Australia is trapped in a weird contradiction

Australia is trapped in a weird contradiction.

Our “responsible men” rush about the world scoring populist political points claiming they are protecting our security, while ignoring that which can undermine all their efforts and decimate Australian society.

Tony Abbott and his coalition cohort have used the cover of the largely confected terrorist threat to avoid confrontation with the issue that will affect and impact upon every aspect of life in Australia.

Swinging from the coattails of America, Australia has rushed to Iraq to confront Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), using that distraction to take up what available space Australians have left in their “finite pool of worry”.

With Tony Abbott at the helm, we cruise the world seeking distractions that will continue to disallow people to pay attention, and understand that the real and most dynamic threat to our security is how we live.

The behaviour of ISIL is unquestionably damnable, but so was the 1994 Rwandan genocide that resulted in the deaths of about one million people, an event that did not draw anything like the same global response.

World leaders, not including Tony Abbott, have gathered in New York with the aim of reversing or slowing climate change, but Mr Abbott and choosing, in preference, talks about international resistance to terrorists.

Climate change is clearly understood to be humanity’s greatest ever security threat and the unfolding changes of the world’s disrupted climate will make the likes of ISIL a force of little consequence.

And just today the Melbourne Age reports in a story headed: “'Bigger threat than terrorism': Barack Obama signals Australia, India and China must improve on climate change” that US President, Barack Obama sees climate changes as vastly more challenging than terrorism.

Terrorism however, is for many around the world, especially Australia’s PM, Tony Abbott, understandable and so confronted in traditional ways, primarily violence.

Climate change, by comparison, has been described by some as a “wicked problem”; a problem that defies description and so being beyond the comprehension of most appears unresolvable.

It has been said that a problem described is a problem half-solved and there lies the difficulty, few people can describe the problem and those that can don’t have the necessary political force, or influence, to advance a societal solution.

Those who do have that influence appear trapped between doing what they know is best for humanity and the perverse need to assuage the will of the people – many know what needs to be done, but there is a perverse societal momentum that is implicating humanity even more in this contrary contradiction.