Climate Change

[stylofone]

I just read "if you don't know, vote no to nuclear." To be hoist with their own petard would serve them right, the fuckers.

[pipbarber]

Neoliberalism will demand that building these idiotic power plants will mean that every single last cent of gov money will be shuffled to corporations and a small army of contractors, including marketers, to get the job done, and of course the cost of parasite infested projects like this will quadruple and take years longer than anticipated. But once it's started, you can't just stop it - well you can but the ALP don't have much of a record of that (stage 3 tax cuts springs to mind). You've probably got a good 2 to 3 decades of public money flowing to construction corporations.

As though we have 3 decades! LOL

[stylofone]

Neoliberalism will demand that building these idiotic power plants will mean that every single last cent of gov money will be shuffled to corporations and a small army of contractors, including marketers, to get the job done, and of course the cost of parasite infested projects like this will quadruple and take years longer than anticipated. But once it's started, you can't just stop it - well you can but the ALP don't have much of a record of that (stage 3 tax cuts springs to mind). You've probably got a good 2 to 3 decades of public money flowing to construction corporations.

As though we have 3 decades! LOL

Note that the policy also involves setting up other factories around the nuclear plants to make lots more useless crap using this mythical nuclear-generated energy. Jobs 'n' growth baby! It's a 1950s industrial dystopian fever dream, like something out of those old propaganda films on archive.org.

[stevebrooks]

I think he is doomed to fail with his mad plan. Australian voters generally reject major changes, e.g the last two referendums. However there is still a danger of a sort of national mass brainfart which we have seen so many times overseas, so we must be vigilant.

Dutton has come up with the perfect counter to that argument, and it basically boils down to this, "people are stupid." Don't believe me?

“We’ve got a staged approach here. If we just dumped all of this information out at once, people wouldn’t be able to consume it,” Mr Dutton told 2GB.

So he thinks everyone who wants to know the detailed planned, financiers, economists, engineers and the rest, they're all to stupid to understand the plans if they were released all at once, therefore he has to sneak them up bit by bit so as not to scare people. That is the most outrageously stupid argument I have ever heard, and now we know there's some real shit in there he doesn't want people to know about! I mean if these politicians can understand it all it must be pretty simple, the fact is it's probably so bad it's Bob the Builder level planning, this is going to be interesting! I can imagine the responses this statement is going to receive from intelligent people who want to know the facts!

https://www.news.com.au/national/politi ... 26b9d7a46a

[pipbarber]

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... -australia

How embarrassing. Even the US is ahead of us. But how to explain it? My first thought was that Rupert dominates the Australian news market, perhaps more so than elsewhere. Is it our ridiculous private school system?

It's especially amazing as Australia is being massively impacted by climate change. Record floods, fires, a dying reef and so on. It's all right in front of our eyes!

Don't look up Australia.

[stevebrooks]

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... -australia

How embarrassing. Even the US is ahead of us. But how to explain it? My first thought was that Rupert dominates the Australian news market, perhaps more so than elsewhere. Is it our ridiculous private school system?

It's especially amazing as Australia is being massively impacted by climate change. Record floods, fires, a dying reef and so on. It's all right in front of our eyes!

Don't look up Australia.

Yeah we are basically little town USA, and you know people from little towns are more resistant to change.

[stylofone]

Not sure if this will be paywalled for others (it's not for me), but here are some quotes just in case. Trump is so awful in so many ways, this particular nightmare gets less attention than it should IMO.

Observers expect him to actively overturn massive progress made in the US under President Joe Biden and undermine international headway by ending climate diplomacy with China and either withdrawing again from the Paris Agreement or sabotaging it from within.

When it comes to the Paris Agreement, it is the latter option that prompts the most concern.

Should Trump entirely abandon the Paris Agreement, his views would become irrelevant to a world already determined to get on with the job, says Alden Meyer, a senior associate with the global climate think tank E3G.

“The real depressing scenario would be if he stayed inside the talks and tried to build alliances with the Saudis or the Russians or others that have been destabilising forces for ambition over the years,” Meyer says.

“Their view would be, ‘Let’s try to roll back things, you know, rather than just pulling out and being on the sidelines’.”

“A Trump victory will fuel the hard right, who are never interested in joining a global effort, who don’t want to see any transition happen, who were very happy to let the status quo operate and to run coal for as long as possible.”

He says this influence can be seen in Australian politics with the opposition’s decision to abandon Australia’s 2030 Paris target and focus on nuclear power.

“I don’t think [Opposition Leader Peter] Dutton and [Nationals leader David] Littleproud would have moved into this space if it hadn’t been for the long shadow cast by the Trump presidential race.”

A similar shift in rhetoric has already been noticed in Europe, with a right-wing resurgence and a lack of progress in United Nations climate talks held in Bonn this month.

https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-amer ... 5jlrh.html

[stylofone]

Sometimes it feels like we just have to hammer on with the same points over and over again, but articles like this show that things are changing. They're getting worse. A key figure is that on the current trajectory, Australia is on target to reduce its emissions by 7% by 2069, compared to 2005 levels. We're supposed to reach net zero by 2050, but with all this gas we'll still be at 93% by 2069. So we will still be adding massively to CO2 even then.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/gr ... s-net-zero

[pipbarber]

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-n ... est-ntwnfb

How does one measure governmental greenwashing? Might i suggest by the penalties imposed on climate change protest?

The ALP ought to be gasping in shame, madly changing legislation. Breath not being held....

[stylofone]

Google's 2020 claim that farcical offsets made it carbon neutral never had any credibility. Now its AI madness has led it to dump even this bogus claim. Microsoft has made similar regressive steps in its emission policy since this shiny new AI thing came along. Big tech is rapacious and dishonest, like big tobacco and their fossil fuel cousins. The idea that the IPCC or whoever it is can invent a new form of zero emissions capitalism has a severe credibility problem. The reality is that emissions are increasing, they have grown at a horrifying rate since we discovered how dangerous they are. It's almost as if we have this massive global program to destroy the climate, instead of actually fix it.

Google has ended its mass purchase of cheap carbon offsets and thus stopped claiming that its operations are carbon neutral, according to the tech giant’s latest environmental report. The company now aims to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2030.

The Alphabet Inc. unit has claimed that it’s been carbon neutral in its operations since 2007. The status was based on purchasing carbon offsets to match the volume of emissions that were generated from its buildings, data centers and business travel. But in its latest report, the company states: “Starting in 2023, we’re no longer maintaining operational carbon neutrality.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... on-neutral