fish don't like new ideas

A year out from the next federal poll, Australia's feral right-wing Liberal-National Party coalition still can't believe it is not the Government.After more than a decade of mendacity, scaremongering, bear-baiting, duck-shoving, arse-sniffing, god-bothering and pork-barrelling, these conservative, increasingly extremist "born-to-rule" ratbags were given the boot in the 2007 elections with their Supreme Leader, John W.

A little message to remind us what is important.

Please read the text that goes with message

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMt2d01C_og

 

The Great Global Warming Swindle was something I discovered on pp.1 & 2 of The Age of Thursday May 24th. This is presented as a documentary questioning the science behind climate change. The program caused a storm when it was aired on UK Ch.4 in March. Howls of protest were heard from scientists including some featured in the film, that it's makers used fabricated data, half truths and misleading statements.

It is postulated that the ABC Board has been pressuring the broadcaster to show this so called documentary to its Australian audience. Despite recommendation from the ABC Science Journalist, Robyn Williams, who advised the TV division not to buy the program, he has further labelled the broadcaster of "verging on the irresponsible" over its decision to air something that was "demonstrably wrong".

In the contemporary world the largest pressures on our societies relate to our relationship with the natural world. Be it water resources, our own pollution from industry and urban expanses, or climate change. And our societies relies on organisations such as the Environment Protection Agency (EPA) to keep check on these pressures, to draw attention to them, and to mitigate their effects.

However, in recent times the effectiveness of the EPA has been somewhat questionable. The most notable case of this conduct recently was the when Tim Powe, senior manager in the EPA reviled "...political considerations have stopped the introduction of air-quality monitoring and mandatory community health checks at Mt Isa's two smelters - the largest source of lead emissions in Australia. "[1] Since this expose testing has found "one to four years, have tested higher than the recommended dosages deemed safe by the State Government "[2]

The list also includes lead and zinc dust blowing off the Townsville port onto the houses of surrounding suburbs [3], the Alcoa Aluminium refinery in Wagerup [4], Port Pirie's lead contamination [5], and the Narangba Industrial Estate fire [6]. And on and on.

This week, Sir Nicholas Stern released his report which stated, if we tackle global warming NOW, it will cost about 1% global GDP, but if we leave it will cost us between 5 and 20% of GDP per year. This is really like any unserviced debt, if you let it build up, and don't try to pay it back, it will eventually bury you. In this report industry was identified as one of the major contributors to global warming, however their responses can be understood through simple economics. Producing large amounts of CO2 doesn't cost them anything, so they do it. We need to put a price on CO2 if we expect industry to respond. Hence the need for a carbon trading scheme. One of the most famous carbon trading schemes is the Kyoto protocol.

I want to share my article with you. This is about the link between Mind and Social / Environmental-Issues. The fast-paced, consumerist lifestyle of Industrial Society is causing exponential rise in psychological problems besides destroying the environment. All issues are interlinked. Our Minds cannot be peaceful when attention-spans are down to nanoseconds, microseconds and milliseconds. Our Minds cannot be peaceful if we destroy Nature.


<strong>Industrial Society Destroys Mind and Environment</strong>

Subject : In a fast society slow emotions become extinct.

The NT's latest nuclear target is on shaky ground.

Recent floods around Katherine saw the water rise 4m around the
fenceline of a proposed site for a nuclear waste dump in the Territory.
Locals complained that this extreme (though not unheard of) event, and
the regular seasonal inundation, should disqualify the scheduled site
from consideration as a nuclear dump for the commonwealth's radioactive
waste.

"No
worries!" says CLP Senator Nigel Scullion, "I know just where to put
the most toxic and highly radioactive of all wastes produced in
Australia."

“In view of the uncertainties about climate change and possible effects, it seems premature to take major action either reacting to possible effects or to limit greenhouse gas emissions."

 - McFarlane (1990)

“It is not proven that climatic changes will occur and the effects are not predictable with our current state of knowledge… it remains to be proven that a greenhouse effect is, in fact, occurring.”

- McFarlane (1990) 

Ian McFarlane, Federal minister for Industry and Resources is founder of Central Pacific Minerals and South Pacific Petroleum and former oil company CEO.  Ian is one of the key delegates at the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate Change (AP6) argues for no caps on greenhouse emissions, stating that the private sector, with "incentives" will solve our greenhouse problems if we leave them to it.

Yesterday a friend sent me, via email, an article from ‘The Times Online’ which reveals that scientists have made observations that confirm that the Gulf Stream is slowing, as predicted. Bad news indeed. But it hasn’t had the same effect on me as it might have had a week or so ago. You see,  I've reached the point where I no longer believe the human race has a right to survive on this planet.

Maybe I haven't been paying enough attention lately, being unemployed and constantly worrying about getting food on the table, but what happened to all the stuff about improving the Murray Darling and "drought proofing Australia"? Surely that wasn't just hype by the Federal government , was it?

I think maximising our water supply is one thing that should be monitored by the feds rather than the states, and provision of water should not be privatised.