Price carbon or face a bleak future

Should we believe the scaremongering of politicians who tell us that safeguarding the short term profits of business and its ability to compete in the international market place is far more important than avoiding the disastrous effects global warming will have on climate and the environment? When they tell us that placing a tax on carbon will bring hardship to families, create unemployment and ruin the economy, should we demand that they produce credible evidence to support their claims? So far they have not.

Should we believe politicians who tell us that Australia will be providing a fair contribution to reducing global emissions by making a 5% reduction in its emissions by 2020 when other countries are making 25% reductions? Should we believe a Minister for Climate Change who assures us that coal production and use will be protected from job losses – in other words, business as usual for the major source of emissions? Or should we demand that they explain why their proposals for reduction of carbon pollution, when compared with the advice of climate scientists, are farcical and totally inadequate?

Then we have the journalists, editors and media outlets presenting denialist views on climate change without ever supporting their position with a shred of credible scientific evidence. On the rare occasions that they present arguments supporting their view, those arguments are always, not occasionally, always shown to be wrong. To put it bluntly, we are being lied to – not by politicians which some may regard as par for the course, but by the media who we are supposed to believe are trustworthy.

We either believe these people or we believe scientific evidence which has never been refuted. If we reject that evidence, if we fail to demand that our politicians act on it, we will not do so at our peril – but we certainly ensure that our grandchildren will inherit a world of extreme climate events and very dangerous sea level rise, a world of hunger, pestilence and destruction well before 2100. We have no defence against these outcomes other than to strive to prevent them or reduce their effect.