Ugo Bardi offers a flash of insight into reasons for differences in strategy of Nation-State majorities, versus the ideology of  elites in charge of Empires.

... Nation-States persecute minorities, while Empires try to protect the rights of its minority groups, something that an independent power can often do. A nation-state, instead, is a natural born killer of minorities. Simply, it has no mechanisms to protect them from the whims of the majority.

... In Western democracies, you can vote for any candidate as long as he/she obeys the orders of the US elites. Once people lose their trust in democracy, the American Empire cannot last for long.

The Climate Analytics (CA) report published this week confirms that Australia has one of the world’s highest total per capita emissions for all greenhouse gases, double that of China and nine times bigger than India. . . .

According to the CA report, Close to 80% of Australia’s total fossil fuel CO2 footprint in 2022 was due to exported carbon. Australia is the third largest fossil fuel exporter in the world, after Russia and the US. In terms of total greenhouse gas footprint, Australia ranks second, however, due to our love of emission-intensive coal.

When EPA made DDT illegal, in 1972, pesticide merchants used DDT in the making of new compounds. They dubbed the DDT parts of these new chemicals “inert” in order to mislead the government and the user, telling them those inert chemicals were harmless. Indeed, all pesticides include toxic and untested ingredients branded inert. - Evaggelos Vallianatos -   https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/08/05/pesticides-existential-danger/

Evaggelos Vallianatos worked as an Analyst inside the USA EPA, and is author of the book "Poison Spring: The Secret History of Pollution and the EPA". Yes, global poisoning is still going on. No, you cannot buy the E-Book version from outside the USA.  A printed version can be ordered from Abbey's books.

Since coming to power, the Albanese Labor government has been working hard not to talk about climate warming impacts, not to lead the nation in a public conversation about how to face the greatest threat to our future, and it shows in recent public opinion research.

...The government does not want to talk about future climate risks because it is conspiring with the fossil fuel industry to make the problem worse.

This is no longer the same planet Earth we once knew, that loved us.

It doesn’t matter if climate scientists cannot accurately say if this is code red, or code purple. They should be labeling it as code “extinction” or “collapse”, and communicating it accordingly.

According to conventional econometrics, GDP per capita has never been better.

The global middle class are living in Maximum Human Supremacy.

Meanwhile, our biosphere has never been more at risk.

Our denial is in the comforting lies of statistics - The Unbearable Anthropocentrism of Our World in Data

...While Australia debates the merits of going nuclear and frustration grows over the slower-than-needed rollout of solar and wind power, China is going all in on renewables.

New figures show the pace of its clean energy transition is roughly the equivalent of installing five large-scale nuclear power plants worth of renewables every week.

The China Energy Council estimated renewables generation would overtake coal by the end of this year.

Who set up these ISDS tribunals?

** ... of the 12 largest ISDS awards to date, 11 involve cases brought by fossil fuel and mining investors.

** Called “litigation terrorism,” because they “instill fear of environmental regulations, climate regulations because you know that it’s going to be costly” for governments.

** A global governance regime that prioritizes corporate rights over those of governments, people, and the planet.

** Multinational corporations from the U.S. launched the highest number of ISDS cases worldwide

Another way that a wealthy few maintain a fossil fueled stranglehold over this planet.

The International Energy Agency forcefully states that the pathway to net zero by 2050 is a very narrow one and requires that no new oil and gas fields get approved.

And yet, despite the Australian public voting for Labor’s pledge to aggressively reduce emissions, on the day after he was sworn in as Australia’s 31st Prime Minister, Albanese was at Kantei in Tokyo making a contrary pledge of “better energy security” for Japan.

Recent Freedom of Information (FOI) releases, and close examination of a mosaic of evidence, have shed new light on who’s been convincing the Government to back away from turning off the gas tap.

The Barossa project is key to the future profits of Santos. The project involves piping gas from the Barossa field north of Darwin for onshore processing. Its output is intended for export to Asia.

In terms of carbon emissions, Barossa is the dirtiest of projects. Some experts have described it as a carbon emission project with LNG as a by-product. To deal with this, the company intends to bury the unwanted CO2 output in the now commercially depleted Bayu-Udan gas field in Timor-Leste waters.