Carbon tax will be irrelevant, but we need to prepare

Proposals for Australia to introduce a carbon tax have dominated public discussions.

Dr Elisabeth Kubler-Ross.

The amount of carbon dioxide emitted by Australians, and anyone else for that matter, is intimately connected to consumption, meaning, simply, that the more we consume the more carbon dioxide we dump into the atmosphere.
That elementary fact was clearly illustrated during the recent Global Financial Crisis (GFC) – with the world experiencing a cash crisis, consumption and subsequently production slowed resulting in a measurable decrease in our emissions.
The GFC saw the economy escape and bolt free, but a carbon tax is about tackling global warming with some discipline and imagined control over the mysteries of the economy.
However, something else is happening, something that will easily surpass the impact of both the GFC and the argued about carbon tax. We are running out of oil!
Everything our industrial world exists because of oil and rather than argue endlessly about a tax we yet don’t understand, we should be apply the ingenuity we are using to win or lose that debate to prepare our communities to live in a low-energy and “oil-less” world.
Life as we know it today and as it will be tomorrow will be as different as a blink and a wink – strikingly similar, but decidedly different, both in intent and purpose.
Rather that waste time piecing together something ultimately useless, our efforts, from the Prime Minister down, should be aimed at understanding how we can live well in a low-energy world.
The road from here to the end of oil in about 30 years will be exceedingly bumpy.
Much needs to be done, but the absolute first priority is to psychologically prepare people for what will be a transformative revolution to life styles.
Discussing life changing events, the late Dr Elisabeth Kubler-Ross said we go through five stages – denial, anger, bargaining, depression and, finally, acceptance.
The end of oil, that will resolve any need for a carbon tax, will see whole communities experience all those paradigms articulated by Dr Kubler-Ross.
The proposed carbon tax is a divisive distraction that will be both irrelevant and unimportant when the oil runs out.