by Tan Copsey
Continuing on today’s riff of environmental stories emerging from depths of the south pacific – The Independent was moved to ask ‘how many Australians does it take to change all the lightbulbs’. To which my reply was – well most of the bloody 68% of the population polled late last year , who rated climate change a ‘serious threat’, and have been pressuring their government to do so since it shamefully followed Bush down the trail towards climate oblivion (apologies for the language – John Howard makes me a little hot under the collar).
Yes, Australia is banning the use of incandescent lightbulbs, which according to The Independent will ‘prevent 16 billion tons of carbon dioxide being pumped into the world's atmosphere over the next 25 years’. This is, without doubt, a little ripper/ beaut/ corker of an idea. Unfortunately contrary to much prevailing wisdom it wasn’t really John Howard’s. Yes the crypto-neo-con Prime Minister of a country he is turning into ‘little drunk America’ is following in the footsteps of, wait for it, Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro. Rather bizarrely those giants of Marxist/ Bolivarian industrialisation have gone climate friendly. I’m moved to recall PJ O’Rourke’s rather nasty, but not entirely untrue, riff on Castro’s attempt to assert his environmental credentials in the early 90’s. Turns out Fidel is actually making one last gift to the planet, and maybe just persuading his good mate Johnny to do the same.
Less amusingly, further plans for a carbon trading scheme are being overseen by the usual combination of energy industry lobbyists. So Australia looks likely to continue its proud tradition of agency capture by Energy Industry, even if one or two little bright ideas are causing cracks in the coalface.
