(Climate change has
had no measurable or obvious physical impact on my life, except in that it has,
for more than a decade now, distracted me from the broadly accepted principle
of ensuring your financial well-being.
However, there has
been other things that have changed – I owned a beautiful motorcycle and it’s gone; I owned an equally beautiful bicycle
and it’s gone, and I had long been a member of the Australian Football League (AFL)
premiership winning club, the Western Bulldogs, and just a few years ago I
allowed that membership to lapse, not wanting to be seen supporting a club
which is part of an organization operating a national sport whose operations
are diametrically opposed to good climate behaviour.
The motorcycle and
the bicycle could both be seen as environmentally friendly, but they were not
as they a part of a wider paradigm that is offensive to the world; a human behaviour that is damaging Earth’s atmosphere.
Christopher Roger
Fernando, from Montrose, writes in today’s Melbourne Age about another aspect
of that he finds offensive and impossible to explain to his students – Robert McLean)
Wasteful AFL
In the same week that global CO2 levels are reported to be
above the 400 ppm mark (The Age, 25/10), the AFL releases its latest fixture,
awash with a multitude of twilight and night games. The majority of games will
now be played under partial or total artificial light. The energy required for
these lights is (in Victoria anyway) usually produced at about 40 percent efficiency by burning coal or natural
gas. As a VCE chemistry teacher charged with teaching students about energy
production and greenhouse gas emissions, I despair at a society that chooses
entertainment and filling coffers over the care of the environment.
Perhaps I should rethink the purpose of my teaching. Maybe
it should now be about simply gaining a qualification rather than equipping young
people to live faithful, earth-caring lives.
Christopher Roger Fernando, Montrose.
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