Climate change, taking the wag to new heights

BACK in my school days just after the First Fleet arrived, my mob was always looking for ways to wag school.

This was particularly tricky during my primary school days as my father happened to be the school principal.

Hence, when I moved to St Mary’s for secondary school, I thought wagging class would be a doddle.

However, that was not to be when my mates and I discovered the Christian Brothers had more spies on the street than ASIO.

I can only imagine the reception we would have received had we said we were taking a day off school to protest about environmental issues.

And it’s not as if we didn’t have such issues with certain scientists back in the 1970s predicting the world was heading for another ice age, then that the hole in the ozone layer would see the sun melting the poles to the point the seas would rise and drown us all.

Remember, the hole in the ozone layer? No, not many do.

We were all going to drown from rising sea levels if we didn’t stop using spray deodorants.

Personally, I preferred to be swamped by rising sea levels than to walk around among people with smelly armpits, but that’s just me.

Then, of course, there was the Millennium Bug. That was a good one!

Remember being told that because computers were not designed to handle the ticking over from 1999 to 2000, airplane computers would fail with flights falling from the skies, nuclear missiles would inadvertently fire themselves leading to World War III, and worse still, the live telecast of the Ashes from England would be interrupted and our TV screens left blank.

I’d like to report here that the Millennium

‘‘ CAN AUSTRALIA’S FUTURE REALLY AFFORD TO BE WAGGING A DAY OFF SCHOOL TO GO SHOUTING SLOGANS IN THE STREET?

Bug scam didn’t fool us here at The Chronicle, but I well remember a photographer and I being rostered on from 6pm News Year’s Eve to 2am just in case the world ended.

Just what we were going to report in the event of the end of the world, I’m still not sure, or, come to think of it, who would be around to read it?

Remember the trillions of dollars spent world-wide in having computers made “Y2K compliant”.

Although, they discovered you really can fool all the people all the time.

So, now we have climate change, or more to the point, the lack of action toward same, leading to our little ones giving up a day’s school to go shout slogans in the street.

Now, I’m no academic by any stretch of the imagination so I’m not one to point the finger here, but by all reports Australia’s education rating on the world standings seems to have dropped from a spot in the top 10 to somewhere in the mid-30s.

My point being, if that’s the case, can Australia’s future really afford to be wagging a day off school to go shouting slogans in the street?

Maybe, and I don’t want to appear harsh here, Australia’s future might need to catch up and sit through the holidays as well.

Of course, there are far more effective ways to get one’s point across, and I was always told to lead by example.

Surely, if the answer to climate change is to use less energy – thereby lessening the need for resources such as coal and oil – then maybe it’s time to lead by example and do without energy sapping tools that use up so much of our fossil-fuelled electricity.

I, for one, will stand by every student who throws away his/her mobile phone and electricity-sapping charger, who chooses to use books for research instead of Google on a laptop, who uses pencil and paper to work out mathematical equations rather than a calculator, and walks to and from school, thereby making mum and dad’s gas-guzzling 4WD obsolete.

Then there’d be no need to go shouting into the street, blocking traffic and disturbing pedestrians going about their business. Just a thought!