I’ve had just about enough of this climate change debate. What really caused my attitude to change from hmmm let’s talk about it to let’s just do something about it already was a recent episode of Insight on SBS TV (great show by the way!).
I get that sinking feeling that we’ll still be arguing about this until the oceans have risen up to our necks
Climate change exists. Humans are causing it. Humans (we) can help to slow it down. Fact. Fact. Fact.
I have been convinced of this without a shadow of a doubt ever since I read the release from the Australia Academy of Science – The Science of Climate Change.
Now, we can’t all agree on every single detail. Some of the literature supporting the claims in the report may not be true. Believe it or not, scientists are humans and humans make mistakes. Despite the thorough review process that academic papers must go through, sometimes factually incorrect material slips in. But at the end of the day, the majority of the scientific literature and the opinion of climate scientists point to the same conclusion.
Jumping on a handful of points that are wrong in the massive body of literature out there and using that as an excuse to dismiss the whole theory is ridiculous. It reflects either ignorance, in most cases, or a more sinister motive – which is scary and anyone that is taking part in that practice should be forced to live on a small pacific island near the beach so that they eventually drown in their own jerkiness. The point is, most of the arguments “proving” that climate change doesn’t exist is either legitimate data presented out of context or urban myths gone viral.
If you continue to bully the Earth, eventually it will fight back
So what do we do about it? If there was an easy answer, we would have done it by now and be perched under a rainbow holding hands. There is no optimal solution to this problem and people will suffer while we try to solve it. The Earth itself has been suffering since humans figured out ingenius solutions to all that food, water and shelter business and then got a bit bored and invented things like factories that crap out smoke, mineral processing that leak arsenic and stock markets that crash. As a result, we’ve gotten ourselves into a state where people like me (born and bred in Australia) can sit on our Macbooks blogging about climate change while people in parts of the world that I’ve have never heard of are still struggling to get a hold of that food, water and shelter stuff. And I admit that I still get shirty when a I pay $4.00 for a coffee and it’s too milky (by the way, how hard is it to get a fucking coffee right when that’s your only job).
So we, collectively, have to brace ourselves because the Earth has an uncanny ability to self-correct. That’s right, the Earth can screw us right back. Hard. And not just us. Our children and their children, etc. Until there will be no more children. No one (specifically) is to blame. Not even Tony Abbott. If you really want a head on a stake, go dig up a bunch of people that lived in the era of the steam engine. Then dig up everyone that came after them. You’ll need a whole bunch of stakes.
No more talky talky
Ok so it exists. It’s our (collectively speaking) fault. What the crap do we do now? Most would agree that we have to switch to cleaner, greener forms of energy production.
How to deal with climate change is also something that very smart people have been studying for a long time. The best solution that we have at this exact moment is to put a price on carbon emissions. In the future, if we think of any better ideas we can implement them too. But the time to act is now!
Here’s the basic idea (Carbon pricing 101): We make something that used to be free, emitting carbon into the atmosphere, cost something. That makes prices for things down the chain, e.g. electricity prices, fruit that is shipped around the world because we want a mango during winter, cost comparatively more. Eventually, people change their behaviour towards cleaner, greener alternatives. The money that is raised by pricing carbon goes towards compensating those people that may be totally screwed after the implementation of such a scheme and the remainder goes towards investing in some cool stuff like green technology. This accelerates the growth in said technology and makes it comparatively cheaper in the long run. A rainbow begins to form and I hold out my hand to yours and you grab it and we sit under that rainbow. You can read more about the two approaches to pricing carbon – a fixed carbon tax or an emissions trading scheme (ETS) – elsewhere. All you need to know is that this solution has been predicted to be effective and economically viable. A friggin economist said so!
Now, that’s the theory. In practice, things get hairy. People will lose out. We probably will get the price way wrong and have to adjust it. Scam artists will crop up and take advantage of stupid people. The market for carbon permits, under an ETS, could collapse. Big polluters will spend their last remaining cents on lobbying for lower priced (or free) emissions to “help with the transition”.
Now to pause for a snack of Political Hot Potato: The argument that people who are already on struggle street will be worse off because of an ETS is bogus! If you’re on struggle street to begin with, an ETS is the least of your worries. Complain loudly if you are actually going to be worse off after the ETS – i.e. the compensation package doesn’t support you enough. In the mean time concentrate your efforts on getting off struggle street, not on trying to predict the future.
All of this is inevitably going to happen. We’re dislodging a behaviour that’s so entrenched in our society that the change is going to feel like having brain surgery through your arse hole. But we have to change, the change has to be drastic and the change has to happen now.
A few token gestures to distract, confuse and ultimately shut you up
The alternatives I’ve heard sound like a load of business-as-usual bollocks. They all fall over under closer scrutiny, they’ve all been thought of before and none of them work. A couple of examples:
- Subsidise clean and green technologies – Sounds great on paper right? But we already subsidise these technologies. It’s a good thing. If we want to subsidise them some more where do you think the money is going to come from? BP? No. YOU! The taxpayer. Or even worse, the schools, or the hospitals, or the pensioners, or wherever we can scrape it together from (I hear defence has a bit of cash to splash around). Try and take money from any of these groups and see how popular your little “greenie science fair projects” will become. Sure, if we only subsidise green technologies it will accelerate their development but, on the other hand, there’s no incentive for big polluters to pollute less while the technology is catching up. So we’re only tackling half the problem.
- More regulation – Chuck another fistful of laws onto the pile and get the Carbon Cops to lay the smack down. This is an even stupider idea. We’ll go round in circles having the same arguments we’re having now about what should be in these laws. All the while it’s the taxpayers that will be funding this political ballet. We already have regulations. They aren’t working. Adding more regulation is putting a bandaid on cancer.
Green is the new black
No one can argue that being lean, clean and green is a luxury at the moment. When the money isn’t flowing, it’s Mother Nature that picks up the tab. As a result, the countries that don’t have two cents to rub together will continue to pollute their way into the 21st century – they’re just a little late to the whole Industrial Revolution party, that’s all. You can’t blame them.
Please start playing “I Still Call Australia Home” in the background.
But we live in the lucky country. We can afford to make major changes towards turning the tides, literally, on climate change. In the process we may even find something so super cool that we share it with our poorer, carbon farting neighbours. Although we actually emit a small fraction compared to the rest of the world, us, as Australians, always punch well above our weight division when it comes to forward thinking. If you’re still not convinced that we can do it, I’m sure that I can arrange a swap with someone on Christmas Island (I hear that they have a really optimistic view about Australia). Joking about the last bit, but not joking about everything else. Let’s just do it already!
Ok now turn off that shit. Qantas totally ruined that song for me.
