The mad rush to decarbonise: Ross Garnaut's unmeetable challenge.

IN 1759 SAMUEL JOHNSON wrote Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia, a tale of three young people who had grown up in royal seclusion, but who escaped in order to experience what the wider world had to offer. They were Rasselas, the prince, Princess Nekayah, his sister, and Pekuah, her handmaiden, and they were accompanied by Imlac, an older man who is described as a poet, but who is Johnson's alter ego.

Eventually they find themselves in Cairo, where they enjoy meeting and listening to the sages of that city, but one such scholar is of particular interest to us today. He is described only as Imlac's astronomer, and eventually this man unburdens himself to Imlac of the onerous duties which weigh upon him:

 
   Hear, Imlac, what thou wilt not without difficulty 
   credit. I have possessed for five years the regulation 
   of weather, and the distribution of the season: the 
   sun has listened to my dictates, and passed from 
   tropick to tropick by my direction; the clouds, at 
   my call, have poured their waters, and the Nile has 
   overflowed at my command; I have restrained the 
   rage of the dog-star, and mitigated the fervours of 
   the crab ... I have administered this great office with 
   exact justice, and made to the different nations of 
   the earth an impartial dividend of rain and sunshine ... 

The astronomer responds to Imlac's expressions of doubt with this assurance:

 
   Not to be easily credited will neither surprise nor 
   offend me; for I am, probably, the first of human 
   beings to whom this trust has been imparted. Nor 
   do I know whether to deem this distinction a 
   reward or a punishment; since I have possessed it I 
   have been far less happy than before, and nothing 
   but the consciousness of good intention could have 
   enabled me to support the weariness of unremitted 
   vigilance. 

The astronomer's predicament is replicated today in the problems now facing Professor Ross Garnaut, the eminent economist who has been entrusted by the state Labor governments and now Prime Minister Rudd with advising them on what to do about "climate change".

During the 2007 federal election campaign which culminated in the defeat of the Howard government, Labor leader Kevin Rudd promised frequently to "manage climate change" and particularly to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, which he did with much fanfare soon after his election victory. Since then the drought has broken and a number of towns in Queensland are coping as best they can with major floods.