Things are rather quiet at the moment as we wait to see wether we get a “Climate Change is Crap” government or “the Greatest Moral Challenge of our time but we haven’t got the guts to upset anyone”. Commentators seem in general optimistic that a hung parliament will help rather than hurt.
Labor always had to do a deal with the Greens if they were going to govern and the agreement reached yesterday is a measured one, with no major promises but many hopeful signs, which might move the odds just in favour of a Labor government, and if some sort of stability can be reached I agree that this may be a positive step, with many of the independents having good histories on Climate (Katter excepted). Fingers crossed.
Meanwhile there seems to be no chance that the USA will do anything except lurch to the right, and hide its head in the sand.
In both countries the high stakes and ever more urgent need to do something which will increase our cost of living in the short term does seem to have driven many on the political right into what Marc Roberts calls an Apocalyptic Feedback Loop.
“The regulation of Carbon Dioxide in our atmosphere should be left to God and not government and I oppose all measures of Cap and Trade as well as the teaching of global warming theory in our schools.”
Strangely this comes as we are getting some good news, with one of the authors of the Planetary Boundaries Study that I discussed a while believing that we can reverse the nine indicators in their study in an interesting Video from TED.
Separately we have news that Europe is moving to renewable energy faster than thought, with for example, Portugal getting nearly 45% of its energy from renewables, up from 17% in 5 years and a town in Maine has cut its landfill by 50% by charging on the basis of rubbish volume, which will result in major savings for the residents as their trash removal fees are cut. Three different houses have been built to a German design which generate up to five times the power they use.
Unfortunately it’s not all good news, with a recent study showing that the previous increase in plant productivity of 3% per decade has reversed in the last 10 years becoming a 1 per cent decline, mainly due to climate change induced drought. At the same time a coral expert warns that the Earth’s oceans are already about 30 percent more acidic than they were before the industrial revolution and states:-
“There is no escaping the fact that we are going to need major reductions in our CO2 emissions — something like 80 to 90 percent. When we see governments arguing about reductions of 10 to 15 percent, I think all of us in the marine science community need to say that CO2 reductions of this scale are simply not going to be sufficient. We have to get off fossil fuels.”
Sunday the 12th September is Sustainable House Day with over 200 homes across Australia, including our own, open to the public and showcasing different sustainable techniques.
Firstly thanks to oldnick, a commenter at the Guardian website, for this lovely definition.
“CACC – catastrophic anthropogenic climate change has a nice ring to it, though some will just say it’s a pile of shit. I don’t say “global warming” because I don’t think it’s broad enough. I will now start using CACC, as in “to CACC oneself” when faced with the gloomy state of the environment. Oh, and of course with CACC, any deniers could be referred to as “Pooh-pooers”"
George Monbiot had a typically hard headed comment on magical thinking in the Guardian yesterday, where he looks at vertical gardens, which according to their promoters, can feed city dwellers without pesticides, herbicides, oil based fertilizers, and reduce the energy needed for intensive farming and transport. George is not kind to this basically silly idea, and then goes on to discuss our habit of allowing our wishes to overrule our rational thinking, and laments that this fault is common on both sides of the climate debate.
The truth, as countless permaculture plots, including ours, have shown is that you can grow most of a household’s vegetables without artificial fertilisers and pesticides and with very little energy use. It’s surprisingly effective, and doesn’t require nearly as much work as you would expect, but it does need reasonably constant attention and its complexity means it doesn’t scale up well. The big organic farmers use almost as much energy as their conventional competitors, so I suspect (for this and other reasons) that sustainable agriculture is going to stay on a smaller scale. Growing some of your own vegies and keeping a few chooks is enjoyable and rewarding for those with a bit of land and an hour or so to spare during daylight hours, but its not going to catch on in our time and space poor city lives.
Our industry is built on specialisation and scale, and it has reached the limits where our major companies are as powerful as governments, and totally focused on the bottom line. This edifice is built on cheap energy and disregard for our natural ecosystems. When you buy in your fertilizer in bulk you want consistency and a low price, which means an oil based synthetic from a distant factory is preferred to a more sporadic and variable supply of animal manure from next door, even though the latter is cheaper and much better for the long term health of the soil. Scale, cheap energy, the ability to ignore environmental damage, and the profit motive causes the first to be preferred to the second.
Our cities are built on the same principles, we have needed a concentration of people in the one place to operate many of last century’s technologies, and they needed to be physically present at their workplace. Although this is often no longer true, our administrative methods still encourage the huge waste of energy and the boring time-wasting that is modern commuting. One of the less obvious benefits of Labor’s fast broadband rollout is that it could start to break this down by making simple forms of telepresence cheap and ubiquitous. Reducing commuting is only going to happen in one of two ways, either by crowding people closer together, which will increase the social pressures we are already seeing, or by spreading out into smaller communities and using telecommunications effectively to bridge the gap.
Our infrastructure has also reached a scale where it is quite fragile. It seems every time there is a little fog in the Sydney area, chaos descends on airline flights all over the east coast, and any road accident on a major freeway does the same for the roads. The costs to industry are starting to get quite serious, and the same sort of thing has happened with electricity supplies, both here and overseas, even before the stresses of environmental legislation are layered on. The trend will continue until we spend much more on infrastructure (more magical thinking), or start to address the root cause: too many people too close together.
Quite separately most working people complain that they don’t have enough time at home with the family, especially during daylight hours, and I have certainly found that the sense of community here in our little valley is dramatically more satisfying than that in the city. So there are major advantages to a bit of localisation, both in energy and social terms. It will however be swamped if our population continues to grow at third world levels, and so will our infrastructure. So its welcome that population is at last being discussed, even if the debate at the warm and fuzzy stage and is mainly framed in terms of immigration. We clearly see that the extra numbers of people in our cities are causing problems, while all of government’s and industry’s goals encourage continued growth. Hopefully this debate will continue after the election, and population planning is incorporated into government decisions, and maybe even the removal of perverse incentives such as the baby bonus. I’m not holding my breath.
So engaging in a bit of near magical thinking of my own, I can see that given a stable population, fast broadband could allow many workers to work remotely, which in turn would slow or break the ever increasing transport nightmare as well as boosting our communities. Again this won’t happen while governments are fixated on growth, and this won’t change until they start making decisions in the national interest, rather than believing the totally magical thinking that the market will fix all ills.
Tomorrow Australia votes in the first election I can remember where there is little apparent difference between the major parties, where most of the trumpeted policies are also magical tricks, and both leaders appear to have abandoned the principles they once stood for. Of the two I think Labor’s broadband policy puts them slightly ahead, while my key hope is that the Greens gain the balance of power in the Senate.
This will be the year when the mainstream media started to report on the effects of climate change as if it is real, and without all the caveats they have used so far. Not before time, and not too surprising given the:-
Massive floods in Pakistan affecting more than 12 million people.
Record temperatures in Russia causing huge wildfires.
Current Decade reaches an all time global temperature record.
Phytoplankton populations in the world’s oceans have declined by 40% since 1950 because of global arming (and they are the base of the food chain).
Wild weather is being reported everywhere.
NOAA has released their 2009 state of the climate report documenting 10 key indicators, each supported by multiple datasets, which unequivocally show the planet is warming.
All of the above are completely consistent with the predictions of climate change, and there is worse to come. So what are we doing about it?
That depends where you are. In Europe and China and India, the answer is “too little but at least trying”
Arabinda Misrah of The Energy Resources Institute in India said “If we look at the Indian scene and look at the actions being taken by state and central governments, it’s a little bit difficult to understand why it is so difficult to get strong legislation passed domestically in the United States”. As reported in ClimateProgress China has shut down enough inefficient coal power stations to power the UK and is set to start domestic carbon trading during the current 5 year plan. Unfortunately a growth rate of 10% still means that China will probably exceed European and US emissions by 2020.
In the US and Australia the answer is to bury our heads under the pillow, and hope we wake up from a bad dream. This article in the Guardian by Daniel Gros, director of the Centre for European Policy Studies, points to the reason. He says “Why has every attempt to set prices for global carbon emissions failed? The answer can be found in one word: coal – or, rather, the fact that coal is cheap and abundant. … In Europe, indigenous coal production no longer plays an important economic role. It is thus not surprising that Europe could enact a cap-and-trade system that imposes a carbon price on a large part of its industry”.
And this comes to heart of the matter, which I keep banging on about like a broken gramophone record…
Gros also states “A planet composed of nation-states that in turn are dominated by special interest groups does not seem capable of solving this problem” echoing Thomas Friedman in the US, Geoff Bertram in NZ and Ross Garnaut in Australia, who pulls no punches accusing Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott of a ”breathtaking sidestepping of responsibility” and calling our response to climate change ”an extraordinary failure of leadership”, concluding that something had ”gone wrong with political culture and economic policy”.
In Norway James Hansen has taken the government to task for on the one hand planning to reduce emissions by 40% while allowing the majority State owned Statoil to invest in Canadian tar sands. After a cop-out reply which said this was the board’s decision and purely a commercial matter Hansen stated “The Norwegian government’s position is a staggering reaffirmation of the global situation: even the greenest governments find it too inconvenient to address the implication of scientific facts. Perhaps our governments are in the hip pocket of the fossil fuel industry…”
Simply put we need to get the money out of politics. Don’t hold your breath.
First a frightening video from the Environmental Defense Fund (via Climate Progress) showing that we have known about our “Oil Problem” for decades, but somehow never quite got round to doing anything about it. I suspect the fossil fuel industry lobby had and has something to do with that.
There is an increasing gulf between what Australians say they want, and what their mainstream politicians are prepared to offer. Part of this is the complete lack of guts in the major parties, who are busy removing any policy that might loose them any votes, and who are paranoid about offending any business. This will shortly ensure that neither of them has any policy at all, and deliver an election where the voters see no real difference between the major parties. The other half is that Australians, while three quarters of them say they want action on climate change, don’t want to pay for it, and certainly don’t have any idea of the scale of the necessary changes. The pollies seem to think that if they knew they would run a mile, and they may well be right, given that the US looks to have given up any attempt to get a climate bill through the Senate, which probably kills off any meaningful international action until something very nasty frightens us.
What is interesting is that the mainstream media here seems to be increasingly interested in the lack of action on climate change, with the Sydney Morning Herald today having links to three articles calling for action on the front page of their website. (here, here and here – OK they also had the dreadful Miranda Devine drivelling on but we won’t go there). The last of the three articles even discusses the recently published Zero Carbon Australia Stationary Energy Plan. This starts with the premise which I’ve discussed in the past, that because Australia’s per capita emissions are so high, if each person now living was given an equal share of the remaining “safe” emissions, our share would run out in roughly 5 years, and then looks at what could be done to convert to a completely renewable stationary energy supply by 2020, using existing technology. While the plan is not perfect (see here for what I see as a biased critique from Bravenewclimate readers who are obviously disappointed that it doesn’t include any nuclear) it shows that we could probably convert most if not all of our generation to renewables for close to the study cost of $37 billion a year over 10 years, or 3% of the economy. If the costs were passed on in full then electricity would increase by 30-50% in price. Contrast this with the tariff increases of between 44% and 62% over the next 3 years announced recently. Not too shabby for a total revamp of generation capability within 10 years, and it must be said that costs are likely to fall quickly once changes of this scale start to bite. Not only does this deliver a massive boost the local manufacturing economy, create lots of green jobs and get rid of many of the sources of pollution we live with now, but it promises major benefits in a world which is slowly but surely running out of oil, as even Lloyds of London discusses in a report that states:-
“Companies which are able to take advantage of this new energy reality will increase both their resilience and competitiveness. Failure to do so could lead to expensive and potentially catastrophic consequences”
Another recent report from the UN shows that not only do corporations do massive damage to the environment, but that this damages their investors as well. The language is particularly blunt, calling modern businesses “soulless corporations” and likening them to a cancer on society, and stating:-
“We have created a soulless corporation that does not have any innate reason to be ethical about anything… The purpose of a corporation is its own self-interest. That is law. So it’s up to society and its leaders and thinkers to design the checks and balances that are needed to ensure that the corporation does not simply become cancerous, and that’s something that sometimes we do and sometimes we really don’t.”
No surprise therefore that people are getting a bit agitated, from George Monbiot posting one of his excellent articles on the role of government in regulating business, to a website which asks Labor voters to pledge not to vote for them unless they make a real commitment on climate.
Unfortunately it takes years of many people getting agitated (George has been doing it for decades) to turn the tide of public opinion. Vote for the Greens in the Senate, and keep talking about the problem, and hope we aren’t too late.
I have just realised that one of my heroes, science fiction author Kurt Vonnegut, suggested in 1990 that one day soon we will all go “belly-up like guppies in a neglected fishbowl.” He suggested an epitaph for our planet “We could have saved it, but we were too darn cheap and lazy.” It seems to hit the nail on the head.
Everywhere I seem to look, people are realising that we have, in the last 50 or so years, almost totally ignored energy efficiency in pursuit of convenience or short term cost, or even worse, just because we don’t care. In many cases we can improve efficiency by adopting and adapting old fashioned techniques, as in the case of this new zero energy laboratory where the design leader John Andary said
“We went back to simple design techniques that were used before there were electric lights and before we had air conditioning compressors. What you had then were narrow buildings that optimized the use of daylight and windows you could open to provide ventilation.”
It is already obvious that Europe is significantly ahead of the rest of the world, presumably as a result of their earlier legislation, which while it has been widely condemned as confused and much too weak, is at least putting manufacturers on notice that change is coming. Imagine what would happen if we actually got serious and put a real price on carbon, without the massive bribes to the current big polluters.
Unfortunately the fall was caused by the recession rather than any deliberate attempt to cut emissions.
Even worse the entire reduction was offset by steep rises in China and India.
The report by a Dutch group shows that China’s emissions in 2009 were just higher than France at 6.1 tons per capita. However both are dwarfed by the USA (17.2) and Australia at 18.8 tons per capita, the highest of the countries analysed.
What do you do as good scientist when some folk doubt your science and claim many scientists are uncertain etc etc? Well you apply science to the problem of course. In a report called “Expert credibility in climate change” a group review the publication history and number of citations (well accepted as a measure of credibility in science) of those making convinced and unconvinced comments about te evidence for global warming. They find that the unconvinced group represent between 2% and 3% of the top scientists, depending on wether you include the top 50 or 200. They also show that the unconvinced group have half the “expertise” as their opponents and have a much lower publication rate.
Lastly a graphic published in technology review shows why efficiency is key to reducing emissions. I reproduce it below, with a larger version available via the link. It shows that 44.6% of the energy we use is lost in conversion from chemical to mechanical or electrical energy. This doesn’t include losses further down the line which bring the total to over 50%. So we are wasting more than half the energy we use. This should be our main focus, as it can actually save us money in many cases.
The Gulf Oil Spill has caused a surprising number of calls for fundamental change from a diverse set of commentators, from journalists to politicians, especially in the US, where folks are starting to make the connection that oil is a declining resource mainly produced in places that don’t much like them. The optimists hope they may eventually join the climate club via the back door, if the whole thing is not yet another passing fad of our short attention span society.
There seems no doubt that an international climate treaty is stalled unless the US makes a significant move on emissions reductions, with the news from the Bonn talks sounding more depressing by the day. The US senate climate bill looks to be quietly dying, and the spill reaction is probably its only remaining hope. The resolution to strip the EPA of its ability to regulate carbon dioxide was only narrowly defeated. Senator Bernie Sanders was scathing, pointing out that it was a debate on whether public policy was made based on science or not. This video of his speech, posted at Grist is worth watching.
Here at home we have the disgraceful spectacle of our mining barons whining about how hard life is when they can’t get the government to do exactly what they want for a change, while the voters are having a justifiable hissy fit about their politicians apparently being almost completely in thrall to commercial interests, as well as unable to organise a piss-up in a brewery. Unfortunately the short attention span will probably come into play again, though political cynicism is on a long term rising trend, and will eventually force some concessions. Apart from voting Green, especially in the Senate, I would suggest any “Get Money out of Politics” campaigns (such as this Getup petition) are worth supporting in the lead up to the federal election, just in case our current government is desperate enough to promise some well overdue change in this area. In Iceland recently a completely new party lead by a comedian won 34.7% of the vote and the comedian becomes the major of Reykjavik. Their platform was a vow to clean up politics.
However the forces for change face very significant obstacles, and not just from entrenched interests. Ensuring the public interest is placed above powerful private interests requires a sense of community, the passing of which pundits from bishops to police chiefs similarly lament. The problem is, many of our current technologies have been, and continue to push us in the other direction. Our species evolved in small groups, and continued to live in small communities until relatively recently. We cope with urbanisation by ignoring everyone outside our immediate circle of friends and family, which has stayed roughly the same size as a hunter gatherer clan. I have been totally surprised by the major difference in attitudes between the city, and our small community at one end of a rural valley, where the Gift Economy, still plays a significant part, and most people know almost everyone in the area.
TV’s and computers make it even easier to cut ourselves off, and once started the feedback makes it difficult to stop. From the limited statistics available children don’t seem to be any more at risk out on the streets now than they were in my childhood, when we were allowed to roam around all day on our bikes. The more we stay in our homes, the more dangerous the outside appears.
As I’ve mentioned before, we ignore our innate behaviour at our peril, as it seems to be responsible for much more of our behaviour than we would like to think. In a world that cannot sustain six billion people in small rural communities this presents a fundamental problem.
The science isn’t getting any better, with the arctic still exhibiting rapid change. The dissentients have made a bit of a thing about the recovery in the arctic sea ice extent (the area of ice which is fairly easy to measure with satellites – the volume of ice showed a brief recovery but has since declined rapidly). Now we are starting to see why. It seems a step change of some sort has happened in the last few years. Hot Topic discusses the matter here while Prof David Barber gives an interesting talk on his recent trip in this video. He describes sailing a Canadian icebreaker into what looked like thick multi year ice, only to find that they were able to stream through it at almost their full open water speed. It was made up of small chunks of waterlogged multi year ice glued together by only a few centimetres of new ice.
Climate Progress discusses the general decline, linking to a study that projects that the arctic will be essentially ice free in fall by 2016 (plus or minus 3 years), and shows a graph (below) that shows that even the ice extent hit an all time record low in June this year.
If you came here looking for good news, I would turn away quietly now. Though, in a strange way the subject of this post is a simple solution to many of our problems. It’s just not that easy to implement.
First however, a few bits of news.
Both the extent (area) and the volume (which is much more important) of the arctic sea ice are unusually low for the time of year, pointing again to the fact that the ice no longer fully recovers over winter and “in situ observations found heavily decayed, very small remnant multi-year and first-year floes interspersed with new ice between floes, in melt ponds, thaw holes and growing over negative freeboard older ice. This icescape contained approximately 25% open water”. Climate Progress has the details including graphs of the decline.
The chorus of calls for an end to the most damaging coal mines is reaching a crescendo, here in Australia, but especially in the US (here and here).
A group of geologists have suggested that humanity is having such a profound and lasting effect on the environment that a new geological period, the Anthropocene, should be declared, and members of the august committee that controls the geological time scale seem to agree. The report concludes:-
Human activity is altering the planet “on a scale comparable with some of the major events of the ancient past. Some of these changes are now seen as permanent, even on a geological time-scale.”
The recent UN biodiversity report says that the goods and services from the natural world must be factored in to the global economic system. Reports quoted showed that on average one third of Earth’s habitats have been damaged by humans, including 85% of seas and oceans, and more than 70% of Mediterranean shrubland, and that the world’s animal population has decreased by 30%, mangroves and sea grasses have shrunk in area by 20%, and live-coral coverage has fallen by 40% since 1970 (reported at hot Topic).
If you have 15 minutes spare, have a look at this video by coral reef ecologist Jeremy Jackson taking about the damage we have caused in the oceans.
Then at least have a quick look at this rather oily video on Climate Progress showing some underwater footage of the Gulf of Mexico. This spill has and will cause a massive amount of damage offshore, regardless of the visible damage, and argues that prevention is the only cure. Grist asks what the effect will be if current attempts to stop the oil fail.
Then Grist discusses the latest stats on oil production and figures we are much closer to peak oil than many folk think. At least roll down to the graph marked “Worlds Liquid Fuels Supply”, and look both at the shortfall, and the small amount being made up by all the new conventional and unconventional projects. It is obvious that oil will become much harder and more expensive to obtain, and will probably come with rapidly increasing risks. Note that the graph is not from some hippy environmentalist; it was presented by the US Department of Energy.
Finally Grist asks why we wouldn’t prefer to invest in clean renewable energy rather than continuing to clean up the mess our old industries deliver.
I couldn’t agree more. We are literally scraping the barrel for oil, we have ignored the damage done in retrieving all fossil fuels, and we are starting to see the ultimate price we will pay.
We continue to pay an increasing cost to monitor, impose partially effective safety regulations, and clean up after this filthy industry, while at the same time giving it hundreds of billions in subsidies and tax breaks The International Monetary Fund estimates that the subsidies are about $250 billion, or $740 billion if you include the tax breaks, and calls for reform of this system.
Meanwhile we spend virtually nothing on the technologies we absolutely need to survive in the medium term; improving efficiency, renewable energy generation, large scale energy storage, and (probably) fourth generation nuclear power, all of which can actively help to clean up our current pollution.
We desperately need to break through the voodoo belief that the market will solve all these problems for us. The market has been increasingly stacked against real innovation by large companies trying to get rich quick by manipulating the political process, and is, in any case, in real danger of collapsing under its own inefficiencies.
We already have the technologies we need to start fixing these problems, though many of them need to be brought to commercial scale. We just don’t have the will, the guts, or the gumption to get on with it.
Fist we need to force the world’s governments to acknowledge the scale of the problem, and then to take action sufficient to resolve the issues.
Easily said no?
The Gulf spill has given Obama a golden opportunity to drag the debate in the USA in the right direction; it remains to be seen if he will seize the opportunity.
I have deliberately delayed commenting for the last few weeks to ensure I could keep at least a semblance of objectivity.
As it turns out yesterday’s 7:30 interview with Tony Abbot frames the issue perfectly.
Kevin Rudd’s extraordinary decision to “delay” the ETS was completely shocking, especially after having ridiculed the opposition’s wish to delay until after Copenhagen stating:-
What absolute political cowardice.
What an absolute failure of leadership.
What an absolute failure of logic.
And much more, including some of the most emotive utterings of this normally rather dull speaker. The transcript in the Australian of his speech at the Lowy Institute last year makes stirring reading. However the reality of the ETS, was that it put the interests of the current energy industry and the big miners ahead of that of the nation as a whole. The Greens were quite right to vote it down, though Labor has tried to paint them as the minor villains of the piece, with Abbot and his merry men of course being the major baddies.
This puts Australia back to the top of the list of the developed countries doing least on climate, and despite our lack or importance and small size, will have been very significant. We were the holdout that recanted at Bali and joined the good guys, and now we are back to full “Black Hat” status, and will be the example seized on by China and India when pressed to do more.
Rudd’s dropping of his commitments on climate change as soon as they are no longer in his own interests are just the latest, and most blatant, example of politicians apparent belief that they can say whatever they like to get elected, and then change their minds as expedient. First we had core and non core promises, followed by a host of small broken promises plus this major one by the current government, and lastly we have the extraordinary performance of Tony Abbot on the 7:30 report last night. Some way in he admitted that he was liberal with the truth, and that the only things he said that you could treat as gospel were policy speeches and the like. His actual words are below, before he started to dig himself rather deeper into the hole he made for himself.
“I know politicians are going to be judged on everything they say, but sometimes in the heat of discussion you go a little bit further than you would if it was an absolutely calm, considered, prepared, scripted remark.
“Which is one of the reasons why the statements that need to be taken absolutely as gospel truth are those carefully prepared, scripted remarks.”
So we are left with the obvious proposition that we cannot trust either of the two main parties to do what they say they will do. Their actions do show that they consistently put the industry lobby above the general public, and hope we have forgotten by the next election, or just marginally hate the current major party slightly less than the other.
Europe, and specifically Britain, is suffering from the same problem, and has just reacted by voting for the three main parties in almost equal proportions (by percentage of the vote rather than elected seats) thus forcing the parties to debate the issues a bit more honestly. This has been common in Europe for years, where majority governments are uncommon. The vote in Britain has also forced a discussion on electoral reform, including discussions on political donations and the ability to “sack” an obviously incompetent government, which living in NSW, seems a wonderful idea. Unfortunately, Australia and the USA, the two main recalcitrant “developed” nations on climate change, both have more polarised political affiliations, though the recent election in Tasmania is encouraging.
The conclusion is obvious. After a century or so in roughly its current state, democracy needs a serious overhaul. The cosy links with money and commerce must be disbanded, and politicians need to be much more concerned about upsetting the electorate. Electronic voting systems are in their infancy and won’t be trusted until an open source implementation is developed and refined, but they do point to some of the possibilities we need. I propose the following vague and unrefined thoughts and suggestions:-
Australia’s electoral system is relatively elegant, though the Senate would be better chosen by proportional representation over the whole country rather than by state.
State Governments have outlived their usefulness. Let’s have one government to praise or blame, rather than allowing another opportunity for buck-passing.
It’s a total disgrace that we tolerate elected representatives of the ilk of Fred Nile and Steve Fielding. I suspect they would not exist if negative as well as positive filters were available, so that, for example, a candidate cannot be elected if more than 50% put a black mark against them. This becomes vital when no one party has an outright majority, to avoid the convenient giveaways to minority interests who hold the balance of power.
Governments should be elected for fixed terms, but the double dissolution mechanism should be replaced by one which is triggered by the voters. For example the electoral web site could allow voters to start and sign petitions. Once these have been signed by a reasonable number of people, they would act as more robust opinion polls. A petition to call a fresh election, and therefore sack the government would be automatically started every 6 months, and the government dissolved if a 55% majority is obtained on two consecutive occasions.
Apart from promoting these sorts of dreams, there seems only one thing we can all do to ensure government’s attention, and coincidently, in Australia it’s also a sensible thing to do. Vote Green, or anyone you support who is not in a major party. This is especially likely to be successful in the Senate, and you can help further by donating to the Greens.
There appears to be a concerted effort by mainstream commentators to counter the recent dissentient surge which is very welcome if somewhat overdue. A number of well reasoned articles are referenced further down the page. First however I have to highlight two videos.
As you probably know I am an avid watcher of Climate Denial Crock of the Week, and he presents a delightful little piece on Lord Monckton.
Secondly a forum called Transforming Data into Policy: What can we learn from climate change policy making in Australia so far? was held at the University of Melbourne recently. It featured four speakers including Ross Garnaut, Rod Sims, Greg Combet and Paul Kelly speaking on climate policy. I watched the video as Rod is a friend, even though he is espousing what I might loosely call the industry case, but I would especially recommend listening to Ross Garnaut.
He says “We have lost the capacity of governments to act on the basis of informed analysis of the national interest against the pressures of private interests”. He questions whether the US government could now actually act in what they see as the national interest against the powerful business lobbies even if they wanted to and suggests that the history of climate change policy in Europe and Australia is not encouraging. “Powerful vested interests are resisting the policy reform necessary to tackle climate change just as they resisted financial regulation policy”.
He talks of “Distorted incentive structures” and suggests that “the future of human civilization is probably at stake” when discussing whether the government can resist the pressure of vested interests, and clearly feels that the government’s ETS has been adversely affected by industry.
Towards the end he says “The private interests have acted genuinely privately, have not sought to debate the issues publicly and have had very strong and clear and ready access to the main ministers…. There has not been similar access for interests that might be seen as representing the public interest.”
So his message is quite clear if quietly spoken
“I would contest that the unhappy circumstances of this current Australian policy is very much the result of government having not got on top of the process of managing the role of private interests in our demographic discussion on this issue.”
The other speakers are worth listening to if you have an hour or so to spare.
The New York Times magazine has a very well written article called Building a Green Economy by Paul Krugman which is well worth reading. He agrees with James Hansen that we should ban any new coal fired power stations though he doesn’t mention nuclear and is slightly in favour of an ETS rather than a tax (I find his logic here rather torturous).
The latest climate talks in Bonn, the first since Copenhagen, have ended in deadlock with the outgoing UN Climate head Yvo de Boer saying there was no chance of a final deal this year.
There also seems to be a welcome swing towards people willing to call for more emphasis on birth control as per this Grist article. Making sure that women everywhere have the tools and information to determine when and if they have kids seems a no brainer. Laurie Mazur points out that the cost of the scheme to the West would be $20 billion, or roughly the same as bankers awarded themselves in bonuses in 2008. I disagree with those who like to focus on population rather than emissions reductions; both will be needed.
Lastly George Monbiot looks at some of the stolen emails and is rightly critical of some of the secrecy involved. In one Phil Jones from the Climatic Research Unit says “Even if WMO [the World Meteorological Organisation] agrees, I will still not pass on the data. We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it”. Sorry but in my opinion this is not acceptable. The whole idea of science is that you publish complete and clear papers so that others can either build on them or try and improve them. Especially in an area that is so sensitive public servants must be open and accountable, and not hide data to try and perpetuate their own reputations. While the inquiries have by and large exonerated those involved, and the dissentient claims that this somehow makes climate change magically go away are utter rubbish, we need to ensure that science remains scientific and doesn’t slowly slip into dogma. I suspect that the peer review process and the influence of the major scientific journals are not helpful in this respect and need revision.
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