Rudd’s climate placebo: a 5% target
On Friday, Kevin Rudd announced over half a billion dollars in funding for the NSW coal industry. Today, he announced an emissions reduction target and an emissions trading scheme that will have virtually no impact on reducing emissions and will give billions in handouts to the big polluters. This is a climate action plan that won’t cut emissions. In other words - a placebo.
Rudd’s moral compass is out of whack – probably because he is too close to the steel and other polluting industries.
In the face of the economic meltdown, Kevin Rudd toured the world, holding crisis talks with global leaders to develop an urgent rescue package for the international banking system. In the face of the climate crisis, the best he seems capable of is a global suicide pact.
Climate change is an existential issue. It is a matter of survival. We can’t decide to ‘get the balance right’ between destroying the biosphere or not. The growing observations of the speed at which climate change is happening are downright frightening. Change is happening faster than even the worst-case predictions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Scientists can’t really predict what will happen to the biosphere if emissions continue to increase along the lines of Rudd’s vision. But it’s not looking good.
To sit on the fence is to fail. I’ve been trying to come up with metaphors to describe why you can’t ‘get the balance right’. None of them quite do it justice, but it’s like being in a burning building and instead of dialing 000, you just dial 0 and hope for the best. It’s like wearing half a condom. Or it’s like removing half of a cancerous tumour.
If the white paper becomes law, Australia will continue to build coal power stations and renewable energy companies will continue to pack up and head overseas. The big polluters will continue to pollute. Lawyers and accountants will get rich.
But worse than all of that, we’re sending a signal to the world that even a modern, brave and prosperous country like Australia is not willing to show leadership on climate change. And if we don’t, who will?
Australia is facing severe impacts from climate change already, Rudd is ahead in the polls and was elected with a mandate to act on the climate. And yet, he seems to think that taking serious action on climate change will result in electoral suicide. In other countries, it is the same. So nobody acts. And in so doing, we guarantee that we will commit collective suicide. It’s just that while political suicide is a social construct, climate change is real.
If the laws and decisions of government are leading us towards collective suicide, citizens of conscience have a responsibility to engage in civil disobedience to stand up for that they know to be right.
December 15th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
A 5% target is woeful, and leads onto global suicide. It reminds me of the story of the money changers in the temple: they were surrounded by something wonderful and noble, but all they could think of was their profit! Damn the ALP for presenting a false front prior to the election last year; a bunch of quizzlings, who have little enthusiasm for the environment, and are in bed with the big polluters.
December 15th, 2008 at 11:48 pm
To a progressive voter, the Internet Censorship issue was a wake up call, to the fact that, maybe Rudd was not all he seemed on the surface.
Then this comes along and all but confirms the fact that Kevin Rudd is a younger much more cunning John Howard in disguise.
He sold progressive voters nationally a dodgy bag of goods. We got a Dude, no doubt about it!
December 16th, 2008 at 9:33 am
It’s a pretty uninspiring target from a government that thought they were change makers.
Australians did the right thing when we voted Kevin Rudd in as PM. We wanted change. Unfortunately, the promise of change has been pretty hollow. So, it’s up to us to be vigilant and again send the message home to Canberra.
December 16th, 2008 at 10:15 am
After all the talk of importance of green and sustainable living - leaving the car at home, replacing incandescent light bulbs with compact flourescent light globes, reusing and recycling products, off-setting carbon - the government has backflipped and left us with a dirty taste in our mouths. Come on Rudd, there is only so much individuals can do without government support. In a time of economic crisis, why are we giving billions of dollars to an already rich industry rather than supporting research and development of renewable energy?
December 16th, 2008 at 11:07 am
The data is now pointing towards Global Cooling, sure lets work towards reducing pollution but let’s no rush into limiting the backbone of life….carbon !
December 17th, 2008 at 12:08 pm
Hasn’t the government actually committed to a 5-15% target … with 5% being the minimum? And, given the current economic climate, don’t you think this is sensible? My reading of Rudd’s announcement was that the target was for 2010-2013.
In his speech, Rudd said “15 per cent below 2000 levels is our commitment to reduce emissions further, if there is a global agreement where all major economies commit to substantially restrain emissions and advanced economies take on comparable reductions to that of Australia.” So the idea is to pressure those other developed economies.
Do you really think it’s sensible, at a time when job losses are being experienced around the country, to propose closing down the coal industry point blank? I agree that renewable energy offers clean energy, but you can’t seriously suggest that renewable energy will employ the same amount of people.
It’s ok for single-issue groups such as the Greens. Ideally, once and for all, the Greens should be given the chance play in the sand and run the country for 3 months … then we’ll see how the nation fares under them. It’d be interesting to see how Australia’s health policy, foreign affairs, competition policy and economy fare…
December 20th, 2008 at 12:29 am
I believe that climate change and change, rapid change is closer and a more pressing reality than anyone is prepared for. I have been on various forums regarding change. Climate change explanation expectation in the last paragraphs.
I believe the Bible is a blueprint of exactly what is going to happen. We just do not know how to read it yet. After a couple of experiences I believe there is much more to the Bible story and that it has been given to the ancients as if seen by the future. So I looked for a science that might come close.
If one looks at Einstein’s idea that wormholes are the predominant formation meaning a stretching and moving of space it is possible. As soon as space is stretched then time has a shape and can be seen from within and from the outside. An example of seen from the outside is the WMAP early universe survey where it has been recently discovered that the heat distribution is of the same shape as the structure of galaxies in our present universe. The early dark matter has a flow, discovered in the last few weeks. The early dark matter is stretched to one side, also discovered in the last few weeks. There is no dark energy in the early universe survey because we are looking at it from the outside.
From inside this current universe we see matter and dark matter account for a quarter of the universe. Dark energy accounts for the other three quarters. That works with a forward and reverse no touching twin line of stars connected. Try wrapping an elastic band around your fingers twice and see the tension across one strand is one quarter. We are in that one forward flow and the other three are energy.
Matter connected in time meaning the shape of time indicates a partial reverse as in magnetic fields when we turn a corner. Note time can not completely reverse because matter would back up over itself. Back to the rubber band analogy and with a bit of shaping a circle and a cross can be made. That is significant. Now the Bible does not pull punches because it clearly says a third of the people will die. For time to reverse fields one would have to calmly wait the time of reverse which would be difficult for the untrained or small children and pregnant women could sustain severe injury if a baby is distressed.
For matter to be connected in time then time would have shape. For that shape see local bubble or local fluff as the heat shape the solar system is traveling through. It is an hourglass meaning a bottleneck in time and it bends at an angle indicating a change in direction which we see before entering the bottleneck. For us it will appear straight as we go through. Also time symmetry affects the nuclear weak force. Critical mass for nuclear weapons will become smaller and less stable. That is already seen in that superpowers are ‘advancing’ to smaller tactical high accuracy weapons. The British have had to move the Trident missiles due to unacceptable high radiation levels. This apparent linear decline in mass size will quickly become exponential. There will be a time when only foot soldiers will march as electronics will fail because they use electricity. Nuclear isotopes are in the family home as smoke detectors, in offices and theaters as exit signs and in schools and hospitals as teaching and healing tools. By far the most nuclear material is in waste although the power generating industry contributes its fair share.
The transition will take a time and so the hour and the day observed around the world will vary according to the dateline and the longitude. It will happen. The poles currently are experiencing rebound due to the lowering of the ice weight upon them. Every percent shift in the roundness of the earth is a two hundred meter difference in ocean height. Magnetism attracts and so the shift of the field to a distant new position will cause stresses as the earth finds its new shape and ocean flow.
This is what is likely if the universe is fully connected in time from end to end and all things known. People complain they would not want life if it is deterministic as the idea suggests. Do you value being who you are each day when you wake up? Is it important to know your name, your job, your bank account? You can not access the past to change those details just as you can not access the future. Your present, your now is reality and the perception of reality is the life you live. It is not so bad. A guitar string does not move along the neck of the instrument but when strummed can produce wonderful sounds (and some shockers as well).
The future I worry about is the scorpion sting and days of pain that must be suffered. Only in the last eight years has there been the power to break symmetry which means breaking reality in a connected time universe. It takes ten or more times the power input to make the heaviest particles. One theory is that antiparticle may travel to the past and change it on us. Why does no one look ahead and ask could the missing energy from the experiments be causing radiation, burning and suffering in the future?
This is if science is wrong about what matter really is. Currently we do know that scientists can not explain what dark matter is or what dark energy is. Giving something the word dark means invisible, unseen and unknown. Scientists also do not know what matter is. That is why they experiment … even at the risk of being wrong.
More of the observations are the super cluster Virgo galaxy M87 and a twin M77 which would be expected in a time reverse through a super structure required to bounce our Milky Way galaxy. We have an influence exterted on our galaxy by Virgo and so relative to any observation our Milky Way galaxy should not be flat. When we see the sun we see where it was eight minutes ago. Likewise any induced movement should give our Milky Way galaxy a conical shape. So the entire galaxy is being evenly pushed in a strange direction as shown by our passage in the local bubble, a bubble we are coming to the end of.
Climate change in these circumstances would require a charge discharge noticed as heat increasing quite rapidly on approach. Mosquitos were a sign of a change in times as known in ancient Egyptian times. Global heating preceeds a cooling cycle or ice age with rapid onset in times as little as a hundred years. This would indicate sacrificing heat on transition to take on the opposite charge. On the quantum scale it is hard to imagine how measurements in pico seconds and femto seconds producing cycles like the 41,000 year and 100,000 year cycles of the sun. Harder to see how the cyclical volcanic eruption of Yellowstone would occur every 600,000 years geologically and magnetic pole reversal every 700,000 by residual magnetic field found in the deep ocean rifts.
Likely there is going to be a rapid heat increase then transit followed by tidal events and then rapid cooling followed water shortages caused by loss of oceans through fractures connecting deep salt layers. Deep sea mining operations have pierced salt layers to get to oil. If that becomes a weak point then because salt formations and oil are commonly found together the relatively stable and unchanging environment we are used to may be one to survive and then do as much to preserve as is possible.
If this comes about then society will need to rebuild from basic tools. Learning to communicate again under changed conditions would also be essential and may require some sort of pictorial record as the visual center of the brain is the most rapid to adjust due to neccessity while hearing is a learned skill.
December 28th, 2008 at 1:53 am
I am not surprised that there is no reply to my last comment so I will start with something simple. Aerogels are the most promising new product for a greener Australia. This article from last year http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article2284349.ece is a building material that locks in carbon dioxide.
If Australia is genuinely the clever country then research and construction projects and public awareness of the potential for Australia to take a position in a world that has forgotten what is it to ’see’ an opportunity and act on it.
January 2nd, 2009 at 3:36 pm
The federal government’s proposition has nothing to do with pressuring other countries into taking positive environmental action, but instead is a faulty attempt at maintaining their social stance in the international politics playground. What does 5% cover other than the emissions of his travelling around the world in an attempt to prove himself worthy to other countries? I am ashamed of myself for ever beleiving that Kevin Rudd would make a constructive impact on John Howard’s Liberal government’s environmentally policy.
Whether climate change exists or not (and i beleive that it does) our government should be taking every possible action to ensure a stable environmental future for us all (for the benefit of the doubt!!!!).
In response to ‘Marco’’s opinions:
Why can people not “seriously suggest” that renewable energy is a viable alternative to the coal industry? Is there any evidence to suggest that renewable energy companies will not be able to provide the same employment benefits as coal? Coal is becoming ever more difficult to source, so what will we do when it runs out, if there is a possibility that renewable energy companies cannot offer the same amount of employment? Could it be possible that we will have to revert to such power sources!?!
Why don’t we give the greens a chance to “play in the sand”? As Australia’s health policy, foreign affairs, competition policy and economy are faring SO well at the moment, it most definitely would be interesting to see what impact their LEADERSHIP would have on our nation!