No one has ever been able to convince me that mankind is creating a climate catastrophe. An alliteration catastrophe perhaps but not climate. For all of those people who “studied English” at school less than 20 years ago, alliteration is stringing together a number of words with the same first letter or sound. And by the way, you’re mostly to blame for encouraging the doom and gloom merchants perpetrating the biggest scam in human history on the world. Those of us who were taught to think for ourselves are waiting to see the evidence. If you advocate shutting a coal mine because parts of the Great Barrier Reef are bleaching, you are making a giant leap of faith with “faith” being the operative word.

We (mankind, that is) may be a minor irritant when it comes to the climate like an errant thread on a new jacket. We can tug on the thread and make a manageable situation much worse or we can snip it off. Similarly if the temperature goes up a tad (or down – ice ages anyone?) we can adapt as we adapt to night by turning on the lights although it has to be said that every day fewer of us have this privilege as the carpet baggers, rent seekers and thieves who run our parliaments and power companies keep imitating King Canute (or Al Capone, take your pick).

I’m not here to present a detailed case for sanity or debunk (much) the case for the prostitution. If there is evidence to support one side or the other go and find it for yourself. Incidentally, that’s part of the problem. Too many people, especially those with vested interests (looking at you Al Gore) don’t want to face facts because as mentioned above, it’s a faith thing and plus there’s the all powerful kaa…ching factor.

I can’t resist inserting a celebrity into the discussion here because as we all know, celebrities have the answers to everything. This allows them to hold a tune or be really good at pretending to be someone else. Or is it the other way round? I’m never sure. Anyway our favourite intellectual chanteuse Missy Higgins said this about the Adani coal mine (which is yet to produce a tonne of coal) – “This coal mine is so big it will tip our climate into environmental devastation”. It’ll produce 40 million tonnes a year. The world currently produces 7 billion tonnes a year. Enough of this stupidity.

No, I’m trying to find an analogy that presents the issue from an Australian perspective in an understandable light. There’re those pesky lights again. Yesterday I thought I had something really neat but when explaining it to the child bride I realised I had made a major mistake. But let’s enjoy ourselves and I’ll give it to you anyway. See if you can spot the error.

Imagine the atmosphere is the packed crowd at the Melbourne Cricket Ground which we’ll round up to 100,000 people. If 4% of the atmosphere is carbon dioxide (NOT “carbon”), that’s 4000 people. If mankind is responsible for 4% of carbon dioxide emissions and nature the rest, that’s 160 people. If Australia is responsible for 1.3% of the world’s man-made emissions, that’s 2 people. Our government’s emissions reduction target is 26%. For the sake of argument we’ll ignore the virtue signalling idiots on the left who want an even bigger target and stick with 26%. So we will save the planet by disposing of one half of one person in the MCG crowd of 100,000.

Then I realised where I had made the mistake. Carbon dioxide isn’t 4% of the atmosphere. It’s 0.04% of the atmosphere – 100 times less than my original calculation. So instead of half a person in the MCG crowd we, in Australia, are reducing global emissions by a toe. So if you’ve had your power turned off because you can’t afford to pay your electricity bill anymore you can be contented knowing that those billions of dollars of renewable energy subsidies we pay every year are paying for a toe.

 

Of the many business trips I’ve done over the centuries very few have involved staying in one place, or even one country for the duration of the trip. Even conference attendances were usually combined with onward trips to other less salubrious places – give conference organisers their due because you rarely end up in (which country/city/race am I going to offend here) Caracas or Lagos or Port-au-Prince or Pyongyang or Adelaide. It’s always Bali or Paris or Cancun or Singapore. And when was the last time a save the environment conference was held somewhere where the delegates could see the problem they were pretending to be concerned about first hand? Rio de Janeiro could almost qualify if the delegate excursion to the favelas had been held in something bigger than a tandem motorcycle but I guarantee no one touched the ground more than two blocks from Copacabana or Ipanema.

Which brings me to Hong Kong where I was for a conference last week and stayed for the entire week. Hong Kong is a great place. It’s a love it or hate it place but in my book, I could live there. Having been there numerous times I know there’s traffic and it’s crowded and there’s smog and typhoons and expat bankers and the Chinese think we are barbarians despite them being the rudest people (with one or two exceptions, says he inserting the cowardly caveat) on the planet. And they’re the most numerous on the planet so big tick for me for offending the most people possible from one race in one sentence (no, muslims aren’t a race so they didn’t qualify). But you never tire of the view and the energy is electrifying. Unfortunately every time I go there the land bit has got bigger and the sea bit has got smaller as more and more land is reclaimed. Victoria Harbour is up there with Sydney Harbour and the Bosphorus as one of the most spectacular waterways in the world but I expect to be able to walk from Hong Kong Island (or the Southern Suburbs as it will then be known) to Kowloon without going through a tunnel or over a bridge or getting my feet wet in the not too distant future.

Speaking of bridges, the Chinese have just built one from Hong Kong to Macau – 35 miles long and the world’s longest sea bridge. As the Chinese are inveterate gamblers (that’s “inveterate” meaning hardened or incurable not “invertebrate” which is what I am after a skin full of sherbets), they now have something for the Hong Kongers to throw themselves off after losing the family fortune in Packer’s old Macau casino.

The object of the conference exercise was to promote a mining project to potential investors. This involved booth manning (I will not say “personning” even if Canada’s teenage girl prime minister wants me to) and spruiking the benefits of the project to everyone who stopped by. If we get to do this again I think I’ll round up a few of the Indian tailors who you trip over in Nathan Road. They’d be able to sell a coal mine to one of the drink waiters.

Standing up and talking for a few days straight is all very well but one needs stress relief and it comes in the form of evening functions that are attractive for one reason and one reason alone – free booze. The first one was an awards night celebrating the accomplishments of various industry high achievers. So we had a room full of miners and bankers being plied with free drinks and some poor sod at the front of the room trying to get them to shut up long enough to hand out a few gongs. Fat chance. Rudeness is an abundant commodity in the mining and money communities. Or deafness perhaps, which would have explained all of the shouted conversations. And here was me thinking they were shouting so they could be heard by their fellow rudees over the bloke at the front with the microphone.

My two colleagues and I eventually escaped to the more sedate, heaving pub precinct of Lan Kwai Fong and seated ourselves roadside to watch the world stagger by. It was a public holiday the next day and the rugby sevens was in town so the bar staff were busier than an octopus with tinea but still managed to keep the Heinekens flowing to our table at a most acceptable rate despite our being as far away from the bar as it was possible to be – take note all you bar slicks in Australia who only ever see the chicky babes lining up at the bar.

The bar entertainment was outstanding and entirely free. Well that may or may not have been the case for other revellers because the entertainment was, in fact, a ticket scalper who happened past advertising his wares while we were enjoying the view and the ice-cold beers. His accent was very familiar and it turned out he lived about a mile from my Manchester relatives and my parents’ old stamping ground. This guy really had the gift of the gab which I guess is rather fundamental to his chosen profession and once he got warmed up we went from the Winter Olympics to the Summer Olympics to the World Cup to the Rugby Sevens to the Commonwealth Games in about 45 minutes without a pause for breath. And all it cost me was a beer. Well played sir.

This was my first overseas business trip for some time and I’d almost forgotten what it was like to lie flat in an aeroplane. Those of you who have read some of my other travel epics on this blog will be aware of my pathological hatred of crowds. Especially when that crowd comprises economy class plane passengers. You will know that until about four years ago, I thought jumbo jets were only 10m long. I was never curious about nor cared where all of those people were going to after they passed through that curtain at the back of the plane – back into the terminal I guess. Before this trip I’d almost become a plebeian plane passenger again but a timely injection of silver-service snobbery brought me back to my senses. Phew.