I like the moral fibre of some of the Star Trek characters. A few words to the United Federation of Planets by fictional protagonist 1st Officer Michael Burnham weaves into what I’m about to say and I thank the authors Bryan Fuller and Alex Kurtzman for that. They would do well at the United Nations and maybe that was their thinking as they express their views about the dark side of human nature on planet Earth.

 

Basically we have two problems facing humanity and that, at a personal level, includes the impact on your own family going forward. We have global conflict for control of rapidly depleting oil and natural gas reserves. A conflict that directly impacts Australian trade with China and that is explained by looking at a map of South China Sea gas fields and reading my article "Using Australia as a pawn". Secondly, if we burn all that oil and gas, we are fighting over, we face the prospect of global warming, extreme weather events, ice melt, rising oceans, flooded coastal cities and tens of millions of climate and war refugees in the decades ahead.

 

Historians will look back on a period in time called “The Oil Wars” a time coupled with a devastating global pandemic and the threat of catastrophic climate change. That time is now!  A time when a frightened child asked his father “How do I defeat fear?" The answer: "You will survive everything that life throws at you and I am living proof of that. We create fear in our own mind so it can be controlled. I have learnt that it's healthier to live without fear and the only way to defeat fear is to tell it No!”

 

No, we will not break the rules that protect us from our primitive self. No, we will not allow weakness or vested interest to destroy moral authority. No, we will not succumb to the will of a greedy few at the expense of all of society. No, we will not hide from the responsibility to our children and their future.

 

We are guilty of all these things and some say that, in life, there are no second chances. Experience tells me that this is true. But, we can learn from the past and we can look forward into the future. We have to be torch bearers casting the light so we can choose our best path forward wisely.

 

We don’t want our children looking back saying: “They knew what was happening, they knew what was coming, they had the technology to save us, but not the will, and they should have done more so, why didn’t they?” “Who and what stopped our parents from doing the best they could for us?” Our grand children and their children will ask.

 

We need to answer that question now, because in hindsight it will be too late.

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To answer the questions of today we need to look into the past. Our democratic system was set up by industrialists to serve industrialists, and more recently powerful corporates and multi-nationals, and they have had plenty of time to perfect that in their favour. It is the nature of capitalism to create social division to favour those with the most money, power and influence.

 

That division separates society into two groups, the pure people and the self serving ruling elite who influence the political class. They control main stream media and dominate public discourse to favour themselves.

 

One of the richest and most powerful groups on the planet are the fossil fuel industry who have the capacity to influence our politicians and then control governments in their favour. This then leads to the support and protection of an industry that has the potential to destroy the natural world and civilisation along with it.  “Big Oil v The Planet” is the fight of our lives. To drive the transition to renewable clean energy, there is a solution within democracy and we exercise that at the ballot box.

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It's our planet. As the US urges Australia to adopt ‘more ambitious climate goals’ and pressure mounts on Morrison to act.

 

Back to the question: “Who and what is stopping us from doing the best we can for our children’s future and our future children?” The answer to that is simple: “That’s the people with vested interests influencing our government to favour themselves and, the people brain washing the greater population to vote for that government”. If we want action to protect the future for humanity and the natural world that’s where we must look and, not just look but act.

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​Australia’s highly concentrated media ownership has had a corrosive impact on democracy. It has skewed public debate, favouring the interests of the wealthy and powerful over the public good with the full support of the Coalition government as they crush our independent public broadcaster the ABC. That same fossil fuel industry controlled government has now put Australia's climate criminal status on global display while brain washing the greater population to support them.

 

In the famous words of Edmund Burke: "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing". 

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In the not so famous words of an artist and activist: "If the law is to ignore what is best for all of society and humanity, and to ignore what is best for the natural world that sustains us, and if that is the path of our leaders, then those men should not be leaders".

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Go to the next article: Game of Thrones - Game On

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