The flooding in two of the

eastern states has been put down to "climate change". It seems to me that every natural disaster is now caused by climate change. 

Now yes, climate changes. It is constantly changing. Most of the time humans have not noticed this because it changes so slowly they don't live long enough to see it. Weather records of one sort or another go back centuries in some places...but for a much shorter period here.

Downunder is now being castigated for "doing nothing about climate change" and "not committing to a zero target by 2050" and more. We are the climate change pariahs of the world.

Or are we? For a start the world will be a very different place by 2050. There is only a faint chance I will be around to see it but I know that the generation below me is likely to be here - and the generations below that. There will be advances in technology - although perhaps not quite as rapid as the advances of the last century. Life will have changed anyway. Setting targets that far ahead is scarcely realistic. It is far outside the reach of any present government.  Goals, if they are to be set, need to be much closer in time...perhaps five years ahead at the most. Any government setting a 2050 target is one avoiding the issue rather than confronting it.

Downunder emits about 1.3% of the world's greenhouse gases but, as a "developed" country we are being asked to do more than many other countries.  The argument is that we generate more per head of population and that has to be reduced. 

It's a reasonable argument in some ways - but not in others. It is reasonable that we should be asked to try and find ways to reduce our individual dependence on energy. It is reasonable that we should be looking at sources of energy other than fossil fuels. 

It is not reasonable to fail to take into consideration that we have a population about the same size as that of California and that it is spread across a land mass about the same size as the whole of  the US. We need to transport people and goods across the country if the country is to function as an economic unit. That is a major contributing factor to the amount of energy we use.  We also don't have the manufacturing capability needed to provide everything ourselves so we import - and we export. Those things use fossil fuels for now.

If anyone doubts this is a problem they need to talk to those of us who have worked in areas where international conferences have almost always been out of reach. International conferences are the places where people make personal connections, the sort of personal connections which are invaluable in research and development. That we did so well in R and D up until the advent of the internet is extraordinary. When the Senior Cat was given funding to do some research in the UK and Western Europe in 1972 it was a major event, reported in the papers. Very few people travelled that far. Now we can use computers to do some of that work - although we still miss out on a lot of the more intimate contacts made at international conferences. 

So yes, we could reduce our per capita emissions if we stop importing and exporting and stop developing in other ways. We can regress to being one of the world's "less developed" countries. We can halt our population growth - something we seem to be currently economically dependent on. We can do all that even while we "support" our Pacific neighbours. 

Even if we do succeed in reaching the goal which has been currently set for us it will not be enough. It won't be enough because emissions targets are not simply about the environment they are about politics.  The big polluters know they don't need to meet those targets. All they need to do is appear to be doing something about the problem at the present time. It will keep those with the power in power - and give them more power over us.

We still need to care for the environment. There are ways to do it and we must - but we need to be aware that, while criticising us so heavily, some of the world's worst polluters are (and will) do far less.