Letter in Advertiser about climate always being down the to do list…

Letter in the Adelaide Advertiser today-

Your reporter Clare Armstrong, in reporting on a new opinion poll, that “climate change is seen as a mid-tier issue compared to immediate financial pressures” (‘Power prices biggest worry,’ Advertiser, 24 April). 

Long-term threats always lose out  to the short-term; today’s final demand letter thudding on the doormat will always blot out next week’s invoice.  This is especially so when the threat is so familiar (older readers will remember that the issue of carbon dioxide build-up has been front-page news since 1988, when we called it ‘the Greenhouse Effect’).

Sadly, over the last 35 years, we kept kicking the can down the road.  The amount of  carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 350ppm in 1988. It is now at 423ppm and – despite all the big batteries, all the safeguard mechanisms, all the solar panels – rising rapidly.

In twenty years, today’s young people will curse us for never having moved the long-term threat to the top of our to-do list.