The cry is for leadership, but not as we know it

The cry for leadership from our leaders can be heard across the country, and of course the world.

All that noise is rather subjective for one man’s leader is another’s despot.

Climate change supplants those arguments for now we are being dictated to by something else and although it is natural, it is also man-made and leaders, past and present, and often unknowingly, have led us to this nexus.

'All that noise is rather subjective for one man’s leader is another’s despot'

That plea for leadership, both courageous and decidedly different from what has led us to this collision of circumstances, was made by several people at a recent Shepparton discussion initiated by the National Climate Change Adaption Research Facility (NCCARF).

Sherri Goodman.

Many ideas were tabled and discussed about how communities and broader nation could adapt to the changing state of the climate, and so the weather, but, it was agreed implementation of those ideas needed leadership.

The idea that we need leadership surfaced again when the former U.S. Deputy Under Secretary of Defense (Environmental Security), Sherri Goodman, who is now with the Wilson Centre to America, was answering questions after her recent address at  the University of Melbourne’s Lab-14.

The last question of evening from the audience was on often heard at such events: “What do you suggest should be the first thing we do when we go home tonight?”

“Elect a leader who will act,” she answered, suggesting we need leaders who will move to mitigate the causes of climate change.

Her warnings about the implications of the world’s damaged climate system were dire and she used examples of conflicts around the world, along with potential and emerging catastrophes to illustrate her argument.

Dr Louise Jeffrey talking
with the Director of the
Australian-German College
art the University of
Melbourne.

 Earlier that same day a post-doctoral researcher from Germany’s Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), in Dr. Louise Jeffery, talked about “Aviation, shipping, and the Paris Agreement”. 

Her message was equally daunting and as there are complications as to who and where the carbon emissions are attributed, there were blatant implications that they were matters whose resolution rested with commanding leadership.

Dr Jeffrey is a 2017 EU Centre Visiting Fellow at the University of Melbourne. 

Leadership is not just about instituting and applying the practical matters that will slow climate change, it also has a sociological aspect for leaders need to help us see the elephant in the room - the emergence in the 20th Century and its solidification in the 21st of individuality and rights that clash with the science that tells us that we must prepared to forego some of individual personal pleasure to allows for the greater good.

U.S. Democratic Party aligns with climate emergency

Last weekend in Orlando the platform committee of the Democratic Party added language into their platform acknowledging the official position of the Democratic Party to be that we are in a global climate emergency. 

Further, the platform acknowledges the scale of the threat to be so large that it will require a leadership response from our country on the scale of our national mobilization to confront the threat of fascism during WWII.  The platform language I offered through an amendment entitled, "Global Climate Leadership", explicitly acknowledges that anything short of that will bring catastrophic consequences to civilization:

Democrats believe it would be a grave mistake for the United States to wait for another nation to lead the world in combating the global climate emergency. In fact, we must move first in launching a green industrial revolution, because that is the key to getting others to follow; and because it is in our own national interest to do so. Just as America’s greatest generation led the effort to defeat the Axis Powers during World War II, so must our generation now lead a World War II-type national mobilization to save civilization from catastrophic consequences.

Adopting this language in our platform is courageous.  It is bold.  It could be said that with the declaration, the Democratic Party has actually stepped out in front of the climate movement in its articulation of the threat, which it seems worthy to note, is appropriately placed as the closing paragraph of the entire platform.

Read Russell Greene’s story on Climate Code Red - “Finding the courage to face the climate emergency: Democratic Party platform recognises crisis.”

We need eloquent, charismatic and courageous leadership to avoid climate change

Leadership that is eloquent, charismatic and courageous is critical, especially if humanity is to avoid the worst of climate change.

Nature abhors a vacuum and at local, state, federal and national levels we have just that, a vacuum (mostly) of leadership that ascribes to the science that articulates the damage done by humans to Earth’s atmosphere and along with that the certain resultant catastrophic consequences.

Those who understand climate science and call for action may well be leaders in their respective fields, but are not emboldened sufficiently to step into the political arena and impress populist values with their views. It’s in colloquial terms, “not their bag”.

Leaders at most levels are simply too addicted to values and ideas that are a consequence of the energy-rich fossil fuel era and so with thinking hobbled to thoughts that humanity’s future security is unquestionably linked to profit and growth, they are unable to see that human life on Earth can be done differently.

Some leaders, of course, would like to do much more. but faced with populist opinion reinforced by myths propagated by those addicted to and entrenched in 20^th Century values and ideas, among them and primarily the fossil fuels industry and the infrastructure it has spawned, find their positions tenuous and personal political survival threatened.

“Populist” equates with democracy and although many believe we live in a democracy, it is, in fact, something else, maybe an oligarchy that sees just a few corporations (less than 150 trans-national corporations) with sophisticated public relations departments (read propaganda) that have convinced the world that what they are offering is democracy, when it is something else; something that ensures their profit and growth.

It was the Zurich-based Swiss Federal Institute of Technology that looked at 37 million companies and investors worldwide and analyzed all 43,060 transnational corporations and share ownerships linking them.

They built a model of who owns what and what their revenues are and mapped the whole edifice of economic power; a power that in reality will have be challenged and unseated if the world is to ever address climate change.

Those 147 trans-national corporations have pulled some remarkably effective and influential strings, but they have overlooked one, and probably the most important, nature.

It’s a power they can not control and unless they are prepared to listen to the “eloquent, charismatic and courageous” the edifice they have built on fossil fuels will soon come crashing down.

Canberra's cohorts have grossly distorted the narrative around modern Australia

Robert McLean is becoming increasingly distressed about the seemingly pointless behaviour of our Canberra politicians

Those who gather in Canberra to govern our country have lost, or grossly distorted, the narrative around which modern Australia is built

Parliament House, Canberra -
 those who gather here need
to be courageous
and committed.

Pointless rhetoric of our federal politicians is rarely about the effective management of the country rather, it is more about discrediting those who have a different political view.

The 24-hour news cycle has its upside, but the reverse of that is the seemingly silly almost minute-by-minute examination of the lives of politicians, celebrities and their ilk.

Living under the heat of such a fierce spotlight and trapped by public expectations of a faultless performance, our politicians are left without time to reflect, consider and dare not demonstrate any apparent weakness by admitting that they are unsure or simply do not know the answer.

We, the polity, are to blame for that.

Australia, as does the rest of the world, faces pressing problems with the most serious, and the most unyielding, being human induced climate change that will bring unstoppable transformations to our lives demanding that any worthwhile response be bi-partisan.

Rather than simply point-score at the expense of counterparts, our politicians need to work together to prepare Australia to deal with a threat that if left unattended, has the potential to not just seriously disrupt life as we know it, but actually decimate the community.

In recent times the country has almost ground to a halt as we argue endlessly about some insignificant triviality, suggesting we choke on a mosquito, while we swallow, with ease, a camel; the camel being the threat of climate change.

Climate change is just the first order of threats as hard on its heels and invariably implicated in a multitude of ways, is resource depletion, species extinction and an imploding world economy.

You would imagine that with a trio of threats, of which anyone alone has the potential to cause relentless difficulties, those Canberra cronies would put aside their pointless child-like bickering to prepare the country the most all-encompassing challenge it has every experienced, vastly bigger and more consuming than either of the World Wars of the 20^th century.

Courage, commitment and conviction has lifted humanity to where it is at now and should we successfully take the human project any further, those same traits are urgently important and the first to demonstrate that bravery, allegiance and passion must be those who gather in Canberra.

The challenge of steering Australia through the ideological changes of coming decades is so massive that only the most courageous need apply; only those who are genuinely committed to our country’s long term welfare and care little about personal gain; and only those who are convinced that the decisions they make will steer us away from present consumptive life styles.