Month: June 2019

There are many many consequences of last month’s election result to trouble progressives, including ABC intimidation, the Secrecy Laws and refugees’ continued incarceration. And then there’s Watergate, the $80 million water sale involving Angus Taylor. Will this be investigated? Not by government it won’t, so here again we see the need for fearless investigative journalism.https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/watergate-the-oxford-connection-behind-australias-richest-water-deal,12783

It’s past time to leave neo-liberalism behind and look for new economic models to deliver on the policy that allows us to be a country in which we’d like to live. It ain’t that now and the progressive ideas we want to see implemented are in the freezer for three years. This time has to be spent developing our version of the ‘Green New Deal’. I don’t think that the AFP will raid us for commenting on this – but with this lot you never know.

How good is hydrogen? Of course, if they’re being frog-marched into fossil-fuel support as big donors demand, LNP shills don’t have the latitude to look sideways at such opportunities as the hydrogen economy.https://reneweconomy.com.au/renewable-hydrogen-getting-cheaper-australia-could-lead-global-market-95168/

Is climate change our World War III or our ‘humans on the moon by the end of the decade’. When JFK committed to the latter, almost no-one thought it possible. We have to think winning World War III is not only possible but just has to be done.Oh, and Happy World Environment Day, everybody.https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jun/04/climate-change-world-war-iii-green-new-deal

Human civilisation or some human civilisations? If the former we are in deep doo-doos. And some civilisations have been there. Jarod Diamond’s book ‘Collapse’ analyses a number of civilisations, from the Sumerians to Greenlanders to Easter Islanders, that have been wiped out by ecological crisis. We have greater capacity for wreaking world-wide catastrophe upon each other now.https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/597kpd/new-report-suggests-high-likelihood-of-human-civilization-coming-to-an-end-in-2050

This Adani fellow didn’t get where he is through a rails run from Modi, he must have some smarts, or is that cunning, about him. A dispassionate look around the world would suggest that coal mines are looming as stranded assets everywhere, so what is his long game?https://theconversation.com/explaining-adani-why-would-a-billionaire-persist-with-a-mine-that-will-probably-lose-money-117682

I grew up on the Broken River in the land of the Yorta Yorta and I identify strongly with slow, red-gum lined inland rivers. My borrungur should be a river, perhaps the Eucalyptus camaldulensis or the red-gum honeyeater, a White-plumed honeyeater. What’s your borrungur?https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-06-01/every-aussie-should-adopt-a-totem/11116978

The ‘easy way’ scientists have found isn’t all that it appears; they ‘believe it can be scaled up’, ‘given enough time’, they ‘might be able to set up giant plants’ to do this. All a bit speculative, eh? Meanwhile, we have a climate crisis and a ready-to-go ‘decarbonise’ response. Stop faffing about and pull out all stops on renewables everywhere.https://www.indiatimes.com/technology/science-and-future/scientists-have-found-an-easy-way-to-remove-co2-from-air-reduce-global-warming-368327.html