The human race was dying out

No one left to scream and shout

People walking on the moon

Smog gonna get you pretty soon

Ship of fools, ship of fools. Ship of fools, ship of fools…

(Jim Morrison)

 A Journey From the Higgs Bosun to Extinction:

This week the media exultantly praised the brilliant scientific work that has resulted in the finding of  the elusive “God Particle” or the Higgs Bosun. The Australian media is also trumpeting their own success at undermining the equally brilliant scientific work of climate scientists in making us aware that by failing to deal with man made global warming we are on the path to our own extinction.

According to recent polls, Australians who once strongly supported government action on climate change now oppose a tax that has been put on carbon emissions into the atmosphere. This is despite the tax being imposed on only the largest emitters of carbon, and despite householders being compensated for cost rises caused by the tax.

It also disregards the strong probability that the early embracing of low carbon technology will put more money in the pockets of Australians than by continuing on our current high carbon pathway.

To achieve these negative polls the mainstream media has lent their support to the deceitful campaigns of shock jocks and avaricious coal barons aimed at denigrating the findings of climate scientists. These findings show that we are already locked into damaging and highly expensive levels of climate change.

While denying the science, they studiously ignore the economic analysis that shows that a carbon tax is the cheapest and most effective method of reducing carbon related climate change.

Disregarding the rapid increase in plant an animal extinctions which point to to our own demise, the media focus on short term impacts and the cost of the tax on consumers, and selected businesses that are high energy users. In doing so they only look at one side of the climate balance sheet.

To balance the ledger, here are just a few of the massive costs of not dealing with the human related causes of climate change:

In reducing carbon emissions we also reduce the health bill from the health impacts of toxic pollutants billowing out of industrial chimneys.

In Europe this cost is estimated to be at least 102-169 billion Euro’s per annum. Furthermore only 2% of the facilities cause 50% of this health cost and these are the same type opf facilities targeted by Australia’s carbon tax. In the USA, air pollutants are estimated to reduce agricultural output by 4% per annum.

According to CSIRO, the human health cost is estimated at between A$3 billion and A$5.3 billion every year, and annual damage to materials, property and buildings is between A$3 billion and A$5 billion – one per cent of gross domestic profit (GDP). 

The savings on avoiding adverse health impacts from pollution alone outweighs the cost of the carbon tax on the economy.

A rise in floods and other extreme weather events like those experienced across Australia has resulted in massive infrastructure damage that costs billions of dollars in crop losses and mineral production. Thousands of houses and their furnishings have been destroyed and as a result insurance premiums have risen massively.

Conversely extreme heat is causing more intense and more damaging bushfires than have occurred in the recorded past. As with the floods, many houses and lives were lost in bushfires, and again the cost was in the billions.

The result in the more frequent swings between El Niño and La Niña oceanic oscillations has been accompanied by an emerging pattern of major floods followed by years of extreme drought. This has caused havoc with horticulture and agriculture and with native vegetation and fauna. Even marine species are at threat with the warming of the ocean, the changes in ocean currents and the acidification of the marine environment.

In fact our whole ecosystem is teetering on the brink of a major collapse. To add to this massive problem for humanity their is a twenty to thirty year lag time in the conversion of CO2 in the atmosphere to a change in the climate.

The current impacts of global warming was caused by the CO2 levels of twenty years ago. With our current CO2 output, global warming will be significantly worse in twenty years time even if we reduced our emissions right now. But if we do not make a  massive change there is a very bleak future for our grandchildren.

As Chief Seattle is reported to have said:

“Only after the last tree has been cut down. Only after the last river has been poisoned.  Only after the last fish has been caught. Only then will you find that money can not be eaten.”

While the enlightened continue to seek out the God particle, the ship of fools is sailing on a high wind. Blinded to the truth by the high priests of greed and selfishness they speed on to oblivion. Will you join them?