Young people hung out to dry by leaders following the money, not the smoke

John Menin writes: The only vandals on this planet are humans, a violent, greedy narcissistic species (“A wilderness of smoke and mirrors: why there is no climate hope”). From British colonialism to slavery, apartheid, Lenin, Stalin, the Gulag, Catholicism, dictatorships, Hitler, Castro, Amin, the KKK, racism, Putin, and on it goes — grubby men with weapons, with God on their side. Money for guns but not for clean drinking water or food or protection of the environment.

It’s not going to change. I spent 20-plus years on fire crews and compared with 1988 when I started, today’s fires and hot winds along with drier bush, etc, are far worse. For the younger generations, it’s your time to get active.

Roger Clifton writes: Young people are more likely to fight than despair. Youth activism will eventually change the votes of their elders, as it did in the anti-Vietnam War days. When enough of us are voting for 100% decarbonisation, a pathway to a clean future can be laid out.

David Arthur writes: Is young people’s future as dire as Maeve McGregor posits? If policies that are now in place are allowed to persist for more than a couple of years, the future will indeed be as bad as described. But if they are recognised as simply a first step away from the abject denialism of the Abbott-Joyce-Morrison years, then maybe, just maybe, things won’t be quite as bad as McGregor foresees. With the end of La Niña conditions and the possible resumption of El Niño, it will once again be blindingly obvious just how severely mug punters have been deceived by the Murdochracy, and further change will be implemented.

I am six decades old and have been trying to warn people about climate change for at least three of those decades. I remain happy with my decision in my teenage years to not have children.

Tim Stephens writes: McGregor is, unfortunately, right on target. Democracy died when big monied corporations bought access and influence with politicians and parties. Polls show most people want strong, urgent action on the coming disaster. But it’s not the number of people that matters but the amount of money pumped into these morally corrupted “leaders”.

Non-real action on climate is the same as the non-action on the vast sea of suffering of those less well-off. The issues are covered by shrouds of complexity and bullshit, which are nothing but lies and deception. The fixes are actually easy and simple. For climate change, emit less carbon and move to renewables. For poverty, change the tax laws back to taxing those who can afford to pay and subsidise those who are struggling.

I had hoped Labor would be a breath of fresh air after years of right-wing nuttery, but alas it is as morally corrupt (almost) as its predecessors.

John Peel writes: Our so-called leaders (mostly men) benefiting today from their decisions or non-decisions regarding climate change will of course not be here to suffer or be pilloried when, inevitably, the worst happens. Should that be, on the most optimistic calculations, by the century’s end, I can calculate that most of my grandchildren won’t be around either. But what of their children and their grandchildren?

Paul Tyndale-Biscoe writes: McGregor’s assessment is depressingly spot-on. What is worse — and highlights the absolute farce of the federal government’s climate policy — is that it is based on addressing or offsetting only the emissions that are created here in Australia, the so-called scope one and two emissions. Scope three emissions — those that come from the burning of the fossil fuels we export — are not our responsibility, and so are conveniently excluded from the policy targets.

However, the Paris Accord quite rightly pointed out that developing countries — those that did very little to create the climate crisis in the first place — should not bear the burden of addressing it, and so in what seems to be the most outrageous loophole in climate accounting, no one has to address these emissions. The fossil fuel industry can go on happily exporting coal to Bangladesh or India safe in the knowledge that these emissions need not be accounted for here, or indeed anywhere.  

Australia and all countries profiting from the mining and export of fossil fuels should be required to take responsibility for the emissions created from the burning of these products. If that were the case, the Greens’ policy of no new coal or gas mines would quickly be adopted.

Graham Sharp writes: Thank you, Maeve McGregor, for this rare, true story of the bleak future for our young people. The only hope is if the bulk of the population accepts this as a reality and removes those politicians captured by the super-powerful fossil fuel industries. It’s an ugly truth but we need it told clearly and face it to start making changes.

The most frightening thing about climate change is society’s blind avoidance and political inaction allowing the world’s emissions to keep increasing. We need your story told over and over until we are truly scared and take action to vote out our captured politicians. We have a long way to go. I will keep fighting as an activist; please keep fighting as a journalist.

Gottfried Otting writes: Labor’s policies on climate change are woefully inadequate, and it knows and admits it. Electoral reform to a multi-party system as in New Zealand is needed to make state capture more difficult.

Keith Altmann writes: I can only agree with McGregor’s concerns about the “poli-wash” of the looming crisis about tipping points. A major driver is around a simplified economic system that ignores the failing biophysical system from our demands for a growth economy. That growth is increasingly a myth except for a lucky few in the short term. Effectively we will pass 1.5C before 2030 and that is even without taking into account a possible 0.6C rise due to cleaning up global aerosols — the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) has referenced this but it was not highlighted or evident to most in its last major report.

I am over 60, but as a retired civil engineer/town planner, I have followed the science since the early 1970s and followed the research closely in the past two decades. I now think we are facing creeping global collapse in coming decades and lack the collective wisdom to act in an integrated way to avoid collapse.

Sue James writes: McGregor is correct, except when she says that if we all stopped pretending we’d be able to give young people the only semblance of optimism left.

No one who has been paying attention could believe there is any optimism left. For how long do we have to see governments prioritising donations that keep them in power before we realise that special interests have won, and it is too late to do anything meaningful now that will save the majority? Indeed, the only people who can have optimism are those ultra-rich who are fuelling (pardon the pun) the problem, and their descendants — they will have the money and resources to survive while the rest dies out.

But humans are not built to stare a future like that in the face, so stopping pretending is almost not an option anymore. If we don’t pretend, what is the alternative? An uprising to make those who are responsible pay for their crimes might be cathartic in the short term, but probably wouldn’t change much in the long term. And governments wonder why there is a mental health pandemic…