Guest essay by Eric Worrall
A MSM reporter shares his guilt at having to make excuses to the Byron Bay Writer’s Festival for not doing enough to promote climate concern.
The biggest mistake we’ve made on climate change
By ROSS GITTINS
29 May 2018 — 12:14pm
Every time I go to the Byron Bay Writers’ Festival I’m asked the same question: since there’s no policy issue more important than responding to global warming, and we’re doing so little about it, why do I ever write about anything else?
I give the obvious answer. Though I readily agree that climate change is the most pressing economic problem we face, if I banged on about nothing but global warming three times a week, our readers would soon lose interest.
But even as I make my excuses, my Salvo-trained conscience tells me they’re not good enough. Even if I can’t write about it every week, I should raise it more often than I do.
…
Our grandchildren will find it hard to believe we could have been so short-sighted as to delay moving from having to dig our energy out of the ground to merely harnessing the infinite supply of solar and wind power being sent to our planet free of charge.
What were we thinking? Did an earlier generation delay moving from the horse and buggy to the motor car because of the disruption it would cause to the horse industry?
The biggest mistake we’ve made is to allow our politicians to turn concern about global warming into a party-political issue, and do so merely for their own short-term advantage.
…
Apparently, only socialists think their grandkids will have anything to worry about. The right-thinkers among us know the only bad thing our offspring will inherit is Labor’s debt.
…
I found this apologia interesting on a number of levels.
Greens are well and truly losing the battle for hearts and minds. Most of the right lost interest long ago, but reporters like Ross Gittins realise even their mainly left wing audiences have priorities other than receiving updates about how doomed we are.
Gittins himself in my opinion admits that he is embracing expediency over green purity, he feels guilty about “not doing more”, but this vague sense of guilt does not translate into an imperative for him to change his own behaviour.
If this failure continues, soon even holdout groups like the Byron Bay Writer’s Festival will give up. They may pay a little lip service, the way left wing bourgeoise of today lift a glass of expensive champagne to toast Karl Marx, but in a few years the age of climate concern will be well and truly dead.
That picture doesn’t look like winter?
Byron Bay is a warm place, winters are very mild…
Sounds nice, I hope to visit someday.
Byron is a beautiful place, but to visit now, you have to put up with a large number of scruffy persons, to whom bathing seems to be a foreign idea they don’t support.
You of course mean ‘ferals’. The truth will set you free.😁
“scruffy persons”
Hey, they prefer to be called by their proper name, “Oiks”, if you’re being casual. Or “Bogans” if you want to be polite.
Bogan is incorrect.
Bogans are a class of lower soco-economical who tend to like drinking tinned beer, doing burn outs, going to the footy and listening to 80s rock. Dress code is the flannelette shirt and common names include Dazza and Shazza.
The more motived bogan may evolve into a self employed tradie but most tend to be on the lower ends of the job markets doing semi skilled or manual type labour. They can be crude but still want the best for their families and are basically harmless.
https://youtu.be/5TP2mBnLBsc
bear in mind the feral/scruffies are probably long term residents who moved there in the 60/70s when none of the yuppies would have bothered going there. now its like many gentrified yuppie over run over priced resorts.
and original owners stunningly hand built mud n strawbale homes are now fetching mega mill at sale btw;-)
poetic really
I remember the days when Ross Gittens was an astute journalist.
He was one of my favourite reads. If he is so wrong on this issue, what other subjects has he failed to report accurately.
Regards
Leftists like Gittens have always been wrong. It’s just you who become right.
This story makes sense if you consider someone like Gittens writing in a different era, say a hundred years ago. He would have said “I agree that saving souls from eternal damnation is the most vitally important issue of our day, but if I wrote about nothing but that 3 times a week I would probably lose most of my readers.”
The dedication to “Climate Change” is now a completely religious one. And as with one religion, the True Believers will always consider their Dogma to be more Important than anything else in the world,
If he is so wrong on this issue, what other subjects has he failed to report accurately.
So often I see people with extensive knowledge about a subject pointing out the lousy, often factually incorrect, reporting on the topic they know about, yet they blindly accept what the same reporter tells them about everything else. For some reason, what you said never occurs to them.
When you point it out, they have a brief moment of realization “Yeah, I never thought about that”, then go right back to accepting what they’re fed unquestioningly.
I never could understand it.
Once upon a time I liked Gittins’ work too, but nowadays I hold him in disdain because he is playing to the inner city green left by bagging economics ( in which he is trained) bagging the coalition conservative government and virtue signalling about climate change
On the latter my guess is he would be hard pressed to explain the theory supporting it
When the cult dies down, a nasty residue will remain. Proposition 65 in California is the residue of Nixon’s War on Cancer, and the notions behind that episode. No matter how well discredited, some True Believers will remain, like those holdout Japanese soldiers still hiding out decades after the surrender.
This post contains thoughts known to the state of California to cause cancer or reproductive harm.
<¿<
Yes! The worm may have turned, as they say, but it will take a long time before we get out of this mess caused by climate change hysteria. Too many vested interests, rent seekers & government taxes at stake for it to all blow over anytime soon, unfortunately.
Here’s an example of the ‘climate change hysteria’ today in Canada on CBC:
http://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-friday-edition-1.4687507/cutting-out-meat-and-dairy-is-the-best-way-to-reduce-your-environmental-impact-study-1.4687514
Feeling morally superior is all that matters to many. It is a great approach as it fits in to their 5 minute attention span on any subject. Actually doing something takes learning over a period of years, which very few (1%) commit to. There is also an interesting equivalency of feelings to science data. When someone argues about geology, they revert to calling me a troll when they have no science argument to make. This is totally equivalent to them. Superiority substitutes for knowledge. That is, most engage in vacuous thinking.
40 million people in the world die every year from using biomass to cook their meals because 2.5 billion cook with biomass. What is biomass? wood, charcoal, grasses,dung …. etc They have no other choice. China is helping to build coal plants in some of these countries because they want to sell coal. We could be helping to build liquified petoleum gas(LPG) plants in those countries. The economics are about the same between coal and LPG. LPG is a mixture of propane and butane. Both come from natural gas of which the world now has 190 trillion cubic metres in proven reserves which is good for at least 50 more years. However natural gas is always being found. The only reason we arent finding any more is we arent looking very much because the prices have drastically dropped. The world also has 50 years worth of oil in proven reserves. I predict we will never run out of either one. Whenever the reserves shrink the price goes up and we look for more and find it. Coal is even in better shape. We have 153 years worth of proven reserves.
Our Prime Minister Justin Trudeau wants to impose a $35 billion carbon tax in the next 5 years in Canada to lower the world’s temperature in a 100 years time by 0.005C His most trusted advisor Gerald Betts wants every fossil fuel plant in the world to be shut down. 80% of the worlds energy comes from fossil fuels. With attitudes like Trudeau, Betts and all the other greenies they have the blood of 40 million people on their hands because instead of spending a $ trillion per year fighting a hoax like climate change the money should be spent helping those 2.5 billion people.
Alan:
I see that the Canadian govt is going to buy the controversial Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion from Alberta to the west coast to ensure that the project goes through to completion. Apparently, Canada can get a better price for the oil in the Asian markets than they can here in the U.S.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/29/canada-kinder-morgan-pipeline-trans-mountain.
When Bill McKibben received the news, he issued an anti-Trudeau rant on The Guardian’s website about it (not the link above). I wish I could find it now because it was rather fun to read. Trudeau is a climate change hero one minute, and the next minute he isn’t. ROTFLMAO.
A multi-billion dollar tax on carbon on one hand, and nationalizing the KM pipeline to ensure its completion on the other. I don’t think I can recall seeing any govt or politician playing both sides of the fence quite like PM Trudeau does on climate and energy. At least not in recent memory. Trudeau should ride that fence like he would a horse…giddyup cowboy.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/29/justin-trudeau-world-newest-oil-executive-kinder-morgan
The only reason that Canada couldnt get a better price was we were forced to sell to US because the Quebecors wouldnt let another pipeline run east and BC and Trudeau nixed a previous pipelne running west. Canada is losing 15 billion a year from being forced to sell to US. If Trudeau wouldnt have forced this pipeline through to BC ( i just told you he nixed a previous pipeline running to BC) the country would have broke up. Alberta and BC are at war. luckily each one doesnt have any armed forces. We are living in a Land of OZ up here. The Wizard is in charge and Toto hasnt learned the trick yet of pulling back the curtain.
“Cleaning up the tar sands complex in Alberta – the biggest, ugliest scar on the surface of the earth – is already estimated to cost more than the total revenues generated by all the oil that’s come out of the ground. ”
The above quote from the above link to the Guardian newspaper IS ONE TOTAL LIE.
The oil sands before getting dug up are a landscape that isnt pretty but it is natural landscape. The Canadian regulations force the oil companies to turn any ground that they dig up into a grassy landscape so that the ground after the oil is dug up looks better than it was when before the oil companies 1st looked at the site. If this cost was more than the oil profit the companies wouldnt do it.
Even Truedolt can see the writing on the wall, if he looks long and close enough.
“the way left wing bourgeoise of today lift a glass of expensive champagne to toast Karl Marx”
Superbly put. I will use this phrase or similar in the future.
I’ll believe it when NPR shuts up about it.
Not a day passes without a climate story.
If this is the level of Ross’s logic, then he should give up writing to influence his readers:
Coal and oil, while in the ground, are also “free of charge”. It is the cost of getting them out and to generating plants that is important.
Of course similarly, “harnessing” that “free” wind and solar makes up the cost of those energy sources, which today (and until a miracle occurs) are significantly more costly than fossil fuels. (And not necessarily more environmentally friendly.)
What is coal and oil but sequestered solar energy from a really long time ago?
That paragraph also caught my eye as the writer seems to think that wind and solar generators appear by magic with no mining of materials required.
They still made from concrete, steel, CARBON fibre, rare earths, copper, aluminium, glass reinforced plastic, oil, grease, etc, etc, etc plus very large road vehicles to transport them.
There are not enough unicorns in the world for their f@rts to produce all of this without mining and fossil fuels.
At least he anticipates having grandchildren. It makes him almost a lukewarmer. Some of his fellow warmists are predicting the end of all life on earth, once we pass the dreaded tipping point.
More likely our grandchildren will find it hard to believe that the world fell for a hoax.
Hysteria. Wind power plants are ho-axish, but the usual Guardian style tatter is just hysteria.
+10
Indeed Greg, and his grandchildren will be extremely embarrassed of their grandfather in regards to all this.
Can you remind me again when the tipping point is? I want to book my flight on Elon Musk’s rocketship to Mars the day before the tipping point.
According to some politicians like Hank Johnson it’s when too many of your people walk to the same side of your country and over she goes.
All the nuts have rolled to California.
Is the US in danger of capsizing?
Just today:
https://truepundit.com/its-now-against-the-law-in-california-to-shower-and-do-laundry-on-the-same-day/
Gads! What are these gits on about? They can write and publish anything they want. But if they write beyond-bad science fiction drivel and call it ‘climate truth’, only a narrow segment of readers are gullible enough to continue following them. This should be the subject of a required session for all attending the Byrons Bay Writers Festival!
Just as a bit of background for those in other parts of the world, Byron is either the unofficial centre of alt culture and getting in touch with the inner beauty of a carbon neutral world through peace love and understanding, or filled with sandal wearing unwashed druggies, or both.
Like the general surrounding area it is a rather attractive and pleasant part of Oz, but seriously Left. Fortunately not the inner city ‘smash the state’ level of Left with their barely hidden levels of factional infighting, but probably not the sort of place you want to let slip that you are pro-fracking.
As for the actual festival, the fact that one of the guest speakers is a newspaper columnist rather than say… oh I don’t know, a NOVELIST, probably suggests just how woke the entire event is. Writers of popular fiction, conservatives or, gaia have mercy, a conservative writer of popular fiction are usually not invited.
I heard they have great Elvis impersonators there. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RiSyBBbC7TE
Byron is also home of the anti-vaccers. Byron has high incidence of whooping cough and measles which has otherwise been quashed.
The higher class version of Byron would be Noosa and it too has high incidence of both as well.
thing is?
you get whooping cough or measles naturally and you do NOT get them again..i got the vaccine and also got whooping cough 5 yrs ago (mutated version thats now around from the stronger bug thanks to vax)
and any measles outbreaks now are likely the mutated version FROM the damned vaccine which puts me at risk of getting them again at an advanced age also
How very odd. Could you please explain how a bacteria or a virus could mutate from a vaccine which contains no living bacteria or virus?
test
Talking about writers, Michael Crichton was a writer that maybe Ross Gittins has heard. Even though he had no dog in the fight, Crichton argued against the Global warming madness pretty much until his death.
https://thinkprogress.org/michael-crichton-worlds-most-famous-global-warming-denier-dies-147caec78b70/
Oops, the link I included is a liberal’s viewpoint of Crichton; naturally they diss him. Nonetheless, it does demonstrate how the left hated him for his sage views of AGW.
‘liberal’ viewpoint indeed.
From the article: “Our grandchildren will find it hard to believe we could have been so short-sighted as to delay moving from having to dig our energy out of the ground to merely harnessing the infinite supply of solar and wind power being sent to our planet free of charge.”
It sounds so simple. I guess he doesn’t realize that “free” solar and wind are causing electricity rates to increase all over the world. It’s not really as simple as it seems. Would that it were.
Try producing the infinite amount of plastics and other hydrocarbon resins we depend on from the “infinite supply of solar and wind power being sent to our planet free of charge”.
Im delighting in asking people how often theyre on the rood cleaning their solar panels?
and are they aware that theyre NOT at all recyclable apart from the metal supports n edge stripping
fun to see their faces as i point out their panels are operating at WAY below the bragged about output if theyre the smallest amount dust n mudcovered as happens in cities- n rural especially
There is a math curve to such things as belief in CAGW, it quickly rose to 1/2 and then it slowly fades to 0, it will die out, after lots of wailing and gnashing of liberal teeth.
Oh, one more thing, I wonder how he got to that BB writers festival, by plane and car i bet? Typical leftist hypocrite.
One, wonders just what kind of awards they give each other… I really do not want to know!
Apparently, this crowd doesn’t drink their sorrows away.
It is also certain that whatever they’re smoking, they should stop.
You would think that the most important issue today, that is damaging both people and environment, is poverty.
Ross Gitting is an economist writer for the Sydney Morning Herald.
And here I thought SMH was…
Smack My Head!🤦♂️
When you read articles about climate change and the science at the SMH…it’s is time to SMH! He may be a great economics writer but he simply follows the party line and unwilling to challenge, let alone question, the consensus.
[insert “you_dont_say_meme.jpg”]
So how exactly did this Ross Gitins fool get to the Byron’s Bay Writers Festival (which, apparently, he’s been to several times before)?
Walk?
He’s an Entitled, no way he’d walk. But if he did, he’d make a big number about it.
(I’m just guessing, but show me wrong if you can)
Haven’t you read “Animal Farm” you should know “All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.”
The grandchildren of that writer will find something completely different hard to believe. By then they will know that the man-made climate change belief is like the belief in witchcraft. If you are convinced it exists you see it everywhere. His grandchildren will know that the whole caboodle was just another delusion, another period of history when reason went off the rails.
What his grandchildren will find difficult to believe is that their own grandfather has fallen for it, lock stock and barrelĺ.
“Apparently, only socialists think their grandkids will have anything to worry about. The right-thinkers among us know the only bad thing our offspring will inherit is Labor’s debt.”
And yet none of them actually LIVE their beliefs and give up all fossil fuel tech, use and transport.
As for Labor’s debt, that’s a strange place to go given Halal Mal has doubled the debt he slammed from Labor’s time in the Sun.
In my opinion the guy is a fool and delusional.
He argues against a proposed tax cut for Australian companies to 25%
http://www.rossgittins.com/2017/12/how-trumps-tax-cuts-will-affect.html
When the rest of the world is lowering theirs and reaping the benefit.
US down to 21% (+ state tax)
UK 19% (further down to 17% in 2020)
EU average 19.48%
Asia average 21.21%
https://home.kpmg.com/xx/en/home/services/tax/tax-tools-and-resources/tax-rates-online/corporate-tax-rates-table.html
Australia will be characterised as one highest company taxes in the world.
It will mean our companies will be more likely to go bankrupt or contract and reduce staff (and so pay less tax).
And less likely to expand and self invest and hire more people.
We are heading for recession and banana republic status.
Not only taxes but wages too. One of the reasons Ford and GM Holden announced in 2016 they were pulling out of Australia was wages. It costs 2 times as much as in the EU and 4 times as much in Asia to build a car in Aus. However, our brilliant politicians, and most of the population, believe the property market is all Australia needs to sustain the economy.
And also electricity prices are some of the highest in the world (double the US),
which is crazy considering all our natural resources.
As well as labour costs, energy costs were also cited as a reason for pulling out of Aus. Australia has massive resources which we simply allow to be exported without a single ounce of value add. Then we import products other countries, China, actually make using Australian iron and aluminium ore and coal.
I guess they haven’t figured out that when the industry and jobs (i.e., the “economy”) depart, the “property market” will tank too, leaving them with…nothing.
But the EU sales taxes (VAT in UK) run between 15 and 25% on virtually everything.
I think sales tax is fair, as it taxes consumption.
Our economy would be stronger if company tax,income tax and GST were all a flat 20%.
And reduce government size and spending.
Gittens even admits that his land is called OZ. I thought we in Canada lived in the land of OZ since we are going to spend $35 billion over next 5 years to lower our share of the global temperature increase at the end of the year 2100 by 0.005C . Maybe the Wizard of OZ has an empire. My gads I never thought of that.