After the climate backflip, what next?

For those who have championed the cause for so long, this sudden about-face is surreal. Like freeing up a chronically blocked sewage pipe, all the pent up history of denial is being flushed past our eyes. Unbelievable!

Before we go patting our prime minister on the head for suffering the indignity of changing his mind, and having the courage to do so, his immediate strategic response is: “Don’t; worry folks, the fix is technical, the problem is just a shortcoming in technology.”

Enter the second phase of denial.

Fifty years ago the world’s most famed scientist-philosopher, Albert Einstein, observed: “It is not possible to solve a intractable problem using the same thinking that caused the problem in the first place.” Remember those words. In years to come, they will prove to be very prophetic.

In the short-term, nothing will stop the industrial society from trying to pursue hi-tech “fixes” such as nuclear power and sequestration of carbon dioxide underground even though in the long-term they will merely add to the global pressure cooker, further breaching the limits of the planet to absorb voracious human activity.

If we go down Howard’s chosen pathway, it would ordinarily take perhaps another two or three decades of folly before the public and political realisation dawns that society simply cannot go along as it is. Problem is, we don’t have that amount of time up our sleeves.

Howard is not alone in this state of denial. Many well meaning folk still romantically think that energy demand can be met using wind, solar and bio-diesel energy sources, not accepting that our enormous consumer footprint is the real underlying problem, and by far the number one priority to address.

But fortunately I believe the 40-year rule has now been broken by the Internet. There is too much knowledge and free trade of knowledge through the world wide web to keep the world’s people blinkered for years on end.

Millions of ordinary people in the streets of Sydney, New Orleans, Mumbai, Rio de Janeiro, have already been stunned into a realisation that unbridled consumption can no longer go along merrily as it has been in the past. Already there is an acceptance that fundamental societal re-thinking has to happen.

Public perception on this is changing by the minute. People, by the droves, are cottoning on that they can live far happier, more convivial and healthier lives, living comfortably with a much leaner footprint. Forget the tardiness of politics; this is where our culture is transforming itself in leaps and bounds.

In years to come it may well be that our children’s children will look back at this historical moment and talk to their children with wonder about the “The Time of the Great Transformation”: the time when humans finally took stock and came to terms with a sustainable relationship with their planetary environment.

It is truly awesome to think that we, at this critical juncture of history, are the people in the hot seat?