Imagine this.
You are in the passenger seat of a car.
The car is hammering down the freeway at twice the speed limit.
Ahead, you see an LPG truck. It’s broken down and is parked right across your lane.
Within a second you will hit it. And you know that when you do, it will explode and take out the nearby primary school.
You panic. Your heart freezes in your chest as you suck in a deep breath and get ready to scream at the driver.
‘STOP!’
‘STOP THE CAR!’
You turn in your seat, astonished that the driver has not already stamped down on the brake pedal.
And then you realise why.
There is no driver.
You are sitting inside an unguided missile, careening toward certain destruction. And it’s too late to react.
‘So?’ We ask with a smug grin. ‘This isn’t happening to me, so why should I be scared?’
Oh, but it is, dear reader. It is.
Our little green planet is hurtling down an environmental highway. It’s going faster and faster, and it’s almost out of control. And just ahead of us, there is a hazard on the road. It’s called irreversible climate change. When we hit it, it’s going to be the end of the story. We can say goodbye to that nearby primary school. And the secondary school. And the rest of the suburb too.
The collision has already started.
And pretty soon we are all going to look over to the driver’s seat and see that there has been nobody at the wheel for a long, long time.
We thought our politicians were guiding us safely to our destination, but sadly, they stepped out at the last traffic light. They knew about the hazard up ahead. They knew it better than anyone. But they chose not to take us on the safer road. They figured they could step off at just the right moment, and the rest of us could take our chances with the LPG truck.
So who’s to blame?
We are. You. Me. All of us.
Because we voted them in. And we sat in the comfortable passenger’s seat and watched as they drove us into disaster.
How different it would have been if we had voted for someone who cared about the entire journey, and not just the first little part of it.