Now what?

Well, you've no doubt heard the grim news by now that the Senate has passed the repeal of the Clean Energy Future legislation and now Australia officially has no climate change policy, pretty much, at all. Sure, there are a few remnants remaining, but the centre piece, the bit with all the economic teeth, is gone. The RET is still under attack. The Clean Energy Finance Corp hangs in the balance as far as I know. Clive Palmer said he would save it, but he says a lot of things. Without the $11 billion per year of income, it can still do things, but it cannot do what it is supposed to do, which is to drive the economy away from fossil fuels into renewable energy. I've little doubt that it will be shut down as soon as possible and all that money given back to the fossil fuel industry from whence it came if Tony Abbott gets his druthers.

So, it would be easy at this point to give way to despair, but I for one, won't be doing that.  As I've written before, the fossil fuels industry is very much on the defensive globally and their long term future is highly uncertain as more and more money is divested, prices are dropping and public opinion, and therefore political will (at least in sensible countries) increasingly turns against them. I'm not too worried about the long term future of the renewable energy industry these days. Once economically priced domestic and commercial scale solar storage becomes available here, and that's only about 2-3 years way in my reckoning, it will be 'all over Rover'. 

This act of vandalism by Abbott, on behalf of the IPA, will only serve to slow things down a little. Heck, it might even serve to galvanise more people into action than ever before. It's certainly not going to lower retail energy prices in any discernible way that's for sure. It's not going to do anything for the Abbott government's already awful international reputation. It's not going to endear him in the hearts of moderate, intelligent Liberal voters, of whom there are many.

We live in an age of wonders where change can happen at breakneck speed. Things are changing so quickly now it's dizzying. Our communications and technology and the interconnectedness of the world have never been so advanced. People can share ideas, research, art, science, games, projects, funding projects, news ... you name it... in nano-seconds now that once took months or years. A technological breakthrough one year is all over the world the next. Of course, this comes with dangers, when bad ideas like some new poison, silly fad like planking, or a potentially dangerous new device like unmanned drones, is unleashed without due consideration of the consequences. But the up side, is that good ideas spread just as quickly. Mostly the good ideas win (eventually).

I don't know what the next few decades are going to bring. A utopian organic green wonderland with free energy for all? Dystopic social collapse as warlords fight over the last scraps of coal and oil Mad Max style? Nobody would be brave enough to try to predict it. Not even me. One thing is for sure, anything could happen. It's going to be a heck of a ride. 

Heaven and hell

I've been thinking about ancient religions this week (as you do).  I was thinking how back in prehistoric times people regarded the Earth as our mother and worshipped all the aspects of the natural world. They believed that when we died we went to an afterlife which they imagined taking place underground. Going underground wasn't considered a bad thing. It was considered like going home.

Things changed over the millennia for some reason, the details of which are mostly lost in the mists of time. We started worshipping gods and goddesses who lived in golden palaces, or mighty banquet halls, in the sky. We forgot about the gods who lived in the trees and rivers, the spirits of the streams and caves. We began to believe that when we die, if we've been very, very good, we go up into the sky to party on with the gods for all eternity. If we've been very, very bad though, we go down into the Earth, which is a terrible punishment. Underground we will be poked with pointy sticks and roasted in horrible fires and tormented in all kinds of other fanciful, but dreadful ways.

It got me thinking about the way we (most of us humans) treat the Earth with complete disdain and disregard, and whether these attitudes are all interconnected? We use words like swamp, scrub, wilderness, wasteland and desert to describe our natural places. We talk about dirt, mud and weeds with distaste. We talk about vermin, pests, wild beasts and germs only in terms of things that should be wiped out. Conversely, we tend to glamourize outer space as a place of adventure and magic, all clean lines, new toys and open frontiers with limitless futures. We don't see space for what it really is - a cold and lifeless void. We don't see the Earth for what she reallly is - our mother, our life support system, our safety net and our only home.

In the backs of the minds of the climate change denying oligarchs, the likes of the Koch brothers and Gina Rinehart, there must lurk the idea that, if we really do manage to ruin a perfectly nice planet, they will be able to fly away. Do they think they will be able to live on a space station somewhere, in some kind of idyllic heaven-like situation, a bit like the elites in the sci-fi/social parody Elysium that was released not long ago? Do they think a new planet will be found that they and their cronies can plunder anew? Do they imagine ruling over Earth Mark II, while living in golden palaces, no doubt after annihilating or enslaving any inconvenient current tenants in the traditional fashion?

Well, this wouldn't be the only disconnect that these people have with reality, would it? It really must be a form of madness, and I find it really rather sad, that so many people have lost their love, respect and connection with our mother, the Earth. Let's hope this attitude changes and changes fast, before it's too late, before she kicks us out of the nest for good.