He made reference to India and China, neither of which will come within a bull’s roar of being carbon neutral before 2070, if then.

The developing world has no intention of stopping its march towards becoming energy intensive consumption based societies just because a bunch of whitefellas says it’s a bad thing.

Sadly, I think that Sheridan is right.

All this talk about a ‘green’ economy is basically bullshit unless those of us who live in the developed world can be convinced to adopt much more austere (but not uncomfortable) lives.

This will include abandoning endless consumption of unnecessary ‘stuff’.

The carbon credits debacle is just part of the wider pattern of people’s lips moving but nothing of practical effect taking place.

In the developed countries there is a complete unwillingness to recognise the implications of changing to a sustainable way of living.

Also bear in mind Cipolla’s Laws of Stupidity, that I wrote about in PNG Attitude a few days ago.

There are many people who just do not believe that major changes will be needed or who believe the climate change debate is fuelled by left wing special interest groups (including biased scientists).

In this context, I was hugely amused to see former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott’s recent call for ‘real’ scientists to speak up about climate change as if those who had spoken previously were somehow fakes.

A few years ago, this same Tony Abbott was claiminhttps://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/oct/10/tony-abbott-says-climate-change-is-probably-doing-goodg climate change was “probably doing good” and that policies to combat it were like “primitive people killing goats to appease the volcano gods”.

Sheridan is right: it is a farce.

Unless we step up to the mark, we will doom ourselves to pay a heavy price for our inability or unwillingness to make the required changes.

Our politicians know that to do anything meaningful will require selling a large shit sandwich to an already restive population.

So it’s looking like it is just not going to happen.

Of course, if the especially virulent version of bird flu which has now made the jump to mammals manages to mutate into something that infects humans, then, according to available data, half of us will soon be dead.

Perversely, our inaction may provide nature with the opportunity to impose its own rather drastic solution. An amusing outcome were it not so serious.