Erik Michaels has written many articles that detail a lot of research on our growing ecological overshoot, climate and energy predicaments. Still waiting for some real policies of sensible degrowth to protect some sort of future.
It can happen to any fossil fuel dependent nation
Federal Government does not wish discourage even more new gas mining for the rest of Australia, so pay up now. "The oil and gas industry has repeatedly ignored commitments to shore up Australia’s domestic gas supply made when developing new export infrastructure." They know which politicians are in their pockets, and get away with whatever they can. Excepting Western Australia, where the state government didn't lie down for foreign gas mining corporations. Now its winter and a quarter of coal fired power stations on australia's east coast are suddenly out of action. Maybe some of these are also owned by profiting gas corporations? It looks like previous government actions of privatizing and selling coal-fired power stations for a song to industry mates has really worked out well for some. With either gas or coal for energy, global climate is cooked just as quickly. At last we have a real corporate carbon tax, for which most of that money goes overseas to the global graft oligarchy. At last some real economic degrowth for Australia.
Neither federal Liberal nor Labor Parties dare reveal their ongoing national disgrace. Not only can they not stand up to foreign fossil fuel companies in order to mitigate accelerated global heating, they can't even extract a smidgen more taxes and royalties for general budget revenue beyond the generous donations both parties received for their re-election coffers, nor do they plan to do anything about massive taxpayer subsidies given to these foreign corporations.
Everyone over 12 years should watch this at least once. Fossil energy dependence and Systems Fragility dictate our desperate biosphere predicaments and the trajectory of our future.
The political deckchairs have been reorganized somewhat in Australia. A new Labor government just scraped in over the majority numbers for the house of representatives (77), despite the best efforts of foreign political manipulators. This seems to have been a victory by default, largely as voters in 10 key seats voted for independent liberals rather than the candidates from the previous smelly and incompetent government. There was not much a swing to the attractions of the small target Labor party campaign. From the first preference votes the average swing against the Liberal party was about four percent ( - 4.26). The swing against Labor was almost one percent ( - 0.70 ). From this dribble of voters leaving the major parties, both the Greens (+1.75) and the Right wing Pauline Hansons One Nation party picked up nearly 2 percent. (+1.87).
The results of parliamentary representation depend on the unevenness of the electorates.The Greens now have 4 seats instead of just 1, elected by rich educated electorates. The Liberal - National Party coalition is reduced to 58 seats from their previous 77 seat result in 2019. The majority team has been swapped, but now with more independents and greens members. All told, this must be some relief for at least half of the Australian Population.
Immediately on taking office the new government is hit with the problem of shortage of domestic gas supply and increasing wholesale energy prices. This is in Australia, the worlds current biggest exported of LNG - liquified natural gas.
Gas is part of Australia’s energy future, Labor has assured fossil fuel bosses.
A flagship carbon capture and storage project - CSS has been a dismal failure at the Gorgon LNG project on Barrow Island off Western Australia’s Pilbara coast. This is one of the largest gas projects in the world. Less than quarter of the CCS target was achieved. Anyway, most of the emissions are from burning the gas after it has been exported. Expensive and inefficient CCS has never and was never going solve this. Despite proven futility of CCS, the Australian government still invests hundreds of millions in CCS projects, as a fossil fuel industry subsidy, and calls them emission reduction "solutions", to give the lie that it global heating seriously. One of the Gorgon project owners is Chevron, has donated a total of $1.1 million over the past 10 years to political parties. To make up for CCS targets failure, Gorgon bought cheap some Australian carbon credits to meet its "CO2 targets". “The oil and gas industry are harvesting subsidies to prolong the life of their operations, not for emissions reduction.” - Analyst Bruce Robertson.
As Adani's bigest investor, BlackRock are enabling Adani to massively expand its coal operations and turbocharge the climate crisis. BlackRock have tried "engaging" with Adani, but that engagement has failed. 💍 💔 So now it's time for BlackRock to quit the engagement and just dump Adani!
Let's build up the pressure on BlackRock to end it. Watch and share this new video calling for the world's most anticipated break up.
Can you place your trust in your nations carbon offsets? In Australia trust in politics is missing because the Liberal Party showed itself to be deathly afraid of creating a real federal ICAC. It failed to deliver any sort of investigative commission against corruption. 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 below as "coal - fondler in chief".
Honest Government Ad. Honestly, the Australia Public keep re-electing the same sort of government. So it must be the fault of the public. IPCC mitigation report says rapid, immediate and permanent reductions in greenhouse gas production are required right now. Australia Federal governments keep feeding money and mining leases to foreign corporations. Its just as well that global oil supply has been in decline since 2018, and the rate of decline will increase to about 8% per year by 2025. Unfortunate for us, to replace all that missing energy with Gas and Coal will keep feeding our monster of a global heated world and make energy even more expensive. This is what big funders of our major political parties want, being all those foreign mining agents of the Minerals Council of Australia. Their happiness is our governments billion dollar sell out. It is your country, mined and fracked, cooked, burnt, fried and flooded. This ruin is helped by political betrayals for piles of foreign donations to Australian political parties.
Faced with the result that some Liberal State Governments may adopt some more elements of real climate and energy policies, the Dynamic Duo of Morrison - Taylor, or more likely their faceless lobbyists, have abolished all pretense of democratic pre-selection process in NSW to ensure only fossil fuel loyalists and "Yes"-men, who must be pre-purchased and vetted by the Minerals Council of Australia, can be trusted as candidates, even for some no-hope marginal seats in the upcoming 2022 Federal Election.
The Conger ice shelf, which had an approximate surface area of 1,200 sq km, collapsed around 15 March, scientists said on Friday. East Antarctica saw unusually high temperatures last week, with Concordia station hitting a record temperature of -11.8C on 18 March, more than 40C warmer than seasonal norms. The record temperatures were the result of an atmospheric river that trapped heat over the continent. Taken from Guardian Article
Weather patterns are no longer what we older people remember. Nature is running out of places to absorb earths heat buildup. This collapse of the East Antarctica Conger Ice Shelf will not be pushed by the media of BAU as threat or interruption to the daily BAU of fossil fuel civilization. Australian Government policies, budgets and the abnormalities of voters zombie consciousness, will continue as usual. Just as if nature had left the Antarctic freezer door open, and a record river of heat was allowed to flow in. Maybe nature will close the door properly next year?
Link to article by Nafeez Ahmed, who writes - "Vladimir Putin’s aim is to sow chaos in Europe. That is why it’s particularly significant that this British national security lobbying group funded by four giant oil and gas firms, several NATO members, along with the Russian Government, is warning that climate activists will turn to “violence”.
It seems to me [Michael Rynn] that climate activists are least violent and yet most empowered of all persons and institutions that have to live inside fossil fuelled states, and they are certainly most knowledgeable and fearful of the corporate police state and its protection of global exploitation. The article highlights how far Fossil fuel States will go to avoid "decarbonization", and risk future global heating.
Russia’s state revenues – and with them the oligarchic structures by which Putin rules Russia – depend on Russia’s carefully cultivated monopoly of the biggest fossil fuel commodities in the world. Russia is the world’s number one exporter of oil, gas and wheat produced using fossil fuel intensive industrial techniques.
Reactions to a blockade of traffic in Sydney, proves just how much Government is "single minded" on business as usual. Nothing must interfere with keeping the fossil fuel export business going, as all of our governments are captured by foreign fossil fuel interests, paid by illusion of wealth which has captured the minds of politicians. There is evidence that we pay more in public subsidy than is returned by royalty payments on exports, but such facts are ignored.
Governments are especially allergic to protests by activist groups, and typically raises fines and punishments beyond those that are given to errant corporations. Profits now seem more important than having a future. "Blockade Australia" was formed in November last year in response to the climate crisis, aiming to “take resistance seriously and think about what kind of action will wield power relevant to the eyes of the Australian state”.
Hundreds of thousands of students join together in the global #ClimateStrike, to demand world leaders fight for #PeopleNotProfit! It is also soon followed federal government election in Australia, where politicians are going to be judged on their failures, as we face ongoing climate calamity. The Sydney event has been moved from The Domain to Kirribilli House, due to weather and other factors. There are many and varied Australian Regional events. Details and interest registration can be found through this link
These past few weeks in Eastern Australia are marked by very intense and prolonged rainfall, leading to record flooding events. Record intensity is the kind that insurance companies might have labelled of "1 in a 500" year event. How would they know? A new climate catastrophe happens somewhere near every year. Flooding from La Nina visits Eastern Australia every decade.
About this event
When: 6.30 - 8.30pm, Wednesday 16 February 2022
Where:
On 23rd December 2021, the Environmental Defenders Office, reported that the Federal Court ruled as unlawful the Government’s contracts that granted public money to frack in the Beetaloo Basin. The EDO had already set up a legal challenge to the granting of $21 million of public money for a private oil and gas company to do exploratory fracking in the Northern Territory’s Beetaloo Basin
I am impressed that the Labor Environment Action Network (LEAN) found itself with a few disappointments at the NSW Labor Party Conference. NSW is already going the way out in approving new coal and gas mining projects.
Like all fossil fuel addicts, the ALP can and has ticked a large number of boxes on restoring environment, circular economy, supporting sustainable industries, becoming a clean energy superpower. But it refuses to have any measures to prevent new coal and gas mining expansions. This undoes any and all good work that can possibly be achieved with "bright green-wash" measures. All of them are going to be undone by global heating.
The relative importance of green-wash, compared to the subsidies of coal oil and gas, is clearly measured by the size of the money flows allocated to each. Green-washing has relatively smaller costs, but a larger public relations impact, and just has to sound good. Some of them, like a truely "circular economy" will likely never be fully achieved, as we chew up our non-renewable resources and spread them as waste all over our planet.