Being in Europe at the moment and seeing what is happening with the temperatures here, you'd have to have rocks in your head not to realise something is amiss.
Forget the summer furphy, we've seen the record for the hottest day on the planet (ie the average temperature across every place on Earth on a given day) broken three times in two weeks.
The frustrating thing for me is things can be done that also solve other problems in the world, like the cost of living. I've recently completed a process of 'greening' my house, removing all gas, and installing additional solar and battery capacity and moving to an electric car.
With the anticipated savings on gas, electricity and petrol costs I'm looking at saving well over 10k a year as a result of these changes, and that will only increase as prices do over time.
Yes, the initial outlay is significant, but if the government really invested in these things and ran them through every home in Australia the price would decrease dramatically and the savings and environmental effect over a long period of time would be enormous. Not to mention the massive boosts in terms of jobs and manufacturing etc.
Such a shame no-one in government at any level seems to have the appetite to take these challenges on.
Mixed bag of a post. I don't think any of this is bad, but a few comments.
Firstly its expensive, if you can afford to do it, great, most people can't. I heard a good quote the other day, 'there is no such thing as a hungry environmentalist'.
Second, things are happening, gas appliances in the home are rapidly on the way out regardless, and will be legislated out. Cheaper, recyclable (I hope yours are) solar panels will become standard.
Re government taking on the challenges, there are undeniable political barriers, the Murdoch denial media, the power of the mining industry and our economic dependence on it, and also the voters. Heaps of people still think its *smile* and/or futile to take action, related to prev media and mining points. Very interesting example of Queensland, recently quadrupled the coal royalty, in one fell swoop, from 2 to 8%, thinking is incentivise the phase out, and use the royalties to transition to renewables, good idea right? The backlash from the Murdoch and the miners has been vicious, brutal. CEO of BHP got up the World Mining Congress in Brisbane a couple of weeks ago and went apeshit, 'we will not invest in QLD!" (Total *smile* BTW, they invest where the mineral deposits are, they find a big copper deposit in Toowoomba next week, they will backpedal faster than Wiley Coyote). But I think there is enough electoral support for it and they are holding the line, and thats good. Point is, that is a very real example of a government 'taking on the challenge'.
