On Nov. 17, School Strike 4 Climate organised walkouts by Australian high school students to protest against the government’s climate response.
“We meet, organise, and strike on stolen Country, and that sovereignty has never been ceded. First Nations peoples are disproportionately on the frontlines of the climate crisis and therefore must be enshrined at the forefront of the climate movement.”
The participation of school children in these protest activities requires and condones school truancy. But the protest organisers sought to justify the truancy on the ground that the students suffered from a virulent form of a specious illness—climate sickness.
The certificate relevantly states that the “Symptoms include increased anxiety from the ... ongoing climate policy inaction,” and “elevated stress on seeing the impacts of the climate emergency now in Australia and worldwide.”
Genuine Fear
The reason that students are now so preoccupied with climate change is that generations of people have been fed a succession of fearful predictions about an imminent threat to the planet claimed to be caused by human activities, and ipso facto can be controlled by limiting those activities deemed to be harmful.Fear breeds fear and the people behind the scenes promoting the scare are making fortunes out of market manipulation and panic-driven legislation all while threatening our entire economy.
Instead of being taught the basics of mathematics, physics, chemistry, geology, and logic to enable students to understand climate issues, and to see through the outright lies and half-truths that feed their fears of a contrived “climate emergency,” a new generation is being taught nonsense by rabble-rousers.
The present climate change frenzy, and its ominous message of connectedness with current Aboriginal problems, is also fomented by legislative activity.
For example, the Queensland government recently released its Queensland Climate Transition Bill 2023.
The purpose of the proposed legislation is to facilitate Queensland’s obligations under the Paris Agreement of 2015 to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius above “pre-industrial levels.”
However, defining a pre-industrial baseline, in itself, is a difficult exercise and may vary depending on what factors are considered for selecting the baseline.
Moreover, the bill envisages a 75 percent reduction in emissions on 2005 levels by 2030 and mandates the achievement of net zero emissions by 2035, whilst phasing out coal and fossil fuels by 2030.
Not surprisingly, the Explanatory Notes use emotive language: they refer to the climate “crisis,” “global heating,” and “dangerous anthropogenic interference with Earth’s climate system.”
Humans Cannot Control Nature
School Strike 4 Climate and compliant politicians assume that humans are capable of controlling the Earth’s temperature. However, such an assumption is foolish because even common sense shows that humans do not possess that power.One major volcanic eruption eclipses the emissions of even our most inefficient power stations.
Thus, the climate protest students’ truancy and their participation in climate-related strikes contribute to the common misbelief that mankind can control the climate of Earth.
Climate control is possible only within a confined space such as an apartment—only if the power to run the air-conditioners is available and affordable.
There is no doubt that mankind has a moral (and legal) obligation to protect the environment, but attempting to limit or control carbon dioxide emissions is scientifically naïve.
Such naivety is counterproductive because Earth currently has dangerously low levels of carbon dioxide in an atmosphere needed to support plant, animal, and human life.
Using a small amount of the vast quantities of fossil fuels available has the twofold benefit of releasing cheap energy and feeding surrounding plants.
To quote Freeman Dyson, an American physicist and mathematician, “A field of corn growing in full sunlight in the middle of the day uses up all of the carbon dioxide within a metre of the ground in about five minutes.”
Nevertheless, the student clamour for climate action is supported by the signing of the “Climate Pledge” by over 450 companies, and the ever-increasing implementation of the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) framework.
The current net-zero politics of the climate change brigade certainly challenge our politicians and all those who are genuinely concerned about the protection of the environment.
But more time and energy should be devoted to communicating the real reasons for climate change to our impressionable youth.
