Sorry Toto, if you want to save the planet, take one for the team

It’s time for Albo to turn Toto over to the authorities, because it turns out that little cavoodle of his is an awful climate criminal, writes Tim Blair.

Bossy rich people keep calling for action on climate change, but they’ll never personally suffer for it.

It’s always other people – normal, hard-working, wage-earning people – who’ll take the hit for our allegedly delicate ecosystem. We’ll lose our productive, tax-generating jobs, affordable cars, properly-heated homes, civilised gas cooking and everything else deemed wicked by cashed-up planetary saviours.

We’ll always be punished. Meanwhile, those self-appointed saviours aren’t hurting at all.

A personal favourite is IT billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes, who invested some $650 million in energy giant AGL a few years ago in a bid to push the company away from coal and towards unreliable and expensive renewables.

For AGL’s less well-to-do customers, increased power bills are potentially bank-breaking. For Cannon-Brookes, on the other hand, $650 million is just a fun way of having his say about climate change.

And then he turned around earlier this year and bought a Bombardier Global 7500 jet. “I’m not denying I have a deep internal conflict on this,” climateer Cannon-Brookes said at the time, claiming he needed the jet “so I can run a global business from Australia, and still be a constantly present dad”.

If you thought this was bad for the planet, you’ve never met a cavoodle! Picture: Roni Bintang/Getty Images

Modern parenting is full of tough decisions. Sometimes your average Aussie dad just has to bite the bullet and buy a $120 million private aircraft.

All members of our saintly climate community are little Cannon-Brookeses, in their own ways. If they do give up anything, it’s only in ways that won’t cause any pain.

Climate crusading Australian billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes bought a new private jet similar to this one, and then publicly moaned about the “deep internal conflict” he felt in pushing up carbon emissions.

Many of them are sufficiently rich to be insulated from any economic setbacks caused by the climate policies they advocate. Many of them, in other words, are Teals.

Or they’re cashed-up, climate-infected Labor types, such as full-time property baron and part-time PM Anthony Albanese, who are attempting to convert Australia’s economy into an enrichment service for Chinese EV manufacturers.

A serious imbalance here requires obvious correction. If only there was something we could demand be surrendered by holy green preachers that would actually make them understand the pain of loss.

If only there was a pressing climate-based need to do away with something that these people actually loved – in the same way they ask us to do away with fossil fuels, farming, inexpensive electricity and all the other beloved indicators of a superior civilisation.

As it happens, there is such a thing.

The climate-caring rich need to give up their dogs. Say goodbye forever to the four-legged and furry. It’s time for Albo to turn Toto over to the authorities, because it turns out that little cavoodle of his is an awful climate criminal.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese with his pet dog Toto, who according to barmy activists, is a climate criminal because of his carbon footprint. Picture: James D Morgan/Getty Images

We know this because activists tell us so. In a list of ways you can have a high impact on easing climate change, US-produced Greater Good Magazine (“science-based insights for a meaningful life”) last week included “opt out of getting a dog”.

This new climate directive arose from a study that found our enviro pals will typically take only decorative or symbolic climate-fixing steps rather than do anything serious. Big shock, that.

“People will engage in lifestyle changes when they think it’s easy to do. It’s less important to them if it’s effective,” study author Madalina Vlasceanu told the magazine.

“For collective action, it is more important to people that the action they engage in will actually result in a meaningful change.”

Which means dogs are done for – at least if they’re owned by people who fancy themselves as climate heroes.

Previous British research found that “an average size dog is responsible for 770kg of CO2e per year. A bigger dog could create a footprint of up to 2,500kg per year. This is the equivalent of a ninety-hour drive”.

Cavoodle Toto may be way smaller than other “oodle” varieties, such as the Bernese Mountain doodle, the Irish wolfhoodle and the fearsome pit boodle, but she’s got one hell of a carbon pawprint.

That’s because Toto occasionally rides on Prime Ministerial flights. She’s probably racked up more air time than any dog since Snoopy took on the Red Baron.

It should be curtains for the PM’s companion critter. And thus will nature balance itself, for at the moment everything is out of whack.

If you rock around town in a decades-old V8 – and I do, just about every day – you get shamed as a climate hater. Even if I’m saving the planet by not buying something new and slave-built.

But if you prance about like Albo with his fluffy city puppy, all you’ll get is media love and probably a slight increase in the gay vote.

Take urgent action, activists. The climate gods require sacrificial oodles. Proceed with your beasts to the chamber of exterminatory justice.