350.org movie "Accelerate" screening at Parramatta Activist Centre, Saturday, 27th April, 2019 at 4:30-6:30 pm
Dundas Community Centre. Heat and Health : Western Sydney Climate Costs. Event 9th May 2019, 6:30 - 9:00 pm
Even aiming to stay within the global warming range of 1.5 to 2 degrees C, the earth systems are pushed on a path that takes us to the kind of climate of 3 million years ago, Pliocene or even 50 million years ago, the Miocene. The Holocene, which nutured our civilizations, is over forever.
Right now, to avoid the extreme, conditions of the Miocene, not compatible with human civilization at all, and insure that only Pliocene conditions are reached, a rapid, global exponential decarbonization is required
David Suzuki points out, that a recent climate science paper says there remains only a 5 percent chance of staying below 2 degrees this Century, and we have actually more chance of reaching 6 degrees of warming (10%), than staying below 2 C. So we'ed better get on with it, as a global apex species, because even 2 degrees is not favourable to the long term survival biosphere apex species such as ourselves. Australia is especially singled out for its rigged corporate games in government..
Everything politicians think they know is most certainly wrong for the real world. Global governments fixation on mutual traded, competitive, exponential, fossil fueled growth. This is the worst possible, long term option ever. There is no wriggle out of contract consequences - Making a Hell of Earth. So what is the cause of this collective insanity? Rapid extinction is nature's unthinking plan for a species that collectively destroys its foundational environment.
The Global Carbon Project, which collects and analyses our global carbon behaviour, shows that nearly everybody is misbehaving.
Growth in global carbon emissions in 2018 looks to be around 2%, which is exactly tied to the rate of economic growth (by GDP)
Growth in Gas was the worst at 3.0%, and almost certainly involves a growth in total methane leakage. It is not provable that the rise in global carbon emissions with GDP has produced a similar rise in global well-being.
New record high of carbon dioxide emissions of 37 billion tonnes for 2018, says we are going to fail very badly.
Humanity are still trying to collectively have infinite growth on this finite planet. Here in Australia, our Prime Madman Scott Morrison, keeps defiantly shouting his "Strong Economy" slogan, in the tones of "Resistance is useless", while Australia burns hotter. After Albert Einstein, we could say that only one thing is infinite, and that is human collective stupidity.
Absent any serious form of global self-control, human global demolition will be future choked by several possible natural "Limits to Growth". Given our massed social and technical ingenuity, we might even manage to have several at once. We might escape the global decline in essential heavy fuel oil supply to power our global big machines, or spend all our energies against the inexorable rise in new climate disasters. This is probably already out of our control, as we struggle to keep creating new limits by growing our ongoing demolition of biodiversity and natural sustainability.
If enough people demand it, governments could declare a climate emergency tomorrow, and we could all get on with the job of fixing it.
Tim Buckley from IEEFA shows us that renewables are the winners we have been waiting for.
In comparison, fossil fuels – thermal coal, natural gas, petroleum, petrol, oil and shale - are a finite source of dirty, heavily subsidised energy with additional ‘externalities’ that are extreme and almost entirely uncosted.
FLAC is asking for donations to support legal costs. Click on the main title link.
Bob Brown and his #StopAdani entourage, have moved up the East Australian Coast towards the Galilee Basin, as a "Convoy", with scheduled stops organised on the way. Some electric passenger vehicles are joining the trek.
Parramatta Park was a major stop for Sydney on Easter Saturday, 20th April 2019. The convoy has now left Brisbane.
Malcolm Turnbull asserts that his cabinet and majority of party-room supported the NEG. The hard-right coal cancer in the LNP threatened to cross the floor to stop its own party government, so it was shelved. The result is that the LNP has no policy on energy and carbon emissions, only "misdirect action". Getup! members have recognized this is government by idiocy, and voted to target the climate-denial coal-loving idiots of the hard-right out of office.
Renewable Energy is now putting new fossil fuel power generation out of business. Bill McKibben's article also refers to Carbon Tracker report, "2020 Vision : Why you should see the fossil fuel peak coming." Remaining global fossil fuels are both non-renewable, and also too costly to burn.
Even “cheap” natural gas is now starting to look expensive compared to the combination of sun, wind, and batteries.
The chief executive of one US solar company said in January, “I can beat a gas peaker anywhere in the country today with a solar-plus-storage power plant. Who in their right mind today would build a new gas peaker? We are a factor of two cheaper.”
This makes it a huge shame that the Australian Government Investors have failed to help with sufficient financial backing for the Solar Reserve project at Port Augusta. But what can you do with government that stalls on renewable energy and still likes to prance around with lumps of Coal in parliament? Meanwhile NSW coal export prospects are in a predicted decline.
Runaway global warming is when natural carbon dioxide emissions from enhanced thawing of northern permafrost occur, and match or exceed human industrial emissions. As global increase in atmosphere CO2 sets a new record in 2019, some of that increase is likely to include the results of additional permafrost thawing, because the no-freeze-up boundary is moving south, and happens later in the season. The Arctic is the worlds organic carbon fridge, it is defrosting, and the hundreds of feet of organic carbon are going off with bacterial decomposition, the edges of which release greenhouse gases as fast as a putrefying joint of meat, or a "a bucket of prawns in the sun". Here is a link to the National Geographic Article. -
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2018/08/news-arctic-permafrost-may-thaw-faster-than-expected/
Market Forces published its January 2019 update report on the investments of Australian banks into fossil fuel expansions. The big banks promised to reduce investments in developing new fossil fuel reserves, since at least two thirds of existing reserves need to be left in the ground to meet Paris agreement climate targets of 2015. They have still managed to throw more billions at investment in new stranded fossil fuel sources which must not be burned.
It is going to take time to stop the growth of our fossil-fueled powered global economic behemoth, and bring down greenhouse gas emissions. Global growth is slowly becoming enfeebled, despite best efforts at growth, as new fossil fuel investments in oil and gas fail to give the same bang for buck as they once did. New "discoveries" have smaller reserves, lower quality product, and cost more to extract. However they surely compound our mounting global climate risks, as we expend more total energy to bring them to market. This was a seriously missing item of inquiry at the recent Australian Royal Commission into Banks.
Australian big political parties have consistently proven that they cannot stand up to Coal, Oil and Gas corporations, in any significant way. That became very clear, when in Western Australia, a very short lived policy put out by its Environment Protection Authority - EPA, was completely ditched. The policy recommended "carbon offsets" to be applied to the carbon emissions from new big COG projects.
The total carbon emissions from any new extraction fields are likely to push global warming way past survivable limits. This is simply not believed or heeded by Australian politicians. They can't stand up to the mining industry money controlled media. Some of the world's biggest resources companies campaigned against the changes. The greenhouse gas emissions in Western Australia are rapidly going up. Political money and media pressure from resource corporations turns leading politicians into corporate attack dogs against the a need to mitigate the risks to human species survival. Our current "accelerated" economic growth, based on COG energy, is incompatible with a human habitable bio-shell.
Nothing is so useless as nation-states that pretend,
that they will fix our climate health.
These King Canutes will mine coal, gas and oil, to the very end,
To avoid sacrifice of their bosses wealth.
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. That the NSW government is even considering a new big coal-fired power station, shows that power elite in government in NSW are insane. They have entirely lost touch with reality and voters. Rebuilding perfectly good stadiums is insane. Dangerous climate insanity is trying to foist new coal power stations on the people of NSW.
New coal is more expensive than renewable energy plant, even before the
costs of fuel and climate change are factored in. Doing the same thing
again and gain, despite evident mounting losses is a typical gamblers
madness in throwing more resources at lost "Sunk Costs".
A rotten "game of mates" with wholesale denial is the only possible explanation. NSW Liberals seem no different from their federal counterparts in being "homophobic, women-hating, climate-change deniers". They have covered up this a bit by using Gladys as a public front
NSW voters would have to be collectively insane to keep these absolute nuts in government. Maybe this will happen, showing our civilization to be completely insane before its final collapse.
When karmic reckoning in the form of climate impacts finally brings Australia to its knees, current events in Africa should have already taught us what to expect, unless of course, the Australian media continue to fail in their coverage.
Crisscrossing the roadless savannah, I quickly learned that cadavers meant a village was near.
Sovereign Risks reduction. What does it really mean?
Both ALP and Adani are in total agreement on what they think is Australia's biggest risk, which is being stopped from making lots of money for new foreign owned coal and gas mining.
But our biggest existential
risks are the burning by anyone of all the fossil fuels in the mines we
already have. And lessening that risks means having no new coal or gas
mines, for a start. There is nothing more certain than additional climate impact from fossil fuel burning, and that climate change will finally stop us if we don't stop our fossil fuel burning.
ALP Shadow Treasurer Chris Bowen - says he won't block Adani mine "because of sovereign risk".
Adani coal mine chief executive Lucas Dow - about a bill to have no coal mining in Galilee Basin.
"This bill would create enormous regulatory uncertainty and sovereign
risk for Queensland, which would extend well beyond simply the Galilee
Basin" . .
By now we should know by now whose side the ALP is really on. They are using exactly the same excuses as Adani.
LNP tells big whopping lies about the lack of success of its Australian climate emission programs. ALP is in outright denial of the simplest concept that global climate change targets means it must not expand Coal and Gas exports further. Both parties are big liars. Both are in serious contempt of the general public, and climate science. Their attitudes stem from taking money from big foreign coal and gas. These big coal & gas parties think that growing the economy is more important than bowing to the dictates of having a survivable future climate. The global fossil fuel economy is a huge unsustainable bubble. The industrial revolution started its great inflation from deposits of finite, non-renewable coal energy. The best quality and easiest to mine of coal oil and gas have already converted to greenhouse gas, and our bubble economies are bound to collapse in near future. Better to do it now, before the global damage and subsequent collapse is even greater.
Quite a lot of us are very concerned, enough to take actions.
The Climate Council of Australia points out the repetition of the great big Australian federal government climate lie, better known as the "Emission Reductions Fund". And since there is a NSW state election very soon, emphasize that NSW is the worst polluting state, and that it is costing us.
Newly released figures from the Environment and Energy department show there’s been a 0.9 percent increase in greenhouse gas pollution in the year to September 2018. Greenhouse gas pollution has now been rising for more than 3 years.
Today’s global consumption of fossil fuels now stands at roughly five times what it was in the 1950s,
and one-and-half times that of the 1980s when the science of global
warming had already been confirmed and accepted by governments with the
implication that there was an urgent need to act.
The drive of power and wealth that dominates society to renew its dominance, drives economic expansion, and that in turn underpins consumption growth
Consumption of fossil fuels is conceived among political and corporate elites, in the media, in international institutions and sections of academia, as being essentially an act by individual humans. This is an abstraction that normalises, and excludes from critique, the technological systems on which those individual humans are dependent, and the social and economic control of those systems.
It will be up to the Australian public to ensure that neither of the Big Coal Parties get to form a government with an outright majority. If they do, it will be our climate peril. Both ALP and LNP have indicated they will do nothing to block the Adani Carmichael Coal Mine.
So please vote third party, greens, or independents, with ALP and LNP as last choice, in that order. We've had a balance of power minority government before. They make for better democracy. This time we should make it so and keep it. Keep big corporate coal political parties out of absolute power and corruption. This your only choice if you don't want to have another new coal mine in Australia.
Chris Bowen is the current ALP Shadow Treasurer. Chris Bowen was reported by the Australian Business section, as saying the ALP will not block the Adani Coal Mine, while he is in the ALP. "
Global resource rates of supply of nearly everything to each nation-state are being fought over more often as the global demand exceeds the rates that our finite earth can provide. Trade between nation-states becomes unable to rectify imbalances in national resources and production. Continued growth of any large nation-state is direct threat to the resource supply of all others, when global supply cannot be increased fast enough for all. The result now is a trade war between USA and China, as each tries to hurt the growth of the other. As growth is the global economic religion, the restriction of growth of other nations now becomes a goal, in order to continue one's own national-growth.
Australia has taken the side of the USA, and has been doing the USA's bidding, in its rejection of Huawei for 5G rollout. Australian government & society has also been both rejecting and denying the increase in Chinese influence in our trade, immigration and political finance. Australian Coal exports have become a target as part of that war. Coal shipments have experienced go-slow's and now an outright block. Meanwhile GlenCore has announced it will not increase its total production of coal, while we all know that all fossil fuel burning needs to be declining now for a safe climate.
It looks like inter-nation carbon consumption rivalry will do more to decrease total global emissions than any notions of being a good global citizen on the climate emergency, as the quest for growth still takes priority over everything. If the USA and China were serious about fossil fuel consumption reduction, they could plan to reduce their dependency faster than global supply supply limits are going to run out, but no, we have a competition to see who can grow to burn the most in the fastest possible way. Only real supply limits indicate that both cannot succeed in individual growth aims. Each will restrict the other.
Coal is only part of the energy mix, of which 90% is still fossil fuels. Gas and Oil Shipments remain unaffected. Australia is now the official no. 1 global exporter of LNG.
Foreign investments in Australian LNG production are doing well. Gas is an energy substitute for coal, but using gas instead of coal provides little or no long term global heating benefit. Both Qatar and USA will increasing LNG production, to rival Australian exports. Global energy consumption is still increasing, 2% in 2017. In absolute terms, that increase is adding a lot more greenhouse gas emissions, due to the absolute large size of our global economy. Until this global energy economy starts decreasing fast, and soon, all bets of surviving near-future climate catastrophe are off. This requires a large decline in global energy trade.
