I tried to post a long comment on COP27 this morning, but the system got indigestion, so I’ll do it this way. It’s not finished to my usual standard for published posts.
COP27 is priding itself on setting up a “loss and damage” fund. I’ll just point out that it has no funds yet, and has all the work ahead of it in setting up the mechanisms for getting and distributing funds. So they have actually set up a talkfest. And China is not part of it.
Something of epochal importance happened in Egypt last week – the most significant event since Cheops shoved up his triangular monument, four thousand odd-years ago at the dawn of ‘civilisation’. But the world media, true to form, missed it almost completely.Continue reading COP27 failure (first cut)→
I’ve been meaning to do a new open thread for a while (last Salon was 12 January). When I saw news of the first entry below I thought it was too good to pass up!
1. Morrison’s ultimate gift to the world
His agent described him as “virtuous globalisation mastermind”
“The time between recurrent events is increasingly too short to allow a full recovery of mature coral assemblages, which generally takes from 10 to 15 years for the fastest growing species and far longer for the full complement of life histories and morphologies of older assemblages.”
I’ve taken it back to months before the 2019 election, which was on 18 May 2019, to show that the situation now is not like the situation then. With six days to go, incumbent PM Scott Morrison is looking for a miracle. Simon Benson, Political Editor for the Oz, wrote after the penultimate poll:
According to the latest Newspoll, Labor would not only win government but it would win with a comfortable majority.
Any notion of a hung parliament is extinguished on these numbers, irrespective of whether any Climate 200 independents get elected or not.
Morrison needed the the contest to tighten with only two weeks to run. Newspoll has shown the opposite.
In large part, yes, because they certainly want to talk about each other, and the media do not want to talk about policy, having settled on the notion that neither side has any, although any journalist who is interested can find Labor’s policies here, the Liberal Party’s story book (plan) here. The Nationals’ Plan is much the same, but slightly different. For The Greens, it depends what you click on when you go to their site, but this is headlined as their Election Policy Platform.
My concern is that the future plans for coal and gas do not sit well the latest science and with what the world must collectively do to prevent the current climate crisis from becoming a tragedy. Within that I have a specific concern about the plans relating to the fracking of gas in the Channel Country. Relevant to these concerns I’ll make four statements with some supporting notes. (Last updated, 27 February 2022) Continue reading On fossil fuels, Queensland needs to pause and consider→
Gas has been seen as a transitional fuel and an opportunity to make money. We now know that it is a major contributor to the climate crisis and should be seen as a planet wrecker. This calls for a reset of climate policy.
