Humans will outlast fossil fuels
CLIMATE CHANGE
IF Extinction Rebellion did their homework on oil gas and coal reserves they would be aware that these reserves would be depleted long before the planet becomes uninhabitable. So in the long run up before the reserves are actually depleted then after the depletion all will be renewables. While you can appreciate some climate protesters’ passion, I wonder if at the end of the day maybe all they are doing is peddling doom and gloom and therefore creating unnecessary anxiety, especially for younger people. No country could afford to adopt 100 per cent renewables in a short period of time by doing away with large scale global commodities and no government will risk all for the sake of the environment. count. Action on the scale of mobilising for war is needed and yes, it will cost us all — less now or more later. There simply is no future in “business as usual”, including for coal mining anywhere.
My generation’s debt
I CHOSE to be arrested last Friday in Launceston at the Extinction Rebellion protest because I feel that the more people who can take this step will encourage our government to reconsider their actions on climate change and Australia’s carbon targets. Momentum is building that cannot be ignored and acts of civil disobedience will contribute to change that is so needed.
Born in 1954, I have benefited from the carbon economy, that is cheap power without any dues paid for the environmental damage caused. Its my generation’s time to shout the bar, pull our weight, pay the ferryman from an ethical viewpoint of inter-generational equity. Perhaps an income-tested carbon levy on our generation would be appropriate to assist those in the workforce who will be negatively affected decarbonising.
Pollution goes on and on
A MESSAGE to Greta Thunberg. Pollution works in many ways, whether it is by big companies like mining or whatever. But the spreading of the pollution message doesn’t appear to have reached our local communities. Just look around our own neighbourhoods, when young people get off a bus, they toss their drink containers onto the footpath.
Then you have the motorists who dump their ashtrays in the shopping centre car parks, and the taxi drivers who have got to keep their taxis clean and toss their drink containers out onto the footpath or yard when their work is done. Then we have the householders who have rubbish and get rid of it by tossing it over their back fence into the scrub or creek. The polluters go on and on, Greta, and I am afraid your task can never be completed.
Lost civilisations
IN the distant future, non-human archaeologists will dig through the remnants of our civilisations and ponder. How and why did this selfish, pretentious, so called intelligent being become extinct? Then they make a startling discovery, they unearth a dinosaur clasping a lump of coal.
Plant more trees
GRETA Thunberg’s solution to the Earth’s problems is a simple — grow trees. Driving around Tassie it seems that the European farming practice of hedgerows and shelter belts has in the past not been much favoured, probably because it would give native animals commonly grouped as vermin, somewhere to hide. It is a shame this attitude persists because I bet all the kids and oldies who marched on climate emergency day would be only too happy to turn up and plant out all the bare fencelines on properties all over this country. It would take a bit of designing and communication but easily done.
Free to insult
ISN’T it wonderful Andrew Hejtmanek lives in a country where he can denigrate the PM with words like spineless, soulless, heartless (Letters, October 12). In many countries he would disappear to a gulag. We should celebrate this and the democratic good sense that ScoMo was elected over a Setka/Shorten ticket by 52 per cent of Australians.
Miraculous mobility
ANDREW Hejtmanek asks how Scott Morrison around without a spine. I suggest it’s a miracle!
Beware fake news
IN reply to “Trump teetering” (Letter, October 14), I think someone reads, watches and believes too much of the “fake news” that manages to reach us from the US on a daily basis. President Donald J. Trump is a fair dinkum, spot on sure thing bet for his re-election bid in 2020. Forget all the polls and polling; just believe the final electoral vote count.
Convoluted thinking
THE President of a certain country thinks his enemy’s (ISIS) enemy (the Kurds) is his enemy … Turkey.
No thanks
gets I READ with astonishment David Keyes’ blissful interpretation of global race relations (Letters, October 14). It must have been so comforting to the enslaved that at least they would not get sunburnt while toiling away in the plantations. How rude of darker skinned races for failing to express gratitude for generations of oppression and subjugation.