The untruths we're being told about coal and renewable power

Wind farms "kill all the birds", said
 US President-elect Donald Trump.

Who better to ingratiate himself with Donald Trump? Joe Hockey is our man in Washington. Remember his thoughts about wind turbines, back in 2014 when he was Tony Abbott's treasurer?

"If I can be a little indulgent," he asked an extremely eager radio host. "I drive to Canberra to go to parliament and so on, I drive myself, and I must say I find those wind turbines around Lake George to be utterly offensive. I think they are just a blight on the landscape."

Trump thinks they're utterly offensive too.

"I don't know if you've ever been to Palm Springs, California; it looks like a junkyard," he told a US radio host a few days before the election.

"They have all these different companies and each one is made by a different group from, all from China and from Germany, by the way, not from here, and you look at all these windmills, half of them are broken, they're rusting and rotting. It looks like a poor man's version of Disneyland; it's the worst thing you've ever seen."

And worse still, wind power "kills all the birds".

Read Peter Martin’s story in today’s Melbourne Age - “The untruths we're being told about coal and renewable power.”

Abbott's demise stokes hope among clean energy providers

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ony Abbott’s demise has stoked hope among clean energy providers that super funds and other investors will step up investment in renewables, such as solar and wind power.

Investment confidence in renewables took a beating in the past 12 months amid concern that the Abbott government was considering ways to tighten regulation of wind turbine rollouts across the country.

In July the government’s $10 billion Clean Energy Finance Corporation was directed by the Treasurer Joe Hockey to freeze investment in wind projects.

Read The New Daily story -“Give us renewables, super funds tell the PM”.

Our government doesn't know or doesn't care - illustrated by Budget plea

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oe Hockey and Coalition counterparts are obviously oblivious to the root causes of climate change, they don’t know, or don’t care.

Joe Hockey - sending out
exactly the wrong message.

The Federal Treasurer has urged Australians to “spend, spend, spend” an idea, that if broadly taken up, will only see us consume even more carbon-rich products and further worsen our place among the world’s biggest emitters of carbon dioxide.

Mr Hockey brought down this year’s Budget on Tuesday night with the theme of “have a go” and “spend, spend, spend”, two ideas that are about reinforcing populist values and if embraced take us further away from abating the causes of climate change.

His ideas of simply a rather brutal and rude extrapolation of neo-liberal policies again illustrating that the present Australian Government has no conception of threats to the country arising from climate change.

Today’s Melbourne Age discusses the treasurer’s disconcerting idea in story - “Federal budget 2015: Joe Hockey's growth message is spend,spend, spend”.

Advice for Joe Hockey that could save $billions for Australia

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 trio from the Charles Darwin University has some advice that Australia’s Treasurer, Joe Hockey, could well take heed of.



Joe Hockey.

A Friend of The Conversation and a Professor of Conservation and Sustainable Livelihoods at Charles Darwin University, Professor Garnett, along with Senior Research Fellow, Kerstin Zander, and a Post-doctoral researcher Elspeth Oppermann, points out that “Extreme heat poses a billion-dollar threat to Australia’s economy”.

“When heat waves hit in summer, do you have trouble sleeping? And the next day, even though you are working in air-conditioning, are you a bit slower, your judgement a bit off, or your patience a bit frayed?” they write.

Report stumbles and falls for ideological reasons, and fails Australians

Australia’s latest “Intergenerational Report” stumbled and fell for ideological reasons when confronted with the realities of climate change.

Our existing neo-liberal Coalition Government has always found the idea of climate contrary to its grand designs; designs that hinge entirely of more of what was and live or die on a carbon rich economy.

Our previous Intergenerational Report, a produce of the then Labor Government, devoted an entire chapter to the challenges of climate change, while this latest report, handed down by Treasurer Joe Hockey, limited  what is in fact a nation-defining difficulty to just three pages.

This timely missed opportunity to address the greatest risk Australia has ever faced has been lamented on The Drum by Olivia Kember and Kate Mackenzie

Writing in “Intergenerational Report fails us on climate risks”  they said: “The Intergenerational Report is all about what's most important for our future, so it's a shame it became another missed opportunity to address the biggest risk issue of the day: climate change.

Conflicting advice from scientists and politicians

Joe Hockey - he doesn't
want us to let Santa
down and so
 shop for Christmas.

Australians face stark differences in advice about how they should behave.

A leading Australian climate scientist argues that we should restrain our consumptive behaviours and yet this morning our Treasurer Mr Joe Hockey encouraged exactly the opposite.

The Melbourne-based scientist said population was not the fundamental problem, rather our seemingly insatiable desire to consume more and more energy-intensive products.

This morning on Radio National Mr Hockey urged Australians to “Go out there and spend for Christmas, don’t let Santa down.”

The contradiction is obvious – science tells us, unequivocally, that climate change can only be addressed if we spend and consume less , while our politicians are encouraging quite the reverse,

You can hear the Joe Hockey interview with Fran Kelly here on Radio National.

Are we seeing stubbornness or stupidity?

Lord Nicholas Stern - combatting
climate change and growth
not incompatible.

Australia’s Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, and his Treasurer, Joe Hockey, have illustrated a stubbornness that could be equated with stupidity.

The pair, facing obvious and overwhelming odds, refused to acknowledge, even when questioned directly that economic growth was inextricably linked to a benign climate, the weakness in their thinking.

Their resistance to the idea and adherence to the belief that the world’s future security and wellbeing was to be found in economic affairs did not even fade when faced with a contrary view from British economist, Lord Nicholas Stern, who in 2006 reviewed the economics of climate change.

Today London’s Financial Times discussed that view in a story headed: “Growth and fighting global climate change not incompatible”.

We are a nation of 'Co2 leaners' when it comes to climate change

Joe  Hockey - he want's
Australians to be "lifters".

Australia is quite clearly a “leaner” when it comes to the world’s efforts to address climate change.

Efforts to “sell” the Coalition Government’s 2014 Budget drove Treasurer Joe Hockey to ask Australians to decide whether they were either “lifters” or “leaners”.

“Leaners” in Mr Hockey’s terms only worsened Australia’s budgetary situation and what we needed to be, again according to Mr Hockey, was a nation of “lifters”.

Many countries in the world are making determined efforts to reduce their respective carbon dioxide emissions, but Australia, considering our massive per capita contributions is doing almost nothing, so we are in effect “C02 leaners”.

An example of Australia’s token efforts is shown by Foreign Minister, Julie Bishop, who has rejected requests for Australia to become a “lifter” rather than a “leaner”.

A story in today’s Melbourne Age, headed: “Julie Bishop rejects UN request to strengthen Australian climate targets” tells of this blatant desire to ignore what is a planetary emergency and continue to lean on the efforts of others.

G20 - naive, wilfully ignorant, actually ignorant, irresponsible or simply foolish?

by Robert McLean

Joe Hockey and his G20 counterparts don’t know about, don’t understand or don’t care about the indisputable facts spelt out in the 1970s by the Club of Rome.

Arising from their recent Sydney meeting was a pledge to develop “ambitious but realistic” policies to add more than $US2 trillion to global gross domestic product over five years.

That pledge, if you take note of the realities described by the Club of Rome in its 1974 book “Limits to Growth”, is not only unsustainable, but wholly irresponsible.

The late systems analyst, author, environmental scientist and teacher, Donella Meadows, examined and explained the finitude of earth’s resources, considered present and likely usage, population growth, wrote about her findings and warned the world of difficult times ahead.

Meadows’ work was acclaimed by those aware of the world’s unfolding social and resource difficulties, but subjected to a barrage of criticism from many.

Ms Meadows penned the book in the 70s and although there was then an understanding of the damage caused to our atmosphere by fossil fuels it was not until the eighties the American scientist James Hansen spelt the complications of human activities linking it irrefutably to market-driven growth.

Mr Hockey, his fellow finance ministers and central bankers have, in signing up to boost world growth have simply worsened difficulties the world already faces.

The G20 pledge is populist in that it fits neatly with what has become human nature to have more, but today we know that “more” in its modern sense equates with a damaged climate, manifested as weather foreign to what most are familiar with and upon which humanity depends.

Rather than align themselves with the brutality of unfeeling growth, those who attend such events as the recent G20, need to be considering how nations understand and deal with the certainty of contraction and a world in which resources will become rarer and subsequently more expensive.

Rather than exhorting people to seek solutions to what ails them through growth, they need to work at understanding the “Limits to Growth” and lead a discussion about how people of the world can find contentment through living a more restrained life.

Such a conversation is contrary to the urgings of the market-driven system, but it is a necessary one for if we continue with business as usual and such things as the G20 Pledge, humanity’s grip on this rather slippery slope will be weakened even more.

The courage to address such ideas is in short supply for it demands a break with what exists and a willingness to take society in a fresh and safer direction; a challenge that is beyond most world leaders who do nought but muddy facts through the proselytizing of fallacies.