It’s only short but it’s one I do like to read every year or so when I get jaded. Jaded about what? About respect for science. About how pure bullshit can be disseminated and believed by people. About how there is a chip in your COVID vaccine so the government can track you. About how vaccines give your kids autism. About how children are taught to doubt evolution. About how climate change is all crap and it’s just scientists making sure they get their grant money.

The book is called The Collapse of Western Civilisation and is written by two science historians (Naomi Oreskes of Harvard U and Erik M Conway of the NASA JPL Laboratory) and looks back on the period of the 1980’s through to the 2080’s from a future historians point of view. It’s intriguing reading. One thing it never fails to make me do is think. And that is a good thing. So what do I think when I’m finished that book? A lot of things. But mostly that I don’t believe it is a work of fiction anymore. I think there is a large element of prediction in there. I don’t have the endless faith that so many have in our ability to avoid catastrophic climate change. So much so that I’ve basically given up talking about it. Explaining it. Or as one person put it to me – “preaching it”. Man was it hard not to punch that person in the mouth. I spent 4.5 years doing a degree in Environmental Science majoring in Sustainable Ecosystems so I don’t particularly appreciate being told I don’t know what I’m talking about and to “stop preaching my bullshit gospel” at them. (And a big middle finger will always be raised in that person’s direction for eternity and I’ll leave it at that) But anyway our total lack of interest in making the required changes to our habits, our lifestyles, and particularly our economies is making it harder and harder for us to avoid catastrophic climate change. Whatever. It’s your kids that’ll cop the worst of it. They get to deal with it because my generation, and what the hell I’ll say your generation too, were a bunch of selfish arseholes. Our duty under the concept of sustainability is to hand on to our progeny a world that is at least as good as what we inherited. Fat chance kiddos. Good luck with that.

So for my next book I’ll probably read the work of another great scientist. I’m considering The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins or perhaps The Demon Haunted World by the late Carl Sagan. And if ever there was a scientist we needed at this very moment in time to explain things to people, it’s Carl Sagan. He was calm, erudite and almost hypnotic in his ability to get you interested in what he was talking about. And we really, really need that now. Instead we get whatever the media want to feed us. And on the rare occasion when the media feed us properly, generally only the ABC in Australia at least, we hear that it wasn’t fair and should have included someone with an alternative viewpoint “for balance”. But that only happens when anything Science is discussed. Never Economics, where I would get up and mention how cost/benefits are never included for environmental services performed by natural functions – I would be told “sit down you heathen” very swiftly indeed. Never Politics, where only the conservative line is allowed air time. To hell with those pesky tree-hugging refugee-loving Greens. Or Religion. Ka-wow. Imagine your school’s scripture class and the local Catholic preacher gives his spiel and then an Imam gets up and gives the Islamic “alternative view”. Oh the horror. Imagine the calls to the Principal. Nay, direct to the Minister of Education himself. Oh the Twitter and Facebook storm fills me with fear just thinking about it. Well, not fear. Revulsion more like.

So in the end re-reading a book made me think. Outside the square. Actually think. About stuff that our political leaders probably wished I wasn’t thinking about. Science. Climate Change. Sustainability. Yeah, nah mate, we’d much rather you turn the TV on and watch something there on commercial TV you know. Big Brother is back on 7, that’s good shit, how about that. Maybe some footy later too eh mate. Whaddya reckon?

I reckon it’s lucky more people don’t read books then isn’t it?