‘Biggest compliment yet': Greta Thunberg welcomes oil chief's 'greatest threat' label

Greta Thunberg and other climate activists have said it is a badge of honour that the head of the world’s most powerful oil cartel believes their campaign may be the “greatest threat” to the fossil fuel industry.

Greta Thunberg tweeted: ‘Thank you! Our biggest
 compliment yet!’ in response to Mohammed
Barkindo’s comments.

The criticism of striking students by the trillion-dollar Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) highlights the growing reputational concerns of oil companies as public protests intensify along with extreme weather.

Mohammed Barkindo, the secretary general of Opec, said there was a growing mass mobilisation of world opinion against oil, which was “beginning to … dictate policies and corporate decisions, including investment in the industry”.

Read the story from The Guardian by Jonathon Watts - “‘Biggest compliment yet': Greta Thunberg welcomes oil chief's 'greatest threat' label.”

Greens seek to shame Labor by vowing to restore carbon tax

A new clash over a carbon tax will shape the next election as the Greens launch a campaign to reinstate a price on carbon, challenging Labor to embrace the policy as the strongest way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Greens climate change spokesman Adam
Bandt and Labor leader Bill Shorten.CREDIT:

The Greens will vow to restore the carbon price put into place in 2011 and scrapped in 2014, telling voters the Parliament can reinstate the policy as if the scheme had never been repealed by the Coalition.

But it will drop the fixed price in the first three years of the original carbon tax and instead promise a market price linked to overseas carbon schemes.

Read the story from The Age by David Crowe - “Greens seek to shame Labor by vowing to restore carbon tax.”

‘We have a duty to act': hundreds ready to go to jail over climate crisis

A new group of “concerned citizens” is planning a campaign of mass civil disobedience starting next month and promises it has hundreds of people – from teenagers to pensioners – ready to get arrested in an effort to draw attention to the unfolding climate emergency.

 Roger Hallam, co-founder of Extinction Rebellion,
 speaking at a Rising Up conference. 

The group, called Extinction Rebellion, is today backed by almost 100 senior academics from across the UK, including the former archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams.

In a letter published in the Guardian they say the failure of politicians to tackle climate breakdown and the growing extinction crisis means “the ‘social contract’ has been broken … [and] it is therefore not only our right, but our moral duty to bypass the government’s inaction and flagrant dereliction of duty, and to rebel to defend life itself.”

Those behind Extinction Rebellion say almost 500 people have signed up to be arrested and that they plan to bring large sections of London to a standstill next month in a campaign of peaceful mass civil disobedience – culminating with a sit-in protest in Parliament Square on 17 November.

Read the story from The Guardian by Matthew Taylor - “‘We have a duty to act': hundreds ready to go to jail over climate crisis.”

'Prolonged and intellectually incoherent campaign against action on climate change'

Robert Manne writing in his new book, “On Borrowed Time”:

“The Australian has conducted a prolonged and intellectually incoherent campaign against action on climate change, which has undermined the hold in public life of the central values of the Enlightenment, Science and Reason. This has helped make action by any Australian government on the most serious question of contemporary times far more difficult than it ought to have been.”

Trump EPA Sued Over Refusal to Release Heartland Institute Communications.

Two environmental groups filed suit Thursday to force the Environmental Protection Agency to disclose its correspondence with the Heartland Institute, a conservative think tank that has led a years-long campaign to discredit climate science.

The lawsuit suggests that contact between the EPA
under Scott Pruitt and the Heartland Institute is more
extensive than previously known.

The complaint by the Southern Environmental Law Center and the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) suggests that contact between the EPA and Heartland has been far more extensive than previously known. An EPA Freedom of Information Act official told EDF last year that an agency search had yielded "between 200 to 600 records" of such correspondence, according to the lawsuit filed in federal court in Virginia.

"EPA's efforts to promote climate change deniers and undermine peer-reviewed science behind closed doors is not only a failure of its mission, it is illegal," said Kym Hunter, an attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center. "The public has a clear and protected right to know what the EPA is doing and with whom they are communicating, including those pushing a climate-denier agenda.”

Read the Inside Climate News story - “Trump EPA Sued Over Refusal to Release Heartland Institute Communications.”

Climate change is a disaster foretold, just like the first world war

“The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time.”

‘The extraordinary – almost absurd – contrast between
what we should be doing and what’s actually taking
place fosters low-level climate denialism’ 

The mournful remark supposedly made by foreign secretary Sir Edward Grey at dusk on 3 August 1914 referred to Britain’s imminent entry into the first world war. But the sentiment captures something of our own moment, in the midst of an intensifying campaign against nature.

According to the World Wildlife Fund’s 2016 Living Planet Report, over the last four decades the international animal population was reduced by nearly 60%. More than a billion fewer birds inhabit North America today compared to 40 years ago. In Britain, certain iconic species (grey partridges, tree sparrows, etc) have fallen by 90%. In Germany, flying insects have declined by 76% over the past 27 years. Almost half of Borneo’s orangutans died or were removed between 1999 and 2015. Elephant numbers have dropped by 62% in a decade, with on average one adult killed by poachers every 15 minutes.

We inherited a planet of beauty and wonders – and we’re saying goodbye to all that.

The cultural historian Paul Fussell once identified the catastrophe of the first world war with the distinctive sensibility of modernity, noting how 20th century history had “domesticate[d] the fantastic and normalize[d] the unspeakable.”

Consider, then, the work of climate change.

Read Jeff Sparrow’s story from The Guardian - “Climate change is a disaster foretold, just like the first world war.”

Turnbull government's holiday plan to silence criticism from charities

By the time the Turnbull government is booted from office, the people who speak out on our behalf will be silenced. They will be unable to campaign on poverty, health or the Coalition's pathetic attitude to the environment.

Agents of foreign influence? A charity collector in Sydney.

The lifeblood has already drained from the Human Rights Commission. Gone are the days when its president would stand up for the dispossessed and the disadvantaged. For the Liberal government, that was just the beginning of undermining those who speak out. Now, Attorney-General George Brandis, chief architect of the "great silencing", is off to Britain. Lucky him.

Read the comment by Jenna Price in today’s Melbourne Age - “Turnbull government's holiday plan to silence criticism from charities.”

Alan joins our letter writing campaign

Beneath the Wisteria supporter, Alan English, has joined our letter writing campaign and below is what he has written and sent to Shepparton’s weekly newspaper, the Advisor.

Things little children say - A true kinder story.

An aunty of mine used to teach at a kindergarten. She told of a little girl who came up to her and said: ”Miss, its coming.” Well it seems we are all likely to be in the poo soon the way things are going. Climate scientists have warned ad infinitum that the World is becoming hotter, but really no one seems to care whether we dirty our pants or not. The government claims to know that the climate is changing, but is so up-tight about the economic situation that what is proposed to avoid a climate melt-down falls far short of what is required. It is agreed that all nations have to pull together, but insufficient is prepared to lead the way or show courage. Yes, we may well be in the poo!.

Most people see the daily weather reports. With Central Australia having soaring temperatures of 48 c and Brisbane experiencing its highest temperature ever, it is highly likely that some-time in January or February we could see a return of temperatures such as 45 c as we did in 2009 when bush fires in Victoria were out of control. How many of you have noted the plight of farmers in Queensland? The sheep industry cannot be sustained due to the heat; and that is apart from the fact there isn’t enough vegetation to eat. Cattle are being driven along roads and stock routes. Some people of the land are packing up and leaving. Rainfall and even cyclonic rains are most uncertain. Meteorologists are not with any certainty able to offer assurances of what may happen. We are not exempt from catastrophe either. It isn’t news that our atmosphere is contaminated. Unless urgent action is taken, we will certainly know what it is to have poo in our pants.

Will as many people as possible ask their newspaper to organise petitions to the Federal Government to take better and more control for what is certain catastrophe without immediate action. Balancing the budget is important, but if our climate becomes unbearable it will be HELL for all of us.

'Voters are being played for mugs' - The Monthly

The Monthly has been keeping us abreast of what is happening in the world of politics in the lead-up to Saturday’s Federal Election.
This latest post brings alarming news – judge it as you will, but if ever the idea of “cheating” could be levelled at a political party for its election campaign behaviour, this is it.

The Liberal Party has always nosily trumpeted it economic strengths, but in this instance it has excelled only at avoiding a confrontation with reality – it’s primary opponents, the Labor Party, has clearly done well at managing Australia’s economy in rather difficult circumstances, but in treating electors like dills, the Liberals have not given us accurate figures, rather we have been taken up the garden path.

This what The Monthly editor, Nick Feik, wrote:

FIGURES IN HIDING

The Coalition has been remarkably adept at avoiding scrutiny of its economic policies and rhetoric throughout the campaign, and this continues today.

It won't release official costings, and has no intention of releasing any before the election. Instead Hockey will present an isolated set of figures purporting to list policies that will marginally improve the budget position, reportedly by $6 billion over the next 4 years.

Nevertheless, voters around the country are today seeing headlines such as 'Coalition savings hit $40 billion,' and articles suggesting the Coalition's costings will all be revealed.

The people voting – and the 2 million who have already voted – are poorly served by ongoing coverage such as this.

The bottom line is that the Coalition is promising to make no major cuts to the budget. Ironically, after years of 'debt and deficit' talk, it is going to the election with a policy platform that entirely sidesteps the 'budget emergency' that it decried.

One final point: the Coalition's excuse for not releasing even these costings until the last days of the campaign was that it couldn't do so until it had announced all of its policies. The Coalition hasn't announced any policies that would have any serious fiscal impact for over a week. Voters are being played for mugs.