Dear Leader(s)

Dear Leader

As I write this, the second most livable city in the world has the world’s worst air quality. 

It’s been great to see you spring into action over the last fortnight once it was clear the political fallout from your secret Hawaiian sojourn wasn’t very palatable to people watching the horrors of this black summer on their devices day-after-day, night-after-night. 

The sight of you on the beach giving that now famous goofy thumbs up grated on many of us who have been frustrated by lack of climate action by a long line of governments owned by the coal lobby, mining moguls and the Murdochracy. 

As your talking points continually remind you and your ministers to tell us, Australia only makes up a little over one percent of the world’s carbon emissions, a rough estimation given all the coal and gas we export. For years we’ve been told that China is building a new coal mine every couple of hours, we’re told it’s better that India has a chance to burn our coal because it’s cleaner. 

Well as I and millions of other Australians sit here in the smoke and dust, thousands of people without a home, entire regional economies are on their knees as a result of the worst spring and summer we’ve seen, you and those that own your obfuscations and weaselly pronouncements don’t seem much chop. 

People want action on climate change. 

And when I say that, I don’t mean what the logging lobby calls “thinning” of Australia’s eucalypt forests. Thinning, a cute term that probably took several roundtables, overpriced consultancy firms and hapless test groups to come up with. Thinning is logging. Logging is not the answer, it’s not even part of the answer.

I’ve long thought climate scientists, economists analysing the impacts of climate change on the global economy, our Pacific neighbours who are suffering from the impacts of rising sea levels, must have all spoken a foreign language. A language not understood by those in what you call the Canberra bubble, because the community wants action whether they are raving inner city lunatics or seventh generation farmers and you just don’t seem to understand.

They and many others been examining and experiencing the impacts of climate change for years now. They told you and your many predecessors that while climate change is a threat, actually more of a threat to us here in Australia than most other industrialised nations, it also provides a swathe of opportunities for us to lead.

Would Australia’s leadership on climate change have prevented these bushfires, who knows, although it should be noted that the 50 million ton cut in emissions under our Kyoto commitments was achieved by 2013, largely as a result of placing a price on carbon. 

Conservative governments since then have achieved zilch, they won’t tell you that of course, the political class no longer concede anything. Actually they want to take the reduction in emissions achieved by the Labor government and carry that forward under the Paris agreement. They’ll tell you about that though. Cute. 

As an aside, remember when Abbott wanted to appoint a wind farm commissioner?? I digress. 

The seeming never ending fires, the denser plumes of smoke are not only horrifying, it is agitating and we’re beginning to take it out on each other; on social media, on the roads, on the streets, in the supermarket aisles.  

What would at least provide comfort during this time of national crisis? 

Knowing we had a government that at least took climate change seriously. Knowing we had a government that wasn’t owned by a coal lobby determined to keep burning dead dinosaurs until there’s nothing left to burn. The community would take comfort knowing that on the world stage we as a nation had the moral authority to lead, to work with other nations, particularly the other industrialisednations responsible for two percent of emissions or less. 

If we were serious we would harness our natural assets, create new industries, new technologies that we could present to the rest of the world. The world could follow our lead, we could engage. The people would know that you were acting in OUR best interest, not at the behest of lobbyists in closed door discussions and murky political donor laws. 

Be warned though, it will take courage and imagination though, which makes me wonder why I’m bothering to write this at all.  

Instead you’re showing our other fellow global systems how to fudge figures. 

In the midst of crises like this it would be of some comfort to know we were doing our part. Our government doing what the vast majority of us want, take action on global change.  

p.s you’re going to need more than a baseball cap when going for drought and bushfire affected communities, the sun’s vicious out there.