Eric Abetz compares The Conversation to Nazis over stance on climate change denial

The Liberal senator Eric Abetz has compared the Conversation website to Hitler, Stalin and Mao, after it announced a zero-tolerance approach to climate change deniers.

Eric Abetz has said the Conversation’s stance
on climate change denial is ‘reminiscent of
totalitarian regimes’ such as the Nazis.

The academic news and analysis website has said it will remove comments and lock accounts that put forward those views, outraging the Tasmanian senator.

“Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong couldn’t have put it better themselves. They’d be so proud,” he told parliament.

“To so superciliously and arrogantly deny a voice to an alternative point of view is reminiscent of totalitarian regimes.”

In a blog post, the Conversation’s editor Misha Ketchell said people shamelessly peddling pseudoscience were perpetuating ideas that would ultimately destroy the planet.

Read the story from The Guardian - “Eric Abetz compares The Conversation to Nazis over stance on climate change denial.”

Understanding society-wide governance meshes with understanding climate change

NEW YORK – In 2015, “fascism” once again became the highest-octane political epithet in general use. Of course, the temptation to apply the fascism label is almost overwhelming when we confront language and behaviour that superficially resembles that of Hitler and Mussolini. At the moment, it is being widely applied to cases as disparate as Donald Trump, the Tea Party, the National Front in France, and radical Islamist assassins. But, though the temptation to call such actors “fascist” is understandable, it should be resisted.

At its creation in the 1920s (first in Italy and then in Germany), fascism was a violent reaction against a perceived excess of individualism. Italy was scorned and Germany was defeated in World War I, Mussolini and Hitler claimed, because democracy and individualism had sapped them of national unity and will.

Read what the Professor Emeritus of History at Columbia University, Robert O. Paxton, said on Project Syndicate - “Is Fascism Back?”

(Climate change is bringing on many things, among them an inequality that is uncovering right-wing Fascist-like politics that are about control and the erosion of human freedom; a freedom that will be an essential ingredient of any sweeping society wide changes needed if we are to avoid the worst of a disrupted climate system. Maybe, a first glance, Professor Paxton’s views might appear irrelevant to climate activists, but avoidance of the worst of climate change is going to about governance and anything that remotely resembles Fascism simply sucks the oxygen out of the societal processes that will be the keystone of humanity’s confrontation with its greatest ever struggle – Robert McLean.)

Expert who likened wind industry tactics to those of Hitler may yet be government advisor

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n expert who has likened the wind industry's tactics to Hitler and claims the Australian Medical Association's support for wind power is "corrupt" is among those that Senate crossbenchers want appointed as government advisers on wind power.

The office of Environment Minister Greg Hunt has confirmed he still intends to appoint a scientific committee to advise on the alleged impact of wind turbines on human health, despite the government's new embrace of renewable energy under Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

The government will also soon announce who will fill the role of national wind farm commissioner to investigate complaints about wind turbines, despite refusing to appoint a full-time disability commissioner.

Read The Sydney Morning Herald story - “Scientist who likened wind industry to Hitler floated as potential Turnbull government adviser”.

Phillip paints word pictures to explain the complexities of climate change

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Phillip Sutton.

ictures painted with words helped listeners understand some of the complexities of climate change and why it is what it is.

Co-author of Climate Code Red, Phillip Sutton, “painted” that picture when he spoke at “Post-Paris: Sketching a new approach” at The Carlton Connect Initiative on Wednesday, September 23.

Phillip, standing before a table of books, all of which he had obviously read, went back to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution to begin his illustrative story.

Phillip is an active member of the Victorian Climate Action Network and recently circulated fellow members of VCAN alerting them to a new book.

He said: “Tim Snyder, an historian, has written what I think is a very important book:  "Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning".  In the concluding chapter, where he focuses on the future, Tim explores stress dynamics that could lead to new genocides.  He draws a conclusion that might surprise some of his readers - that climate change might be one of the most serious.

“Tim makes a very powerful argument, developed in the second half of his book, that the ability to rescue threatened people when genocides are underway is terrifyingly limited - so effective prevention is crucial,” he wrote.

A “long read” on the Guardian says, in commenting on the book and discussing the order both those on the left and right fear it says: “In an era of climate change, the rightwing version of anarchy, economic libertarianism, may pose the more pertinent danger.”

Read the Guardian’s long-read story - “Hitler’s world may not be so far away.”