Feature Photo : Big Blue Marble 

True or not, blaming global warming for the projected decimation of [Australia’s] platypus, certain marsupial populations and, the Great Barrier Reef, has proven to be a lucrative source of funding for activists and rent-seekers. It’s also an excuse for the [Australian] federal government to institutionalise massive wealth transfers through a 43 per cent 2030 emissions reduction target. It knows this ambition is utterly unattainable but that a lie told often enough becomes the truth.

So the enforced economic and social distortions which follow will enrich the few at the expense of the many and be justified on the familiar, yet dishonest, ground that the cost of emissions reduction is far less than the damages of inaction.

As US House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi neatly summarised when supporting the Democrats’ historic climate bill, ‘How can they (Republicans) vote against the planet? Mother Earth gets angry from time to time and this legislation will help us address all of that’. In a world led by superstitious authoritarians, who will argue?