Charles sits silently with me as I muse about life

Charles Mackay’s timeless book, “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and The Madness of Crowds” sits at the end of my desk as I muse about life.

Although silent in every sense, thoughts ignited by Mackay’s marvellous 19^th Century book repeat in my mind sometimes engineering doubt about those things I have spent more than a decade understanding.

That momentary doubt is just that, momentary; for as quick as that doubt arises, the unequivocal evidence of the damage we have caused extinguishes those mental interrogations.

However, I cannot escape the fear that I too might be caught up in a delusion such as that alluded to by Mackay except for the madness he refers to was just that, a madness driven by emotion and superstition, broadly and socially accepted at the time; they were cruel mental confusions, devoid of fact and reason.

Personal concerns about climate change have me frequently on the end of much finger wagging followed by the accusation of “You, environmentalists!” as if I am personally responsible for the ills of both Earth and humanity.

Being described as an “environmentalist” is not wrong, but decidedly unsettling.

Sometimes I correct people saying, “My unease, my first concern, is for the people of this planet and our fellow species and so the natural by-product of that is caring for and about the environment, and within that allowing people and all other life forms to thrive”.

My journey to becoming what might be termed a “climate activist” began, unknowingly when, as a teenager, I worked for the dark side. Yes, I spent about two years travelling the coasts of Australia and in New Guinea’s Gulf of Papua working with an oil survey company, setting off explosions, killing fish of all sizes and recording data that allowed geologists to determine the presence of what I now know is a destructive fossil fuel.

My sojourn from reporting ended when I returned to Echuca’s Riverine Herald, then the North Central News in St Arnaud and then, in the early eighties, I finally settled at this newspaper.

Life took a telling turn late nineties when a severe road accident forced me into early retirement and then after several years of recovery (it’s a salvage and repair job that never ends) the essence of reporting, curiosity, surfaced again the pursuit of answers took me, by chance to a free public lecture at the University of Melbourne.

Seeking social answers, the first free lecture I attended mentioned betterment of the community, but it was really about building resilience in communities wrestling with the impact of climate change.

That ignited my interest and so for more than a decade now the university’s free lectures have been something of a haunt for me as they provide a rare opportunity to hear from people from all parts of the world with the sharpest of minds; minds that have been applied to exploring and understanding what it is we have done, and are doing, to the slither of life giving gases that surround our planet.

The delusions Mackay alludes to can be found among those unable to suppress their superstitions and a longing for what was causing the suppression of reason and good sense killing off the revelatory thinking needed to respond to a rapidly unfolding new world.