You know it must be bad when……..

Shell urges Turnbull to pass climate scheme

Robert Manne chastises the Australian’s Plimer-worship

Some points go to the Oz for printing a critical view from Robert Manne:

Cheerleading for zealotry not in the public interest

LAST week, The Weekend Australian published three pieces enthusiastically welcoming the publication of Ian Plimer’s new anti-climate science book, Heaven and Earth – Global Warming: The Missing Science: an overwhelmingly favourable editorial, a lengthy interview with the author and a column by Christopher Pearson of gushing praise. In these three pieces not one word of criticism of Plimer was to be found.

It might have been supposed that the editors of this newspaper would wonder about the capacity for fair-mindedness of a geologist who describes the entire climate science community as “the forces of darkness”; who recently told Adelaide’s The Advertiser that his book would singlehandedly “knock out” not one or several but “every argument we hear about climate change”; and who, in earlier work, had spent considerable energy trying to prove that Noah’s Ark was a myth, the intellectual equivalent of a zoologist seeking to dispose of the belief that the serpent in the Garden of Eden could really have spoken to Eve.

Yet apparently, despite such obvious signs of zealotry, the editors at this newspaper experienced no doubts

Continued here.

Ian Plimer – Heaven and Earth

Though the book has only just hit the book shelves, mainstream science is debunking Plimer’s “Heaven and Earth“.   Check out Barry Brook’s early impressions.

Chants, signs and graffiti from the G20 protests in London.

If you got any more, please contribute and link to the original article or image if it exists.

“Beat inflation — eat the rich” – G

“Build a bonfire, build a bonfire. Put the bankers on the top, put Gordon Brown in the middle and burn the f…..g lot” – C

“Jobs Not Bombs: YES WE CAN” – S

“Abolish money” – C

“Eat the Bankers” – S

“Capitalism isn’t Working – another world is possible” – S

“Make love not leverage” – S

“This ruckus sponsored by JobCentre Plus” – S

“When I say banker, you say wanker” – C

“It’s our money they’ve stolen” – S

“Can we overthrow the government – yes we can !” -S

“Capitalism stole my virginity”

“RIP Canary Wharf, 1990-2009” – S

“F..k capitalism” -S

“Consumers suck” – S

“Housing is a right not a privilege” – S

“Capitalism kills” – S

“Swindler’s List” – S

“Nature doesn’t do bail-outs” – S

“Renewable democracy” – S

“Mind the Income Gap” – S

“Green capitalism is not possible” – G

“Planet before profit”- S

“Spank the banker” – G

“Capitalism is condemned” – G

“It’s going to get worse” – S

“Down with this sort of thing” – S

“Fractional reserve bull£$it” – S

“Democracy is an illusion” – S

“No-one has any right to buy or sell the Earth for private gain” -S

“0% interest – in others” – S

“Beneath the concrete, the forest grows” – S

“Resistance is fertile” – S

Monbiot vs UN climate change negotiator

Check out this great interview between Britain’s George Monbiot and The UN chief negotiator at the Bali climate change talks – Yvo de Boer.  There are a few others on Monbiot’s web site including such interviewees as the head of Shell, the CEO of cheap airline group EasyJet and the head of the International Energy Agency.

Monbiot has a way of cutting through bureaucratic clichés and revealing the dark heart of climate issues.

Click this link —> Monbiot Meets…Yvo De Boer

Good news from the US

Finally someone in a leadership position (or soon to be at least) understands the dual challenges of unemployment and environmental action.  Obama is poised to initiate unprecedented funding of fit-outs to reduce energy consumption in public buildings and in American homes.

This herald article suggests Australian green and union movements are pleading for the same initiatives here.  Unfortunately, the union movement is split between support for polluting industries and those who support the greening of the workforce.  This is demonstrated in this appalling article by Paul Howes of the Australian Workers Union on ABC online.

More on Australia’s cop-out on CO2

I thought an article from Peter Hartcher in the Sydney Morning Herald put it well this past week.  Labelling Rudd “Captain Reasonable”, he had this to say:

“He described climate change as an elephant of an issue, but then proposed not doing anything especially big about it.

He called it “a threat to our people, our nation and our planet”, but then announced only the gentlest of responses.

He said the country stood at “the crossroads of history”, but then suggested that we choose the course of least resistance.

For heaven’s sake, he seemed to be saying, can’t we all just be reasonable.

Rudd’s carbon emissions plan is crafted as a piece of political positioning, and he said as much himself…”

There are times when trying to carve the middle ground is not the right course of action.  Times when leadership means bringing non-believers along with you.  Times when there is truly a right and wrong position and no rational in-between path.  And times when anything less than urgent and drastic action equates to utter failure.

To draw an analogy, if I’m jumping across a ravine between two cliff faces, it doesn’t matter if I miss by 5 metres or only 1 metre – I’m screwed either way.  I wish Kevin Rudd could understand that his bureaucratic and political impulses willcarry destructive consequences the like of which we’ve never seen.

Further on this topic, progressive action group GetUp is raising funds to air this ad during the Cricket on Boxing Day:

…..and poet and environmentalist Mark O’Connor discusses here
the suicidally high population growth rate that Australia is pursuing
(higher than most South-East Asian countries including Indonesia!) and
how this will make significant CO2 reduction almost certainly
impossible.

Kevin Rudd – you are a disgrace

Three protesters interrupted the PM's announcement today

World leaders gathered this last week in Poland to forge an agreed direction for climate change policies leading to the Copenhagen summit in 2009.  Australia’s ruling centrist political party (Labor) had already deferred plans to announce its intended carbon reductions on a world stage…and now we can see why.

Buckling to intense lobbying from our coal and mineral industries, the Prime Minister announced plans to reduce our greenhouse emissions by an insubstantial 5% by 2020.  There is some form of appeasement in the declaration that this might rise to 15% if there is a global agreement.

Aside from the fact that such a target, if pursued by others, will lead to catastrophic shifts in the Earth’s climate, the decision to reward polluters is particularly evil.  This ABC article outlines the outrageous handouts:

The amount of free permits available to those industries – such as aluminium, cement, lime and silicone production – has been increased to 25 per cent, compared to 20 per cent flagged in the green paper.  That amount would rise to 35 per cent once agriculture is included in the scheme, which is not expected until at least 2015.

Industries now also have the choice of being assessed for assistance via two different tests based on either revenue or the value it adds to the product in the manufacturing process.  If an industry produces over 2,000 tonnes of emissions per million dollars of revenue or 6,000 tonnes of emissions in the value it adds to a product it is eligible for 90 per cent of free permits.

If it produces over 1,000 tonnes of emissions per million dollars of revenue or 3,000 tonnes of emissions in the value it adds to a produce it is eligible for 60 per cent of free permits.  The Electricity Sector Adjustment Scheme will also provide $3.9 billion assistance to coal fired power generators over the next five years.

To put this another way – if a company produces a lot of climate altering pollution it’ll get great wads of cash, if it produce a little bit less, then taxpayers will reward it just a little bit less.  Perverse but true.  As Greenpeace Australia recently said – “it’s like paying someone to be a prick”.

I hope that such a gutless effort will come back to bite Kevin Rudd, a man who is all talk, and no action.  An archetypal politican, but not a real leader.  Here is what commenter Emma had to say in this post on the ABC online website:

A failure on all counts.

A failure of a target.

A failure of a scheme (giving away free permits to polluters, rushing to compensate at 5%, soft entry targets mean much harder targets and higher costs later)

A failure to heed the warning of scientific experts, economists and experienced policy makers and their own independent review, led by Garnaut.

A failure on the global stage – a spectacular diplomatic failure in fact.

A failure to keep an election promise.

A failure to help try to save our children and grandchildren.

A failure for the planet.

A failure of a government.

Many Australians will no doubt agree.

Secret first footage – clean coal technology

Coal parody from Greenpeace

Enjoy.

more about “Coal parody from Greenpeace“, posted with vodpod