‘The cry for survival comes from the planet itself.’
We heard the truth in the words of the 46th President of the United States of America. In that recognition hope surfaced again. USA will re-join the Paris Accord. There’s to be an end to the deliberate destruction of the environment to advance the coal, gas and oil industries. An end to logging Alaskan forests? In USA at last we see signs of reasons to be hopeful.
Meanwhile, in Australia our wonderful, courageous Australian Youth Climate Coalition is fighting for the future because of the problems we face since our Australian government refuses to hear the cry for survival from the planet. Note their latest decisions beneath this image.
] Announcement of $50 million to fast-track fracking exploration in the NT’s Beetaloo basin comes after a series of budget commitments to scale up the gas extraction and production across the continent.http://www.aycc.org.au/
We have had orchestrated deliberate antagonism to dealing with global warming. A joint fossil fuel combination, in Australia and USA, as far back as the 1990s, set out to prevent action to deal with global warming If you haven’t read The Carbon Club by Marian Wilkinson, do so. With all their wealth and power, these corporations set out to deny the truth of science. Now that global warming can’t be denied they are changing tactics.
Go to the Scientific American.
Climate Deniers Shift Tactics to ‘Inactivism’
Fossil fuel interests are trying to blame climate change on individuals while also sowing division, says Michael Mann, one of their prime targets, by Richard Schiffman on January 12, 2021
They certainly have their allies in the Coalition government in Australia that intends to take revenue set aside for our Clean Energy Climate Fund to promote gas! They are backing gas wells in a State forest in NSW and on agricultural land!
Imagine 800 gas wells in the State Heritage Pilliga Forest, an iconic Australian landscape and the Minister for the Environment has approved these wells!
Pilliga National Park | NSW National Parks
And it is not just fossil fuel and plastics companies.
In Papua/Indonesia we see the threat of the operations of a palm oil company.
by The Gecko Project and Mongabay on 21 January 2021
- Members of the Auyu tribe of Papua, Indonesia, are demanding a halt to the operations of palm oil company PT Indo Asiana Lestari (IAL), which appears to be gearing up to clear their ancestral forests.
- They say that the company failed to obtain the community’s consent for the project, and that it’s not clear whether it even has the requisite permits to begin operations.
- IAL’s concession is part of the Tanah Merah megaproject that is already dogged by allegations that key operating permits have been falsified.
- The Papua region is home to the world’s third-largest contiguous swath of tropical rainforest, after the Amazon and the Congo Basin, but large areas may be cleared for plantations.
- [Too often, it is profit now. No care for tomorrow.]
I have written about Carlo Rovelli before. He made clear he sees the modern separation of the sciences from the humanities as pernicious. Go to my blog
– Carlo Rovelli – Enhancing our understanding of nature. Now I bring him in again. I go to his essay, written in 2015, Certainty and Global Warming in his book There Are Places in the World Where Rules Are Less Important Than Kindness, published by Allen & Unwin, 2018, translated by Erica Segre and Simon Carnell 2020.
Dealing with those climate deniers using the uncertainty principle to denigrate climate science – remember our Coalition government got rid of that section of our CSIRO – Carlo Rovelli wrote: ‘If a fire breaks out in a cellar, a reasonable person looks for a fire extinguisher, calls 999, escapes from the building. Whoever says, ‘But there’s no certainty that the fire will spread, therefore let’s carry on with breakfast’ is a cretin. And yet this is precisely the attitude taken by those who argue that the problem is not serious, because we have no certainty regarding the climate.’ p. 166
They are still here lobbying. Unlike New Zealand, Australia does not have a climate change policy. The Coalition government has not signed the UN declaration to protect bio-diversity despite the fact that this continent has fauna unique on the globe. The marsupials and the monotremes. And our flora is so different!
So, where is the hope in this blog? First go to the
Gallery for Sustainable Art in Berlin
Artists are facing the future. Among the works, one dealing with the impact of extreme flooding is ‘Floodtide’ – a video poem by Ian Gibbins of South Australia – Artists know fossil fuels are significant enemies of the future. Plastics are another.
While there are some concerns with his point of view, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on ABC RN is presenting the Boyer Lectures for 2020, delayed by the virus. The first lecture by Dr Andrew Forrest calls for a move to green hydrogen.
Andrew Forrest calls for a move to green hydrogen “on a …
www.miragenews.com › andrew-forrest-calls-for-a-mo…
Ross Garnaut in his book Super Power promotes green energy. But, does this Australian government have the political will to make the investments we must have? And in our democracies will voters care about the future for the young people? Go to http://www.aycc.org.au/
Sciences and Humanities 