Surviving Climate Change: What Would A Low Carbon Future Look Like?

In a previous post I argued that we need to change the way we talk about climate change in order to tackle it. Essentially, human beings are psychologically wired to respond to messages of positivity (gain) rather than negativity (loss), so instead of the doom and gloom narratives of climate disaster, we should be focusing on protecting our planet and spreading positive ideas of how we could turn the issue around.

What will a low-carbon future look like?

So, to practice what I preach, I want to create a vision of what a low carbon future would look like, once we get our act together and cut our carbon emissions, reducing global warming to a safe and manageable level.

I’m not claiming to depict exactly how a low-carbon society would work, but I will explore four key areas: energy, transportation, food, and technologies.

Read the story from Medium by Tabitha Whiting - “Surviving Climate Change: What Would A Low Carbon Future Look Like?”.

Malcolm Turnbull must take on Tony Abbott over renewables

In a world of short-term, opportunistic, populist politics, politicians easily ignore the so-called "vision thing". Responding to issues day by day, they easily put aside longer-term strategic considerations - indeed, often compounding the magnitude and severity of the policy challenge.

Tony Abbott believes he won his election on carbon
pricing, rather than simply because the voters had
had enough of Rudd/Gillard/Rudd.

Not working to a strategic end game, essentially just patching up rather than solving, results in the policy task becoming so big that any change soon becomes a large and politically difficult one.

Climate change is a glaring example of this; politicians have played short-term politics to the point at which they have made it politically very difficult to move substantially forward when, in terms of the science, the world may already be past a tipping point.

What's more, it is now personal, Abbott v Turnbull, and the stakes are very high; the next election outcome is at risk, as households and industries get eaten by rapidly rising power prices and face the mounting probability of blackouts.

Read John Hewson’s story in the Melbourne Age - “Malcolm Turnbull must take on Tony Abbott over renewables.”