Hand-wringing over soaring fuel prices is a national obsession but, sadly, it is not matched by the quiet reflection this moment warrants - either as a nation, a parliament, or as individuals.

Subscribe now for unlimited access.

Login or signup to continue reading

Such introspection might raise unpalatable truths around governmental negligence, hyper-partisanship, consumer choice and our obligation to leave the world in better shape than we found it.

For some, nothing ever changes. We've come to expect a certain prideful ignorance from right-wing populists and their media shills.

Even during what Anthony Albanese has noted is the biggest fuel price spike in history, the strident anti-renewables crowd will not admit they were wrong in sticking to crude oil, like, err, crude oil.

Decades have been lost during which Australia might have achieved energy self-sufficiency, incentivising a rapid electrification of its vehicle fleet, also.

Instead, the nation has bickered and guzzled.

Thanks to opportunists who tapped into a wilful anti-intellectual streak, past attempts to put a dollar-per-tonne price on emissions were scuppered. Politics overwhelmed policy.

The result, in national interest terms, is baleful mediocrity. Vulnerability in place of resilience. Incremental shimmying when step-change was required.

Confrontingly, however, the fanatical fossil-fringe is not the only section of our community that should reflect.

The fairytale of infinite oil abundance turns out to be more widely held than that.

It is woven into the wide brown land's plunderous fabric.

For a start, governments at all levels, have not merely continued our urban sprawl, but have accelerated it, building far-flung dormitory suburbs, and vastly expensive, car-reliant infrastructure.

At the same time, Australians themselves - particularly as the climate problem has worsened - have responded perversely by opting for ever-bigger houses and ever-heavier........

© The Examiner