Jesting on the environment: Australian mining gets a present    By Binoy Kampmark

 

How reassuring it is to be a mining magnate in Australia. Far more significant than royalty, such figures are the unelected captains of industry who know that governments will do whatever they can to accommodate their wishes and whims. True, the rhetoric might sometimes be sharp and seemingly at odds, especially when it comes to that great irritant known as climate change, but the business of Australia is mining, and so it remains.

For that reason, the portfolio of environment minister has been a misnomer, hovering between vanishing non-entity and irritating court jester. Mimicking those climate change conferences that take place in oil and gas producing states, such an official’s role is to manage continuing mine approvals and their extensions while proclaiming the march of renewable sources of energy toward a decarbonised economy.

Australia’s current Environment Minister, Tanya Plibersek, has gone the way of others, making sure to slip in a few more mining approvals before the festive season in the hope that few would notice. The manoeuvre only makes sense by understanding that an Australian environment minister tends to be the fossil fuel industry’s closeted defender in government, the emissions protector at the cabinet meeting, the shield to respectable polluting. Those appointed to that role know the prime minister thinks little of them. The minister, in turn, also knows that the machinery at the disposal of the office is about as impressive as the country’s broadband system.

What makes Plibersek’s behaviour particularly galling of late is her willingness to jest more than usual. This may have been aggravated by last month’s personal intervention by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to sink a deal she personally brokered with the Greens and independent Senator David Pocock to create a federal environment protection agency.

In a late November press release, we have her trumpeting Australia’s move “from the margins of international environmental leadership – right to the front”. (Front of whom, one asks?) There are party political statements filled with little substance. The Albanese Government was “helping nature thrive”. Greater protections were being afforded the environment. The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework had been agreed upon.

Plibersek’s inner jester was again manifest on 19 December, posting on the X platform that the Labor government was “turning Australia into a renewable superpower”. What really suggested she had taken leave of her senses was another post mocking former Liberal Prime Minister Tony Abbott, standing beside the current Opposition Leader, Peter Dutton, in a 2014 shot with this disciplinary caption: “It’s 2014. These guys approved eight new coal mines and were laughing about climate change.” She goes on to “fast forward” matters a decade. “In 2024, Labor has approved 0 new coal mines.”

This was a jest with little purchase. For one, Plibersek had approved three coal mine expansions in September this year, a move she suggested in lawyerly fashion could not be regarded as “new projects” so much as extensions. These decisions, she justified curtly, had been made “in accordance with the facts and the national environment law”. The Australian Conservation Foundation preferred to remind her that the three projects, all in New South Wales, would generate more than 1.3 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions in the course of their operation.

These extensions, it is also worth considering, are not recommended by the International Energy Agency if global warming is to be limited to the magic figure of 1.5°C. In its 2021 report, the agency envisages a “Net-Zero Emissions Scenario by 2050” in which fossil fuel use will fall “drastically”. There would be no need either for new oil and natural gas fields beyond current approvals, or new coal mines or mine extensions. Dare one but dream.

What made matters even worse was that 19 December was a day that saw the approval of three mining projects: the Caval Ridge Horse Pit Extension at the Bowen Basin in Queensland; the Lake Vermont Meadowbrook Coal Mine Project, also in Queensland; and the New South Wales Boggabri Coal Mine, given a State Significant Development status.

The measure enraged the Australia Institute think tank sufficiently to encourage the start of a glum petition. “While our leaders claim that Australia is on track to meet its climate targets of 43% emissions reduction by 2030, and net zero by 2050, Australia Institute research shows that when land sector emissions are removed from the modelling, Australia’s emissions are actually increasing.”

In a media release, the institute pointed out that the three mines, in the current state of operation, “were already so large that they could almost cover greater Sydney, or most Australian cities”. The body’s research director, Rod Campbell, found it all distasteful. “Putting this out just before Christmas is a classic ‘taking out the trash’ tactic. While Australians are trying to enjoy the end of the year, the minister is doing the bidding of multinational coal companies.”

The Climate Council was also baffled. Climate Councillor Lesley Hughes, with mighty authority, condemned the decision. “Our atmosphere doesn’t care if this coal is for steel or power – it’s all heating our planet and driving climate pollution. Burning coal fuels the climate crisis, worsening bushfires, floods and heatwaves that devastate our communities. This decision flies in the face of science, common sense, global responsibility and our duty to protect our kids’ future.”

Plibersek is unlikely to be ignorant of any of this. But like her predecessors, she conducts policy from a cage of constraint. When so stifled and confined, the options narrow: to vanish, or become a jester. And jester she has become.

https://johnmenadue.com/jesting-on-the-environment-australian-mining-gets-a-present/

 

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         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

 

HYPOCRISY ISN’T ONE OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS SINS.

HENCE ITS POPULARITY IN THE ABRAHAMIC TRADITIONS…

 

 

PLEASE DO NOT BLAME RUSSIA IF WW3 STARTS. BLAME YOURSELF.

 

 

FROM CHARLIE HEBDO....

 

À la rencontre des « Kidultes », ces grands enfants bénis du capitalisme   Meeting the “Kidults”, these big children blessed by capitalism

 

The endless family meals and the joyful dark comedy of gift-giving are soon to return, to the great delight of children... and "kidults", those big kids who have remained fans of stuffed animals, Pokémon cards and other Star Wars figurines despite the end of their carefree days. Above all, a worrying phenomenon of collective regression carefully orchestrated by the toy industry.

It's overflowing everywhere. In the golden aisles that the horde of tourists and consumerist sheep roam in department stores, it's dripping with perfume and bling-bling. And we'd almost be jealous of this leather goods store that claims more living space than its future buyers. So, one week before the start of the Christian festivities, welcome to the "paradiso" of some - we catch in the crowd - and the nightmare of others: at the Galeries Lafayette, boulevard Haussmann in Paris. A place of all budgetary excesses and capitalistic audacity.

To discover the latest, go to the fifth floor, in the "Jellycat patisserie", installed for 5 months among the stuffed animals and Legos. They serve éclairs, strawberry tarts and mousse baguettes in an electric blue Parisian bakery decor. In the middle of the stand, three employees are even deployed - not to cash you or advise you on their latest novelty - but to play a little comedy: arriving in front of one of these "patissiers" in an apron, you present your order on a small piece of paper; he grabs a stuffed animal, transfers it to a mixing bowl and offers to mix it with a whisk; he then mimes decorating your 40 euro delicacy with whipped cream using a fake piping bag; and ends by wrapping it in bakery paper. A joyful plaything in short. Until we realize that all the actors in this marketing play are none other than adults. Enough to tip into dystopian.

Foam baguettes

"Indeed, our customers are overwhelmingly adults who buy for themselves or as gifts to other adults," confirms Jennifer Thomas, the manager of the team of fake pastry chefs. And be careful not to upset these big kids too much. A soft strawberry tart in her hand, Pascale, 38, is on the defensive: "There is not necessarily a reason why it attracts us. I do not understand why certain objects would be reserved for children. It does not mean anything, we too can want to make collections, we can want tenderness. It is not because at 15 years old some drop their toys and become serious that we should all do the same," she unpacks. After all, who said that a stuffed animal couldn’t move people once they’re past the childhood stage? “We can see that we have a real impact on customers. I have a lady who once cried during our performance. We’re here to convey emotions. Today, we’re in a hyperanxiety-provoking period where people need lightness and softness,” assures Jennifer Thomas, convinced that it’s in the children’s section of Galeries Lafayette that they’ll find them.

What if our ills had exhausted all therapeutic remedies? What if there were only toys left? In any case, this is what the small business of toy merchants has been trying to make us swallow for several years, hidden behind a window of nostalgia or well-being - Pokémon cards or coloring books of your choice. As a result, the market of those now nicknamed "kidults" - a contraction of "child" and "adult" in English - now represents 29% of the turnover of the toy sector, according to the latest study by the Federation of Specialist Toy and Children's Products Retailers (FCJPE). "This is the great hope of childcare brands. Because the drop in the birth rate has had a very strong impact on the sector, kidults could well take over," even analyzes Jean Kimpe, general delegate of the FCJPE. Especially since the market is often more high-end than its child equivalent.

And the worst thing is probably to have fallen for it. Who would still be surprised to see a big fifty-year-old teenager fall for the latest Star Wars collector Lego box or the latest trendy candy pink plush toy? Not a hint of pedophilia on the horizon, fashion has been there.

And social networks too. Because behind the Jellycat pastry shop, there is, of course, big money, but above all a vast PR operation on Facebook, Instagram or TikTok. "It has become a real community. People who come here know about all the new products and stock shortages before they even arrive at our place", Jennifer Thomas still hallucinates. The "rather inexplicable phenomenon of playground successes" - according to Jean Kimpe - thus deported to the internet, where you can accumulate millions of views by sharing the latest addition to your collection of plush pastries on video. The "kidults" plotting online instead of meeting around hopscotch.

This is the basic logic of capitalism

So, just as there are footballers and marble collectors, there are also toy clans among regressive adults. On Rue Dante, in the fifth arrondissement of Paris, we come across a new species: figurine lovers. In front of the maximalist window of Pulp’s Toys, a specialist in Japanese goodies and other Marvel dolls, Alix and Lisa, both in their twenties, unwrap a “smiski”. A small phosphorescent collectible figurine that they discovered on TikTok. And there are plenty more in the window: Hello Kittys, disguised cats, etc., they show us, stars in their eyes. "We're a bit backward, I think we still haven't grown up," they admit at first, before trying to find an explanation for their madness: "I'm studying psychology and it's true that I didn't have a great childhood so, in a way, I'm making up for what I didn't know before," Alix begins. "My father died too!" Lisa continues, a smile on her lips. As if you had to justify having cracks when you're caught with a toy in your hand, with no children around.

David*, 57, doesn’t need to do that much. Passionate about Goldorak since he discovered the Japanese theme song as a child, he spends his free time watching for new Actaruses that are popping up in his neighborhood. “I have static ones, ones that propel themselves, ones that shoot lasers, etc.,” he lists. “I admit, I’m still a child deep down, it’s my passion.” And for this kind of nostalgic oaf, Samuel Coavoux, a sociologist specializing in culture and video games, has an explanation. No doubt, he says, our society has more tools “to satisfy its nostalgia.” No doubt the success of “playfulness” and the “gamification” of society have something to do with our sudden taste for board games. But the sociologist mainly points the finger at the cultural industry. “It’s the basic logic of capitalism.” A company like Disney has an interest in conquering the largest share of the market and there comes a point where you can no longer send children to the cinema ten times a month. However, until recently, we targeted children, we served them children's content and when they became adults, we targeted their children. Now, the industry has understood that this cut it off from 90% of the market, so it continues to follow its fans who have grown up by showering them with series on darker or romantic themes," he analyses.

But too late, the damage is already done and the personal development lobby has already adopted the benefits of play for adults, urging us to "cultivate our inner child". As if a good puzzle or coloring page could make us forget that Bayrou is Prime Minister or that Mayotte has been blown away. But, of course, you will choose a 1,000-piece puzzle and a level 5 coloring page, just to reassure yourself that you have grown up a little despite everything.

(link caché)

 

TRANSLATION BY JULES LETAMBOUR.....

 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

 

HYPOCRISY ISN’T ONE OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS SINS.

HENCE ITS POPULARITY IN THE ABRAHAMIC TRADITIONS…

 

 

PLEASE DO NOT BLAME RUSSIA IF WW3 STARTS. BLAME YOURSELF.