My Mother Said it's a Hoax

In the early days of global warming, in the days when media services were independent entities all competing for the best and latest news, I was told that problems with the world were all made up by the government just so they could tax us. Global Warming was just to scare us into only buying Australian cars and to pay for dumping rubbish at the dump, which has always been free. The local hand burger places all used Styrofoam packets and every house had a chimney which discharged black smoke in winter and which always played havoc with my asthma.

Nearly 40 years later some of those early pollution years have changed, but not by much. Hand burgers now come wrapped in paper, but the burgers come from cows raised on farms where once stood rain forests, cars have been improved to burn fuel cleaner and use less (well in Australia and Brazil at least), houses mainly use gas heating and access to land-fills is restricted and we are required to recycle. These changes have mostly come on the individual and the individual pays for their waste and their pollution.

But 40 years later nothing has changed when it comes to major global warming, and now climate change. Instead of only 70% of the world's forest being cut down, we now have 95% gone. Instead of clean energy production Australia still uses dirty coal power. In 40 years since knowing about the problems with our environment the conditions and situations have only been made worse, not better.

I have read reports about climate change being a natural process and that it isn't man made. Well, I am no scientist but in ecosystems I know the predominance of forest influences weather patterns over a region, the help keep the air clean and influence cloud formations for rain. 95% of our forest have been cut down. Forests influence weather patterns. Am I the only to notice this obvious, though not very scientific point?

40 years after learning about global warming big polluting industry has increased its production and use of natural resources, the increase so great that some resources will become too expensive to mine and use in less than 100 years - an no oil is not one of those resources, it will just become too expensive to use by anyone who is not part of the wealthy elite. Because of the lack of positive action against global weather and environmental issues several billion Africans will die by the end of the 21st century. They are now suffering extreme drought, many have few resources to exploit and even fewer people on the continent have a government to assist them. What has this to do with climate change? This is the indirect effect of allowing the world's polluters and resource users to continue with their environmentally pollutive ways. Because of climate change affecting more and more of the planet the concept of supplying aid to the African continent will have to be stopped. Flooding, drought and severe weather events across Europe, the Asia Pacific and the USA will keep donating nations too busy with their own problems to help anyone else.

All this will happen while the mega corporations continue to post 10 billion dollar profit quarters, and continue to pump gaseous waste into the air and metals into the water.

40 years after that shrug from my parents I find myself having to explain to my children just why little has been done to rectify or fix some of these pollution problems? My daughter made this video, with a little help from me simply giving one message based on the current situation in Australia.

While it is true climate change is actually a natural occurrence, what the hair splitting skeptics are not taking into account is that we have had most of the global changes happen in less than a century and several thousand years ahead of natural occurrences. Also, and this is what annoys me about the skeptics, a climate change is supposed to take roughly 500 to 1000 years and in the ice caps this change will take a slow 10 000 years. We are seeing it in less than 100.

We cannot stop the process, it was too late for this in 1967 and beyond our grasp in 1982; all times when we knew what was going on and still argued it wasn't real. So easily we believed in not doing anything, so easy was it to do nothing at all and just wait. The same do nothing and just wait attitude today.

What can we do if the climate change process is a runaway? We do what we should have done in the 1960s, we change out technologies, move to cleaner systems and a more environmentally and economically stable energy producing state. Why? The damage has been done. Because doing this NOW will be the difference between 500 years of planetary hardship and several thousand years of hardship, and this will be hardship. In another 100 years the big corporation would be running down, they would have polluted everyone, including governments and will be the only one who can afford anything above a cup of rice and some brown vegetables.

Perhaps that is extreme, but it needs for only two or three conditions to change rapidly and that is what will happen; so, just how do we claw back some of the environment for future generations. This isn't going to be easy, as the mining companies, the oil companies and the coal producing companies (along with their energy producing stations) are deeply entrenched in the economy of every country. Every time you threaten their wealth they threaten to raise prices and punish people. Every time you threaten the livelihood of people so rich they are beyond any known laws they will threaten governments with advertising campaigns to have them thrown out of government. So, to stand up against polluters of the world and even of Australia takes some pretty tough resolve and unlike the Australians of the 30s, 40s and 50s, there is very little resolve left - the general option across this once grand nation is indeed to sit back and watch.

After 40 years is it possible that Australia has lost in the great fight for the salvation of its own environment, has it simply given up and said, 'I don't care'? There has been a possibility put before the Australian people and that possibility is to apply a tax to the polluters themselves; make them pay for the clean-up, make them pay for the switch to cleaner energy production and make them pay to change their wasteful ways. It is put before the people, but even before it even gets into reasonable discussion such a plan against BIG business is being called a tax on Australians by the opposition party (Which must be reported - they received 22.8 million dollars from the polluting companies during the last election – while the government got 1,1 million from the unions – in itself an interesting point). The company Rio Tinto claims it is a tax on the poor and as such they will put up their prices. The first act of the wealthy when said wealth is threatened. You make us clean up our mess and we will punish you.

In 40 years I have seen a country that would not back down from a fight to one that accepts the threats of corporations rather than face them down and make them clean up our air and water. When did Australia become like this, or was it always there and the first signs were in fact in my parent’s poignant shrug and claim global warming was a hoax?

People has said the government has finally found a way to tax the air we breathe; well have you tasted the air you breathe lately; you are already paying the polluters for the air you breathe and what they are pumping out at the power stations and factories would kill you a thousand times over. So, what is the choice here, pay cheaply for poisonous air, or pay a little extra to get cleaner air? Pay a little extra so the fish in our rivers don't just end up with heavy metal poisoning as in some regions of the country.

The Carbon Tax proposed by the Australian government is a tax on the Australian polluters and a drive mechanism to make then reduce emissions and it a harder way encourage them to rethink their technologies. The government has to take a harder line now, because even with the many millions of dollars in incentives already paid to these polluters they have not changed anything, and some could argue they have only increased emissions. Who are you going to trust and who are you going to support - the companies holding the gun to your head with the threat of higher prices, or the government that wants them to pay their fair dues.

I will not shug to my daughter; I will not shrug away her future.