Educating our Children on Climate Change

One dad’s answers to a school project: Interview Dad on Carbon Tax:

Q1: What are the advantages and disadvantages of a Carbon Tax being introduced in Australia?

There are no advantages because it will cost too much and not improve the environment, even if everyone in the world spent all the money they had saved up doing it. Carbon dioxide gas warms the planet a little bit but is not as dangerous to the climate as scientists though it was. Climate changes mainly due to natural causes like the sun and the oceans, not due to you and me and the climate will not get too hot anytime soon. Clever kids like you will have plenty of time to invent exciting and better ways of making our planet an even nicer home for more people and look after the environment, as children before you have always done since the Romans invented the flushing toilet. Right now, there are many more important and urgent things to fix, like paying back too much borrowed money by many naughty countries, helping with famine in Africa, providing clean water to poor countries and fixing up mean governments around the world.

There are many disadvantages. It will cost more for Australian businesses to make things compared to other countries, so all of Australia will become poorer. Families will end up paying even more for heating, cooking, all their food and most things they buy (even with some of the money being returned by the government). Too much of our money will be wasted on people doing silly jobs, and on expensive machines that don’t work well and on people cheating, all for no benefit as has already happened in Europe. Think, how do we heat your bedroom at night, when we close coal power stations and expensive solar panels have no sunlight and wind turbines have no wind.

Q2: What effect do you think the Carbon Tax will have on CO2 emissions?

Small. Tiny. So small, that it would be like taking a table spoon of water out of a swimming pool, because other much bigger countries like China, India and USA have no Carbon Tax or only a pretend one. Despite this tiny effect, it will cost us too much money.

Q3: Do you think Miss Julia Gillard was right to introduce a Carbon Tax? Why?

She was very wrong, and I and most Australians are very angry with her. She promised and crossed her heart, hope to die, that if we make her the Prime Minister, she will not give us the Carbon Tax. After we made her the Prime Minister, she said she changed her mind and she is now giving us the Carbon Tax, even though most of us don’t want it. It is very bad to lie, to make promises if you don’t plan to keep or to break big promises. She should have no ice cream and no Nintendo games for a month.

Q4: What was the reason of Julia Gillard’s introduction of the Carbon Tax?

Only she knows for sure. She says because she believes it is the right thing to do, the right thing for the environment. But she said the opposite before the election, and she told other untruths, so we don’t believe her any more. I think she needed the help of the Greens to be Prime Minister, who said they would help her only if she gave us the Carbon Tax, so because she wanted to be Prime Minister so much, she chose to break her promise to us and pretends that it is good for us.

Q5: The majority of people do not like the Carbon Tax. Why is this?

Some dislike it because Julia Gillard promised to not bring in the Carbon Tax and so has no right to do it. They say she should call another election and let us, the people decide.

Some people don’t like it because it will cost them more money ad they don’t like to pay or they can’t afford to pay it, and they don’t believe her that she will return all the money to them as she promises to do.

Others, like me, believe trying to reduce carbon dioxide is not necessary enough to put up with all the cost and damage to our economy it will do. We should do more research to be sure that it is really necessary and invent better ways to reduce carbon dioxide if it really is necessary.