Climate change
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David 
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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Just in case anyone's wondering if the Liberal Party aren't as bad on this topic as people say:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-12-13/howard-lends-support-to-anti-climate-change-book/3727650
Before anyone says that Howard is ancient history, keep in mind that nearly a dozen Coalition MPs from the Howard government are still in parliament, and at no stage – certainly, not under Abbott or Morrison – has there been any move to repudiate that legacy or substantially move away from it. Instead we've had a lot of speaking with forked tongues, with the party often pretending to have a climate policy on the one hand (again, this goes back to Howard, as mentioned in the article) while quietly reassuring donors and the rank and file that they're not really going to do anything meaningful about it on the other.
Here's more on the current targets, by the way, and how the government is claiming to be meeting them:
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/using-kyoto-credits-to-meet-paris-agreement-misses-the-point-garnaut-20191209-p53ic7.html
| Quote: | Economist Ross Garnaut says Australia's reliance on 'carry-over credits' to meet its international emissions reduction pledge defies the spirit of the Paris agreement and will ultimately cost the economy more than taking decisive climate action.
Australia's commitment under the Paris climate agreement requires it to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by between 26 and 28 per cent by 2030.
The 185 signatory nations signed up to different individual targets by 2030, but share a longer term goal to hit net zero emissions by 2050.
Carryover credits refer to an accounting measure, where a country counts historical emissions reduction that exceeded old international goals against its current target.
Australia will include its carryover credits from its over-achievement on the Kyoto Protocol in its efforts to meet the Paris target. Most countries don't count their credits, with just Brazil, Russia and the Ukraine potentially following Australia's lead and arguing at the United Nations international climate talks in Madrid this week for their inclusion.
"Anything that keeps actual emissions in 2030 higher rather than lower will make achievement of the ultimate target more difficult and costly," Professor Garnaut said.
"That is a good reason why Australia should reduce emissions by much more than 26 per cent to 28 per cent, no matter what the rules are about the use of carryover of credits from earlier targets. The later you take action, the costlier it will be to reach zero emissions by 2050, as agreed at Paris."
"Within that framework, any technical point about using surpluses from earlier periods towards meeting our national target misses the point. The real point is whether we are on track for zero emissions by 2050." |
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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Bernard Keane takes a similar view:
https://www.crikey.com.au/2020/01/13/morrison-bushfire-blame/
| Quote: | The government is guilty of criminal neglect. But it’s not alone
For decades, Australia’s governing class — politicians, policymakers, economists, journalists, business leaders — have patted themselves on the back for their success in the core business of public policy: the unprecedented global feat of nearly three decades of economic growth, including avoiding the 2008 global recession.
While they were achieving that, however, they were also preparing a climate catastrophe that would cost the lives of, so far, 28 Australians, inflict an unimaginable toll on the country’s ecosystems, impose colossal health costs on the residents of our largest cities and inflict tens of billions in economic costs.
It’s the greatest policy failure of a generation, much worse than the debacle of the Iraq War or the early nineties recession. And no one has any excuses. This summer’s catastrophe — which will be a forerunner of similar summers to come — is exactly what scientists have repeatedly, for decades, warned would happen.
Scott Morrison is bearing the brunt of the blame. That’s entirely reasonable. Even putting aside his climate denialism and his enthusiasm for coal, his government is guilty of criminal neglect in its refusal to properly prepare for a catastrophic summer: emergency strategies left to gather dust (yet another stuff-up by Home Affairs), fire experts ignored, requests for additional funding rejected.
To cover his government’s negligence, Morrison has repeatedly resorted to blatant lies — about linking bushfires with climate change, about the role of backburning, about calling out the ADF.
But blood is on the hands of many more than just Morrison and his ministers. Australia’s long-term role in sabotaging international climate action began under the Howard government, with John Howard leading the effort to resist internationally-agreed targets for emissions reductions in the 1990s and obtain a special deal for Australia’s rampant land clearing that alienated other countries.
The election of George W. Bush in 2000 gave Howard a partner in climate crime but Australia — the developed economy most at risk from climate action — had already forfeited any role of global leadership in reducing the level of global warming that, 20 years later, would deliver year after year of record high temperatures.
For those who insist no amount of emission reductions by Australia would have made any difference this summer, what might have been if the Howard government, instead of sabotaging international climate action, had properly sought to protect Australia by pushing global action to curb emissions?
Responsibility, too, rests with the corporations and industries that systematically stymied climate policy in Australia over the last 20 years. The Business Council has worked hard to undermine climate policies while professing to support climate action; the climate denialism of the Minerals Council is so bad even some mining companies have threatened to abandon it.
Global and local fossil fuel companies like Chevron, Gina Rinhart’s Hancock, the failed Linc Energy, Minara and Origin have collectively pumped millions of dollars in donations into the coffers of both sides of politics; Santos and Woodside by themselves have handed millions each to the political parties to influence policy in their interests.
Many offer lucrative jobs to politicians, party officials and public servants after they leave public life. Responsibility for the catastrophe of this summer lies at their door as well; their executives should contemplate the charred landscape of eastern Australia and reflect on their handiwork.
And much of this couldn’t have happened without the media. There’s plenty of blood on the hands of News Corp executives and successive editors of outlets like The Australian, the Telegraph and, now, Sky News. Years of climate denialism targeted at both sides of politics — witness the recent smearing of NSW Liberal Matt Kean for daring to talk of bolder climate action — has wrecked evidence-based policymaking; the malignant nature of News Corp has been displayed in recent days in an absurd campaign to blame arsonists for the catastrophe.
But much of the non-Murdoch media has also helped normalise a brazen climate denialism that would be regarded as unhinged even in other countries. Failing to address the blatant lies of the Coalition campaign against the Gillard government’s carbon price; urging voters to support Tony Abbott; and political journalists fixating on race-calling and political tactics while ignoring policy have all made life comfortable and relaxed for denialists.
In particular, many journalists have unthinkingly absorbed the favoured climate framing of denialists and fossil fuel companies — that we can have emissions abatement or economic growth and jobs, but not both. The tens of billions in damage and lost growth from the bushfires are a frightening demolition of that myth — and a stark rejoinder to the journalists, Murdoch and non-Murdoch alike, who literally screamed at Bill Shorten during last year’s election campaign to explain the economic costs of his (woefully inadequate) climate policies.
And yes, Labor too has played its part in the debacle, despite being out of power for much of the last two decades and its own myth-making about the Rudd government’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. Only the Gillard government — under pressure from the Greens — and Bill Shorten in the 2013-16 parliament, when he advocated strong emissions abatement targets and two carbon pricing schemes, can avoid blame.
Morrison deserves to wear this catastrophe, to use Keating’s phrase, like a crown of thorns. But our governing class, the media and business elites of the last two decades share responsibility for the lost lives, ruined businesses, damaged health and ecocide that have marked this summer, and will mark decades to come. And they should never be permitted to forget it. |
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All watched over by machines of loving grace |
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Wokko 
Come and take it.
Joined: 04 Oct 2005
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| Whenever the Coalition take up a Labor/Green style climate taxing policy their primary vote plummets and polling shows them losing elections. People may not be enamored with the conservative right of the Liberal party but they'll vote them in over a Labor lite climate hoax carpetbagger like Turnbull. Morrison needs to tread very lightly on this issue and not listen to polls from Sydney/Melbourne because those areas didn't give him power. |
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PyreneesPie
PyreneesPie
Joined: 22 Aug 2014
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| Quote: | | Morrison deserves to wear this catastrophe, to use Keating’s phrase, like a crown of thorns. But our governing class, the media and business elites of the last two decades share responsibility for the lost lives, ruined businesses, damaged health and ecocide that have marked this summer, and will mark decades to come. And they should never be permitted to forget it. |
Yes. |
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PyreneesPie
PyreneesPie
Joined: 22 Aug 2014
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Forwarded to me by a Nick's mate:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/09/opinion/australia-fires.html
| Quote: | In a rational world, the burning of Australia would be a historical turning point. After all, it’s exactly the kind of catastrophe climate scientists long warned us to expect if we didn’t take action to limit greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, a 2008 report commissioned by the Australian government predicted that global warming would cause the nation’s fire seasons to begin earlier, end later, and be more intense — starting around 2020.
Furthermore, though it may seem callous to say it, this disaster is unusually photogenic. You don’t need to pore over charts and statistical tables; this is a horror story told by walls of fire and terrified refugees huddled on beaches.
So this should be the moment when governments finally began urgent efforts to stave off climate catastrophe.
But the world isn’t rational. In fact, Australia’s anti-environmentalist government seems utterly unmoved as the nightmares of environmentalists become reality. And the anti-environmentalist media, the Murdoch empire in particular, has gone all-out on disinformation, trying to place the blame on arsonists and “greenies” who won’t let fire services get rid of enough trees.
These political reactions are more terrifying than the fires themselves.
Climate optimists have always hoped for a broad consensus in favor of measures to save the planet. The trouble with getting action on climate, the story went, was that it was hard to get people’s attention: The issue was complex, while the damage was too gradual and too invisible. In addition, the big dangers lay too far in the future. But surely once enough people had been informed about the dangers, once the evidence for global warming became sufficiently overwhelming, climate action would cease to be a partisan issue.
The climate crisis, in other words, would eventually become the moral equivalent of war — an emergency transcending the usual political divides.
But if a nation in flames isn’t enough to produce a consensus for action — if it isn’t even enough to produce some moderation in the anti-environmentalist position — what will? The Australia experience suggests that climate denial will persist come hell or high water — that is, through devastating heat waves and catastrophic storm surges alike. |
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But if climate denial and opposition to action are immovable even in the face of obvious catastrophe, what hope is there for avoiding the apocalypse? Let’s be honest with ourselves: Things are looking pretty grim. However, giving up is not an option. What’s the path forward?
The answer, pretty clearly, is that scientific persuasion is running into sharply diminishing returns. Very few of the people still denying the reality of climate change or at least opposing doing anything about it will be moved by further accumulation of evidence, or even by a proliferation of new disasters. Any action that does take place will have to do so in the face of intractable right-wing opposition.
This means, in turn, that climate action will have to offer immediate benefits to large numbers of voters, because policies that seem to require widespread sacrifice — such as policies that rely mainly on carbon taxes — would be viable only with the kind of political consensus we clearly aren’t going to get.
What might an effective political strategy look like? I’ve been rereading a 2014 speech by the eminent political scientist Robert Keohane, who suggested that one way to get past the political impasse on climate might be via “an emphasis on huge infrastructural projects that created jobs” — in other words, a Green New Deal. Such a strategy could give birth to a “large climate-industrial complex,” which would actually be a good thing in terms of political sustainability.
Can such a strategy succeed? I don’t know. But it looks like our only chance given the political reality in Australia, America, and elsewhere — namely, that powerful forces on the right are determined to keep us barreling down the road to hell. |
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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watt price tully 
Joined: 15 May 2007
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| PyreneesPie wrote: | | Quote: | | Morrison deserves to wear this catastrophe, to use Keating’s phrase, like a crown of thorns. But our governing class, the media and business elites of the last two decades share responsibility for the lost lives, ruined businesses, damaged health and ecocide that have marked this summer, and will mark decades to come. And they should never be permitted to forget it. |
Yes. |
Indeed, cuts to the chase. Succinct and nails it.
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“I even went as far as becoming a Southern Baptist until I realised they didn’t keep ‘em under long enough” Kinky Friedman |
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Wokko
Come and take it.
Joined: 04 Oct 2005
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Nothing that any Australian or group of Australians did in the last 100 years would've had any effect on today's climate or this year's bushfires.
If you think it would then you're either brainwashed or shamelessly pushing an agenda.
You could go back in time and stop Scott Morrison being born and nothing would be different as far as climate or fires. Nothing, nada, zip, zilch. |
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watt price tully
Joined: 15 May 2007
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| PyreneesPie wrote: | Forwarded to me by a Nick's mate:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/09/opinion/australia-fires.html
| Quote: | | In a rational world, the burning of Australia would be a historical turning point. After all, it’s exactly the kind of catastrophe climate scientists long warned us to expect if we didn’t take action to limit greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, a 2008 report commissioned by the Australian government predicted that global warming would cause the nation’s fire...... |
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Great article and thanks Pyrenees Pie 👍👍
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“I even went as far as becoming a Southern Baptist until I realised they didn’t keep ‘em under long enough” Kinky Friedman |
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think positive
Side By Side
Joined: 30 Jun 2005
Location: somewhere
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that is pretty shitty indeed. i guess they know they will be gone by then and dont care. while i really think lack of prep work etc is more the cause for the fires, i absolutely believe global warming is a problem, you can actually see marks in the glaciers, like the rings on a tree, so exactly what are the plans to cut greenhouse gases, aside from ditching spray cans? like the big stuff? i know i should probably know the answer but i dont! cheers
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You cant fix stupid, turns out you cant quarantine it either! |
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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| Wokko wrote: | Nothing that any Australian or group of Australians did in the last 100 years would've had any effect on today's climate or this year's bushfires.
If you think it would then you're either brainwashed or shamelessly pushing an agenda.
You could go back in time and stop Scott Morrison being born and nothing would be different as far as climate or fires. Nothing, nada, zip, zilch. |
It's not just Morrison, though, and nobody's saying it is. As Keane writes in the article I posted above:
| Quote: | But blood is on the hands of many more than just Morrison and his ministers. Australia’s long-term role in sabotaging international climate action began under the Howard government, with John Howard leading the effort to resist internationally-agreed targets for emissions reductions in the 1990s and obtain a special deal for Australia’s rampant land clearing that alienated other countries.
The election of George W. Bush in 2000 gave Howard a partner in climate crime but Australia — the developed economy most at risk from climate action — had already forfeited any role of global leadership in reducing the level of global warming that, 20 years later, would deliver year after year of record high temperatures.
For those who insist no amount of emission reductions by Australia would have made any difference this summer, what might have been if the Howard government, instead of sabotaging international climate action, had properly sought to protect Australia by pushing global action to curb emissions? |
Australia had the chance 20 years ago to put pressure on our superpower ally and fellow travellers to sign up to more meaningful targets. Instead we gave them cover and dug our heels in ourselves. So let's not pretend this is solely about Australian emissions or Australian policies – climate inaction is a global problem with global consequences, and we've done our bit to make it worse. And now we're suffering as a result.
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All watched over by machines of loving grace |
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Wokko
Come and take it.
Joined: 04 Oct 2005
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You think anyone cares about "Australian Pressure"? The Japanese have been whaling under or noses in the Southern Ocean despite our "Pressure" for decades.
Like people thinking they can change the climate on purpose, Australians thinking they have any importance at all is laughable. China, India and the USA are under pressure from much larger, more important nations than Australia and they don't give two shits. |
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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I respectfully disagree. We're not necessarily a major player on the world stage, but we're not insignificant either.
As a random example, we're one of the less than 10% of countries in the world to be included in the G20 summit, along with Argentina, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the UK and the US. There are certainly countries there with lesser and greater influence in that group, but we're not exactly talking about minnows here, and our mere inclusion there puts us above countries such as Spain, Poland, Sweden, Iran (whose exclusion is admittedly likely to be more political than about lack of global influence), Pakistan, Thailand and Israel, among roughly 170 or so other nation states. If you can be bothered to turn up on election day and cast your vote as just one voice among millions of people, then I'm pretty sure we can agree that one of the world's top 20 economies should try to make good geopolitical decisions.
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roar
Joined: 01 Sep 2004
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Sorry Dave, I have to agree with Wokko on this one, we hold no sway,whatever.
| Wokko wrote: | Nothing that any Australian or group of Australians did in the last 100 years would've had any effect on today's climate or this year's bushfires.
If you think it would then you're either brainwashed or shamelessly pushing an agenda. |
If you do not think changes over 100 years would have had any effect on the bushfires "you're either brainwashed or shamelessly pushing an agenda".
Don't you love definitive statements that work both ways?
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kill for collingwood! |
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Wokko
Come and take it.
Joined: 04 Oct 2005
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Except yours is wrong.
Australia's impact on global climate is so miniscule even now, let alone when we were a sparsely populated nation of sheep farmers that anything that was done would have exactly 0 impact. If you somehow managed to prevent European settlement and there were only natives with neolithic technology the only difference would be the arson of malicious wankers wouldn't happen, but the lightning and weather and fires would be the same. |
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