In this day and age everything is all about balance, particularly in our industry.
Every day our editor asks, begs and then insists I get the other side of the argument or debate on every story or issue, although not any more.
Pitching an idea this morning I found a loophole, it’s called common sense.
Writing yet another story about a science backed, peer-reviewed, globally recognised study on climate change the meeting fell silent – there was no need to get the other side.
It turns out that finally we don’t need a ‘denier’ to balance a story, and the reason is simple – the evidence is in and irrefutable.
And while deniers are few and far between these days I know just where I could find one if the need arose. Unfortunately he is just down the road in a well appointed taxpayer funded office.
That got me thinking.
Isn’t the climate change debate a bit similar to the old condom theory taught at school of ‘better to have one and not need it than need one and not have it.”
What if we are wrong? What if the deniers are right?
Nothing. That’s what happens.
Of course we would have built a sustainable (and possibly even affordable) model of power, future-proofed (a term politicians have thrashed to death) our agricultural industry and possibly even made the world a better place.
But what if we are right?
The same applies.
There is no downside to ‘believing’ in climate change, even if it is not true. But what we can’t afford to do is sit idly by and do nothing because the consequences of being right are too great.
Over the past 20 years the Murray-Darling has seen a 41 per cent decline in stream flow.
That system supplies over one third of our nation’s food supply.
Meanwhile we wait in a cacophony of deafening silence to hear any outcomes from the damning allegations of water theft from that very same waterway, the lifeblood of inland Australia.
