A massively underwhelming experience

Last Thursday I started Bill McKibben’s new book Eaarth [1]. Its main premise is that due to global warming/climate change, the world we once knew has gone forever, and we have to adapt to our new world whilst tyring, however vainly, to minimise future global warming. It’s sobering stuff. Especially as yesterday there was a general election in Australia for the House of Representatives and half the Senate. And the approach of the two main parties to global warming and climate change is abysmal at best. Indeed Liberal leader Tony Abbott’s a climate change sceptic if not denier [2]. So no choice there. The Greens are better on that issue, but their Middle East policy’s awful [3]. As the Liberals are better on the Middle East than Labor, my House of Reps vote was down the ticket [4]. On my Senate ballot paper I put The Climate Sceptics last, Family First and the Shooters and Fishers down there somewhere, and a general scramble above that. Maybe mine’s a wasted vote. But no-one – I repeat, no-one – is giving global warming/climate change anything remotely like the undisputed top policy billing it deserves. In short, voting in this election was massively underwhelming. But be this as it may, not for a moment did I forget that in the global context, it’s a privilege to be able to vote. And that to a fair degree our parliamentarians are accountable to us voters.