#23 Guest blogger + 1: Anna Fienberg, conversations during the plague

 Conversations during the plague

Today, I spent in my pyjamas. Again.
I say to the handsome devil, ‘Do you know what’s wrong with the world?’ 

  He says nothing … he thinks more about what time we’ll have dinner, or how to acquire more toys … not the state of our planet. So I give him a few ideas to chew on. He says he’ll think about it after dinner.

‘So, handsome devil,’ say I, ‘imagine Australia if medical and science experts were given a major spot on national TV news each night, taking the temperature of our earth and seas, broadcasting the deaths of species, the recovery of others.

Imagine Australia if medical and science experts were funded by our Government, as top priority, to find a vaccine – multiple vaccines – to cure the man-made disaster of climate change.

Imagine Australia if medical and science experts were accorded such respect by Government as to be directing the nation’s policy on managing forest, native animal, ocean and human health in the face of the climate change virus…

Imagine Australia if medical and science experts were encouraged to do what they’re best at and invent, hypothesise, run trials, and show us the most effective paths to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Imagine Australia if Government didn’t leave the climate change virus to be sorted by the ‘market’, stopped taking bribes by the virus-producing fossil fuel companies, and policed taxes from the billionaire corporations in order to help pay scientists to get on with the job.

Imagine Australia if the Government respected the findings of medical and science experts enough to warn us, with nightly bulletins, that it is not safe for our planet to heat beyond 3 degrees, and that if we do, the virus of climate change will be out of our control.

Imagine if we accepted that there is no possibility of herd immunity to catastrophic climate change. This would be a different Australia, one that I’d love my grandchildren to be grow up in.

‘So, what do you think about that?’ I ask.

 

 

 

‘Where’s my dinner?’ is his gruff, ruff reply.

 

Many thanks to award-winning Australian author, Anna Fienberg for her insightful and funny addition to our blog. I think Master Pepper must be a wise dog to live in Anna’s household.

(Ed: If the use of the term the plague annoys, it’s not meant to downplay the seriousness of the pandemic, Covid-19. Regard it as a touch of Aussie dark humour.)