The tragedy of the commons refers to a situation in which individuals with access to a public resource (also called a common) act in their own interest and in so doing, ultimately deplete the resource.
Over exploitation of the world’s fisheries is a prime example. The ocean is owned by everyone so no-one takes responsibility for it. The prevailing ethos is ‘if I don’t net those fish then the next guy will’. Consequently 50 per cent of fish stocks have been hunted to commercial extinction.
It occurred to me that climate change, the seemingly unstoppable rise in greenhouse gas, is a tragedy of the commons. The biosphere is a public resource. Australia may be intent on reducing the amount of greenhouse gas domestically but is the world’s second biggest exporter of coal and gas for other countries to burn. Even though we profit enormously from the sale of these fossil fuels, we justify our dissonance by saying ‘If we don’t sell them coal and gas, somebody else will’. I think arms dealers share that same morality.
For Australia to become a truly responsible global citizen in this climate emergency, we have to forsake profiting from the sale of fossil fuels and leave them in the ground. This is our greatest environmental challenge because it means walking away from $120 billion in GDP revenue (which is growing each year).
But there is a silver lining. According to the Milankovitch Cycle (search it) in 60,000 years our planet enters another Ice Age and the temperature plunges 5–6 degrees and half the Earth freezes over. Then we will really appreciate every lump of coal and litre of gas we can get hold of!
The trouble is, the doomsday spectre of climate change is so pervasive, few believe we will be here in 60,000 years. That is so sad.
Maybe read the IPCC report mate, it’s actual science not waffley speculation
I don’t think you read the article. And you don’t seem to understand what science is nor how it works.
When the opposition keeps getting censored and shutdown all the time. because no open debate is allowed, probably a good idea to go see what they have to say. Not what your told they say, not the ‘opposition’ presented to you, go find the real opposition and start asking questions, they will answer you and you will be surprised what they say.
There is literally trillions of dollars to be made from climate panic. You can make anything happen with enough money, and everyone has their price.
“Climate panic” you moan.
National Bushfire Apocalypse 2019/20, Flood Catastrophe 2022, nothing at all to ‘panic’ about.
Yet in the other 95% of Australia didn’t even notice cause it was business as usual.
Try being in an Earhquake or anyway near a Tornado and it may put your experiences into perspective.
Quaternary ice ages last about 100,000 years, and are interrupted by the warmer interglacials which lasted about 10,000–15,000 years. The last cold episode of the last glacial period ended about 10,000 years ago. So we are due to to get cold again soon. Procession tries to causes Ice ages every 23,000 years. We are due for another one of those in about 10,000 years. Western and Eastern civilisations record some centuries being very different temperatures to others.
Most temperature changes we know about remain unexplained, but there are plenty of unproven theories pushed as fact. There is a lot of money to be made by the Climate Catastrophy Industry, so don’t expect honesty. Tribes used to pay big time to get the Witch Doctor to dance around to make the climate good this year for the crops. Many Tribes sacrifice their children to the god, or burn witches alive. In the 19th century, people were paid to fire cannons at the clouds to try make it rain.
Humans never really change, so go buy everything the priests with white lab coats tell you too or there will be a curse put on you by the sky gods. Cause you don’t know what’s actually going on anymore than your average Aztec did. So be ware when someone says ‘those children you had are causing the problem’, because the next thing they say is ‘we have to get rid a lot of these people’, then it’s into the volcano for you!
The corporate take over of the environmental movement is clear to see we now put the individual humans use of the environments resources on the same level as mutlinational corporations, an individual cannot rape the ocean in their lifetime but a Corporation can and does daily and has more rights and access to the environment remember that corporations bring you tuna in a tin can I would never eat tuna if I had to catch it myself but for 95cents a can my cat can eat tuna too.