Climate Change

This picture is in the horticultural fair at Chiang Mai. I loved it there. It seems a long way away already, in time and space, the cyclone of Sydney. At the community centre in Tambar Springs, which is known for being a bit different. As in, the locals are a pack of light fingered retarded alcoholic welfare dependent hillbillies who make Deliverance look like a picnic. Bit harsh, Cheryl, is what I'd say.

Have to write the Hunting in Packs column, this time on climate change and global warming, and the aim is to upset as many people as possible in order to stir up the letter writers. Here goes a draft:

During the last year, in the cool depths of the media currents, a giant shoal of fish changed direction all at once, to the right, or was it the left, they veered sharply, as if controlled by one mind.

It's hard to believe that only a year ago to be green was entirely passe, that there was no surer way to turn off a news editor than to label yourself a greenie or your issues environmental. Press releases from Greenpeace, WWF, the Greens and all the other worthy groups large and small were barely, or rarely, even glanced at as they made their way from the fax machine to the garbage bin; of even less interest than most of the dross that makes up the snow storm of press releases passing through the nation's news rooms on a daily basis.

Now it's a crime to leave your kitchen light on by , burning up fossil fuels unnecessarily and threatening the very future of the planet. Think of the lives, the species, the shorelines you could have personally protected, if only you hadn't left that light on.

From the start global warming, or climate change, was a gift to politicians. All they had to do was to utter the words to appear to be doing something about the single most important issue facing the planet and its billions of inhabitants. Form a committee to discuss how best your government, department, association or kindergarten could best address climate change and by Golly, you were a hero.

From the start global warming and its followers have shown serious signs of religious fervour. And indeed it was the perfect religion for the modern age. To be a good guy, to capture the high moral ground, to convert and become at one with a large and growing body of initiates, all you had to do was declare belief. It was in this atmosphere of heightened hysteria that Australia's Opposition leader Kevin Rudd could slam the Prime Minister John Howard as a climate change sceptic, and be treated seriously, as if being a sceptic was in itself an evil.