Morrison government announces funding for community environment projects

The Morrison government will unveil $22 million in funding for community environmental projects across the country on Monday, stepping up its green pitch to voters ahead of the election.

Scott Morrison at the Snowy 2.0 project last week.

The program, which will provide up to $150,000 to each federal electorate in 2019-20, follows the government's funding announcements on its revamped "direct action" emissions reduction initiative and the Snowy 2.0 hydro project.

Read the story from The Age - “Morrison government announces funding for community environment projects.”

Maths illiteracy has led to Trump and Brexit: Eddie Woo

Dubai: For Eddie Woo, there's a direct link between the trouble many adults have with maths and the election of Donald Trump, Brexit and climate change denial.

Cherrybrook Technology High School maths teacher Eddie
 Woo says the way maths is taught in Australia and around the
world needs to be changed radically.

Mr Woo, the Cherrybrook Technology High School maths head teacher who has become known around the world for his maths YouTube videos, said the inability of many people to understand data and statistics has become a major social problem.

Read the story by Pallavi Singhal from The Age - “Maths illiteracy has led to Trump and Brexit: Eddie Woo.”

The Koch Brothers Get Their Very Own Secretary of State

In the Republican wave election of 2010, when Charles and David Koch emerged as defining figures in American politics, the greatest beneficiary of Koch Industries largesse was a political newcomer named Mike Pompeo. After his election to the House eight years ago, Pompeo was referred to as the “Koch Brothers’ Congressman” and “the congressman from Koch.”

Mike Pompeo testifies before the Senate Intelligence Committee on February 13.

Now Pompeo is positioned to become a Koch brothers–influenced secretary of state.

After serving for a little more than a year as Donald Trump’s top yes-man at the Central Intelligence Agency, Pompeo is Trump’s pick to replace Rex Tillerson, the administration’s listless placeholder at the Department of State.

In a measure of the extent to which Trump and Tillerson had disengaged from one another, the outgoing secretary of state apparently learned of his firing via Twitter Tuesday morning—when an aide showed the nation’s top diplomat a tweet from the president announcing the transition. A statement from the department indicated that Tillerson was “unaware of the reason” for his removal.

Read The Nation story by John Nichols - “The Koch Brothers Get Their Very Own Secretary of State.”

Will Queensland embrace the future or stick with its shocking land clearing past?

If a tree falls in the Queensland outback during an election, does any voter care? If you happen to be a besieged koala, you’d definitely hope so.

Land clearing in Wombinoo in Queensland, Australia. The aftermath
of land clearing in 2016 triggered intervention from the federal government. 

With the Queensland election upon us, it has become clear that the rights and wrongs of clearing Queensland’s forests and woodlands have been a polarising issue with all major players releasing dramatically different policies.

The scene was set for this debate when, only weeks before the election, shocking new independent data was released that showed that 400,000 hectares of bush were cleared in Queensland during the year 2015–16.

This is the equivalent to a Gabba cricket pitch-sized area of forest cleared every three minutes every day, all year. Experts from WWF Australia have estimated that 45 million animals were killed as a result of the clearing in 2015through 2016 alone.

Read the opinion piece on The Guardian by Lyndon Schneiders - “Will Queensland embrace the future or stick with its shocking land clearing past?”

The Climate Science Denial Promoters Behind Queensland's Energy Scare Election Headlines.

In the final week before an election, the biggest-selling newspaper in the Australian state of Queensland screamed a front-page headline that cut into one of the poll’s most divisive issues.

“Nervous Energy” read the headline, claiming an “Exclusive” on a “Dire warning of power station closures, blackout.”

According to the Courier-Mail, a just-published report had warned that the center-left Labor Party’s target of 50 percent renewable energy by 2030 would cause “statewide blackouts” for “up to 15 percent of the year.”

According to the report, the policy would also cut dividends to the state’s treasury and push power prices up even further. Labor rejected the claims, saying the state owned the coal power stations and it had no plans to close any prematurely.

The report was from the Australian Institute for Progress (AiP) and provided a perfect echo of the center-right Liberal National Party’s (LNP) warnings to prospective voters in the state poll. But this is not surprising, when you learn who is behind the AiP.

Read Graham Readfearn’s Desmog story - “The Climate Science Denial Promoters Behind Queensland's Energy Scare Election Headlines.”

Qld One Nation 'not going anywhere' says Dickson

Pauline Hanson has been caught on the hop by the announcement of the Queensland election on November 25.

Fran Kelly - talking with morning
with One Nation's Steve Dickson.

She's currently in India with a parliamentary delegation and will miss the first week of campaigning.

But her presence still looms large — with One Nation set to field candidates in 60 of the state's 93 seats meaning the minor party is in with a chance of holding the balance of power.

LNP Opposition leader Tim Nichols has ruled out any deals — but former premier Campbell Newman predicts the Liberal National Party won't be able to form government without One Nation's support.

Listen to the RN Breakfast interview - “Qld One Nation 'not going anywhere' says Dickson.”

(Obviously, a few brumbies are loose in the top paddock - One Nation’s Steve Dickson said this morning on radio that is his party’s intention to build a new coal-fired power plant in northern Queensland. Such an idea contradicts overwhelming evidence that coal, being a prime fossil fuel, is the cornerstone of human behaviour that is worsening climate change and putting at risk most everything that is good about life. Dickson and his One Nation counterparts should be avoided and not allowed, under any circumstances, anywhere near the levers of power - Robert McLean)

Turnbull needs to excavate his old 'climate self' if he is to win an election

N

Malcolm Turnbull - needs to go back to
 his old climate-self to win an election.

o more “stop the boats” or “axe the tax”. In announcing his challenge to Tony Abbott on Monday, Malcolm Turnbull promised to take Australian politics away from the mantrafication of policy by three-word chant.

He offered to treat the public intelligently, to engage it with reasoned explanations for policy change, and to fashion a convincing positive economic narrative for Australia.

You could almost hear a collective sigh of relief from the withered body politic.

Read The Conversation story - “If he wants to win an election, Turnbull should go back to his oldself on climate”.

Election landslide brings challenges for those who care

Saturday’s Federal Election brought some rather special challenges for those of us interested in the welfare of people and the environment that sustains them.

The Tony Abbott lead Coalition was swept to power in what appeared to be a competition between the environment and the economy.

It was, and is, an immeasurably unfair race – with the environment (long-term concerns) being something of a turtle and the economy (immediacy and short-term gains) being the hare.

The climate skeptics, many of whom populate our new government, are unable to disassociate the two, as are, obviously, many of those who voted on Saturday.

The environment and the economy have always been dissimilar with one being driven by nature and the other by a human construct.

Until we have the intellectual athleticism to be able to recognise that difference and add the cost of what damage we do to the environment to the cost of human endeavours, then the complications of climate change will only worsen.

Saturday’s election the Coalition pushed, in a public sense, our concerns about the environment to the periphery of the social agenda and in an article headed: “Australia rips up climate-change policies” NewScientist argued the landslide election result was bad news for the climate.

Celebrating small successes will not give us the needed big result

A friend recently said we should be celebrating the small successes that helped mitigate the difficulties associated with climate change.



Australia goes to the polls on
Saturday, September 7.

That, interestingly, is something with which I have decided empathy, if this was in fact 1980.

September 2013 is now, and no matter how much we wish or hope is not 30 years ago.

The simple subtleties, those small successes that would have been afforded us in 1980 can no longer be celebrated for climate change has settled upon the world at an alarming pace; rather more quickly than even the more pessimistic scientists had predicted.

If we are to avoid catastrophic climate change, no longer can we nibble around the edges of our carbon dioxide emissions rather, we have to stop them completely.

Any political party, regardless of philosophies, beliefs or values, has not put forward any sort of proposal that would take humanity anywhere near reaching a position from which we might be placed to avoid the worst of climate change.

With the September 7 Federal Election almost upon we still argue whether our emission cuts should be five per cent or 10 per cent – both are wholly inadequate and unless we are prepared to embark on a war-like footing that would ensure at least 80 per reduction in carbon emissions, then the economy that all earnestly want to protect, then that precious market driven weather and everything with which it is implicated, it doomed.

The Guardian using modelling commissioned by the WWF-Australia writes, in a story headed: “Coalition’s climate policy would cost vastly more than budgeted: study finds”, that funds set aside to meet emission targets would fall short by at least $20bn.

Record gathering Beneath the Wisteria

Today’s Beneath the Wisteria was a record.



Climate change sets
records and Beneath
the Wisteria sets
new highs.

The records, although there are none save my rather suspect memory, suggest we had more people than ever before gather Beneath the Wisteria to consider our response to climate change.

We had 27 people join us this morning, although the numbers were boosted by having five candidates from the forthcoming September 7 election and discuss their ideals and values, particularly as it applies to addressing climate change.

Before today our previous highest number of attendees was 23, but today it was difficult to keep track for the some arrived late and others left early.

Among the candidates who joined us were:  Rod Higgins (Australian Labor Party), Ian Cristoe (Australian Greens, representing Damien Stevens), Fern Summer (Bullet Train for Australia), Catriona Thoolen (Palmer United Party), and Sharman Stone (the sitting Member for Murray of the Liberal Party).

Supporter, John Pettigrew, was the master of ceremonies (a rather grand title for a somewhat humble and informal group), allowed each candidate a few minutes to state their case, followed by questions from the assembled group.

A morning of robust discussion that maybe did not make it clear who should attract a vote, but the opposite (who you wouldn’t vote for) appeared in clear relief.

Shepparton Community Fund CEO, Lisa McKenzie, has invited Beneath the Wisteria and the Slap Tomorrow committee to be involved in the October 19 and 20 “Show Me Greater Shepparton” expo.

Lisa suggested we could have a stand for one, either or both of the organizations, that someone from either of the groups could speak for 15 minutes on either or both days and that a Beneath the Wisteria  session could possibly be staged at the expo.

Comments about the suggestion are welcome, and encouraged.