One thing that has puzzled me recently is how polling indicates that less people believe that climate change is real than a year ago. This seemed counter-intuitive especially as the science is now unequivocal that it is happening, and it’s largely caused by us:
http://www.copenhagendiagnosis.org
Then I realised that maybe it’s a good thing. Denial is an emotional reaction and is typically the last stage before acceptance, so perhaps this shows that many people are reacting to the possible truth and all it’s consequences. A big moment for me was realising that climate change will profoundly affect food supplies, and not just make things ‘a bit warmer.’ I’ve also learnt that nature is interlinked in a myriad of ways we will probably never fully understand, and that you can’t tackle, say, the dwindling water of the Murray-Darling river system, without tackling climate change.
There are no easy answers and my belief is that we have to change our behaviors quite a bit as well as governments putting in regulation, encouraging investment in cleaner forms of energy and so on. Our government certainly hasn’t been up-front and honest about this, and continues to peddle the line that things can go on as before.
BTW – check out this brilliant, brilliant short film about the fallicy of ‘cap and trade’ systems for carbon pricing:
http://www.storyofstuff.com/capandtrade/
Hey there furrygardener. Is that your garden in the picture? and just how furry are you? Do you think the fur will affect global warming or will global warming affect the fur.
ha ha. it’s a cyclical (feedforward/feedback) relationship between fur and warming
I’ve seen furrygardner. You have to push away the fur before you even realise there is a human in there. The first time I saw him in his garden I reported a sighting of the sasquatch, and the media was fooled for over a week.
“you can’t tackle, say, the dwindling water of the Murray-Darling river system, without tackling climate change.”
That’s interesting, because I notice that recently Tony Abbott, in his infinite wisdom, seemed to talk about doing just that – through his ‘green army’ plan.