By MICHAEL SLOVANOS
WELCOME to the Canberra-based organisation called The Climate Change Authority (CCA) – one of the dozens, if not hundreds of taxpayer-funded bodies that sit around in plush offices discussing how they will implement some policy objective.
This particular organisation, backed by both Labor and LNP governments, has the audacity to think it can make decisions that affect a changing climate. It’s pure hubris, conceit and pretension. These highly-paid government ring-ins have zero authority over, or effects on, climate.
I would credit them with the intelligence to realize that themselves, after all, they are a reasonably well-educated lot of people qualified in various fields of endeavour. Or have they taken some sort of blue pill along the way that has them convinced that Gaia/Mother Earth is coughing and choking under the burden of “excess CO2”?
But of course they will tell us of all the wonderful reports on “climate change” that they have produced. They will recite various schemes they have come up with to encourage electric cars, produce hydrogen, and “facilitate” all sorts of energy saving schemes in the allegedly great and noble “transition to net zero” that no-one ever voted for.
CCA chairman Matt Keane might even tell you how he once proposed, as NSW Environment Minister, to mandate 50% of cars on NSW roads to be electric by 2030 or some such other magical date. Oh yes, a wonderful “green idea” until people began telling him the electricity system simply did not have the capacity to charge even half those cars every night.
News flash CCA: The climate has always been changing. It is not a linear, highly predictable part of nature, except for the four seasons it has been producing year in, year-out for as long as human history has been recorded.
And of course the people in the street know that the seasons themselves are variable. They can start early or late or around the time expected. They can be dry, wet, windy, still, sunny or cloudy. They can be extremely hot, cold or in-between or all the above at once.
Australians don’t need a committee of nine experts in Canberra to tell them that climate is changing. And neither do vast numbers of Australians buy into the hysterical claims of green cultists like Greta Thunberg or Adam Bandt, that excess CO2 is creating a climate crisis.
Many Cairns News readers are older people in their 70s and even 80s. They have been watching the climate on a daily basis for at least half a century of those decades form all vantage points, and they know that the claims of the so-called climate scientists frequently quoted by the CCA and others are paid-for and self-justifying prognostications generated by computer models.
And the CCA does itself no favours when it publishes leftist ideological tripe like the following, its Reconciliation Action Plan:
“The Climate Change Authority recognises that reconciliation has a crucial role to play in the net zero transition. An inclusive society is more resilient to the impacts of climate change, with greater capacity to withstand the economic changes and shocks that will come with a successful transition of the global economy.
“The need to transform the Australian economy provides an opportunity to better involve First Nations peoples in decision-making and sharing in the benefits of the transition.
“By valuing and promoting diverse ways of being, knowing and doing with respect to the lands, waters and air, we hope to help forge a more inclusive national identity: one that recognises the value of respecting each other and Country.
“The actions outlined in the authority’s second Reflect Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP) [PDF] and in the authority’s Engagement Strategy are opportunities to deepen, diversify and enrich the authority’s understanding of First Nations priorities and the ongoing impacts of historical events. The authority’s first Reflect RAP can be found here.”
And surprise, surprise, the CCA’s so-called Reflect RAP strongly endorses the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous People. Now who would have thought a government-funded “think tank” would be supporting the UN Agenda 2030 and all the associated ideological and bureaucratic claptrap? Yes, we’re being sarcastic.
And for those who would like a little light, entertaining reading, we point you to CCA’s “Engagement Strategy”, which outlines the layers of bureaucratic BS that one might normally associate with a heavily-funded federal government “authority”.
Oh that we had an Elon Musk in Australia to rifle through the books of this and the hordes of other so-called Canberra-based “authorities” whose members jet around the country appearing on ABC panels and environmental conferences spouting their expertise and signalling their virtue.
