h/t Grant Griffiths – The New York Times thinks leaders are ignoring the Australian people’s demand for climate action – despite voters electing a Conservative government last May.
Australia Is Committing Climate Suicide
As record fires rage, the country’s leaders seem intent on sending it to its doom.
By Richard Flanagan
Mr. Flanagan is a novelist.
Jan. 3, 2020
BRUNY ISLAND, Australia — Australia today is ground zero for the climate catastrophe. Its glorious Great Barrier Reef is dying, its world-heritage rain forests are burning, its giant kelp forests have largely vanished, numerous towns have run out of water or are about to, and now the vast continent is burning on a scale never before seen.
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The fires have already burned about 14.5 million acres — an area almost as large as West Virginia, more than triple the area destroyed by the 2018 fires in California and six times the size of the 2019 fires in Amazonia. Canberra’s air on New Year’s Day was the most polluted in the world partly because of a plume of fire smoke as wide as Europe.
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And yet, incredibly, the response of Australia’s leaders to this unprecedented national crisis has been not to defend their country but to defend the fossil fuel industry, a big donor to both major parties — as if they were willing the country to its doom. While the fires were exploding in mid-December, the leader of the opposition Labor Party went on a tour of coal mining communities expressing his unequivocal support for coal exports. The prime minister, the conservative Scott Morrison, went on vacation to Hawaii.
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In no small part Mr. Morrison owes his narrow election victory last year to the coal-mining oligarch Clive Palmer, who formed a puppet party to keep the Labor Party — which had been committed to limited but real climate-change action — out of government. Mr. Palmer’s advertising budget for the campaign was more than double that of the two major parties combined. Mr. Palmer subsequently announced plans to build the biggest coal mine in Australia.
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This posture seems to be a chilling political calculation: With no effective opposition from a Labor Party reeling from its election loss and with media dominated by Rupert Murdoch — 58 percent of daily newspaper circulation — firmly behind his climate denialism, Mr. Morrison appears to hope that he will prevail as long as he doesn’t acknowledge the magnitude of the disaster engulfing Australia.
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Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/03/opinion/australia-fires-climate-change.html
Are Australians concerned about climate change? Sure. But there is no evidence of an overwhelming demand for more climate action.
If climate action was a higher priority than say jobs and cost of living, the Australian people would have elected a party which promised to prioritise climate action, instead of electing a government which promised to prioritise economic growth and prosperity.
As for Clive Palmer, I don’t think Palmer and NYT’s claims that Palmer won the election for the Australian Conservatives are credible. At the time of the election in May, Clive Palmer was facing a massive public backlash over a dispute with workers regarding pay and entitlements at his financially troubled Nickel venture. Palmer reached a settlement to pay outstanding worker’s entitlements in August this year, well after the May election.
They left out:
…Toads are exploding into fireballs
….Roo’s are turning into brain-eating zomroos
…and cats are sleeping with dogs
I think that about covers the missing materials from this ridiculous “news” article.
Pump out the groundwater, win stupid fires.
I *am* being sensitive. The Australian environment has never been able to support high density population and about 80% of its environmental problems are caused by intentional ignorance of environment that have nothing to do with the temperature of the air.
Every house, business or municipal building lost that had tar or plasticized shingles is now a monument to morons in government. The same crap happened in the Camp fire out around Paradise CA, people with huge flammable parched trees over largely firestorm brush directly over and around their houses got run down by ignorance of the environment in government enhanced fireball form. Very few structures that were up to modern code were lost unless they were hammered by the structures around them.
We’re seeing hundreds of videos of fire teams being endangered or surviving firestorms in Australia by their technology alone. Such deployments of manpower are *moronic* and incompetent. The military equivalent would be to use cavalry charges against incoming thermonuclear weapons. It is simply yet another proof that the government of Australia – A PRODUCT OF ITS POPULATION’S APATHY AND IGNORANCE – isn’t competent to scrub sidewalks.
Socialist state governments, especially in NSW created many new National Parks to lock up land. Livestock were not allowed to graze and you could not so much as pick up a stick without risking a massive fine. The extreme green motivated socialists would not allow back-burning because they did not want to disturb the animals, even though regular fires had become part of the landscape via the Aborigines. Undisturbed national parks are NOT true natural land-they are artificial and unsustainable environments.
With many years of debris, now bone dry, we all know what MUST happen, especially with arsonists around. An imam has called for fire jihad. Fire Jihad has already been done by flying incendiary kites in to Israel. Why do we tolerate this? If it turns out that any of the arson (85% of the fires have been shown to be acts of arson) is politically or religiously motivated, the full weight of the law must fall upon them. FULL compensation must be payable by the motivating body, ie, the political group or religious body must pay for every shed and house burned down, every farm animal killed, restitution for the murder of the millions of animals killed. This will immediately bankrupt them. Just look at the big stink over an aboriginal police officer killing a wombat. To quote Stalin-“The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of a million is a statistic.”
We have seen small bands of envirozealots prevent fuel reduction burns. They think they have the right to impose their way upon everyone , but when it turns out they were totally wrong, they expect to have no culpability. This is not how it works. It should be that the envirozealots are identified so the bill for firefighting and damages is presented to them for the damage (usually in the tens of millions per fire + fines for killed wildlife). Thus, if it is a group of 10 envirozealots/ environazis prevents a burnoff that was designed to prevent a fire that eventually caused 10 million in damage, then each environazi is liable for a million dollars each or incarceration until the damages are paid. This will likely be life in the slammer. As there are probably only a couple of hundred such environazis in Australia, they will soon land in the slammer or disband. As it is, we are getting sick and tired of small but very noisy veganazis and environazis doing whatever they like with impunity. This is effectively a takeover by the environazis.
Time for these vermin to be ignored. If they want to chain themselves to a tree to prevent back burning-tough, they will burn. If they invade a farm, the farmer should have the right to bring out the shot gun to protect their property. Note, it is a band of about 100 veganazis that have gone to farm after farm to create havoc. They put their entire crew in to each operation, making it seem like they are many-Alinsky Rule number one.
Meanwhile, we hear the warmists bleat away about “climate change” being the cause. They are yet to define what “climate change” actually means! Bring on the Royal Commission, but ensure that it investigates if human CO2 really is the dominant cause of catastrophic/ dangerous global warming/ “climate change.” Bring it on. It will be sweet indeed if John Cook is put on the stand to answer this simple question-“Of the 11,944 papers reviewed by your team in 2013, how many of these papers came to the conclusion that man-made carbon dioxide was the dominant cause of catastrophic or dangerous global warming or climate change? No prizes for guessing the actual answer to this question. As his study was over a 21 year period, it can be regarded as comprehensive, so the actual papers in the “Holy Grail” pile can be regarded as the actual Holy Grail of evidence.
The vessel is likely to be an empty vessel.
The NYT publishes this stuff? They can’t be serious.
Oh, wait, the author is a novelist, this is the trailer for his next book of fiction right?
Saw this banner in Newtown Sydney
“All I want for Christmas is real action on climate changes”
https://imgur.com/a/C0UQcTV
What is real action?
I’m pretty sure that means imposing global socialism and reverting everyone (except the elites) to the Stone Age.
To me this sounds like the beginning of the end of the scam. Countries will wake up one by one.
The public and politicians were OK with green talk and green fuzzy promises when there was no cost and when the green promises seem real.
…all the spending on green scams in Australia has resulted in brownouts and expensive electricity…
… and no effect on climate change, no effect on atmospheric CO2 rise, and absolutely no effect on forest fires.
Australians have immense deposits of hydrocarbons which they need to sell to help pay their country’s bills and to keep a large portion of the Australian population employed.
Sky News Australia carries a report this morning that our PM, Scott Morrison, should call Donald Trump and tell him to reverse his 2016 election promise to withdraw from Paris. Seriously, about three minutes into this clip.
https://www.skynews.com.au/details/5cdc9a4023eec6001c65b7c2
No doubt Donald is anxiously waiting for instructions from Scomo.
At least it is a change from everybody screaming for someone else to do “something”
Eric wrote;
“As for Clive Palmer, I don’t think Palmer and NYT’s claims that Palmer won the election for the Australian Conservatives are credible.”
Careful Eric. The Australian Conservatives – at the time of the election at least – were a ‘Conservative’ political party formed in protest after the Left tosser Malcolm Turnbull backstabbed and cheated his way into being Prime Minister of the Liberal (big L Liberal) party. It could be argued that the AC was the physical manifestation of the DelCon movement.
The AC, unfortunately, under performed and was delisted as a party after the election.
While it is correct to say that the conservative side of Australian politics were successful in 2019, saying the Australian Conservatives were successful is both incorrect and misleading.
from the article;
“Mr. Flanagan is a novelist.”
Yeah, and in non woke terms not a particularly successful one. He has collected all the right literary awards but doesn’t seem either well read or prolific. The only novel that even has brand recognition is Sound of One Hand Clapping – and that, to be honest, is probably more due to the fact he borrowed the title from a koan – and many of the reviews for this suggest it is pretentious and melodramatic.
He seems to have published seven books over the last 26 odd years. Yes… Well done. Brandon Sanderson by comparison has finished two novels in the time it has taken to read this article and even George RRRRRRRRRR Martin finishes novels faster than that.
He also has a screen credit for the movie ‘Australia’, and that movie was rubbish.
I think that Flanagan says ‘novelist’ but really means ‘arts grant and awards parasite’.
Also from the article;
“In no small part Mr. Morrison owes his narrow election victory last year to the coal-mining oligarch Clive Palmer, who formed a puppet party to keep the Labor Party”
Wow.
Okay, for those not reading from Australia Clive is a blow hard who seems to have made his fortune by constantly starting a new exciting project every time reality started to kick in with his current one. This is the man who wanted to build a Titanic replica. Don’t ask me why. Probably because it sounds exciting to easily impressed investors rather than there actually having a proper business model attached to it.
In an earlier election he ran for House of Reps and got in.
(irony, considering Flanagan’s claim above is that Palmer owes his election victory to the Australian 2PP system and Labor voter preferences)
He then formed Palmer United Party by convincing a bunch of other independent senators to group with him and that lasted about 3 months before the alliance collapsed. Palmer then got a massive reputation for never actually being either in parliament or his electorate and declared he was no recontesting his seat in the following election.
All was fine until the 2019 election where he crawled his way out of the dustbin of history he himself had thrown himself into and tried to re-invent himself as the Australian Trump. Unfortunately for him he had his own failed political record, his blow hard persona, a lot of adverts that bordered on tin-foil hat fantasy and the fact that no one really trusted him. Yes he did spend a bucket load of money. Apparently at least. I do not have the actual inclination to go check but his heart attack waiting to happen face was all over youtube for months.
The context of this money spent needs to be taken alongside his actual results – they were rubbish. Nationally his party scored about 2.6% of the senate vote, which for context is less than the 3.8% of votes that were declared invalid. Speaking from scrutineering experience, invalid votes are normally deliberately blank, not ballot sheets that have been accidently stuffed up, so in real terms more voters couldn’t be stuffed supporting any party at all than they were voting for Palmer’s party.
Also, if you are not a ‘novelist’ with a detachment from reality you might notice that the Labor party vote stayed about the same. The Liberal/Nations (aka the conservative types) picked up votes in the senate, but at the expense of the minor groups. Labor (the Left) didn’t lose voters, the Right regained them from the centre, AND under the preference system used in Australia anyway, the minor minor party votes eventually get preferenced to a major party anyway.
Also, in context of Flanagan’s argument, is the massive amount of time, effort and undisclosed money used by GetUp! (the political party you have when you want to pretend you are just a concerned grass roots community group) to bank roll – among others – the massive campaign by ‘independents’ against major sitting Liberal members. Tony Abbott was defeated by one of these campaigns. Strange that Flanagan, in his clearly unbias discussion, doesn’t seem to have mentioned this.
Flanagan, I put to you, needs to stop attempting to make comment on topics he is either unable or unwilling to discuss honestly and stick to milking the public teat by winning woke lit awards.
Sick and tired of this idiotic ignorant climate change labelling. What the heck does even mean climate change when Earth’s weather is always changing. Due to what most would know if did their own homework instead of repeating bs like moronic parrots… sun cycles called solaris minima and solaris maxima.
At the moment Earth is going through solaris minima and the deepest so far recorded since ca mid 1600. The orbital wobble is also the Earths’ weather game changer but let’s keep the simple elementary school weather lesson, simple.
Solaris minima is the reason why the weather around the world at the moment is so odd. It is a temporary situation and there is nothing and nobody that can stop this celestial and natural event. The sun poles do flip every 11 years and this is the start of either solaris minima or maxima.
The problem isn’t some of the mayhem heavy rains have been causing or the polar bear winter temperatures (not in this of country for weather manipulation … 10C increase weekends and ph only?! and with an odd 100% humidity that follows? Humidity is indeed the result of weather manipulation.
Anyway, just consider this … last year QLD and NSW went through the worst drought in decades … how many bush fires were there?
This year, first day of ‘summer’, what happens in QLD and NSW? 22 bush fires no media has yet given a proper investigations’ information because … they were deliberately lit… California Amazon forest style. Agenda orders government to take over farming industry too … no wonder why farming got let to die off, let’s not forget the scandal of the Darling river and its water payback fraud that as per usual nobody got arrested for, those gov funds that ..has any of this money gone straight to the farmers to help them to pay back some of those bank loans and/or to buy cattle? How about having some of it spent to provide pumps to (geo supervised) extract water form the underground water reservoir, of one of the biggest in the world too, both states do sit on? … Exactly so.
Australia is burning to hell, not because of some idiotic ignorant insulting yap, but because some idiot with too much money paid to have fire experimenting California Amazon forest style. That thanks to the Greens as well, it went out of control.
By the way if there is something to really worry about … even scientists have no idea what mayhem this is going to cause … is that momentum solaris minima turns into solaris maxima. Hoping it is going to fry the Christ out of all that crap of space spying toys… problem is that most satellites are weaponsided too … the dingo will be back to bite human trash in the butt … no poop.
Footnote. That Greta? She is the victim child of parental indoctrination. Any other kid out of its own initiative would have never yapped the crap Greta yaps.
So sunshine internet isn’t that thing that makes fb go only. it is that thing that one can research anything from … for remember … none of this info is top secret info … it is all for public domain right there under your noses to research … so much so, one can even find documentation about the nuking off of massive chunks of ice from the poles that has been happening at least for the last 30 years, for ice reforming experimenting (the famous melting of the ice at the poles caused by … what again?) … But cause not instigated to research, the mental laziness of most … the despicable lack of curiosity… most prefer to make out of themselves … a bunch of moronic media idiocies parrots. Time to step up to your game as human being and start pointing the index towards the right trash …
And if by chance it were to be proven that climate change has caused these bushfires, which I seriously doubt, our key response should be adaptation to the changed situation. Given our minuscule emissions compared to China, India and other developing nations we in Oz can have essentially zero impact on CO2 concentrations. Even if the greenhouse believers are right their proposed solutions are a pack of lies
Richard Flanagan, who makes a living out of making things up. A fiction writer. Lovely prose, crap science.
I just read that 47% of the brush fires are arson and 87% man made. Also Australia averages 60K brush fires per year.
Yep! And most of those arsonists are know to authorities.
All Aussies: you must immediately send ALL of your money to the government- that will make the fires stop – right, won’t it…