will you be honest to your children ?, page-217

OK, I will answer your question.

Yes, I will be honest with my children.

I will say that I never knew whether the planet was warming due to mankind or not. I will say that lots of data and science was shown at the time to persuade me both ways. I will be honest and say that I could not come to a decision on whether I really believed it as I knew that data can be callibrated/massaged/doctored/and presented in a myriad of different ways to achive the desired outcome.

I will also say that for a long time I thought that society was overly consumptive and wasteful. I will say that I did not trust my kruddy leader to 'save us' as for me the answers were straightforward and there all along. Invest in solar and renewables via tax incentives, charge manufacturers for wastage and excessive packaging, build more bike lanes, invest in public transport, allow people to get off the grid without penalising them, decentralise and re-regionalise Australia, stop logging Australia for woodchip in Japan, etc etc ..... all these things could have been done.

But I will say children, the leader(s) did not do any of these things. They mooted an ETS and a global trading scheme that let all the big polluters off, and tried to persuade the less wealthy that their extra costs would recompensed? How does this change behaviour I asked? How does this save the planet? I asked for proof, like 'has the ETS in Europe reduced carbon?' but no-one could or would give me an answer. I did not trust them.

I will say that history has shown time and time again how perfectly normal and rational people, can be persuaded against their better judgement by the zeitgeist of the time. Children dobbing in parents in Maoist China, the silence in Germany during the Hitler years, the neighbours killing neighbours in Rwanda. I was not brought up to be a sheep, and to slavishly follow what I was told. I was brought up to question, to believe in myself, and to be true to myself.

And if dear children, the planet is changing, and you are less fortunate than I, then I am sorry. But each of us is on the planet in his own time, and that was my time, and now it is your time. I hope you will still question, believe in yourselves, and be true to yourselves. I never did anything with a bad heart, and sometimes the world is bigger than us, and events are bigger than us.