Saturday 30th of March 2024

the fall of the soviet abbott...

abbott

from the ABC

Former Federal Government climate change adviser Professor Ross Garnaut has likened the Opposition's climate change policy to Soviet era decisions.

Professor Garnaut helped the Government design its emissions trading scheme (ETS).

The Opposition's policy is based on incentives for businesses who choose to reduce their emissions and more money for initiatives like soil carbon and solar power.

Professor Garnaut says he never considered modelling that sort of direct action.

"I did not take seriously the possibility that it would become part of the Australian policy discussion - I thought that debates over the Government taking huge decisions about the resource allocation ended with the fall of the Soviet Union," he said.

"To think that regulation, decisions by bureaucrats and governments to reach the right conclusions is, I think, delusional."

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extinction is nigh for some...

Meanwhile, re the monkey business...

Have a good look at the photos and drawings. Look at the faces. Take in the unusual names. They may not be around much longer. These are humanity's vanishing relatives.

Today a group of the world's leading zoologists reveals the 25 most endangered members of the primates – the biological order which contains monkeys, tarsiers, lemurs, gibbons and the great apes, including, of course, humans.

We may be doing fine, at least in terms of numbers: at 7pm last night, the human population of the world had reached 6,803,362,494. It hit 6 billion in 1999 and will hit 7 billion possibly as soon as next year. But our primate cousins are in a very different position.

There are just over 630 species in total, and incredible as it may seem, more than 300 are now threatened with extinction, from developments such as the destruction of tropical forests, the illegal wildlife trade and commercial hunting for bushmeat. This morning, the dangers facing the "top 25", the species really living on the edge, will be highlighted at a conference in Bristol Zoo.

The list includes five primate species from Madagascar, six from Africa, 11 from Asia, and three from Central and South America, all of which are now in need of urgent help to survive.

Conservationists want to highlight the plight of species such as the golden headed langur, which is found only on the island of Cat Ba in the Gulf of Tonkin, north-eastern Vietnam, where just 60 to 70 individuals remain.

Similarly, there are thought to be fewer than 100 individual northern sportive lemurs left in Madagascar, and about just 110 eastern black crested gibbons in north-eastern Vietnam.

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Gus: Let's say that our success is others' demise... We are the champions of taking over space, the masters of destruction, the chemists of poisons and the engineers of modifications, including warming the atmosphere — most activities that are unsuitable for some other species to live on earth, including our cousins... It is part of us that is disappearing, too fast...