I presented myself to the service counter of my local Cafe at the sign that reads, ‘Please wait to be seated.’ “Table for one, sir?” “In the smoking section!” I jokingly reply to the not so bemused waiter. Indeed, in my early days as a silver service waiter one of my roles was to offer the cigar box around with the port at the end of service. That was in an establishment where the entire restaurant was a smoking area. This was the late 80s, not that far back. The thought of smoking indoors anywhere now is, of course, preposterous. ‘Smoking is bad for your health,’ have they not told you?

The times have changed and are changing. How far back was atmospheric carbonation a point of contentious argument amongst industrialist climate change deniers and scientists? Five, ten, twenty years. What about now? Don’t carbonate the atmosphere, because, as the science is now evident and indisputable, carbonation of the atmosphere is a cause of global warming and climate change.
‘The Mater hospital is lighting up nightly!’ Burning coal.

The Mater hospital South Brisbane is burning at least two full truckloads of COAL, approximately 100 tonne a week, in a furnace there for unknown reasons. The Mater is a privately owned entity and so information of the internal operations are not readily accessible. Why are they burning coal? Why are they still burning coal? What possible reason would, could even be reasonable? It is unconfirmed rumour that it is to heat water, was once for electricity production, possibly for sterilisation or heating purposes. The truth is that we cannot find out. The rumour mill also tells us that the reason that they continue this destructive, dangerous and irresponsible community insult is for purely financial reasons. So many questions without answers.

‘First, do no harm!’ ‘Primum non nocere’ is Latin from the Greek for, in English, ‘First, do no harm!’ First do no harm, is accredited to the very origins of western medicine via the classical Greek physician Hippocrates and asserted in ‘Of the Epidemics’ and the ‘Hippocratic oath’ as one of the basic premises of medical service, ancient or modern, that of, ‘First, do no harm.’

In ‘Of the Epidemics’ Hippocrates says, “The physician must be able to tell the antecedents, know the present and foretell the future - must mediate these things, have two special objects in view with regard to disease, namely, to do good or above all to do no harm.”

The Mater hospital is producing and discharging smoke, carbon dioxide, toxic gases and soot of coal burning into the south Brisbane sky. Poisoning the air of the inner Brisbane city skies.

We know that as the Industrial Age meets the present, antecedent evidence, the cause; of predominantly coal fire and emissions, has brought us to these now evident dire ends. What uncertainties our future holds, we hesitate to exaggerate, though dire malady undoubtedly to ensue.

Climate change will affect all of us and to what degree, tell, in our physical space, our homes, our farmlands, our children's future? A massive increase of pressure and requirement put on our health and medical needs and institutions, reactions to these global warming disruptions therein, our scientists tell, desperately yell. We change or climate change, …bad climate change. From that, the simple message. Change. Maybe the Mater is drumming up more clientele.

The panacea: don’t [mine, haul and] burn coal. If only that were the case though. Cessation is but the start and the true direction set. Currently we are careering in the the direction of damnation and the actions and attitude of the Mater hospital epitomises the callous and inconsiderate actions of the commercially minded, financially blinded, selfishly focused few who would bring harm to the many, to the all. First of all, do not carbonate the atmosphere is the simple decision to be taken here.

The Mater producing health destroying poisonous emissions is simply and ironically an oxymoron of health care norms.

NOW, (our very now,) this is fundamentally a question of ethics, morality, virtue and care. The board of the Mater, we would hope, hold these over ease of operation or profitability. I wonder what other compromises are made by the board that would affect the general health of the people and the environment? (The mind boggles.)

It brings into focus other activities by the medical fraternity at large, such as other pollutant types, emissions and disposal and the general waste production, of the massive amount of single use plastic and the like.

‘Mater,’ again a word of Latin and Greek origin, meaning, specifically, ‘Mother,’ in it’s very name implies that life giving wonder, that loving, nurturing, healing and healthy life giving care.

The Mater has an ironic sign postered at all entrances stating, ‘No Smoking on hospital grounds.’ Perhaps they can comply to their own and for every individual’s legally required mandate of ‘No Smoking on hospital grounds.’

Only a couple of hundred metres away our children sit in classes of schools and kindergartens, the resident community return to homes, walk their children home, breathing in this unfiltered filth, discharge from the hospital facilities. Workers have no other option than to breathe it in. Perhaps the members of the board could present themselves to the community, the children, parents and workers and explain their actions and reactions as to why they do what they do and why ‘know better, do better’ does not apply in their case.

This is our shared atmosphere. It is not for anyone or any single entity to soil.

Please Mater, Mother, Burn Not! For Goodness Sake, Burn Not!

Pen.