Climate Change

[pipbarber]

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... -toxic-air

Climate change adjacent. Pretty scary stuff.

Anyway, Rishi, he no care.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... en-targets

[joele]

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... -toxic-air

OK this is interesting, that WHO's safe air quality guideline for PM2.5 concentrations is 5ug/m3, so when they say almost everyone in Europe is breathing toxic air they are saying over 5ug/m3.

In Victoria everything up to 25ug/m3 is considered "GOOD" low pollution air and 25-50ug/m3 is considered fair only triggering over to poor air at 50ug which is 10 times what the WHO recommends as safe.

https://www.epa.vic.gov.au/for-communit ... in-the-air

Melbourne at least does seem to sit under 15ug/m3 for the last 48 hours and mostly under 10 thankfully.

https://www.epa.vic.gov.au/for-community/airwatch

Though in southewest Sydney we have it peaking over the last 48 hours at 55ug/m3 (though only hazardous due to PM10 not PM2.5)

Screenshot_2023-09-21_11-59-56.jpg (156.72 KiB) Viewed 1353 times

Wollongong pm2.5 peaked at 123ug/m3

Screenshot_2023-09-21_12-00-36.jpg (123.8 KiB) Viewed 1353 times

https://aqicn.org/city/australia/nsw/wo ... /illawarra

[stylofone]

Anyway, Rishi, he no care.

I heard a commentator say that Rishi's planet-fucking policies were inspired by a recent by-election (Johnson's old seat of Uxbridge), which the tories unexpectedly won, allegedly because of measures to ease traffic congestion. So they have dumbed the whole issue down and decided to go further down the climate denial path, but it is doomed to fail because it comepletely misreads the electorate. I'm looking forward to those conservative arseholes losing the next election, bring it on please you fuckers.

[pipbarber]

I heard a commentator say that Rishi's planet-fucking policies were inspired by a recent by-election (Johnson's old seat of Uxbridge), which the tories unexpectedly won, allegedly because of measures to ease traffic congestion. So they have dumbed the whole issue down and decided to go further down the climate denial path, but it is doomed to fail because it comepletely misreads the electorate. I'm looking forward to those conservative arseholes losing the next election, bring it on please you fuckers.

I'm not sure they're misreading the electorate. The rise in populism suggests to me that the tories, in this particular case, will try and position themselves as anti-establishment, and fighting back against the woke elites that are causing all the problems. It probably makes a certain type of electoral sense.

Immigrants, the EU and the green mafia are why your wages don't cover the rent and you can't afford to turn the heater on. Regulations are why raw sewage flows in the rivers and green is just code for communist. And...and...whatever other unhinged bullshit comes to mind as an explanation for the slow motion collapse in progress and what electorally expedient story will fix it.

And what really is the alternative political platform? One that soberly assesses our situation.

Vote for me, my platform is that it's too late to prevent civilization in its current form surviving global heating. The near future is all about dodging natural disasters and debt collectors, finding enough food and clean water and trying to prolong life for our children as best we can with no clear and obvious path visible at all. We are fucked, and we have no fucking idea how to fix things.

So...Vote 1, we are clueless in the face of pending disaster!

Yeah...probably won't win an election with that. The reality has superseded our political forms. The tories could well win again because electoral politics is not based on reality.

[stylofone]

So...Vote 1, we are clueless in the face of pending disaster!

In the Emperor's New Clothes fairytale, how long does everyone go on pretending? We are well and truly in that stage now, but in our case the many children who have spoken out have been ignored so far. This is the scenario which sees Sunak in with a chance.

Also, what the fairytale doesn't mention is the people who don't just pretend, they actually truly BELIEVE that they can see the Emperor's very fine garments. Then there are loyalty brigades who are encouraged to inform on any family members who raise sartorial doubts, and the death squads who deal with the dissenters.

Despite all that, on balance I think Sunak is on a steep slope to the depths of the valley of loserdom.

[Irrev-Black]

Air travel is mostly wastage. Could've been Zoom, could've been an email... you know what I mean.

Well, humanity's profligate wastage of the environment is coming back to bite air travel. Anyone know the words to Elvis's All Shook Up?

[wadaye]

Dowd indicates William Catton's overshoot as the most important book he and his wife Connie have read in their lives, and that publicising it is the thing that when he goes to his grave will be his most satisfying achievement.
I agree that Overshoot is paradigm shattering and eyes opening

[stylofone]

Overshoot, I just read, was written in 1980. 43 years is the blink of an eye in terms of the climate, but not many people have been able to articulate what is just around the corner. Plenty of people still can't do it even now that we are so much closer to the catastrophe.

This reminded me of an absurd article I read by former Liberal leader and clownish political weirdo Alexander Downer. Basically he said Rishi Sunak is brilliant and his backsliding on climate change policies was "realistic". Downer, for some reason, is a member of the UK Conservative Party and gets to vote on the leader. Downer's adoration of Sunak implies we're really in trouble because he clearly thinks thinks the sun also shines out of Sunak's arse, and along with a whole lot of methane it's making things a hell of a lot worse.

I'd say it's more realistic to assume that the climate disasters in the coming years will be bad enough for people like Sunak to be prosecuted for crimes against humanity.

Downer's bilge is behind a paywall, but this is the guts of it:

Over the last few weeks, the British prime minister has done what few leaders have had the courage to do. He’s launched a policy attack on vacuous climate change sloganeering by telling the public the truth.

He knows that to achieve net zero by 2050 will require huge costs and sacrifices, if it’s to be achieved at all. And it’s low-income people who will bear the greatest pain from crippling increases in energy bills, forcing motorists to buy expensive electric vehicles, charging people to drive their cars in built-up areas, forcing people to buy expensive boilers, insulate their homes and so on.

Sunak has told the public the truth and announced policy changes to make the cost of climate action more affordable and less painful. Target years banning new petrol and diesel car sales have been extended, lower income people have been exempted from installing heat pumps rather than gas boilers, plans to tax meat sales have been canned and so on.

Sunak is being honest. Ultimately, all these ambitious climate targets – laudable as they may be – may be achievable, but not if we trash the place.

https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/bl ... 920-p5e6cg

[pipbarber]

Rishi's play will probably spread across conservative brains like a virus. If he wins with it, which of course he could, expect Dutton to follow suit in our election, which would be a few months after the UK's.

It's a wild ploy, gain another term in office in order to oversee more of a collapsing state.

But we all know that installing a solar panel, driving a tesla and eating an extra plant based meal every week may be meaningful on a psychological and existential level, but it won't prevent catastrophic global heating.

Nothing short of total systemic change for adaptive purposes will have any lasting social benefit, and given that no one is proposing that, why do anything? It really is a brilliant political reset, if your solitary goal is reelection.

It also, rightly, points out that the less wealthy majority will be disproportionally disadvantaged by the types of policies green new deal politics embrace. Again, a brilliant slight of hand trick here. GND politics is just greenwashing capitalism and capitalism always disadvantages the less wealthy, so Rishi is using the dangers of capitalism to promote capitalism. It's an orgy of obfuscation, confusion, greed and power, and it might work - as in he might win an election, and so might Dutton.

But none of these childish power games are likely to matter, in the end.

[pipbarber]

It's not too late, provided we....
There's still time so long as we....
It's not all bad news, we can still....
The science is clear, we need to....

Yeah, nah....

‘Staggering’ 740 fossil fuels projects approved by flawed laws, climate council reveals

New research from the climate council reveals a “staggering” 740 fossil fuel projects have been approved through Australia’s main environmental law.

The council says this highlights a “fundamental flaw” in the legislation – its “failure” to address climate change.

A new report shows the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation is failing to protect Australia’s unique wildlife and iconic natural places from the “catastrophic impact” of climate change.

Climate Council CEO Amanda McKenzie said our understanding of climate change has changed drastically in the 20 years since this law was written, but environmental protections haven’t kept up.

'As climate impacts worsen around us, it’s urgent we fix this.

The Albanese Government promised to strengthen the law before the last election, but while this work seems stuck in limbo, more fossil fuel projects are being waved through – including four since the government came to office.

The Government can step in to genuinely protect our environment by strengthening the law to put climate at its heart.'

...or it might not quite get around to it just now, but certainly in the next term, pretty soon after that, absolutely on the agenda...