Imagine 1 kilometer of atmosphere and we want to get rid of the carbon pollution in it created by human activity. Let's go for a walk along it.
The first 770 meters are Nitrogen.
The next 210 meters are Oxygen.
That's 980 meters of the 1 kilometer. 20 meters to go.
The next 10 meters are water vapor. 10 meters left.
9 meters are argon. Just 1 more meter.
A few gases make up the first bit of that last meter.
The last 38 centimeters of the kilometer - that's carbon dioxide. A bit over one foot.
97% of that is produced by Mother Nature. It's natural.
Out of our journey of one kilometer, there are just 12 millimeters left.
Just over a centimeter - about half an inch.
That's the amount of carbon dioxide that global human activity puts into the
atmosphere.
And of those 12 millimeters Australia puts in .18 of a millimeter.
Less than the thickness of a hair. Out of a kilometer!
As a hair is to a kilometer - so is Australia's contribution to what the PM calls Carbon Pollution.
Imagine Brisbane's new Gateway Bridge , ready to be opened by the PM.
It's been polished, painted and scrubbed by an army of workers till its 1 kilometre length is surgically clean. Except that the PM says we have a huge problem, the bridge is polluted - there's a human hair on the roadway.
We'd laugh ourselves silly.
There are plenty of real pollution problems to worry about. :wall:
It's hard to imagine that Australia's contribution to carbon dioxide in the world's atmosphere is one of the more pressing ones. And I can't believe that a new tax on everything is the only way to blow that pesky hair away.
