You’ve got to hand it to the global warming deniers – they really have figured out their argument. The ragtag gang of big business finger-lickers and luddites that make up the climate change naysayers in Australia have stopped trying to attack the science – the line they now trot out is “well there’s no point doing anything until the Chinese and Indians do”. And as spin goes it’s not a bad line.
The only problem is the Chinese and Indians have picked up on it and started doing back.
Enter last week’s tut-tutting and finger-waving by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao.
“The developed countries have a responsibility and an obligation to respond to global climate change by altering their unsustainable way of life,” he said.
He added rich nations should devote one per cent of their economic output toward helping poor countries fight global warming.
This from one of the leaders of the biggest single emitter of CO2 in the world – that’s right, they just leapfrogged the US.
Not that Wen’s not right. He is.
The fundamental thing we in the West seem to have missed with global warming is that we will all need to fundamentally change our habits.
We will have to unplug our air conditioners, junk our big heavy cars and build appliances that will last. Getting excited about earth hour and taking canvas bags to the shops is simply not enough.
We will need to drastically reduce packaging, have shorter showers, eat less meat, sweep up leaves instead of blowing them, and recycle, recycle, recycle.
Plus our governments will need to invest in more public transport infrastructure and sustainable power options.
And we do have the moral imperative to spend some of our wealth helping the rest of the world do the same – because if we don’t have the money to do something, who do we think does?
But no government seems to have the guts to expend the political capital to ram this message home. Hopefully Barack Obama and our own Kevin Rudd will put an end to that.
Of course the Chinese Premier was grandstanding a bit – he was speaking at the start of a 76-nation conference in Beijing aiming to tackle climate change.
And of course he had one eye on his domestic audience as well.
However the unprecedented $586 billion they’ve just earmarked for spending on environmental protection – amongst many other things – will go some way.
But the Chinese will need to set some proper CO2 emission targets and join the party as well.
Because if we just keep blaming each other where will we be?
If we’re determined to spend our way out of this coming recession, Keynes style, then maybe some of that money should be earmarked for reversing this trend.
Otherwise all we’ll have to cling to when the seas rise will be right-wing spin.
