President Reagan’s strength was to make up his mind, then move his cabinet, then move the politicians, then convince the people. Australian minor parties in opposition have to do it in the reverse order.
The NSW election was in part a revolt against an issue that started with the ETS and is now the Carbon Tax. The balance was the utter incompetence of the Labor government in every other facet. The cost of living was fertile ground. Healthy scepticism is a philosophical essential and the issue, that it is unlikely that an Australian government could cool the planet, struck a chord with the people.
The crowd who protested last week on the lawns of Parliament were called by Labor, the Greens and cloistered sections of the media to be: extremists, members of the Ku Klux Klan, oddballs, that “other audience”, wing nuts, rednecks and Dungeon and Dragons' fantasists. On Saturday they were just called voters.
To say this did not have resonance was refuted in a sea of corflutes at every polling booth I visited. It was even further reinforced by Independents and Labor insisting that the election should not be seen as a referendum on the carbon tax which, rather than dismissed, accentuated the then belated sensitivity. Even the Greens found out too late that there is a growing trend of scepticism as to whether Al Gore's Armageddon is happening.
It is essential for the Coalition’s electoral prospects that Julia, Labor, the Independents and Greens keep fighting for a Carbon Tax. They need to talk incessantly and emotionally about Professor Garnaut's cure for global warming. They need to stand shoulder to shoulder with Tim Flannery and the 30 to 40 percent that assure you of electoral carnage. I shall continue to work with the 60 percent who are furious at being vilified by sections of the media and I shall continue to be dumbfounded that there have been more than 246,000 hits in one week on my website, caused predominately by this issue.
The latest bit of wonder and light is Tim Flannery's statement that changes from a carbon dioxide emission scheme may take 1000 years to make a difference. We could not foresee in 1911, even in our wildest imagination, the world we live in now, let alone from the Dark Ages in 1011.In the Dark Ages the general view was that the world was flat and there be dragons in the remote oceans. The overwhelming consensus position of science was that the sun went around the Earth and if you denied this later proved misconception, you were called a heretic and tortured on the rack.
The historical relevance of bad policy is clearly displayed in the fact that just prior to 1911, Argentina was the wealthiest nation on Earth but the benevolence of nature is no match for bad government. If wise counsel was to come from a modern day Letter of St Paul to the Australians it would be this, you are blessed with many capabilities and stuffing up your economy is one of them.
They won’t be using coal in 100 years time in the form and the volume they are using it now but this change in behaviour will have nothing to do with a carbon tax. Maybe thorium will be in use and definitely advanced nuclear energy, hopefully away from highly active fault lines. There will be advancements in efficiency of photovoltaic cells way beyond the less than 10 percent currently to an amount that makes them naturally market competitive with coal.
What I do know is that they did not develop the wheel because they taxed walking nor did they develop the car because they taxed the horse so I imagine that new sources of power will be developed by ingenuity driven by the fact they start running out of the old sources.
I believe Earth Hour is an apt metaphor for the Global Warming debate. It is reverence for the darkness. It is nostalgia for the Dark Ages. It is our own little piece of 1011 when we should instead be inspiring the ingenuity of mankind to deliver the fundamentals of life to as many people as possible at a price they can afford.