Here’s a little question for you all to ponder. What’s much of the current debate on the environment over – climate change or the politics of climate change?

Are people using climate change as a platform for a wider political agenda? The answer – naturally – is of course. And it’s throwing up some wonderful ironies.

There’s much talk – justified talk – coming from environmentalists questioning the wisdom of tossing public money at the poor sods who try to farm marginal land. Yet these people don’t think twice about demanding dollars for alternative energy sources that aren’t financially viable.

Take Labor left member Antony Albanese’s fondness for “market instruments” to promote the take up of renewable energies. When the likes of Albo start talking of market based solutions, you know something dodgy is going on.

And it is. This isn’t a debate about climate change. It’s about the politics of climate change. These people aren’t even interested in the science of climate change. All they’re keen on is pushing political agendas.

The cover story of last week’s New Statesman was headed “Why we must ration the future“. “Unless we secure a deal determining how much carbon each nation and each person can emit, we simply will not survive,” the blurb said. And as for the text:

The best indication of whether a person truly grasps the scale of the global climate crisis is not whether they drive a hybrid car or offset their flights, nor whether they subscribe to The Ecologist or plan to attach a wind turbine to their house. The most reliable indicator is whether they support carbon rationing…

[B]ecause carbon rationing represents a total break with business as usual that it is the only climate-change policy that will work. Let me put it simply: if we go on emitting greenhouse gases at anything like the current rate, most of the surface of the globe will be rendered uninhabitable within the lifetimes of most readers of this article. We must reduce our emissions by 90% or so within three or four decades if we are to have any chance of avoiding this looming catastrophe.

That challenge requires collective, conscious action, involving a planned transition from a high-carbon economy to a low-carbon one. Just as we did not hope to win the Second World War by muddling through with a pre-1939 economy, we cannot hope to face down today’s emergency without completely altering our national priorities. Defeating Hitler was our number one aim in 1940: it ranked above health, education, crime and all the other day-to-day concerns of government, requiring a supreme effort of mobilisation. Defeating global warming must be our priority today, or we will lose this war, and with it our very existence as a civilisation…

That’s the agenda – very clearly stated. Massive intervention in every aspect of our everyday lives. Self appointed busybodies and the sternest of nanny staters dictating our behaviour and our choices.

The New Statesman says: “The received political wisdom is that the general public will recoil in horror at a scheme whose very name recalls wartime national emergencies and austerity. Rationing is the opposite of today’s consumerist free-for-all, where economic growth is the highest objective of government policy.”

Well of course they will. It’s easy to joke about carbon rationing. How will it work? If you exercise too and you speed up your breathing will you risk using up your quota of oxygen for the day?

This is grand scale nonsense – grand scale nonsense some bizarre believers are trying to impose on us on the back of our natural, normal love and concern for our environment.