Letter to the editor

The "handful" of 3,000 people who attended the "Say Yes to climate
actions" event in Perth on a long weekend, mirrored the 45,000 who
rallied across Australia on June 5th.

Of course, whilst not a mandate, it is a powerful reflection of the
broad and deep community call for action.

Claims ( in your paper ) that there is no "scientific documentation" that a tax
will work, is an absurd argument, because taxes are economic
measures, not scientific constructs.

Science tells us what will happen if we do nothing, and what the likely
consequences will be. Science does not tell us what action to take.

From an economic perspective, global warming can be viewed as a "market
failure", the result of not capturing the externalized costs of
greenhouse gas emissions ( and other pollution ).

Rather than accept the evidence presented by the world's scientists,
those who seem fundamentally committed to free market ideology, have
instead chosen to put their faith in markets and the paradigm of
indefinite growth, refusing the logical and inescapable conclusion that
we must account for the negative costs of our actions.

As a carbon price rises, it will initially favor gas, then renewable
energy, over coal.

Last weeks letter to the editor raises another popular contradiction of the
economically conservative; the favoring of nuclear energy. Even though it
cannot possibly compete without large taxpayers subsidies, government
regulation, insurance and decommissioning.

This would seem anathema to free market thinking. Or does it say more
about more about privatizing benefits and socializing costs?

Our emissions trajectory means we will now likely pass the relatively
safe threshold of a 2 degree global temperature rise. Heralding a
future, where our health and well being, and the state of our
environment on which we are entirely reliant, will be seriously if not
immeasurably compromised.

The questions really should be; what makes your recent commentator and his ilk so
blithely certain they are right and the scientists with expertise in
these area are wrong? So certain it seems, that they believe we should
willfully ignore the science and the risks and do precisely nothing. How
in fact, is it even possible to entertain such a diabolical dereliction
of responsibility.