We choke on the gnat and swallow the elephant with ease

-       Robert McLean

Our earth is facing
the firing squad.

Australians, from the Prime Minister down, presently agonize over the impending execution of two countrymen in Indonesia.

The fate of the drug smugglers has produced bipartisan unison in Australia and yet the world-wide deaths emanating from climate change pass almost unheeded, producing little but confrontation and disagreement throughout the country.

It is beyond time that the people of the world recognized that metaphorically our behaviour is committing untold numbers of people to a fate that is different, but little worse.

A story published on Fusion - “Why Climate Change is a Human Rights Violation” – removes whatever doubt you might have, pointing out that climate change is violence—it is a force of death, impoverishment, and displacement.

It ends: “We know our planet is in peril. But it’s time to start talking about the people dying because of our failure to get real about climate change”.

The fate of the two Australians in Indonesia is important, but irrelevant when considered within the scope of climate change and the fact that it is a dilemma we still have time to do something about - it simply needs commitment and the will.

 

It's a little like as choking on the gnat (the death of two Australians in Indonesia) and swallow the elephant with ease (climate change and the thousands of deaths it causes pass almost unnoticed).