While Australias minerals and fuel exports boom, the Labor government has run out of trust, Australia is running out of sustainable resources, apart from wind and sunshine, and we are all running out of time. Everything is measured in short term liquidity and money convertability, little is measured in long term value. Climate activists and Greens are spied apon for the purposes of money politics.

Look who is suffering from paranoia now. Its the Federal Labor Government.

Martin Ferguson, the minister on loan from mining corporations, has been pressured by his owners, the fossil fuel companies to enlist ASIO and the Federal Police in spying on climate change and clean energy activists.(7th January 2012).

This must be in his job description.  At least Tony Abbott cannot accuse him of bending over for the Greens.

http://wa.greens.org.au/content/minister-using-asio-spy-behest-fossil-fuel-lobby-must-be-held-account

" . . .Martin Ferguson, who requested the additional surveillance, has been prompted by energy company lobbying to urge stronger criminal penalties against protests that disrupt critical energy infrastructure.

Much of the intelligence collection is carried out for the Australian Federal Police by a Melbourne-based private contractor, the National Open Source Intelligence Centre, which monitors activist websites, blogs, Facebook and Twitter.

. . ."

http://www.smh.com.au/national/spies-eye-green-protesters-20120106-1poow.html

Of course emails may be monitored as well, especially by ASIO, but they are not going to say that.

Who are the chief climate activists in Australia? Why its the members of the Greens party , particularly parliamentarians. Ever wonder how the Sarah Hanson-Young email correspondence to the last ombudsmen got found out so quickly?

Imagine Mr Martin Ferguson getting a report every day on all Greens Politician electronic correspondence. And passing it on to his masters.

At last , I will be able to have the ministers attention. He wants to know what we are thinking.  So please increase the internet messaging. It might even replace focus group research.

For the record, I have no intention of sabotage public energy infrastructure. I rather like having a reliable electricity supply, with which I can run a fridge, cook meals, run my computer, charge my mobile phone. And the other 4 people living here like it too.  I would much prefer to have grid electricity supplied by a mix of Big Solar Thermal and Wind power. Some biomass is ok too. Please, Mr Ferguson, can we stop burning coal and gas. Soon. This decade. Starting on your governments term.

I recently had 10 Solar PV panels installed on my roof. My latest bill showed grid power use has been cut by more than 50% since last year.  To do better requires more panels or less use. Thats only for sunny daytime. The inverter will will only supply while the grid is supplying, so I need the grid.

" . . .FOI documents show the Energy Security Branch of Mr Ferguson's department was proactive in ensuring the Australian Energy Market Operator, Macquarie Generation and TransGrid were warned of a ''peaceful mass action'' at the Bayswater power station in NSW in 2010.

. . ."

Governments are fueled by trust, much more than money, and Labor government appears to have  run out of this vital fuel. Only the alternative of a brain dead Liberal and National Party zombie opposition is able to keep it in office.

". . .Ms Gillard has not kept her word on protecting native forests under the $276 million federally funded agreement signed more than four months ago to end most native forest harvesting.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-01-11/brown-dumps-gillard-meetings/3767020?section=business

An immediate stay on logging in 430,000 hectares has not yet happened because independent experts are still working on verifying their conservation value.

. . ."

So this government wants to know the price of everything, and the value of nothing.

" . . .

Ms Gillard is due in Tasmania on the weekend.

Her office says the Government will continue to work closely with the Greens, despite Senator Brown's decision to end their weekly meetings.

The Government says it is continuing to work with the Tasmanian government and environment and industry groups to implement the Tasmanian Forestry Agreement.

. . ."

So its all about money.  Compensation.  Gunns wants compensation for its $100 million of contracts.  Corporations always want handouts from the government.  I wonder who might end up getting the majority of the compensation?  Most likely it is to be shareholders who were just betting on the exploitation of yet another non-renewable resource, probably with borrowed money. The resources are supplied gratis free , no cost, from Mother Earth, who has absolutely no use for money, and very wisely would not trust a banker anyway. Bankers are a very short term survival species.

Money, is unnatural numbers in temporary computer storage or pieces of paper which state entitlement to non-renewable resources at the going exchange rate. 

The Labor government only wants to talk about price, "Limits to Growth" still applies, and the price of all fossil fuel energy resources are going up.  Australia has already run out of the best quality and most accessible coal. This means long wall coal mining must now take place under sensitive ecological and civil infrastructure, such as lakes and rivers, dams, and productive agriculture areas, national parks and even city suburbs.  Ditto for shale gas and coal seam gas.  Energy resource extraction corporations are coming soon to wreck your agricultural livelihood and poison your home.  Resistance and complaints will be met by the full force of the law.

Fresh water, reliable climate and good soil are not in overwelming supply and are also degrading. These become more valuable as our population grows. The difference between these essentials for continuation of civilisation, and energy resources, is that the Minister for mining corporations can help his masters make big numbers in their bank accounts. 

Fossil fuels are dead, so can be stored and shipped anywhere for money, in readily calculated and predictable amounts, until the energy is consumed forever and converted into climate rot.

Fresh water, good climate and soil are immovable, and have value that can be only realised over long periods of time. Food products can be exported, but at an unreliable rate, proportional to agricultural base, and only above the local consumption needs of the population. The agricultural base is only renewable to the extent that it does not degrade soil resource and run out of fresh water, and is not dependent on fossil fuel derived inputs. We do not have enough here in Australia.  Agriculture is dependent on declining soil and water.  It is fueld by increasingly expensive superphosphate and fossil fuel chemicals.

Currently, Australias fuel and mineral exports continue to grow each year, while agriculture gets more fragile and harder each year. At some point the mineral export boom will bust, remaining resources will be too expensive to extract, but we will still need to feed ourselves.

http://www.dfat.gov.au/aib/trade_investment.html

To share more in the money bonanza, the minerals and fuel corporations re-invest a lot of profits, in more extraction and export infrastructure, in the hope of beating the competition to getting more.  This causes an exponential boom, a big bubble of investment, and results in a shortening of the total lifetime of each resource.  It is rate limited with respect to market demand, and export facilities.  Investors are counting on continued boom and demand, from rising population and industrial expansion in Asia.

The minerals and fuel export boom, are now a large distorting tumor in our economy and government, making us look sick overall.  The increased value of the Australian dollar, is making all other export sectors of the economy less competitive.  Its encourage an import boom of consumer products, chiefly sourced from China and Asia. This is a bad positive feedback. 

The earnings of foreign extractors is used to buy up more Australian companies, generous licenses to Australian resources, including productive agricultural land, and of course to buy political influence, to ensure that extraction proceeds without environmental regulation and local political opposition.

Why is it bad for sustainability?   It increases throughput and scale of the economy, and increases our Impact = Population x Affluence x bad technology.  It makes a few people very rich, because of warped employment and income distribution. Increased throughput is the enemy of sustainability. It discourages recycle and resuse. It makes us complacent consumers, forgetting about the future. Labor hopes it means Labor votes, because the "economy" is in good shape, as far as the bottom line current money balance goes. It certainly means more money and more political influence to foreign extractors.

Most of all, it slows down adoption of renewable energy technology. In Australia, and Asia, growth in renewable energy is still trying to catch up with the rate of growth of the economy, in energy consumption and export of none renewable energy and minerals.

For climate change, this is long term disaster.  When the growth bubble pops, climate change debt will be impossibly high, and the economic means to transition may be gone.

What a real pity, that Australians caved in to the Mining Corporations greed campaign to avoid a super profits tax.  This was one of the few means available to control the positive feed back growth tumour, and one of the available options of funding sustainable energy infrastructure. The feeble mining company approved replacement, Julia Gillard and the resources rent task, is not up to the job. Martin Ferguson is not up to the job.  Labor is not serving long term interests of Australia as a sustainable economy, despite Julia Gillards vague post-back-stabbing promise of a "not too big" Australia.  It is serving a short term foreign corporate resource extraction. And thats what ASIO, Mr Ferguson and Labor party all report to these days.