Economy
Joyce for Camberra
Remember the old “Six degrees of separation” fashion?. Went the way of hula hoops and yo-yos I suppose. The idea was that any person in the world could be linked to any other person in just 6 steps. Is it true? Well let’s try it with, oh, say, Barnaby Joyce and Ronald Reagan. Can’t be done you say? Well, I reckon I could do it in one step.
Among the many things for which Ronald Reagan, worst president in US history until the crown was snatched, easily, by Mr Bush, was famous was this. His predecessor, Jimmy Carter, a man with his eye, unusually for a US president, on the future rather than the past, had installed solar panels on the roof of the White House. Carter could see what was coming, having lived through the 1973 “oil shock”, and decided to set an example for the American people in alternative energy use and in reduced energy consumption (he famously had the WH thermostats turned down a bit). Virtually Reagan’s first act (I’m guessing after turning the thermostats up) after swearing-in was to order the panels torn off the roof.
Now note that this wasn’t just a matter of leaving the panels there to rot because he wasn’t interested, he actually and symbolically ripped them down as a way of thumbing his nose at any environmental considerations whatsoever. Americans would burn as much oil and coal as they wanted to, and they would never resort to this greenie solar energy nonsense. It was an emphatic statement that the right wing in America (and later here) was at war with the conservation movement.
And Barnaby? Well there he was the other day sneering at Labor for helping people insulate their houses. Insulation, ”that’s the fluffy stuff that sits in the ceiling for rats and mice to urinate on”. Not a criticism of the way the program was implemented – certainly criticism there has been – but a sneer at the very idea that people would insulate their houses to save energy. In Barnaby’s world, like Reagan’s, Australians are free to waste as much energy as they please, and no world communist government is going to insulate their houses thanks very much. Or stop them clearing all the trees in Australia, if they felt like it, as he was saying a day earlier.
Picture: SMH