LETTER: Sentiment on climate change is shifting

DEAR News Of The Area,

I WAS infuriated to read that $2.5m of our local council rates were going to what I consider to be some pie-in-the-sky ideology dreamt up by left-leaning virtue-signallers who think they are going to save planet earth.

I believe that it’s time for that brigade, along with their woke, self-righteous and perpetually offended peers, to take a back seat. You’ve had your day in the sun.

In my opinion, the sentiment is shifting. We’ve had enough of the scaremongering. We’ve had enough of the emotive language and buzz words.

Reality and practical common sense (now not so common) had to prevail eventually.

Climate is the average of weather conditions in any particular location over the four seasons. Weather is what you get on a daily basis.

Yep – the earth is getting warmer at minute fractions. It has been happening since the Big Bang and there is absolutely nothing mankind can do to change the daily weather.

There are still going to be floods, droughts, bush fires, tornadoes and hail storms somewhere around the world at any given time. But there are still going to be nice sunny days and cold winters days, too.

How ridiculous is it that we in Australia produce less than two per cent of the earth’s pollution, yet we lead the world in combating climate change – apparently?

I believe that the rest of the world is laughing at us, and taking advantage of us at the same time.

This is my perception of how carbon credits work.

A big manufacturing business in the city uses X amount of coal-generated electricity and emits X amount of carbon into the atmosphere, and buys a huge tract of useless land in the middle of the Simpson Desert with supposedly X number of trees on the property. To my understanding, there are no checks and balances, only a visual glance on a computer screen of Google maps by a paper-shuffler in Canberra to verify the existence of said trees.

The abstract measurement of the carbon emissions in the city are off-set against an abstract measurement of the capacity of these non-existent trees in the desert to convert carbon into oxygen through photosynthesis.

That’s how you get to net zero. It’s imaginary.

Let’s call it for what it is. It’s the same stuff that you find on the floor of a cattle truck after it has had a cargo of bulls.

I will refuse to pay my rates next year if Coffs Harbour City Council wastes that much money on buying glider fuel.

I think I have just lit a fire of epic proportions. So be it.

Regards,

Dave Williamson,

Coffs Harbour.