'Men in suits' miss what could really derail, disrupt and destroy our economy

M

any of Australia’s “men in suits” gathered in Sydney this week to consider the country’s economy, not mentioning climate change and its potential to derail, disrupt and destroy our economy.

The economy, a human construct, will be detailed by another human construct, climate change, a product of our endless and excessive use of fossil fuels and within that an economy the feeds insatiably on the growth that is the mantra of those in suits, the “responsible me”.

Those “men in suits”, those “responsible men” need to refocus their lives and enable themselves to see that a climate change engendered recession; a recession with which they are completely unfamiliar is just decades away and far beyond the domain of discussions this week in Sydney.

Read about the summit in today’s Melbourne Age - “National Reform Summit: Recession wake-up call from ex-Treasury head Martin Parkinson”.

Paying lip service to dangerous mantras

Prof Corinne Le Quere.

The idea that “every little bit helps” is a dangerous mantra when it comes to climate change abatement.

Those “every little bit” comments are, according to a story published in The Guardian, really just paying lip service to avoiding catastrophic climate change.

A major two-day London conference at the Royal Society headquarters this week it became clear that “every little bit helps” is a dangerously misleading mantra when it comes to mitigating climate change.

The organizers, Professors Kevin Anderson and Corinne Le Quere of the Tyndall Centre – posed contributors a brutally simple question: what would need to happen if we were to do more than simply pay lip service to the idea of avoiding dangerous climate change?

The Guardian in its story headed: “’Every little helps’ is a dangerous mantra for climate change” said the answers to the question about avoiding dangerous climate change were radical, but none mentioned re-using plastic bags.

The clear message from the conference, it was reported, was unrestrained capitalism was incompatible with decarbonisation: the sums simply don’t add up.