Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

The other need for local military enforcement's about to disappear too.  Supposedly we're supposed to start mining the one third of the world's known uranium that's nestling in the SA desert.  The trouble is that with the high Aussie dollar and the cashflow nervousness the European "financial wobbles" have created, it's apparently not a good time to go uranium mining.  The sackings last week by Rio Tinto of a large number of its Sydney and Melbourne office staff are the best indicator of our local mining future.

[T]he arrest of carbon emissions may not be sufficient to halt the current trend, except if accompanied with global efforts at down-draw of atmospheric CO2 using a range of bio-sequestration, organic and chemical methods.

The International Energy Agency is not a bunch of green tree-huggers. The following Executive Summary from their new report is a significant input to other debates here and elsewhere. Headlines: "Oil could hit $150 a barrel soon if investment in the Middle East and North Africa fails to rise with demand" : "If fossil fuel infrastructure is not rapidly changed, the world will 'lose for ever' the chance to avoid dangerous climate change." : "Delaying action is a false economy: for every $1 of investment avoided in the power sector before 2020 an additional $4.3 would need to be spent after 2020 to compensate for the increased emissions."

The passing of the carbon tax bill today is a victory for future generations and for the planet. The money raised will be used to fund alternative energy and new industries for Australia. We can all stand proud today.

With challenges like these confronting mankind, can we continue with a business as usual approach? Are the current institutions capable of addressing these challenges? I think not. To fix these problems governments will need to raise a lot more revenue.

I believe it is greed that is a root cause of climate change denial. The people who deny the threat of global warming are the same people who are unwilling to change their way of life so that others in the village can survive. People who want it all now and are unwilling to leave anything for generations to come.

...even science fiction writers such as George Orwell, Aldous Huxley or Doris Lessing did not envisage a civilisation that would knowingly, against the best scientific evidence, devastate its own atmosphere and ocean system as comprehensively as has been and continues to be done through anthropogenic (human-induced) climate change.

The Carbon Tax is not going to make one iota of difference to whether our grandchildren have a Great Barrier Reef. What it will achieve is a rapid exodus of Australian manufacturing. Australia, the land of solar roofs, manufactured in China. Australia, the overseas-owned quarry.

It's to be hoped that Julia willl vindicate the need today, and that the propoganda war being fought on the issue will be assuaged and mollified.. but don't count on it!

"The simple systems which sustained people in monetary poverty but in reasonable harmony with nature and the seasons and with what was sustainable and what was not have only been suborned and abandoned on a global scale in the last 100 years or so."-   Rob Scott

In all my years of working in animal welfare I have never seen anything to equal that. If you did not see it then go to IView, or there is footage on our Animals Australia website. Just google it but be warned. It is more than shocking.

Surely it is time to get on with the job. Rather than debating carbon tax we should be investing in alternative energy, instead of a two speed economy (miners doing well everyone else struggling) we should be rolling out technology such as this. Projects like this create jobs in regional areas and massively reduce our use of fossil fuels.

Inherent in IPCC climate change projections are continuous trends toward mean global temperatures of 1.8 to 3.6 degrees C by 2100, depending on emission scenarios, as adopted in the Stern and Garnaut reports, giving an impression as if mitigation and/or adaptation can be undertaken at any economically or politically chosen time over the next several decades. Unfortunately this is not the case.

"A global movement of climate justice organizers and direct actionistas has been building People Power against the root causes of climate change for quite some time. In North America, our fight to stop climate change and fossil fuel extraction is happening right now all over the country" - Scott Parkin

Sure, let’s make the most of the renewed attention and reawakened concerns about nukes. But in doing so, let’s not spend too much energy attacking phantom reactors. I'd rather leapfrog over any questions of hypothetical reactors to confront the reality of uranium mining. I don't know that we can do anything about earthquakes and tsunami, but we have a responsibility, and an opportunity, to act now to avoid the risk of another Fukushima.

A prominent Cairns businessman is spearheading a push to bring thousands of Japanese refugees left homeless by the earthquake and tsunami to the Far North to ease the pressure on the disaster-struck nation.

During a time of war a leader who wanted to appease the enemy would be called a traitor. It is about time we asked who is paying these people when the scientific evidence is so overwhelming. Whose interests are they supporting?

Just before 2 a.m. on February 19, the war on climate science showed its grip on the U.S. House of Representatives as it voted to eliminate U.S. funding for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The Republican majority, on a mostly party-line vote of 244-179, went on record as essentially saying that it no longer wishes to have the IPCC prepare its comprehensive international climate science assessments.

65 dead.. so far..

I want to help others see that it can be done, if you want it enough.I am only a pensioner, with a child that's most bedridden, and yet I can run this farm on the principles of permaculture and communalism. We don't make any money, but we don't have big expenses

Back in March 2008, I put down my prediction that later that year the oil price would reach $145 and bring an end to world economic growth. Now we're back at $90, will it happen again?

Sometimes an inquiry is necessary. There is a need to quickly and efficiently cut out dead wood so that the tree can sprout again. This is not the case with the flood response.

What becomes immediately obvious is that there is more agreement than disagreement. Nevertheless, it has been said that a chain is as strong as its weakest link, and laying the issues out clearly explains why so many people are so cautious about the emissions trading bill.

June, April to June, and Year-to-Date Global Temperatures are Warmest on Record Last month’s combined global land and ocean surface temperature made it the warmest June on record and the warmest on record averaged for any April-June and January-June periods … Worldwide average land surface temperature was the warmest on record for June and the April-June period, and the second warmest on record for the year-to-date (January-June) period, behind 2007. (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, US)

Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming - reviewed by Robin McKie of The Observer.

Is it possible to have prosperity that isn’t about rising income? A prosperity that would give us health and security, at the same time allowing us to participate socially with hope for the future – a life that gives us the ability to flourish as human beings on a finite planet?... We are social beings, not isolates. To be complete we need to free our imagination: our prosperity should be about caring for others – a prosperity of hope.

"The enquiry will tell whether this is the case or whether there has been a monumental screw-up by BP and or the drilling contractor. One would imagine a deepwater drilling moratorium will be in place in the meantime."

Feeble attempts by civilization to mitigate the climate are drowning in a tide of medieval conspiracy theories by man-over-nature ideologues. There is nowhere else the 6.5 billion of contemporary humans can go.

Mark Lynas has posted on the Guardian a fascinating and depressing first person account of the final Heads of State meeting. How do I know China wrecked the Copenhagen deal? I was in the room

The following editorial will be printed today by 56 newspapers in 20 languages, mostly on the front page. "... both the Sydney Morning Herald and Melbourne Age dropped out of the project after climate change convulsed Australian politics, demanding, they felt, a more localised editorial position." Write and tell them they were wrong.