ABC TV broadcast its Four Corners investigation documentary of "Digging into Adani" last night , October 2nd. I watched it live. It is also now available on ABC iView, for viewing or download. I thought the program captured pretty well the underlying sleaze, corruption, environmental damage, tax evasion, behind the rise of this Indian Corporate Behemoth. I have seen the evidence before in bits and pieces on our fragmentary media. Our ABC have done a public service in bringing it together.

PRASHANT BHUSHAN - PUBLIC INTEREST LITIGATOR: They appear to be crooks from all this evidence that the Department of Revenue Intelligence has unearthed.

They clearly appear to be crooks.

STEPHEN LONG: Crooks is a strong word.

PRASHANT BHUSHAN: Yes, it is, but unfortunately that's the only word that can be used in these circumstances

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Four corners - "digging into Adani" - transcript - http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/digging-into-adani/9008500

It also demonstrated well the political dynamite of the Australian and Queensland government, as having shown a consistent and unreasonable behaviour of being  "blindfolded and bent over backwards" in order to try and give the Adani Corporation everything it could possibly need. The shame of seeing this happen should be most acute to our politicians who are involved. It indicates that both Australian and Indian governments have much that is broken and corrupt, deep within the political and regulatory institutions that are supposed to provide protection against environmental abuse by corporations. A lack of shame indicates complicity and a deep game of mates.

"Crooks" also appears to be the only word that can be used in these circumstances. On the surface, Mr Adani and family are big-shots in India, owning ports, mines, coal-power stations, having mates in the government and regulatory agencies, and are able to break the rules without personal consequence, with blanket denial. The Adani Coal project will indulge in wanton environmental neglect, and break all of Mr Greg Hunts Environmental approval conditions, because that is what it always has done.

Below the surface is desperation. The world's biggest coal power station, owned by Adani, does not pay, and is up for sale for about 2 cents. The complex structure of shell companies and tax-havens indicates, and lots of uncompensated environment damage, indicates that Adani cannot make an honest living. Global systems of resource exploitation and resource market returns on investment have been in seriously poor state for a decade, and corporatchiks are running it using mountains of debt, on the verge of bankruptcy. Too bad the global system is choosing this time to crumple and collapse, as roughly predicted in "Limits to Growth" in 1972.

It seems to be a typical example of how industrial-government-nation-override-regulations-&-environment forms a bubble system - IGNORE - that does not value any part of semi-intact nature, except for extractable fossil energy.  IGNORE has full-on addictive, psychopathic, delusional behaviour. Our system of IGNORE dumps the costs of "externalities" on others.  IGNORE allows free use of tax-havens through complex corporate structures. IGNORE employs the use of blanket denial from politicians and corporatchiks, who are often the same people at different stages of their career path. IGNORE leaves the permanent health and environment costs to be suffered by others, including the current climate emergency that requires the greenhouse gas emissions of civilisation be cut to nearly zero as fast as possible. IGNORE takes us on the path to extinction at the mercy of our Earth System that is fast going crazy.

I fully expect the Australian politicians involved to pretend this broadcast never happened, or to employ the blanket denial strategy of IGNORE. The only way to overcome this, is to write, email, phone, facebook etc, en-masse to mental cripples involved (Prime Minister Mr M.T., Energy and climate minister Mr J.F. etc) to indicate that the Adani Coal mine is completely out of bounds, and that they shall be voted out of office if they persist with it, because it the evidence is far into the public domain now.

The opposite path to IGNORE is to go for RESILE - Renewable Energy Sustain Inherent Limited Environment. We need to back off from pushing the Earth life support system to breaking point. Those limits are not precisely known. System time delays, such as delayed decades of a climate emergency full of booby traps, and greenhouse gas, positive feedback tipping points, and over-exploitation all indicate that many critical life support systems are in a danger zone. At past 400 ppm CO2, and climbing, we are well up over the Holocene long term maximum of 280 ppm.

RESILE requires a collapse of global energy production away from fossil fuels. This will surely cause a collapse of economic growth, and a collapse of resource consumption, and a loss of luxury comforts. The entire purpose of investing in safe climate energy technologies, is to exclude Gas and Coal from being consumed down to the last carbon tonne, while providing a modicum of energy support for the remaining survivors of human civilisation. RESILE will require non-voluntary life-style changes which abandon over-consumption in favour of rationed and rational survival strategy. RESILE must invest in living without fossil fuels.

Collapse is happening faster now, as net-energy per person declines fast around the globe.   The USA is approaching a state of general employment collapse, is unable to maintain public welfare and infrastructure. Most importantly, the USA government is now totally incompetent. The Jerks of Australian government regularly dance to the strings of USA military policy.

Only a complete abandonment of fossil fuels, will allow a simpler form of civilisation to flourish at a decent level of complexity, while Earth Systems still allow.  The difficulty of this is extreme. The only civilisation that has managed to do a form of this with a long sustained success was the eastern part of the Roman empire, known as the Byzantine, when forced to do so, when in extreme peril, after the collapse of the western Roman empire. Through its religion, writing systems and culture, it has a lasting influence in the Russian speaking nations of today.

Today's "Western Civilisation" looks ready to collapse into demented dotage.

Our President is the incarnation of infantile autism.  His Braindead Trust of dotty warlords are brass boobs with the intellectual acuity of ventriloquists’ dummies.  His cabinet is a looney gaggle of retro clowns and Snerd goofuses, embarrassing even to that stumblebum Congress of sociopathic criminals and defectives that confirmed them.

And the Goldberg Machine of US Empire churns on.  And so it goes, as Vonnegut said.  In his view humans were put on earth to fart around, and this seems certain in our case.

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    How Long America - CounterPunch - https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/10/02/how-long-america-2/

"Looney gaggle of retro clowns and Snerd goofuses, sociopathic criminals and defectives"   I think that covers the majority of Australian political parties of today, as they push the throttle hard down on fossil fuel extraction of gas and coal, just like the USA. It is IGNORE all the way to final extinction, driving blind and bent over facing backwards. Sooner or later, the blindfold has to come off, and the current course, and political positions on fossil fuels will have to be abandoned. Invest in fossil fuel free resilience and lifestyle, for that is the only final destination.

I am sure that individuals competing in the "ruin the nation for my own advancement" leadership elite have some smarts, but all of them fall into the IGNORE category.

STEPHEN LONG: Watching on from Delhi, India's former Environment Minister can't believe what he is seeing.
JAIRAM RAMESH: Ultimately, it's the sovereign decision of the Australian Government, the federal government and the state government. But public money is involved, and more than public money, natural resources are involved.
I'm very, very surprised that the Australian government, uh, for whatever reason, uh, has uh, seen it fit, uh, to all along handhold Mr. Adani.
So, my message to the Australian Government would certainly be, uh, please demonstrate that you have done more homework than has been the case so far

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    Four corners - "digging into Adani" - transcript - http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/digging-into-adani/9008500.

It is past 50 years since "Limits to Growth" was published in 1972. And so it goes, business as usual.