Peter Bromhead: Gloomy future

Photo / Peter Bromhead

The latest report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change makes glum reading.

It suggests world leaders now have little time left to reduce carbon emissions and avoid catastrophic warming, leading to significant sea-level rises and large-scale shifts in temperature that will dramatically disrupt natural ecosystems.

Climate authorities suggest that by mid-century we will be subjected to high risk of wildfires and diseases, and decreased food production, and gloomily hint that the planet's population may reach a tipping point for survival.

This has come as a bit of a shock to me. After all, why am I paying carbon tax every time I fill my car's fuel tank, if my contribution isn't cooling things down a bit?

By mid-century I'll have reached my compulsory retirement age of 120, and naturally I expect to enjoy those golden years in peaceful tranquillity, contemplating my lifetime of slavery as a journalist.

Instead, the IPCC report suggests I'm going to be out there around the clock protecting my retirement enclave with a bucket of water and a stirrup pump, just like in the 1940s, when the Germans tried to torch my possessions with incendiary bombs.

Concerned that my carbon tax contributions are not being used efficiently, I called a government office to inquire how our geophysical efforts to control temperature fluctuations were going.

"Where are my compulsory carbon tax donations being channelled?" I said sternly to a bewildered official. He babbled on about "the big picture" and appeared fuzzy on spending details. When I suggested that perhaps my contributions were being used to fund travel expenses for officials attending further global warming conferences, thereby adding to the greenhouse problem with even more unnecessary air travel, he sidestepped the question and advised me to join an active body monitoring our fragile ecosystem, so I could have a better understanding of that "big picture".

I didn't bother explaining that I've been focused on sustainable energy devices for years, slavishly using those ghastly energy-saving bulbs and installing solar panels, double glazing and insulating walls - not because there's a holier-than-thou little planet-saver inside me, but because it makes economic sense.

This appeals to my tight-wad upbringing as a child, living in an isolated rural property in the North of England that was without running water or electricity, and where even candle wax was recycled.