DULLARDS
Turnbull. Has there ever been a more apt name for an Australian politician?
I like to picture him seated at a kindergarten table circa 2007, flicking the switch on a compact fluorescent light bulb (CFL), basking in hastily rehearsed oohs and aahs.
Well done, Malcolm. Pure genius.
There’s nothing like the imposition of significant amounts of mercury, a deadly toxin, on Australian households—business and government being naturally exempt from the prohibition on incandescent lighting—to tackle environmental problems. All hail the political mantra, vehemently intoned on both sides of parliament, of ever-increasing Efficiency!
I wonder, did Malcolm teach those children the correct way of disposing of a broken or worn-out CFL? What would you do in the event—unlikely, according to the then federal Environment Minister—of a breakage?
Turnbull’s CFLs make Rudd’s pink batts fiasco look like a picnic, in terms of environmental contamination and degradation.
But what’s really been poisoned is environmentalism, the hard-won gains of which have been steadily wound back, ironically in the name of addressing “climate change.”
The paltry, tremulous light emanating from a CFL should serve as a tocsin, alerting us to the fact that the multifaceted discourse of environmentalism has been hijacked, superseded even, by that of global warming, climate change, greenhouse gas emissions.
Just don’t expect great things from an Australian political leader, no matter how “brilliant” they may appear to be.
With few exceptions—safely hidden away on the back benches of the parliament—our elected representatives, rendered myopic by party politics and the abiding influence of threadbare ideologies, are an exceptionally dim lot.
I like to picture him seated at a kindergarten table circa 2007, flicking the switch on a compact fluorescent light bulb (CFL), basking in hastily rehearsed oohs and aahs.
Well done, Malcolm. Pure genius.
There’s nothing like the imposition of significant amounts of mercury, a deadly toxin, on Australian households—business and government being naturally exempt from the prohibition on incandescent lighting—to tackle environmental problems. All hail the political mantra, vehemently intoned on both sides of parliament, of ever-increasing Efficiency!
I wonder, did Malcolm teach those children the correct way of disposing of a broken or worn-out CFL? What would you do in the event—unlikely, according to the then federal Environment Minister—of a breakage?
Turnbull’s CFLs make Rudd’s pink batts fiasco look like a picnic, in terms of environmental contamination and degradation.
But what’s really been poisoned is environmentalism, the hard-won gains of which have been steadily wound back, ironically in the name of addressing “climate change.”
The paltry, tremulous light emanating from a CFL should serve as a tocsin, alerting us to the fact that the multifaceted discourse of environmentalism has been hijacked, superseded even, by that of global warming, climate change, greenhouse gas emissions.
Just don’t expect great things from an Australian political leader, no matter how “brilliant” they may appear to be.
With few exceptions—safely hidden away on the back benches of the parliament—our elected representatives, rendered myopic by party politics and the abiding influence of threadbare ideologies, are an exceptionally dim lot.