Sciences and Humanities

AUKUS is the trio formed for Australia to buy nuclear submarines from USA and the UK.

It appears we have much more in common than nuclear submarines.

Each of us faces the undermining of our environments in the name of market forces.

The science warning us about the future meets the face of market-driven greed.

I know it is too long and many will not be concerned while we face the pandemic but. . .

In Australia we have governments, Federal and State, equating fossil fuel with the future. When they talk of the economy and energy they avoid talk of the environment.

Stop Woodside Climate-Wrecking Gas Project Now! greenpeace.org.au

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Our Australian Federal government is backing the exploitation of pristine waters off the NW coast of Western Australia by Woodside which now contains part of what was BHP. It is called the Scarborough Project. The Australian Coalition, a neo-liberal government, shown by its preference for privatisation and its now clearly market-driven approach to the pandemic, is undermining national efforts to protect the environment, preferring separate deals with different States and Territories.

It still avoids establishing ‘fit for purpose’ National Environment and Biological Diversity legislation required by the Graeme Samuel’s Report on the 1999/2002 legislation.

In the United Kingdom, see how its Environmental Agency has been hamstrung steadily by governments. Read George Monbiot’s essay.

Fishy Business

The ease with which I registered my dead goldfish as a waste disposer shows how total regulatory collapse has opened the door to organised crime.

By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 24^th December 2021

It’s a tragic story, with a happy ending. Until I was seven, I had a goldfish called Algernon. He wasn’t the most exciting pet, but I was quite upset when I found him floating one morning on the surface of his little tank. This, or so I thought, was the end of a short and uneventful existence.

But a few weeks ago, I wrote a column about the failure to regulate waste disposal in the UK. It showed how millions of tonnes of waste, some of it extremely hazardous, are now being handled by organised criminal networks, and illegally dumped or burned, presenting major hazards to our health and to the living world. It showed how the Environment Agency in England and its equivalents in the rest of the UK have lost control, to the extent that anyone can now get themselves officially licensed as a waste disposer, using false information that can remain unchecked.

Some people found this hard to believe. But as chance would have it, at that very moment, the spirit of my dead goldfish spoke to me. With a clarity he had never exhibited in life, he explained that he wished to be registered as an upper-tier carrier, broker and dealer in waste. This would ensure that anyone paying him to dispose of waste materials could be confident that he had met the requisite standards, and was not the kind of fishy operator who would take your money, dump your waste illegally, evade landfill tax and potentially land you, the unwitting householder, with a £5,000 fine for failing to exercise your “duty of care”.

Perhaps motivated by a sense of guilt, as I had neglected him in life, I sought to fulfil his wishes. On the Environment Agency’s website, I affirmed that he was a, ahem, sole trader and had no unspent convictions. I gave his name as Algernon Goldfish, of 49 Fishtank Close, Ohlooka Castle, Derby, and paid the requisite fee. It took less than four minutes. A month on, my long-deceased goldfish remains on the register as a bona fide upper-tier waste dealer. If you want your rubbish safely removed, no job too big or too small, Algernon is your man. Or your fish.

Already, in other words, the system has fallen apart. The government says, “We have pledged to reform the licensing system for waste carriers”, but this has been going on for a long time, and the situation is likely to get worse. Last month, the Environment Agency circulated two memos to its managers. They explained that while reports of pollution, illegal dumping and other kinds of damage are rising, grants for incident management have been reduced in real terms “by 90% in 10 years”. The only events to which it can still respond are those it is specifically funded to investigate, which means incidents at “regulated sites” (such as places handling radioactive waste, certain kinds of illegal waste and those involved in flood control) and water companies.

The memos instructed staff to “not routinely spend time” on anything other than acute catastrophes caused by other businesses. Members of the public reporting incidents at unregulated sites should be “reassured that their report is useful to help us prioritise our work”, and are effectively advised to take the law into their own hands, by speaking directly to the perpetrator. The agency’s officers are then instructed to “shut down report”.

In other words, unless you run a regulated site or are a water company, you can do what you damn well like. Mind you, as a constant stream of filth suggests, if you are a water company or a regulated site you can also do what you damn well like. Everything is fishy now, except our rivers.

There are two categories of crime in this country: those for which you can expect to be prosecuted, and those for which you can’t. There’s no consistent connection between the seriousness of the crime and the likelihood of prosecution. Bag snatchers stealing a couple of hundred pounds a week are more likely to be caught and charged than fraudsters emptying the bank accounts of elderly people. Carrying a few grams of cannabis is more likely to land you in trouble than dumping hundreds of tonnes of hazardous waste.

On one estimate, aside from the fake companies registered on the Environment Agency site, there are more than 250,000 unlicensed (in other words outright illegal) waste disposers in the UK. The number of con artists involved in ripping off vulnerable people and in white-collar fraud must also be high. According to the latest report by the auditors Crowe UK and the University of Portsmouth, in 2020 fraud cost people and businesses in the UK £137bn. Their estimate has risen by 88% since 2007. Yet only 0.4% of fraud is believed to result in a criminal sanction.

Many tens of thousands of people are likely to be involved in the industrial-scale money laundering, tax evasion, shell companies, corrupt practice and concealment of assets in the City of London and its satellites, and the UK’s property market. Large numbers are running coercive labour rackets in farming, car washes, nail bars, restaurants and other businesses. Altogether, it would not be surprising if more than a million people in the UK were engaged in the kind of organised crime that seldom leads to prosecution.

This is what you get from 40 years of deregulation. While good citizens are bound by ever more oppressive laws, “the market”, according to neoliberal theory, should be released from regulatory constraint. Deregulation is a euphemism for destroying the effective capacity of the state to protect us from chancers, conmen and criminals. Empowered to cut corners, fishy businesses outcompete responsible ones and we begin to shift towards an organised crime economy.

As crime syndicates extend their reach and expand their wealth, they become politically powerful. Eventually, mafias become embedded in public life. This is what happened in the US during prohibition. You can see it at work today in Russia, Italy, Mexico and Lebanon. There is no obvious mechanism to prevent it from happening here.

When Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s chief strategist, announced that his aim was “the deconstruction of the administrative state”, people were horrified. But in reality, it has been happening for years, on both sides of the Atlantic. It’s just that they do it subtly. Our government couldn’t simply close down the Environment Agency: people would be up in arms. Instead, it hacks the budget and creates an institutional culture of demoralisation and failure. The same goes for the other regulatory bodies. Probity, integrity, trust? They sleep with the fishes.

http://www.monbiot.com

Posted in health & safety, law & order

And in the United States of America the Environmental Protection Agency was trashed by Trump. But this, from the Center for Biological Diversity, refers to the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

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For Immediate Release, January 3, 2022

Contact:

Noah Greenwald, (503) 484-7495, ngreenwald@biologicaldiversity.org

Lawsuit Launched to Protect Tucson Shovel-Nosed Snakes Under Endangered Species Act

Rare, Beautiful Snake Wrongly Denied Protection

TUCSON, Ariz.— The Center for Biological Diversity filed a formal notice today of its intent to sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for once again denying protection to Tucson shovel-nosed snakes under the Endangered Species Act. In response to a September 2020 petition from the Center, the Service denied protection to the species for the second time in September 2021.

“The lovely Tucson shovel-nosed snake needs protection from massive urban sprawl from Phoenix and Tucson,” said Noah Greenwald, endangered species director at the Center. “Protecting this snake will mean protecting more of the natural desert we all love.”

The Center first petitioned for protection of the snake in 2004. In response, the Service found the snake warranted endangered species protection in 2010 but said such protections were precluded by its work to protect other species. In 2014 the agency reversed course and found the snake didn’t warrant protection. In doing so, however, it misinterpreted a genetics study to find the snake had a much larger range than previously thought and therefore didn’t need protection. That conclusion was directly refuted in a letter from the preeminent expert on the snake, the late Phil Rosen, Ph.D. In denying protection once more in September, the Service ignored this new information.

“The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is badly in need of reform, but so far we haven’t seen any effort to do so by the Biden administration,” said Greenwald. “It’s not just this little snake that has been wrongly denied protection. Over the years the agency has refused to list dozens of species protections despite clear imperilment, including wolverines and pygmy owls. Even when the agency does protect species, it often takes far too long, sometimes more than a decade.”

The striking Tucson shovel-nosed snake is characterized by alternating black-and-red stripes over its cream-colored body. It has a small range limited to portions of Pima, Pinal and Maricopa counties in an area sometimes referred to as the “Sun Corridor Megapolitan” for its rapid urbanization. Making matters worse, the snake only occurs on flat valley bottoms that are prime development areas.

Like other shovel-nosed snakes, the Tucson shovel-nosed snake is uniquely adapted to swim through sandy soils using its spade-shaped snout. According to a study by Rosen and Center Senior Scientist Curt Bradley, the snake has already lost 39% of its historic habitat to agriculture and urban development; the vast majority of its remaining habitat is unprotected and vulnerable.

Tucson shovel-nosed snake. Photo courtesy of USGS. Image is available for media use.

The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 1.7 million members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.

More Press Releases

It is all symptomatic of what is happening in three basically English-speaking nations.

Not just Bolsonaro in Brazil.

Time to go to the New Testament –

Matthew 7:3: ‘Why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thy own eye?’

Time to look at this beam in Australia’s eye. What we will allow to happen to our bio-diversity! And this is just one instance of it. Consider the ‘green washing’ in the name.

Find out about this definitely mis-named Verdant Earth Technologies, established only 2018 since Morrison’s Australian Coalition fossil-fuel supporting government has held power.

Nothing will be lush, rich, flourishing, thriving, teeming, prolific after Verdant Earth Energy is finished with it in the name of ‘biomass’. And all the koalas will be gone.

‘Destroying forests to burn for a few minutes of electricity is not a climate solution, it is environmental vandalism and must not be allowed.’ See how big that beam in our eye is!

And Australia suffers from so many bushfires and they are worse and worse and we lose so much! And it is the beginning of our summer and there is a bushfire in Western Australia now! And a company expects to be allowed to do this!

Listen to the Nature Conservation Council on this video.

‘Biomass is not green energy’.

WATCH AND SHARE THIS VIDEO ON REDBANK TO SPREAD THE WORD Watch on Youtube   Share on Twitter   Share on Facebook Verdant’s proposal, if approved, would require more wood than Forestry Corporation generates from its logging operations across the whole of NSW in an entire year. Verdant plans to source this timber from anywhere within 300km of Singleton, threatening forests all the way to Grafton in the north and the Illawarra in the south. If approved, Redbank will trigger the logging of thousands of hectares of our native forests each year. Biomass proposals like Redbank could set back forest protection and climate action by decades and must be rejected. Watch & Share Video LEARN MORE ABOUT THIS PROPOSAL  Burning trees for electricity releases enormous amounts of carbon dioxide and feeds climate change.   It takes a forest tree decades to grow but only seconds to burn in a power station furnace. The overall climate impact is arguably worse than coal, and the destruction of forests and all the animals that live there is devastating. Protecting native forests and the carbon they store is one of the solutions to climate change.

I wonder how many ex-patriate Aussies care about what could be happening here.

We have a Minister for the Environment increasing the number of coal mines and wanting to reverse the decision of a Federal judge that she has a duty of care for children whose health suffers from ‘climate harm’ – asthma – from coal mines.

You have the right to vote in the next election.

Our ABC RN Science Show

Privatising developments in space?

We have the right to be concerned.

A serious warning from the University of Adelaide’s

Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

audio

Space travel and illegal wildlife trade are bringing greater biosecurity threats.

Fears of new biosecurity threats

Next – Australia’s new Chief Scientist presents her hopes for our possible contributions to the future with our public universities centre stage.

A reminder of the vital importance of Australia’s public universities that were left to languish by this Australian Coalition government in 2020 while COVID 19 raged.

Our public universities had to shed 40,000 positions. All that knowledge, acquired over years, lost. Lecturers, Tutors, Researchers, Librarians, Assistants had to find work elsewhere. They were not going to be funded to stay working for us.

Australia’s billions in revenue went to businesses and private schools, not to the knowledge and capacity of Australians to prepare for a future of global warming.

Hurrah for Cathy Foley – We must have the Humanities to ask the right questions.

audio

Our chief scientist’s goals and hopes for science in 2030

Robyn Williams, presenter of our public ABC RN’s Science Show gives her the last words in today’s program – December 11th 2021.

This Chief Scientist from Australia’s CSIRO knows we need STEAM not just STEM.

When it is private fossil fuel wealth, not weather and the necessity to invest to adapt to changing climate and increased uncertainties – floods on the east coast, major bush fires on the west coast now in Australia’s early summer – that matters for those in government, in a democracy we can vote them out!

We are citizens not just tax payers.

The sciences with the humanities!

Music in this world of geological time.

What matters is our capacity to share wonder.

The Jenolan Caves in New South Wales, Australia.

1. > One of Australia’s Most Amazing Experiences
2. > The Jenolan Caves Blog.

‘Underground Ecstasy‘ – the story of music underground.

December 5, 2015. Worth repeating in 2021, even if a pandemic has got in the way.

‘Every day, people tour Jenolan’s Lucas Cave. Deep underground, in The Cathedral Chamber, they are transported by a sound and light installation that showcases the dramatic proportions of Jenolan’s highest, grandest and acoustically magnificent chamber. With a sound system designed for performance in this sublime, natural amplification space, The Cathedral is the natural environment for a profound musical experience.  The voices of Dame Joan Sutherland and the Vienna Boys’ Choir have been further elevated by its majestic proportions.

But it is the default soundtrack used on most Lucas Cave tours that evoked sheer delight in the heart of a recent visitor.  Cave guide, Lisa Sampson, led her tour group into the Cathedral Chamber, and remotely activated the default soundtrack, as usual.  To her amazement, the piece of music was a massive favourite of a man in her tour group. In fact, he turned out to be a member of the composer’s worldwide fan club!  So, the tables turned, and cave guide Lisa received a fascinating commentary about the composer, the music, where it has been used and why it sounds so familiar to most people.

The song? The Ecstasy of Gold – originally composed by Ennio Morricone as part of the film score of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.

Lisa was inspired to do some serious digging into The Ecstasy of Gold. Here is what she discovered. The version played in The Cathedral is by Metallica. It’s been the super-band’s introductory music at concerts since 1983. Jay-Z sampled it in Blueprint. The Portuguese football team Sporting FC have used it as their introductory music for a season of home matches. It’s been used in an episode of The Simpsons and in a Spongebob Squarepants film. In fact, The Ecstasy of Gold has been so extensively covered that it has its own Wikipedia entry!

People have been singing in The Cathedral Chamber since it was first explored in 1860. In fact, it is one of the oldest, continuously running tours in Australia.

This is 2021 remember. Check it out. If you can, come and EXPERIENCE it. If your school, music group or organisation has a special relationship to a piece of music or musical artist, contact Jenolan Caves on 1300 76 33 11 and ask whether it can be played in The Cathedral on your Lucas Cave tour. Remember to book the Lucas Cave tour too! Don’t forget. This is December 2021. We hope it can be visited in 2022.

Nature and culture nurture one another. Come and immerse yourself in both.

AND – ABOVE GROUND, IN 2021,

WE NEED TO TELL AND HEAR A STORY OF WHAT TOMORROW MIGHT BE.

If you take this journey beneath the surface in 2022, remember and care about and be prepared to do something about the global warming of our blue planet. It is our collective home. And vote for the future for all of us,  not for the increasing profits for the greedy fossil fuel corporations and their appalling, shameless political allies in Australia.

Australia’s Prime Minister danced a jig to celebrate an LNG development in the ocean off the North West of Western Australia. An attack on bio-diversity. A $16 billion project that could have supported real clean energy developments across the nation and provided support for the people of the Torres Straits whose island homes are suffering from changes in the climate. Australia’s First Nations and our Pacific ‘family’ as he calls our neighbours. No! He dances a jig and cheers for Woodside.

Poem. Music. Images

‘The Life We Live Is Not Life Itself’

Ian Gibbins, former Professor of neuro-science at Flinders University, now video poet who lives in Adelaide, South Australia writes: ‘Well, this is something really wonderful… The video I made with Tasos Sagris and Whodoes The Life We Live Is Not Life Itself won the top prize for Avant-Garde films in the Fotogenia Film Festival. The whole Festival has been a magnificent feast of diverse forms and voices. The finalist list included some of the best videos I’ve ever seen. So to come out on top is incredibly humbling.

Massive thanks to Tasos Sagris and Whodoes for entrusting me with their fantastic words and music and the Institute for Experimental Art in Athens for supporting the project.’

If you haven’t seen it, here is the video:
https://vimeo.com/512116821

A special way of connecting. This work is taking me, and I hope others, beyond the frustrations of continuing political intransigence, at least for a time.

That is the question!

Will the President of Brazil fulfill his commitment?

Before COP26 there was this news about the plans of Bolsonaro’s government.

Members of the ruralist caucus and allies to President Bolsonaro approve bill that paves the way for a new indigenous genocide,
APIB. 23 June 2021.

Robyn Williams, presenter of The Science Show on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Radio National, November 21^st, expresses this concern and asks this question about this pledge from Brazil.

Amazon deforestation pledge.
‘The Amazon is being burnt and turned into grazing land. The world’s biggest rainforest influences weather systems in South America and climate even further afield. Brazil signed an agreement at the recent COP26 meeting to wind back its destructive practices. Will they stick to it?’

Amazon deforestation is stopping forest from recycling rainwater, which affects temperatures – ABC News

There is evidence in this information of Brazilian intentions a year before COP26.

Brazil sees record number of bids to mine illegally on Indigenous lands, Mongabay. 13 November 2020.

We are suffering in so many ways from the indifference of governments to global warming.  Callous indifference in their approach to people in the interest of powerful fossil fuel corporations.

In Brazil mining illegally on Indigenous lands.

In Australia, fracking on Indigenous land

in the Northern Territory.

We are democracies.

What are voters doing?

Australia, China, India, Russia are showing their indifference to the future. Coal, oil and gas are only to be ‘phased down.’

Why the humanities must come in now. How long have the humanities been trying to help us?

Back in 1959, Walter M. Miller wrote A Canticle for Leibowitz

‘A Canticle for Leibowitz is a post-apocalyptic social science fiction novel by American writer Walter M. Miller Jr., first published in 1959. Set in a Catholic monastery in the desert of the southwestern United States after a devastating nuclear war, the book spans thousands of years as civilization rebuilds itself. The monks of the Albertian Order of Leibowitz preserve the surviving remnants of man’s scientific knowledge until the world is again ready for it.’ This novel has never been out of print. Note! It spans thousands of years!

In 1897 H.G. Wells War of the Worlds was published serialised. Right at the time when there was an increase in the late 19^th century anarchist movement! See any comparison in our contemporary world?

In 1909. E.M. Forster, The Machine Stops imagined a time and situation when the society, relying on ‘the machine’ for everything in their survival, had to live underground.

In 1932 Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World took us to a government where people were made passive with SOMA sedation, keeping people under control at the least expense.

The ‘Getting of Wisdom’ was discouraged, just like Australia today with the cost of Humanities degrees – in the arts, literature, history, politics, drama, music, –  raised by 113%. Rejecting creative and critical thinking.

Now, in Australia, we have Clade by James Bradley, first published in 2015 by Hamish Hamilton.   The  meaning of ‘clade’ comes from biology. It is ‘a group of organisms believed to comprise all the evolutionary descendants of a common ancestor’ – From ‘great apes to human clades’.  In 2013 Australia’s Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, attacking effective emissions reductions, and stopping them, had called climate change crap.

Like the rest of the world, Australia has known about global warming for decades. The less frightening term ‘climate change’ was brought in by those determined to protect their carbon-fossil fuel profits. Read The Carbon Club by Marian Wilkinson which details the way Australian and American corporations worked so well to deprecate, slow down, dismiss – as Rupert Murdoch did with his media empire – to stop the elimination of fossil fuels. James Bradley has looked ahead to imagine how some will live in Australia, the UK and China.

Are we sleepwalking into disaster?

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Radio National

Science Show presented by Robyn Williams October 30^th 2021.

The prize winners, the anthology, the history remembered. The Science Show this week is all about Bragg.

Sir Lawrence Bragg, Nobel Prize for crystallography, born in Adelaide, insisted the best science writing for its essential import to be realized and discovered was ‘akin to poetry and literature.’ See his Foreword to The Apple and the Spectroscope. That is the aim of the annual anthology of the Best Australian Science Writing, published by New South, the publication arm of the University of New South Wales.

Listen to Ceridwen Dovey speak about why she writes about science and why this prize-winning work focuses on what we are doing to the night sky. None of the billionaires setting out to privatise space asked any of the astronomers how or whether their flights might impede their study of space. They had no interest in potential killer asteroids. We will have 60,000 satellites crowding the night sky in ten years. Who is caring an ounce?

Associate Professor Alice Gorman, space archaeologist, Flinders University, and former Bragg Prize winner was mentioned as one of those trying to help us see what we are doing.

Profit is being put before knowledge and the future for the children.

audio

On a roll – Ceridwen Dovey wins Bragg Prize for Science Writing again

AND

At the same time, Are too many nations, like this Australian government, putting short-term fossil-fuel based profits first? ARE our young people, unable to Vote, going to have to deal with what politicians, now in positions of power refuse to care about? Ian Lowe summarizes what is needed to move the world away from its current climate trajectory.

audio

World sleepwalking into disaster with lukewarm climate action

I thank our national citizen-owned Australian Broadcasting Corporation for its commitment to knowledge.

First go to Globe 4 Globe: Shakespeare and Climate in the UK

A two-day event took place in April in London

This major two-day event, co-hosted with the University of California (Merced), gathered experts, activists and theatre practitioners in a vital exploration of the relationships between Shakespeare’s works and the current climate crisis.

Scholars explored ecological collapse and renewal in Shakespeare’s texts; environmental experts mapped out ways in which Shakespearean theatres and festivals could achieve sustainable and ethical futures; theatre professionals reflected on the capacity of live theatre to change audience perception and behaviour.

AND also in the UK, meeting the challenge of climate change. The actions taken by the national government!

These documents with their policy positions contain clearly stated decisions and they are legally binding.

UK 2050 =21 documents in existence, of 1868 pages.

Heat & building strategy.

Heat pump grants

Electric vehicles incentives

End gas boilers by 2035.

Internal combustion engine [ICE] sales ended by 2030.

All Treasury reviewed!!! – Not so in Australia – and that’s not all.

They are all legally binding.

They have five year targets.

While, in Adelaide, the example in Shakespeare’s Globe in the UK has been followed by Alys Daroy.

InDaily, Michelle Wakim reports on this October event.

Eco-theatre production takes the Bard back to nature

Shakespeare South Australia ­– a new local outdoor theatre company with an environmental ethos at its core ­– debuts this week with a production of Twelfth Night in the picturesque setting of the Palm House lawns at the ‘In the early days of the pandemic, actor Alys Daroy returned to South Australia from the UK to find that Adelaide, “one of the world’s leading arts and culture centres”, was without an outdoor Shakespeare company. She was spurred into action.

“I spoke to my agent, Ann Peters at SA Casting, and she said, ‘Darling, you’ve got to do it’. So I spoke to the Botanic Gardens and one thing led to another and here we are!” says Daroy, founder and artistic director of Shakespeare South Australia, which launched earlier this year.

Alys Daroy has more than a decade of experience in Shakespearean performance, and before arriving back in Adelaide she was working on an “eco-theatrical production” at Shakespeare’s Globe in London. Shakespeare South Australia characterises itself as an eco-theatrical company, which means its approach to production conceptually and materialistically considers environmental impact and relationships to the natural world.’

Print article

‘In the early days of the pandemic, actor Alys Daroy returned to South Australia from the UK to find that Adelaide, “one of the world’s leading arts and culture centres”, was without an outdoor Shakespeare company. She was spurred into action. And Adelaideans will be watching it now.

‘This green plot was their stage’ – paraphrasing ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream‘

And, also in South Australia, the State governments leading the energy challenge of climate change.

New IEEFA report sees South Australia as world’s energy …

https://www.pv-magazine-australia.com › 2021/06/03

3 June 2021 — Not only is SA on target to meet its 2030 renewable energy target by 2025, but the state has also set a target of 500% renewables by 2050, with .

But what Did Australians hear from the Prime Minister On Tuesday October 26th, on the news Corp, Murdoch, Channel 9?

The catch cry of ‘technology not taxes’ was back in play. No modelling on show. We might be told later. [Some one said that would be ‘drip fed’.] A few slides from the booklet. No clear policy. No mandate – that’s a dirty word here since Covid19. Certainly no legislation. Only one mention of the environment and that was about ‘cutting red tape’. No increase in the 26 to 28% target for 2030 in the Paris Agreement. It had been signed on to by the then Prime Minister, Tony Abbott in 2015. He called climate change crap. There will be offsets. This was packaged as what this Prime Minister sees as ‘the unique Australian way’. And it will only be net zero emissions by 2050.

We were not citizens, merely tax payers with not interest in the future for the nation’s children. We were only consumers and customers. The technology needed to be capable of commercialization. It was competition not collaboration. And coal and liquid natural gas, with fracking, and 900 wells in a forest were well and truly in the mix as the ‘traditional’ – not the polluting – industries. And there was no guarantee that there would not be more of them.

We are told Gautam Adani wants to speak in Glasgow! The Prime Minister of the UK will decide.

Those who care about the environment and the future for children are entitled to ask these questions, aren’t we?

How many of these global corporations are setting out to have it both ways?

Greenwashing while they continue to profit as much as possible from pollution.

Will Adani use the coal from Bravus, the Carmichael mine in the valley of Galilee, Queensland, to make plastic in India? Plastics – so much part of the worst pollution in land, rivers, lakes and ocean on every continent. Think of the size of the population of India. Think of plastic waste dumped in villages in other countries. Imagine it all mounting up rather than money being invested in cleaner alternatives.*

A polluting fossil fuel – coal – from Australia for a major polluting product – plastic – in India!

Adani blasted over ‘toxic’ $4bn plan to use Australian coal to make plastic in India
The Guardian. 18 June 2021.

• Centre for Science and Environment’s (CSE) new background paper on plastic waste and its management forms the backdrop of discussions at a webinar attended by key bureaucrats and experts 
• 79 per cent of the plastic made in the world enters our land, water and environment as waste; some of it also enters our bodies through the food chain, says the CSE analysis 
• India has not yet acted on the Prime Minister’s call for ‘freedom’ from single-use plastics. The government’s 2022 deadline for such a ban has now been rescinded 

And there is a serious question about whether Adani is supporting the military junta in Myanmar with its history of murder and mutilation?

The Adani Group denies engaging with Myanmar’s military leadership over port deal but video suggests otherwise
ABC. 30 March 2021.

TAKE NOTE

Still, the Coalition government of Australia dithers afters decades of refusal, since 1996, to take a global perspective on the advantages of national investment in clean energy, manufacture, vehicles and products.

The Australian Government has been taken to the Federal Court of Australia by the Australian Conservation Foundation twice, once in 2018 and once in March 2020 (still ongoing as of September 2020), relating to its contravention and alleged contravention of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 with respect to the impact of the mine on groundwater and the country’s water resources.^[82] And we are the driest continent in the world. Yet we privatise our public waterways.

AND

The Act of Parliament under which the Coalition government has been taken to court was passed in 1999. It is 22 years old. It is ‘not fit for purpose’ to protect the environment. And the Coalition refuses to implement the Graeme Samuel Report presented early 2020 because it will strengthen the legislation to protect the environment.

The Report on the State of the Environment is due to go to Parliament.

Go to the Science Show on Australia’s ABC Radio National and listen.

Download Crisis awaits if the world fails to act on climate (7.01 MB)

Download 7.01 MB

Emma Johnston, Dean of Science at UNSW is a chief author for the next State of Environment Report for Australia. She says the last 5 years has seen a long list of environmental catastrophes a result of climate change. Landscapes are being devastated by fires, floods, extreme heat, and drought. Species are moving their ranges, which works for some animals. Not so easy for plants. She says crisis is staring at us if the world fails to urgently reduce carbon emissions. Nations need to recommit to the zero by 2050 commitment made in Paris in 2015 and go even further.

What can young people expect from those who represent their nations at this conference in Glasgow?

Conference of the Parties COP26 Glasgow 31st Oct – 12th Nov 2021

[Have you heard about what is happening in Vittel in France?]