Half baked emission reduction scams

Can you place your trust in your nations carbon offsets? (Revision #2)

Overshoot collapse, national state repression, institutionalized corruption, political mendacity, and accelerated global heating are surely by now the only processes that climate activists can rely upon.

Major Australian political parties, and governments of affluent nations in general have a major absence of anything trustworthy in what they say about global heating mitigation actions. Perhaps this applies in general to everything else they say to the public media. Trust in the governments of affluent nation-states is entirely absent if you care about our climate future.

This is maybe because voters are told by politicians that their constituents don’t care about climate mitigation.Just like a recent article says (Sydney Morning Herald — April 17 —”Voters don’t care about integrity commission: seven Liberal MPs”. No need for the government to have any integrity at all then. Just like the Labor opposition shadow climate minister said, long before his appointment as shadow climate minister, “my constituents don’t care about climate change”. Therefore what you don’t care about cannot harm you.

Likewise the Australian government won an appeal against a an earlier legal action won by climate activists, that charged that the environment minister ought to take the health and welfare of future generations into account. [7]

No, the duty of care, responsibility of Australia government environment ministers (and all the other key ministerial portfolios), whatever they swear on after appointment, has been for several decades, to only take actions that maximize the mining export profits of foreign corporations, for which our public government subsidies and tax breaks exceed to the total royalties our state governments earn. [6]

The duty of Australia’s legal systems of so called honorable higher courts and judges, is to back the corrupt legislative and regulatory practices of the government, codified as laws made over many decades by money corrupted politicians and the builtin weakness of the governments old constitution(s). The duty of proposed independent commissions against corruption is not to exist.

Such exported emissions are now several times, domestic emissions. New coal and gas mining, returns no extra marginal benefits to Australia citizens or government budgets, but most certainly increases the harmful growth of global carbon emissions. Increased mining of coal and gas continues the survival game to satisfy the endless hunger global corporate energy and finance markets, as the energy cost of energy continues to rise for oil, coal and gas continues to rise, while global net prosperity still continues to fall.

Global civilization of affluent nations is now a mining civilization that depends on supply of cheap energy and minerals, and the labor and land of third world nations to feed the obese bodies in developed nations. There are two sorts of nations, those doing the mining, and those being mined. Nations dependent on growing industrial mono-cultivated cash crops can buy their necessary chemical inputs from the affluent industrial exporters. This system of industrial enslavement works well for some, comprising about 20% of the global population.

This explains most of how wealthy nations developed. Fossil energy sources and chemicals are the main component of the energy and food metabolism of developed nations. Our species homo colossus is trying ever harder to keep up its consumption of non-renewable resources. Wars depend on it and are caused by it. Only the failure of resources supply, or the irreversible toxic failure of the entire global biosphere looks likely to stop the tank of civilization in its tracks. Wars are designed as human meat slaughter machines that help reduce the number of violent anti-government protestors, would be revolutionaries, and the number of mouths for governments to feed, and justify the increasing repression of free press and free expression in nations in direct, proxy wars, or planning their next invasion. This covers most of our planets affluent weapon selling nations. The UN is an impotent failure, and its secretary general, and institutions, and reports such as the IPCC are ignored voices. The entire human species already in the process of spectacular catabolic biosphere systems collapse.

It is hard to slow down the global fossil fueled mega-machine. Its machines and acolytes, dependents and slaves are everywhere. Intricate plots and mistrust abound. We wait while the industrial machine economy slowly chokes down and growth falters from its contradictions of eating its own finite host biosphere, and its stores of ancient sunlight. The end game panic occurs as our falling net prosperity soon going to meet the rising energy costs of energy. This shows in the rising prices of everything, and falling value of global currency, and loss of economic worth of every human being not essential to keeping the global economic machine running.

The cross over point marks the decline of affluence, the end of net prosperity, and gradual switch off as global machines fail, are turned off from lack of fuel and lack of affordable systems maintenance. This is the only trend I can place any trust in, since all nation stations, political parties, and voters in democracies of affluent nations have all failed the technology and sustainability tests for human civilization, yet again.

The closure of the jaws of collapse in this energy economic crunch is coming soon. The danger is that a complete fascist takeover over by fossil fuel authoritarian governments, as already run by corporations, will try to prolong their existence, by a temporary acceleration of fossil coal and gas mining, with continued rising carbon emissions, to offset rapid decline in global oil supply, of about 8% per year by 2025. Do not forget the increased hostile actions that turn our planet into series of fossil fuel connected war zones, for control of energy resources, between nations armed to the nuclear teeth after decades of arms race and cold war conflict. The current two sided slaughter of culture, language and historically related peoples between Russia and Ukraine I take as assured predication of a future to come for us all.

In Australia the next Federal Election is May 22nd. Electorate trust is missing, and cynicism is high, because the Liberal Party showed itself to be deathly afraid of creating a real federal ICAC, as a primary election promise in the previous election campaign. It failed to deliver any sort of investigative commission against corruption. No legislation was introduced to parliament for public debate, by the government party. There was an excellent ICAC model legislation introduced by an independent MP, (one of a few “cross-bench”) which was promptly dismissed by the government.

No legislation by introduced by independents that I can think of, as been allowed to pass by the major parties. [1] Trust is absent because only money can buy political power in Australia. Trust is missing because the Prime Minister acts like a public relations guy for the Minerals Council of Australia, described in the juice media interview as “coal — fondler in chief”.

Mining billionaire Clive Palmer hopes to exploit the lack of trust in major party politicians. His “United Australia Party” campaign is running again. His candidates preferences flows swung the federal election results in Queensland last time in 2019. [3] Before the election is even called, we have seen months of prominent bill board branded ads featuring yellow background and capitalized text that says “Sold Out, Sold Out” for Labor, Liberal and Greens. These are so tacky, “Ad Jackers” have been doing their creative editing”. [2]

[3] Before the election is even called, we have seen months of prominent bill board branded ads featuring yellow background and capitalized text that says "Sold Out, Sold Out" for Labor, Liberal and Greens. These are so tacky, "Ad Jackers" have been doing their creative editing". [2]

The Greens haven't sold out, they do not take donations from mining corporations.

Clive Palmer is himself a massive sellout, as he makes his personal fortune in billion dollar deals with foreign mining interests.

Clive Palmer is just another example of money-rot in the rotten state of Australian politics. He benefits from extreme amounts of net income, and is having another attempt at buying votes for balance of power seats in the Australian Senate. Among his policy ideas is an additional export royalty tax of 15% on all exported iron ore, to pay for our ballooning "national debt". This seems like it might be another version of Labor's ill-fated mining resource profits tax. That will appeal to some. Clive will not make any policy to limit our blowout in contributions to the global carbon budget.

For the Australian federal election in May 2022, it is clear that neither the Labor nor Liberal parties have any desire or policy to reduce Australia's global production of greenhouse gases from coal and gas mining.  It is very evident that all their mates are on the payroll of foreign corporations that make their fortunes by exporting gas and coal to boost global greenhouse emissions. Neither party appears interested in restricting mining of gas and coal for exports.

Instead the politicians argue about and set targets for "domestic" emissions. Labor has set a higher target for this than the Liberal party. Both relay on dubious carbon offset credit schemes to meet a large part of their targets. The emphasis on domestic emissions is a major part of the scam, as exported emissions massively exceed them.

If the entire developed world invents so many fake carbon credit schemes to reduce the bulk of their emissions, then who are going to be doing real, rapid and immediate emissions reductions that are required? Most of the global greenhouse emissions are from the developed world.  Emissions are directly proportional to wealth, as measured by GDP. The only carbon economy reductions with a guarantee are from declining global oil supply, which is predicted to decline real global wealth.

Here our existential contradictions and predicaments have trapped us. The total globally available offsets are small compared to current high rates of global emissions. Many of them, such as ecosystems grow-back, are what we should be doing anyway. Schemes without strict oversight are ripe for financial exploitation, resulting in a low proportion of integrity and likely success of carbon credits in negating global emissions. Carbon capture and storage is neither practical nor economical for most of our fossil fuel burning economy. Wishing cannot make it otherwise. So wealthy nations that cannot possibly negate massive emissions tied to their wealth, go and fake it.

One of the reasons for such fakery is that the world is literally stuck with the inertia of its current vast array of machinery investments, capital and consumption requirements and supply pipelines. The very best it can do with regards to energy consumption and emissions is to abandon the notion of future growth, and accept a gradual decline. A economic steady state is an impossible mathematical idealization because the biosphere is already in a state of real and rapid decline, and so is our master resource of global oil supply. [5]

Tim Morgan has published a voluminous online blog (200+), on surplus energy economics, tracking current trends in national prosperity and the rising Energy Cost of Energy — ECoE. Our economies are energy systems, and money is but a system of arbitrary representative tokens.  I have barely attempted to read them through, but their general message is simple and very repetitive. SEED trend plots suggest zero discretionary prosperity for Australia by 2036, presuming no further major black swan events, in #204[8].

All voters in Australia take note, energy costs and all other dependent costs are sure to rise, no matter which political party wins government in the next election, no matter what lies are currently being peddled by the mining money corrupt government and media. Rules of energy physics and resources strictly apply to the global empire troika of USA, UK and Australia, and all other affluent nations. This is incurable stagflation due to rising ECoE, and will continue as long as our dependence on fossil fuels continues.

USA, UK and Australia seem to have common parallel social and political trends of decline. All are governed by slick “democratic” party machines, with branding and PR hacks to hide the facts they are no more than a bunch of hopeless, hapless and cruel clowns that play a game of musical chairs in government, all the while being puppets to the lobbyists of fossil fuel energy dependent corporations that jerk their strings with money. All are failing to cope with the crushing jaws of rising ECoE, falling prosperity, and rising costs of global heating. As global “leaders” they are lead the world down into the toilet bowl, soon to hit below water level, ready to be flushed.

For the time being renewable energy systems still seem to make better energy supply investments, as the mining costs of supplying fossil fuels will continue to rise, while growth of scale of mass production costs of renewable energy remains affordable. I have read complaints that current renewable energy systems cannot supply the high concentrations of energy need or high temperature manufacture such as steel making and silicon purification for PV cells. This will be a big challenge for future technical innovators.

"Data suggest 70 to 80 per cent of ACCUs issued are devoid of integrity - they do not represent real and additional abatement." - Prof. Andrew Macintosh

As the above juice media production suggests, money spent on ACCUs (Australian Carbon Credit Units) is like "spending money on strippers and coke", that is, mining corporations that strip the country for a sexy imaginary gas - led recovery.   In Australia their administration and certification has been placed by government into the hands of mates  in coal and gas mining, who have a vested interest in making carbon credits plentiful and cheap, but are incapable of doing rigorous carbon accounting. They are more interested in salability to suckers than negating carbon emissions.


Juice media also presents an expert consultation interview on this topic, to give detailed backing to their "honest ad" assertions.


Those nation — states, political parties and people who are still protected by money, possessions and political power don’t want climate mitigation action. They are embedded in the controlling power politics of nation — states. Therefore climate mitigation is never going to happen while the fossil fuel wealth creation systems still exist. Only the collapse of our massive ecological overshoot can bring our homo colossus species back to sustained living on earth. Together we can and most surely will very soon.


Australian Conservation Foundation message.  Resile from overshoot now and avoid the rush. 

The above activist campaign sign says “Climate Action Now”. For me it ought to be understood to imply “Resile from ecological overshoot now”, as climate crisis is an integral part of massive ecological overshoot powered by fossil fuels. Our Seneca Cliff is the collapse of resources supply after our overshoot falls back. To step back at the brink of our fall requires us to coordinate together to decrease our global energy consumption per person in the most equitable ways, and this can be most effectively done in affluent nations like Australia. Failure to this well will result in much additional systematic violence, which will serve us even faster systems collapse. Affluent nations grown dependent on energy and resources wastage have lost their abilities to make do with less, and lost their community resilience.

Our instinctual and psychological coping mechanisms, are overridden by our daily physical needs and habits, which create a need for denial. So action now amounts to waiting around for our machine economic systems to fail. Current nation-state governments rely on the strength of our systems needs and denial to re-elect themselves despite a track record of being the hopeless cause of our growing predicament.

We are biological creatures, so we should have no need to have a wasteful use fossil fuels to meet our needs. Other ways of living are possible. Fossil fuels are declining bad hangover from the industrial revolution. The world has accumulated lots of scientific knowledge to find ways to support our lives more sustainably after we ween our systems off our massive dependence on coal, oil and gas. There is no other way to reverse the massive degradation of our biosphere. We need to "resile" from our current fossil fuel overshoot foolery. Pretend indulgences from the church of carbon offsets won't do, and may add more greenhouse gas emissions in the long run [4].

. . . there is a high probability that offsetting projects contributing to prosperity will increase emissions over and above those arising solely from the activity being offset.
- Kevin Anderson [4]


Fossil fuels are declining in affordability, but are threatening to haunt our future lives like a bad hangover from the industrial revolution. The world has accumulated lots of scientific knowledge to find ways to support our lives more sustainably after we ween our systems off our massive dependence on coal, oil and gas. But we don’t look for it while the ease of fossil fuel lifestyle exists, and nearly all our machines depend on burning hydrocarbons.

[1] The Guardian - "Massive policy failure" : retired judges blast Morrison’s broken promise on federal Icac.
www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/apr/15/massive-policy-failure-retired-judges-blast-morrisons-broken-promise-on-federal-icac
[2] Pedestrian - "The very bad billboards have two chief purposes: attracting disaffected voters and giving everyone else the shits."  
www.pedestrian.tv/news/clive-palmer-uap-billboards-defaced/
[3] Pedestrian - Clive Palmer’s Party Is Claiming Responsibility For The LNP’s Shocking Win.
www.pedestrian.tv/news/clive-palmer-united-australia-party-election-coalition-preferences
[4] Kevin Anderson : The inconvenient truth of carbon offsets. 
www.nature.com/articles/484007a

author:
Michael Rynn
description:
Australian government fakes domestic emissions reduction, an example of global heating by half baked global carbon credit scams, but higher energy exports.
keywords:
Half baked emission reduction scams
og:title:
Half baked emission reduction scams

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