Sentiment has no place if we are to truly address climate change

-      Robert McLean

Sentiment is not something which our climate understands or is concerned.

Any successful response to climate change will largely be free of emotions; it will be pragmatic, rational and goal oriented.

Such a response, which didn’t really exist, anyway, is presently being seriously disrupted by the pull of a powerful emotive issue that the Abbott-led coalition is playing to its advantage.

The mid-flight destruction of flight MA17 in the Ukraine that cost the lives of nearly 300 people was devastating in every sense, but will be comparatively small change when our disrupted climate tips into a different paradigm.

Near endlessly government energy, not to mention money, is being spent in putting right the wrongs that brought down flight MA17 and tidying up the resultant chaos.

Governments, disparate as was the passenger-manifest for the flight, have bonded to seek resolution of MA17 crash.

We need an equivalent gelling of world governments to we address climate change.

Subsequent media, government and societal attention has been almost entirely distracted from the fact that our government is not only doing nothing about climate change, but has actually disbanded and buried the sliver of protective measures the previous government had put in place.

The challenge for all of us concerned about climate change is to rescue discussion from the news wastelands and again turn the spotlight to the conversation and so highlight its importance – write letters to your local newspaper, contact your local parliamentarian and discuss the issue whenever the chance presents itself.