Talk of climate change like smoking

It is incredible just how conditioned we as a species have become.

No sooner do we see somewhere which is naturally beautiful than we want to add to it or change it in some way: we want to get more people to come to it, principally so that they will part with their money. (Tourist Opportunities for Secret Retreat, Peninsula.News March 26)

This is happening all around Australia, so that apart from those areas of the coast locked up in National Parks, and even they are under threat, everywhere is beginning to look the same.

Wouldn't it be easier if people who want the razz-a-mataz go to the Gold Coast or The Entrance in the first place and leave some places for the rest of us?

It is no wonder that authorities maintain that internal tourism is falling.

Overseas tourism will also drop, once people realize that all the natural, wild places have been changed or tamed or are threatened with flooding or drought.

We are slow to grasp that every change we make to the environment, has an impact on the ecology of the area, so that eventually the very things which attracted us there are gone for ever.

As Mark Taylor, director of environmental science at Macquarie University has so aptly said, we are "trading a potentially secure future for the 'instant scratchie' of economic growth."

Money is all we ever seem to think about.

No one is willing to face up to the uncomfortable realities of our present lifestyle.

We just want to make, sell and consume regardless of the future.

We all talk about climate change but in much the same way as smokers constantly talk about giving it up but only a few actually do.

We seem unable to grasp the fact that it means changing our thinking; living differently and yet it is a war we have to win.

Instead of this, every level of government has adopted a "business as usual" policy.

We must have our every desire satisfied and God help every other species.

Our local government, for instance, is determined to continue with its policy of rip it out, pull it down or concrete it over, for vested interests must make their money before moving to higher ground.

Why is our Council so unconcerned about climate change and the expected inundation of much of our low lying areas?

Waringah Council and the Gold Coast Council are very concerned and are even buying back some irretrievable properties.

The insurance industry is very worried.

They know that climate change is here, now.

If the earthquake in the Pacific had been any further south then the tsunami warnings might have been for the Peninsula.

The whole of our coastline has been under the sea previously.

What makes us think it cannot happen again?

Let's face up to the problem and stop trying to re-create the planet.

Margaret Lund Woy Woy