Here we are in the richest country in the world by per capita wealth. And also in the high carbon emissions per capita. Its now 2011, another record year for global man made carbon emissions and another record high in Atmosphere carbon dioxide. Australia may finally pass legislation that leads to a carbon price, if Julia Gillard and her fragile government agreements with the Greens and Independents can survive another week, without Kevin Rudd rising to become another dead Prime Minister. This is during a time of great protests and threats from the Somebody Elses Problem movement, (SEP), better known as Australia's Mining Best Friends.

[ . . .An SEP is something we can't see, or don't see, or our brain doesn't let us see, because we think that it's somebody else's problem.... The brain just edits it out, it's like a blind spot. If you look at it directly you won't see it unless you know precisely what it is. Your only hope is to catch it by surprise out of the corner of your eye.

. . . Ford Prefect – In 'Life, the Universe and Everything', by Douglas Adams.

The technology involved in making something properly invisible is so mind-bogglingly complex that 999,999,999 times out of a billion it's simpler just to take the thing away and do without it....... The "Somebody Else's Problem field" is much simpler, more effective, and "can be run for over a hundred years on a single torch battery."

This is because it relies on people's natural predisposition not to see anything they don't want to, weren't expecting, or can't explain. . . .]

The Liberal Party is perfectly and supremely ultra-right on this. They have so much they cannot explain, they won't even try. Of course its a real SEP. Its going to be our childrens and their descendents problem down to the last generation. The Liberal Party should be congratulated for their efforts to reduce the numbers of people which will be born in future to suffer this. By maximising our emissions now, we may snuff ourselves out rather much earlier than expected, a bit like having a humane execution by lethal injection. With far fewer children surviving in each succeeding generation, the total amount of global suffering will be reduced. By reducing the human population much faster, and thereby reducing our global climate impact, their maybe even some ingenious human beings that can manage to survive long term. But probably not in Australia.

To quote the self described worlds greatest climatogist and acknowledged mining interests owner, Ian Plimer, the leading climate scientist of the Australian National-Liberal Coalition Parties, and chief ABC climate denial spokesperson, and personal friend of Alan Jones, what more could we really want, as our new climate will become “warm and wet”. His book “Heaven and Earth” was laviciously praised by the Australian newspaper, as the last word in the climate change debate. The Australian newspaper is owned by the global uninformed public opinion creator, Mr Rupert Murdoch.

It may of course, turn out to be just a little bit hotter in some parts. There will be crocodiles basking on the river banks in tropical Antarctica, just like the good old warm times. Pole to Pole holiday flights will be all the rage.

Looking up Hansard on the internet, for things like the “Senate Select Committee on Climate Policy” is a droll thing. The terms of reference are what constrains committees and what they can do. So the greatest power of government lies in who writes the terms of reference. The next greatest power lies in the cleverness in which Committee members can interpret the terms of reference, to narrow down findings in the direction of least harm to the status quo. There must be great satisfaction in doing in the most narrow way for the participants, for it removes responsibility to consider anything wider. After a while, the satisfaction can settle in for a Vogon bureaucratic job well done.

[ Back to Douglas Adams again, who must have had real experiences with Vogon bureacracy.

. . . They wouldn't even lift a finger to save their own grandmothers from the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal without orders signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public inquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighters. The best way to get a drink out of a Vogon is to stick your finger down his throat, and the best way to irritate him is to feed his grandmother to the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal. On no account should you allow a Vogon to read poetry at you.

. . .]

Do not allow a Vogon to read Hansard to you. Or a Select Senate Committee terms of reference. Also avoid listening to ABC radio, as they broadcast Parliamentary debates, where weary members endlessly shuffle around for “divisions” on mindless questions, to keep themselves awake, during the endless personal histrionics and deeply heart-rent poetic speeches on the questions on matters of National Importance, such as “climate change might not be really, really happening, because I know X who says he/she doubts it”. Unfortunately all the members have turned off their hearing aids, and/or that part of their brains connected to their hearing. This is because matters of debate of party difference, slogans have to be repeated a hundred times, since each side never listens to, let alone accepts the others statements.

 For terms of reference, thankfully there is no general need to go past the first one or two terms. Consider the “The SENATE SELECT COMMITTEE ON CLIMATE POLICY, 2009 (The previous government on the ETS).

 The first term is

To inquire into and report on:

(a) the choice of emissions trading as the central policy to reduce Australia’s carbon pollution, taking into account the need to:

1. reduce carbon pollution at the lowest economic cost,
   

2. put in place long-term incentives for investment in clean energy and low-emission technology, and
   

3. contribute to a global solution to climate change.

Lets rewrite this first term, as it should have been worded and prioritised.

(a)

1. Australia wants to maximise its contribution to a global solution to climate change, since we are at severe risk for medium term survival of civilisation on our continent, and we want to encourage and help other nations to do the same.

2. Because of the prior delay on acting on this issue, the ugency to radically change our way of life has grown. It is therefore important to reduce carbon pollution at the fastest possible rate, subject to the constraints that large numbers of jobs in renewable energy are created, our transport systems are modernised and electrified, and no-one goes hungry or suffers unduly with uncompensated effects on those made unemployed in situations of low wealth. Compensation does not include coal mining magnates.

3. Reducing the short term Cost is not an object, because the costs of losing the basis of our physical existance, our ecosystems, which may not consequently not provide sufficient food, water and homes for all of us, is priceless. The consequence of running out of fossil fuels, soon oil, later on gas, and shortly followed by our coal reserves all being sold to China, will also be deleterious to our economy, especially at a reduced level of consumption and production. By building a renewable energy infrastructure, we insulate ourselves from rising economic and ecological extractive and consumption costs, and we reduce long term energy supply costs.

Everybody can see why what is happening now is not working. The lowest economic cost, of course, is doing nothing. The entire purpose of our major political parties is to do nothing. Nothing to offend the United States of America, whose policy is to have deny Climate Change by having no policy on it..  Barack Obama will be visiting here to be reassured that the carbon price legislation will not interfere with business of making money from selling off Australia, exporting its riches, and supporting American wars of hegemony over dirty people we try our hardest to keep out of our country.

Even those nations which can boast of meeting carbon emission targets, such as those in the Eurozone, have partially succeeded in this task in exporting their emissions to Asia. By importing more manufactured goods from China, India, developed nations have not succeeded as well as they like to pretend in reducing global emissions.

There is hope still. The developed nations of the world, amoungst them being the USA, Europe, Canada, UK, have stalled their economies. The Eurozone, including UK are doing its best to switch to renewable energy under the circumstances, perhaps realizing there is no other choice.

The USA and Canada are blessed with the belief that fossil fuels will last at least as long as they do. At the current rate of global warming accelaration, assisted greatly by tar sand oil extraction and processing, they could well be right.

The USA is still commited to financial suicide at this very moment. It is spending its ingenuity, time, and best efforts into vanishing trillions of dollars to keep its Empire of Bases running on fossil fuels. No oil rich nation can be spared from its attentions. A decades long strategy of Middle East control by force, has had some access benefits for a few traditional big oil corporations, but for everyone else its been blowbacks, blowouts and very bloody.

Even the Global Financial Crisis has not dented USA ardour, as it continues with its Global Fracking for Carbon (GFC). Their Chinese Credit card is stacked high with almost no limits and low monthly billion dollar repayments. China being the only national entity that still stockpiling US Treasury Bonds. Like a game of Monopoly, whereby the mortgaged to the hilt player is moving around the board, the next US landing on an opponents high rent property may see a big sell off at bargain prices. Perhaps the Chinese could opt next to buy the Pentagon and the Empire of Bases, which would solve the problem of who runs the world without a nuclear Armageddon. Then we can finally ground the drone killing fleet, which has had zero return on investment. Killing namely poor unfortunates in far off countries on made-up evidence, and making hundreds more extremely angry, is not a definition of national defence.

Those nations suffering most from the Greed, Foreclosures and Come-uppence, (GFC) are the USA, and the Eurozone. They have greatly increased foreign imports over exports over the last decades, leading to money flow imbalances which have beggered their economies, leading to the opposite of Economic Growth. After a decade of exporting jobs overseas in search of the lowest cost of labor and lax environmental laws, US and European economies are shutting down. Most of the money has moved into private and corporate hands. The European banking system collapse is going particularly well at the moment. Removing this last Viagra dosage from global attempts to despoil our planet may finally lead to Economic Shrinkage. As the markets for Asian economies shrink, so too must the huge Economic Growth of 10% for China over the last decade. That growth was fueled by enormous currency debts from the US and Europe. Australian indebtedness is currently being helped by the Chinese corporations buying up our land, companies, and mineral and gas exploration rights from under our feet. And they are probably leasing rent agreements for our politicians as well, by taking over the usual corporate lobby channels.