Confessions Of A Climate Change Skeptic

In the heady days of the last boom, long before some selfish Americans stopped paying off mortgages they could never possibly afford, people had lots of time to worry about the big issues. Issues like - Why has Britney gone off the rails? Plasma or LCD? Is it pretentious to dress your kids in Burberry? Another trendy issue which was very popular back then was ‘climate change’ or ‘How you and I have fucked up the planet and what we should do about it’. Everything green or even slightly tinged with green was suddenly gold. Stuff like hybrid cars and carbon off-set air-travel. People demanded that governments took action to combat climate change and carbon emissions. Every corporation was trying to out-green the next one. Then along came the GFC and changed our priorities somewhat.

I guess a carbon free future is a nice idea, but a future full stop is nicer.

Anyway, today I’m coming out as a climate change skeptic. It’s not so much that I don’t believe that something is happening to the climate - it’s just that to be honest I don’t really care or believe in the hype surrounding it. I don’t know about you, but I find it difficult enough to think about what to have for lunch today, let alone a few extra degrees in 2020. I certainly can’t speak for the majority, or anyone else for that matter but I get the sense that addressing climate change is something that we’d like governments to take care of so that we can all go back to worrying about what to eat and wear. From my admittedly basic perspective, I’m still to be convinced that that we can start drawing conclusions about a changing climate over such a short time frame (say 100 years), compared to the overall age of the earth (give or take 4bn years). And even worse, making predictions on future climatic events based on what has come before in such a ridiculously complex and dynamic system. We’ve sure got a great track record in predicting the future to date.

Before I go on, I’m going on the record right now to say that I haven’t taken the time to properly understand either the science underpinning the cataclysmic forecasts or the legislative steps governments around the world are taking to address it. Sure there are a more hurricanes nowadays, a few polar bears have lost their habitat and I’ve heard that some pissy island nations could disappear underwater sometime in future. But really - how is this going to affect your average punter here and now? For me, the whole concept of ‘carbon credits’ and ‘emission targets’ is too just hard to get my head around, not to mention make me tune out. Do I now have to send a couple bucks to the government every time I drop one? Should I start charging my kids if I do the ‘pull my finger’ joke?

Just to consider things seriously for a second, how are we going to realistically ‘set a price’ for carbon? How do we monitor emissions from factory X versus coal mine Y? Who is going to administer all this? I guess the only thing that we know for sure is that you and I are going to pay for it through a comprehensive government advertising (sorry education) campaign and an undoubtedly bloated bureaucracy. But more than that, I’m skeptical that we as Australians can really do that much to change things for the whole planet. As an island nation with a population smaller than some cities, how exactly do we hope to do effect change by ourselves? I know, I know - if we all had that attitude nothing would get done. But this is one case where I don’t think anyone is going to give us a big pat on the back for being climate change martyrs. I’m pretty sure carbon molecules don’t respect national boundaries. Or respond to ‘climate change leadership’. Call my cynical, but I don’t think 2 billion odd Chinese and Indian folks who are busily trying to pull themselves out of abject poverty care that much about the size of their carbon footprints…in a more basic but no less important way, they too are more worried what to eat and wear.

In our need to be seen as doing something ‘pro-active’ (is there a more grating buzz-word apart from ‘synergy’?) about climate change, I’m just skeptical that the committee’s response we are going to end up with will be of any benefit to anyone. In fact I’m worried we will get some sort of shitty hybrid model whereby we make compromises to various interest groups and it ends up being an administrative, enterprise-killing burden that doesn’t reduce our reliance on fossil fuels or make one iota of difference to a global climate. In my simple mind if you want to increase the cost or something that’s bad for you (e.g. tobacco) shouldn’t you just put a tax the bloody thing, instead of trying to introduce some fancy-schmancy cap and trade system that no one understands and costs lots of money to run?

But hey - at the very at least 20 years from now we will all be able to look our kids squarely in the eyes and say we took strong and decisive, if pointless action.