Cash, the Melbourne Cup, bank profits and climate change

Australia's big four banks continue
to report record profits - the antithesis
of climate change mitigation.

The cacophony of cash surrounding today’s Melbourne Cup and reports of Australia’s big four banks again recording record profits conflict with what is needed to mitigate climate change.

Both are about growth, exactly the type of growth that engenders the circumstances that are prerequisite for climate change – they are energy intensive and neither the cup, nor the growth experienced by Australia’s banks will survive the impact, the implications and complications of a damaged atmosphere or the continuing depletion of fossil fuels.

The success of Australia’s banks and the Melbourne Cup is the epitome of capitalist world, but within the essence of both is a strong socialist stream that suggests that one is the cousin of the other, meaning in broad terms that one cannot stand without the other.

The question about what drives the politics of the atmosphere have been discussed in a story on The Conversation headed: “Is climate change is a socialist plot?”

Interestingly, the story explains, that people in both socialist countries and those administered by capitalist democracies are responding with vigour to climate change.