The new South Australian Labor government has declared a ‘climate emergency’.

Climate lockdowns, surveillance of your ‘carbon footprint’, and restrictions on how much fuel and meat you consume might sound like a conspiracy theories now, but the stage is being set for them to appear in the near future.

As historian Dr Stephen Chavura noted in response to Labor’s motion, ‘Emergency is the language that you use when democracy is no longer working for you.’

Declaring an emergency is what tyrants do when they wish to shut down debate, silence their opponents, and ram through legislation that would otherwise be difficult to pass. South Australia’s opposition leader, David Speirs, dismissed Labor’s motion as mere virtue-signalling but, while it is certainly virtue-signalling, it is more concerning than that. 

We have seen the passing of coercive, restrictive laws in Australia over the past two years with the frequent declaration of state emergencies due to Covid. One of the first actions of SA’s new Labor government was to make amendments to the South Australian Public Health Act 2011 which allow for those who disobey a public health ‘direction’ to be imprisoned for up to two years or have to pay a fine of $20,000. This would have been unthinkable before Covid, but we accepted such extreme penalties because of an ‘emergency’. The same will happen regarding Climate Change unless we stop letting bureaucrats rule us via draconian edicts. 

In the coming years, being a ‘climate denier’ will mean that you are viewed as a threat to society – a threat to our very existence, no less – and get you publicly demonised, just as people who didn’t receive Covid vaccines have been. It will take courage to stand up to the Woke ideologues who are convinced, due to incessant propaganda and with a kind of religious fanaticism, that the end is nigh. 

Labor’s motion is notably broad and vague, designed to induce fear rather than meaningfully address an issue. It reads, ‘Around the world, Climate Change impacts are already causing loss of life and destroying vital ecosystems.’ Labor’s proposed solution is committing to ‘restoring a safe climate by transforming the economy to zero net emissions’.

That’s quite a commitment – one that will cost many South Australians their jobs and make them dependent on dodgy, expensive renewable energy sources (which are entirely dependent on the weather). It’s also dangerously ambiguous. Where, exactly, has Climate Change caused loss of lives or destroyed vital ecosystems? How, exactly, will the economy be transformed? These questions remain unasked and unanswered by South Australian parliamentarians. 

Utilising nuclear power probably isn’t up for discussion, as that would make sense. As usual, the so-called conservatives in SA’s Parliament hardly protested the blatantly ideological rhetoric of Labor and the Greens. Climate catastrophism has a stranglehold over Australia’s state Parliaments because Climate Change is one of the most powerful shibboleths in Australian politics. Anyone who questions it is immediately dismissed as an extremist and ignoramus, meaning those making the claims go unchallenged. There is no contest of ideas in the South Australian Parliament, just people on ‘both sides’ of politics agreeing that the government needs even more control over our lives.

Speaking of control, at the World Economic Forum’s recent annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, J. Michael Evans – the president of the Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba – said something alarming:

‘We’re developing, through technology, an ability for consumers to measure their own carbon footprint. What does that mean? Where are they travelling? How are they travelling? What are they eating? What are they consuming on the platform? Individual carbon footprint tracker. Stay tuned, we don’t have it operational yet, but this is something that we’re working on.’

Evans presented this tech as being voluntary but, clearly, it would be very appealing to a state that wishes its citizens to believe that there is a climate emergency and that we have to get emissions down to literally zero. 

Over the past two years, Australians have accepted many authoritarian actions from state governments without realising the significance of what they’ve conceded, and it looks like Climate Change will be the next ‘emergency’ used to justify further government control. We’ve accepted mandatory vaccinations, medical discrimination, border closures, mask mandates, and even prolonged lockdowns to slow the spread of a virus with an over 99 cent survival rate. Will we accept governments tracking our carbon footprint (how much petrol, electricity, gas, and meat we consume) and penalising you if you exceed your prescribed weekly limit to save the planet? Time will tell. 

Climate Change is nothing but an excuse for more government control. It’s promoted either by people who wrongly believe that humans are changing the weather and that a cataclysmic climate apocalypse awaits us all if we don’t act now, or by globalist authoritarians who want to use Climate Change as a Trojan horse for draconian restrictions and comprehensive surveillance. We need to stop assuming that Climate Change is important because people in authority tell us it is. It’s their interest for it to be important, not yours.

Conservatives cannot pretend that Climate Change is a serious issue that must be addressed while also advocating a moderate response to it. The Liberal Party’s policy on Climate Change appears to be, ‘Yes, humans are changing the climate and this will lead to our extinction if we don’t act quickly, but let’s be a little more cautious than Labor about it.’

This is not a viable policy. Either Climate Change is a threat or it isn’t. The Liberals must find the courage to state the obvious: despite decades of wild predictions about the ozone layer (remember that?), and melting ice-caps, the world is still here. The predictions haven’t come true. They never do. 

Australians have become complacent with broad, sweeping restrictions on our movements and decisions due to the apparent emergency presented by Covid. While Labor’s motion is virtue-signalling for now, we can expect to see more draconian legislation rushed through Parliament without proper scrutiny under the guise of an emergency, as happened with the recent amendments to SA’s Public Health Act. Hopefully, the past two years will motivate us not to allow governments to control us further before we’re all eating crickets.

Lincoln Brown can be found over on Twitter.

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