On the down-hill road to extinction

William P. Hall on December 11, 2022

Now the Victorian Election is over, we we must keep our politicians feet to the fire. Strong, early, and competent action against global warming is the only issue in Parliament that really matters if we are concerned for the futures of our families, or indeed, for our species and the majority of life on our planet. If we don’t stop and reverse the still accelerating global warming our world will soon be so hot that humans and many other species will be experiencing major die-offs and collapses of critical ecosystems before the end of this century on our way to extinction.

The featured article here shows how close we already to this precipice of no return — even without considering the added stress of human caused global warming.

Our road to extinction began with killing off megafauna

In his ‘overkill’ hypothesis, Paul S Martin proposed in 1966 that humanity’s expansion out of Africa into Eurasia, and then into Australia and the Americas led to the extinction of most of the very large terrestrial animals (“megafauna”). The large animals were easy to kill because they had no prior experience with two legged hunters. Hunters feasted and multiplied until the easy prey in a local area was all killed off within a generation or two as humans continued to multiply and expand into new territories — until entire species were exterminated. By its very nature the fossil record is sparse and little evidence of an actual killing spree has been found, but in most of the areas humans colonized out of Africa there was a healthy variety of megafauna before there was evidence of human habitation. And once evidence of human habitation appears in the record there is no more evidence for megafauna, suggesting that large animals were hunted into extinction within a few decades of their first encounters with our distant ancestors.

Martin published his seminal paper while I was doing preparatory studies at Southern Illinois University – Edwardsville before starting my PhD in evolutionary biology at Harvard. The debate continued throughout my time at Harvard as evidence accumulated and was discussed. Martin’s North American paper was published in 1973 as I received my degree and began my teaching career. Some scientists still argue today that climate change was responsible for most of the extinctions and not humans. However, accurately dated fossils and evidence for human hunting reviewed in a 2015 research article by Surovell, show a good fit with Martin’s overkill hypothesis rather than close correspondence with the climate changes.

Once humans are present in the landscape and as our evolving technology grows ever more powerful, this presence affects all living things. Our expanding population and exponentially increasing consumption, control, and destruction of biological resources is progressively leading towards total exploitation or extermination of the natural biological resources we depend on for our own survival. Most extinctions – especially of little creatures – has resulted from human obliteration of their habitats through increasingly mechanized and fossil-fuel driven agriculture.

This post’s featured image shows what a few years of plowing did to the plains of SW Colorado during the ‘dust bowl’ droughts in the 1930’s. Simple farming managed to obliterate all life for as far as as the camera could see…. Actually, the tractor is plowing along the contour lines of the slope working to repair some of the damage so at farming could resume when the rains returned again. The Guardian article below did not include the photo I used, but describes the situation:

A replica of cave paintings in Chauvet cave, France, created around 36,000 years a go. More than 178 species of megafauna are estimated to have been driven to extinction betweeen 52,000 and 9,000 BC. Photo: Patrick Aventurier/Getty Images [from the article]

by Phoebe Weston, 25/11/2022 in the Guardian

Humans v nature: our long and destructive journey to the age of extinction

The story of the damage done to the world’s biodiversity is a tale of decline spanning thousands of years. Can the world seize its chance to change the narrative?

The story of the biodiversity crisis starts with a cold-case murder mystery that is tens of thousands of years old. When humans started spreading across the globe they discovered a world full of huge, mythical-sounding mammals called “megafauna”, but by the end of the Pleistocene, one by one, these large animals had disappeared. There is no smoking gun and evidence from ancient crime scenes is – unsurprisingly – patchy. But what investigators have learned suggests a prime suspect: humans.

Take the case of Genyornis, one of the world’s heaviest birds, which was more than 2 metres tall and weighed in excess of 200kg. It lived in Australia until, along with many other megafauna, it went extinct 50,000 years ago. In North America, giant beavers weighing the same as a fridge and an armadillo-like creature called a glyptodon, which was the size of a small car, existed until about 12,000 years ago, when they, too, went extinct. In all, more than 178 species of the world’s largest mammals are estimated to have been driven to extinction between 52,000 and 9,000BC.

For a long time, these extinctions were thought to be linked to natural changes in the environment – until 1966, when palaeontologist Paul S Martin put forward his controversial “overkill hypothesis” that humans were responsible for the extinctions of megafauna, destroying the romantic vision of early humans living in harmony with nature.

…

[T]oday … we are not just killing megafauna but destroying whole landscapes, often in just a few years. Farming is the primary driver of destruction and, of all [surviving] mammals on Earth, 96% are either livestock or humans. The UN estimates as many as one million plant and animal species are at risk of extinction.

Read the whole article….

We hit the accelerator on the downhill road to extinction with fossil fuel burning and habitat destruction

I came face-to-face with the catastrophe we humans are speeding towards some than six years ago as I was finishing a 10+ year book project on the coevolution of humans and our increasingly powerful technologies, “Application Holy Wars or a New Reformation“. This combines significant threads from my own life-history (paleontology, evolutionary biology, systems ecology, theory of knowledge, organizational theory, engineering & the exponential growth of computer technology), to explore and explain how our hominin ancestors (close cousins of the ancestors of chimpanzees and bonobos) have become so powerful that we are profoundly impacting our planet’s atmosphere, oceans, land surface, and biosphere.

As I focused on finishing the project by forecasting future trends in this coevolution, it became clear that further effort was largely pointless — because few if any people would be available to actually read the book. We face a population crash and social collapse in the global mass extinction event we are forcing on our only planet. I concluded that what time I had left would be far better spent trying to focus people’s and our leader’s attentions on the crisis that we are rushing towards in hopes of organizing actions to delay and perhaps avoid the oblivion.

Several of my works (plus much of the material I have collected on Climate Sentinel News) map out how the evolutionary road we are on leads to a catastrophe if we are unable to put on the brakes and turn off the road to extinction to find a way back up the hill before it is too late:

… Victor Anderson, a visiting professor in sustainability at Anglia Ruskin University, also argues biodiversity loss has been seen by some as a middle-class, trivial or even rightwing issue….. He says the issue continues to be difficult, not least because every aspect of industry is entwined with nature’s destruction. “I think tracing through the causes of biodiversity loss is a bit frightening, because it does lead you to the whole way in which the world economy operates.”

The story of the biodiversity crisis is a tale of decline spanning thousands of years. From hunting huge mammals to extinction to poisoning birdlife with pesticides, humans have treated nature as an inexhaustible resource for too long. Environmentalists, Indigenous peoples and scientists have been sounding the alarm about the biodiversity crisis for more than half a century, and yet no meaningful action has been taken. Much has already been lost, but there is still lots to play for.

Featured article

Collapsing biodiversity on its own is a shocking indicator that human impacts on the natural world are exterminating a vast array of other species through direct killing and habitat destruction. We are also making the entire planet less friendly to life in general through global warming, increasing the acidity of watercourses, lakes and oceans, and poisoning the environment many other ways.

Inevitably, the circle of biological collapse is folding back on humanity itself. The biosphere provides a vast array of “ecosystem services” (oxygen in the air, drinkable water, pollination of crops, soil renewal, fisheries, etc….) that we and our domesticated plants and animals depend on for life. Beyond that, our continued burning of fossil carbon is raising Earth’s surface temperature to levels that are lethal for many plants and animals. As I write this, much northern Australia faces extreme heatwave conditions in the mid 40s, that are easily lethal to unprotected humans and many other organisms:

Maximum temperatures are expected to be in the low to mid forties over inland NT and in the mid to high thirties across northern parts of the Top End, while overnight temperatures will be in the mid to high twenties. Severe to Extreme heatwave conditions are expected to increase in area and intensity and reach a peak early next week before beginning to ease. (http://www.bom.gov.au/nt/warnings/heatwave.shtml; see also Extreme heat health alert issued across Northern Territory). Similar warnings have also been issued for northern WA and QLD.

Such conditions can easily cause local extinctions to many species unable to migrate long distances to recolonize depleted areas. Many other organisms that depended in one way or another on the now extinct species will also go extinct because they are unable to replace that dependency – leading to a cascade of extinctions leading towards the ‘sterilized earth’ situation depicted in the featured image. As more and more extinctions occur along with increasingly frequent and widespread ecosystem collapses, Homo sapiens (our own species) will almost certainly be included in the casualties lost for all time. This conclusion is where ‘business as usual’ is driving towards.

I’m not the only one issuing this warning; Antonio Guterres – UN Chief said: We’re racing down the “highway to climate hell” and pointed to the only realistic way to avoid this end to our history on Earth: “Humanity has a choice: cooperate or perish,” Guterres told the UN COP27 summit. “It is either a Climate Solidarity Pact or a Collective Suicide Pact,” he added.

Avoiding this suicide won’t be easy given the vast sums of money fossil fuel and other self-serving special interests are willing to spend whatever it takes to protect their short-term interests in maximizing their extraction of burnable fossil fuels and minimizing their costs to stay in business. No thought seems to be given to the fact that this path may well doom them and everyone else to extinction within a few more decades of business as usual as our whole biosphere collapses in global mass extinction.

At least Australians and Victorians seem to be moving our governments in the right direction to begin mobilizing effective action to protect what is left of our natural environment and to stop and reverse global warming. In the last few months, we have proved we are able to elect governments that claim to be interested in doing this (even though they also still seem to be working to protect fossil fuel special interests).

What we must do now is to hold our elected parliamentarians feet to the fire to ensure that they actually take the climate emergency seriously and begin mobilizing to fight the fires.

We need to turn away from the the Apocalypse on the road to hothouse hell, and we won’t do this by continuing with business as usual!

In the same way I saw no point in finishing my book, it seems to have taken the clear thinking of Greta Thunberg, a 16 year-old girl who concluded school was pointless as long as humans continued their blind ‘business as usual’ rush towards extinction.

greta-act-as-if-the-house-was-on-fire
Listen to Greta’s speech live at the World Economic forum in Davos 2019. Except for her reliance on the IPCC’s overoptimistic emissions budget, everything she says is spot on that even she, as a child, can understand the alternatives and what has to happen.

In other words, Wake up! Smell the smoke! See the grimly frightful reality, and fight the fire that is burning up our only planet so we can give our offspring a hopeful future. This is the only issue that matters. Even the IPCC’s hyperconservative Sixth Assessment Report that looks at climate change’s global and regional impacts on ecosystems, biodiversity, and human communities makes it clear we are headed for an existential (“i.e., UN Newspeak for “extinction is likely”) climate catastrophe if we don’t stop the warming process.

In Greta’s words, “even a small child can understand [this]”. People hope for their children’s futures. She doesn’t want your hopium. She wants you to rationally panic enough to wake up, pay attention to reality, and fight the fire…. so our offspring can have some hope for their future.

And above all…. make sure that your elected parliamentarians take this situation very seriously indeed!

Let’s hope that we can stop global warming soon enough to leave them with a future where they can survive and flourish.

Featured Image: A farm tractor plows terraces after the contour of the land is determined on the southwestern plains of Colorado, March 25, 1938. Associated Press file photo from an August 1, 2017 Denver Post article by Patrick Traylor | [email protected], PHOTOS: The Dust Bowl in Colorado and the Great Plains, showing what was left of humanity’s work a few decades after trying to occupy the land.

Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.

Climate Council warns of wet future for Oz

William P. Hall on November 28, 2022

Climate change, driven by burning fossil fuels, contributing to the Great Deluge, is consigning Australia to escalating climate disasters

Most of Australia’s East Coast from Cape York south to the Victorian border has had over a meter of rain by the end of October — with the rains still continuing. Some of these areas have had more than 2 meters, and a few more than 3 meters! Many rainfall records have been smashed in all of the eastern states: Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania; leading to almost constant flooding through the whole area that is continuing today. The latest reports from the BOM tell us the rains will continue into summer.

This is clearly a function of global warming. Physical laws dictate that as air temperatures rise, the air can carry more water vapor before it begins to condense as rain. Higher temperatures increase the rate of evaporation of water from soils and standing water – encouraging drought. Seemingly contradictory warmer air can precipitate more water in areas where it is raining. As the water condenses out as rain it also releases its ‘heat of fusion’ — and more heat is available to drive more extreme winds able to carry rain to high elevations before the rain freezes to fall back to Earth in devastating hail storms. Over larger areas there is also more energy available to fuel increasingly powerful cyclones.

Increased water means increased plant growth, increased temperature increases the rate at which soils and vegetation dry out — ensuring ever more catastrophic wildfires.

Ever more floods, fires and tempests cause increasing damage to infrastructure and people’s livelihoods and property until the catastrophes follow one another so closely that there are simply not physical or human resources left to repair the damage from one catastrophe before the next catastrophe causes even more damage. If the warming is not stopped this progression leads inevitably leads to social collapse (as we are already seeing in parts of the world), agricultural collapse (and famines as we are already beginning to see in Africa and the Middle East), ecological collapse (as we are already seeing in marine habitats with coral reef communities, kelp beds, sea grass meadows), and finally, population collapses when the land has literally been swept bare (areas in Africa are already on the edge of the cliff).

With the collapse of society, humans will quickly lose the scientific and engineering capabilities to fight further climate change already dialed into the system, such that there will be little hope of avoiding near-term global mass extinction. Continuing ‘business as usual’ support of the fossil fuel industry more-or-less ensures this grim outcome.

The Climate Council’s report, presented below, presents the facts and explains what they mean here in Australia, and some of the things we can to moderate and mitigate the expected damages. This is a good start, but I would be a silly liar if I said this was all we need to do in order to keep from utterly destroying our future.

The great deluge: Australia’s new era of unnatural disasters

Vote Climate One will continue to do whatever we can do to encourage serious government leadership and action to fight climate change. Please do what you can to pressure your representatives to counteract the self-serving special interests who consume our resources and return little or nothing from the super-profits they take overseas.

If we can help get climate savvy governments on the problems that really matter, they may be able to mobilize enough action so we can survive our accidental disruption of Earth’s Climate System so our kids and grandkids inherit a world they can live in….

Let’s hope that we can stop global warming soon enough to leave them with a future where they can survive and flourish

Featured Image: Rainfall and Flooding 2022 – Queensland to Tasmania. Current year data from 1 January to 2 November, sourced from Bureau of Meteorology, 2022. Graphic from Chapter 2, The Great Deluge: Climate Extremes in Action, in the featured article.

Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.

Readers, the Election’s over – time to shift gears

William P. Hall on November 28, 2022

I still have washup on the Victorian Election to write, but it’s time for news on why we have to hold our representative’s feet to the fire

The election is over, but votes are still being counted. Greens and climate-friendly minor parties have done well in both houses, with climate friendly independents in Hawthorn and Mornington still in the running on Monday evening. Labor will have a clear majority in the Legislative Assembly (Lower House) and it seems fairly certain that Greens and climate friendly minor parties will hold the balance of power in the Legislative Council (Upper House).

This is a vastly better outcome than we could have had with a Liberal/National Coalition in power.

Nevertheless, our climate is still warming at an accelerating rate, and humanity faces extinction if we fail to stop and reverse the warming before civilization begins to collapse and a consequence of climate catastrophes, increasing die-offs from extreme temperatures, and famines from collapsing agricultural systems. At least until we are fully involved in the NSW state election, I will be posting more of the flood of bad news crossing my desk every day to reinforce the need for all of us to keep hammering our Parliamentary representatives with the urgent need to organize effective responses to the climate emergency.

From today alone, I have 5 important news items, I’m going to try to get out tonight. All are important, but not all of them are grim reading.

Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.

Group Voting Tickets – made for dodgy dealing

William P. Hall on November 24, 2022

Group Voting Ticket for Group P (Health Australia Party) in the Western Metropolitan Region.

Let Victoria’s Group Voting Tickets (GVTs) show you how they abuse your one vote above the line to elect 4 more people you don’t know to the upper house

The group voting ticket illustrated above (page 31 & 32 in the file on the Victorian Electoral Commission website) is the completed ballot paper for a voter in the Western Metropolitan Region putting a [1] above the line in the [P] column on his/her formal ballot paper to vote for Health Australia. Assume that you are that voter. This one mark will then be your vote to elect FIVE members for the Legislative Council for the Western Metropolitan Region.

By voting [1] above the line for [P] you have given your FIRST PREFERENCE to candidate Isaac Golden, the homeopath who established the Health Australia Party (where minor parties are concerned, only the first preference in the column ever has any chance of being elected). You may have voted for Health Australia because of its apparently strong pro climate policy and/or your support for alternative medicines.

However, according to the GVT for your [P] vote, if Golden fails to win a quota for election from his above the line votes, the SECOND PREFERENCE from your ballot goes to [Q] who happens to be incumbent MLC Bernie Finn for Labor DLP. Finn is one of the most extremely right wing Christian MLCs in the Victorian Parliament: rabidly anti abortion, anti-gay, and anti climate science. In the end he is so extreme that when he was a sitting member for the Liberal Party, in May this year they expelled him from the party. If these added votes do not complete a quota to elect Finn go to Finn’s first preference, Group [U] for the independent, Villagonzalos. The Group U first preference goes back to Finn, adding the number of ballots for Villagonzalos to Finn’s preference count.

Your THIRD PREFERENCE goes to column [M], for the sitting one time Labor member, Kaushaliya Vaghela who recently founded the New Democrats Party after resigning from the Labor Party in March this year because she was left off Labor’s ticket for this election. As a Labor Member she worked to represent the Victorian Indian and south Asian communities across Victoria. Intensively searching the Web, I could not find a single document mentioning the word climate. Vaghela’s first preference goes back to Isaac Golden’s Health Australia. So, if Vaghela fails to reach a quota in that round, her preferences are also added to Finn’s account towards his quota.

Your above the line then gives you the independent Fred Akerman from Taylor’s Lakes in Group [E] for your FOURTH PREFERENCE. Akerman is a member of the Liberal Party’s far right religious faction, but Group E’s preference also is Health Australia’s Isaac Golden.

Your FIFTH PREFERENCE goes to Meg Watkins a member of the Animal Justice Party in Group [N] which also lists Health Australia’s Isaac Golden as their first preference.

All this does my head in, but the GVT tells me that if Golden does not gain a full quota from your [1] vote for Health Australia, Bernie Finn has two chances to add your vote to his count for the quota, and if your vote does not complete Finn’s quota for election, Golden gains votes from three more of his preferences if they are also not elected.

Do you really want to elect these kinds of rat bags into Parliament with this kind of wacky diabolically obtuse voting system?

The bottom line: if you want to control who your vote can elect you must express your preferences below the line on the big Upper House ballot.

Vote climate one’s Traffic Light Voting and Voting Guides – Vic make this about as easy as possible.

They are legal, but Victoria’s Group Voting Tickets are evil and encourage corruption

On Climate Sentinel News I have already reviewed several articles showing how Victoria’s electoral legislation seems to be deliberately designed to encourage dirty political backroom dealing:

Incidentally, I first encountered the idea of group voting in the late 1960’s when I was living in the then notoriously corrupt US State of Massachusetts, where all you had to do is tick which party you were voting for — and that was it, the party would tick all of the other boxes on the ballot the way they wanted to.

Group Voting Tickets for the current Victorian election were published by the Victorian Electoral Commission on the evening of 13/11/2022. Early voting begins on the very next morning, 14/11/2022. Given the bizarrely complex ballot format used to show each party’s tickets, and the difficulties of actually finding the page where they would be/were published on the VEC’s website, it would be completely impossible for the average early voter to vote above the line with any knowledge of how their vote would be used. It is hard to think this is NOT a design feature in the voting system to deliberately hide the fundamentally evil and corrupt harvesting of voters intentions by political insiders to elect the insiders’ own preferred candidates.

Beyond the issue of timing, there are two others major problems relating to voter’s intentions for electing candidates for the Legislative Council (Upper House):

  1. The legislation encourages backroom preference swapping cabals to be established where micro-parties winning less than 1% of first preference votes still have a have a good chance to elect a party representative in at least one of Victoria’s 8 Upper House regions. The members in the cabal (nominally 8) do this by directing the voter’s single above-the-line vote to certain other parties in specified regions (as demonstrated by Health Australia’s GVT ballot above) .

    Collectively, if all 8 parties in the deal for a particular region pass all their preferences to a designated “winner”, this will probably be enough to provide a quota to elect their preferred candidate to the 5th seat in that region. With an average of around 24 candidate “groups” in each of the Upper House Regions, three cabals can operate across 8 regions without substantially impeding each other’s operations. Each cabal can organize the 8 members’ preferencing so that all of the cabal members will pass their preferences to the designated party who most wants a seat in that particular region. Each of the participating parties then preference the agreed ‘winner’ for each region. E.g., Isaac Golden’s Health Australia Party clearly seems to be a designated winner for the Western Metropolitan Region.
  2. Victoria’s Group Voting System easily accommodates secretive cabals to win seats for rat bag micro parties that would never be elected if voters had to preference all candidates. The VEC regulations also make it relatively cheap and easy to formally register a party by paying an application fee of $764.50 as at 1 July 2022, and proving that it has 500 members. Because it is easy to do, many ratbags and other kinds of unpopular extremists form parties. This guarantees a super-large and complex ballot that that begs to be gamed and actively discourages voters from voting below the line,

The two major parties have no interest in changing this situation, as in the past the corrupt system has clearly worked to keep many Greens from being elected. The system also provides them with a number of micro parties that can be easily bought by catering to their special interests should it may be necessary to form a minority government.

The Facts

Following here, is my attempt to show the information extracted from some 200 group voting tickets from across the 8 Upper House Regions. The law allows a party to submit TWO GVTs each with different preferences. Some parties have taken advantage to do this. Two tables show the information extracted.

Group Voting 2022 Victoria
(full table here)

The full table covers all 8 Upper House Regions. It is organized specifically to show how each party makes its preferences in relationship to acting on the climate emergency. The Greens preference is highlighted with green. The Greens’ commitment is considered to be the best in terms of its breadth and extent for taking the emergency seriously. Some of the column names are self-explanatory. Letter refers to the label of the [box] and column for the named party on the ballot paper for the region. First non-self is the named party’s first preferenced party. The GREENS column lists the Greens Party’s ranking on the named party’s preference order. Similarly the Labor and LNP (Liberals or Liberals and Nationals joint ticket) columns list those parties’ rankings on the named party’s preference order. 3rd last, 2nd last, and Last indicate the three parties at the bottom of the preference list for the maned party. This gives a fairly clear picture of how serious each of the parties is about climate action. Also, by tracing the chain of first preferences (e.g., first preference of party A is party N; first preference of party N is to party C; first preference of party C is to Greens) it is easy to see if party A is either directing its preferences towards climate action or to potentially anti-climate parties.

I have only looked in detail for specific evidence of preference swapping at the Western Metropolitan Region, and only as far as the first preference. The following sequence shows the alphabetic identifiers for each group/party on the ballot with an arrow pointing to the first non-self preference on that party’s Group Voting Ticket. If the party is not elected in a round its votes are applied to the alphabetic group listed as its first preference. Where a group receives more than one first preference – its name or the name of its leader if that leader is running in the Western Metro region is shown in parentheses. Where the same name appears three times or more, I take this as evidence that the fix is in where that party or person is likely to be elected on preferences, even if that group has received a very low number of voters first preferences. Constructing the sequence requires scanning the full group voting ticket for each party in the Western Metro Region, as can be found on the VEC website:

A → W; B → S; C → M (Vaghela); D → Q (Finn); E → M (Vaghela); F → Q (Finn); G → T; H → R; I → G, J → F; K → P (Golden); L → J, M → P (Golden); N → T; O → Q (Finn); P → Q (Finn); Q → U; R → Q (Finn); S → M (Vaghela); T → G; U → Q (Finn), V → F; W → A; X → G.

Depending on how many above-the-line votes Finn receives, given his long tenure in the region as a member of the Liberal Party he has a chance to win a quota and be elected in his own right. Adding quotas to be received from SIX additional parties’ first preferences added to his own first preferences, there is a good chance that the Labor DLP may also elect its second candidate, Thi Kim-Lien Le, a Vietnamese “small business owner” from Footscray. This has to be a ‘fix’, as there is no way in a practical sense that people voting for six other parties above the line could have any idea that they might be electing the extremist Finn and a total unknown.

Vaghela (New Democrats) and Derryn Hinch’s Justice each will receive first preferences from three other parties besides those they receive in their own right. Golden and the Victorian Socialists and Labor both will receive preferences from two other parties. Here it should be noted that preference trading can go a lot further down the parties’ preference orders, where in some cases it may be necessary to go down the list to even the last places.

A case in the Eastern Metropolitan Region from the 2018 Victorian Election that I presented in Corruption of ‘Above the Line Voting’ for the Victorian Parliament’s upper house, and repeated here demonstrates this.

[In 2018, i]f you voted above the line in the Eastern Metropolitan Region for Labor because you thought it has a better climate policy than the Liberals, Labor preferenced Transport Matters ahead of the Greens and successfully replaced the sitting Green member with the Transport Matters candidate:

EASTERN METROPOLITAN 
2014: 3 Liberal, 1 Labor, 1 Green
ABC Calculator: 2 Liberal 2 Labor 1 Transport Matters
Projection: 2 Liberal 2 Labor 1 Transport Matters

Summary: In this count the major parties have two quotas each and Rodney Brian Barton (Transport Matters) appears to snowball from 0.62% of the vote to beat all others including the Greens (9.03%).  Although Barton at one point falls to third-last, no threat to his victory has been identified.

Result: The provisional result is, as expected, 2 Liberal 2 Labor 1 Transport Matters.
Update: This result has been declared.

Your vote above the line for Labor because they appeared to have a better climate policy than the Liberals, shifted the balance of votes by two further away from reliable supporters of climate action.

Group Voting by Party Victoria 2022
(full table here)

The full table covers 24 parties/groups standing candidates over all Regions in the State Election. Columns have the same meanings they did in the first table organized by Region. This table is sorted by party and reformatted to show the preference flows for each party over the whole state. In addition to using bright green for the Greens, the additional colors highlight additional information. Grey-green designates parties other than Greens that Vote Climate One has flagged with green lights. Light grey-green is applied to Sustainable Australia because of their exemplary voting record in Parliament but decidedly anti green-light preferencing in the election. Solid orange highlights parties Vote Climate One has flagged with orange lights. Legalize Cannabis is highlighted with orange borders because they have more favorably preferenced green-light and orange-light Labor parties than all other red-light parties, despite having been placed in Vote Climate One’s red-light category for historical record and stated policies.

To conclude: if you want to have any control over who you are electing to the Upper House, VOTE BELOW THE LINE

If you vote above the line you will be supporting genuinely crooked politics! Both major parties actually like it that way. Both parties have some genuine ethical members, but the parties themselves are happy to cater to the needs and desires of their special interest patrons.

Vote Climate One has done everything we’ve had the time and resources to do to make voting below the line as easy as possible while still giving you full freedom to vote for who you want. Rob Bakes little video shows you how to do it. Of course, we want you to vote for responsible climate action, but what Rob demonstrates will help you rank candidates any way you want.

As a final note: treat my numbers with a bit of caution. My brain has difficulties with detailed quantitative stuff like this. I have double checked most stuff, but I haven’t had time to triple check.

Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.

News Flash: Fundamental corruption in Victorian Upper House Group Voting Ticket law revealed by Preference Whisperer

Climate News Links on November 17, 2022

Glenn Druery has worked as a political strategist for more than 20 years, helping minor party candidates win office.(triple j Hack: James Purtill) / From the featured article.

Glenn Druery in his own words describes how he legally corrupts the Victorian Upper House voting system allowing parties to distribute voters’ above the line vote.

Vote Climate One strongly recommends that everyone who cares who you vote for should take the effort to avoid the corrupt system and vote below the line. Our Climate Lens Traffic Light Assessment system and Voting Guides are designed to give you information about each party to make voting below the line for those particular parties and candidates you decide you want as easy as possible. Our information focuses on the various parties’ climate policies and reliability, but will also link you to information on all their other policies as well.

For Climate Sentinel News’s other articles on Victoria’s corrupt above the line voting see:

Voters can draw their own conclusions from today’s ABC article below without further comment from me.

Members of Angry Victorians Party discuss preferences with Glen Druery./ To view the video click on the article’s title.

ABC News, 17/11/2022

Calls for Victorian electoral reform after ‘preference whisperer’ recorded boasting of influence

Key points:
  • Two members of the Angry Victorians Party recorded a meeting with so-called “preference whisperer” Glenn Druery
  • Mr Druery said he charged $55,000 to arrange upper house preference deals, which is legal in Victoria
  • The opposition and some minor parties are calling for electoral reform to abolish the group voting ticket system

Victoria’s “archaic” upper house voting system must be reformed, MPs and experts say, after secret deals to elect micro parties were exposed by a leaked video.

Victoria is the only state to still allow group voting tickets (GVT) — a system where parties allocate preference for voters who number the upper house ballot paper above the line.

It has led to complex and secretive deals between micro parties to harvest preferences in order to get elected with minuscule primary votes.

Read the complete article….

Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.

VC1 red lights some parties and candidates on ethics

William P. Hall on November 17, 2022

Crooked systems encourage dodgy players

Victoria’s use of politically corrupt group voting tickets for Legislative Council elections fosters unethical parties and practices. In Corruption of ‘Above the Line Voting’ for the Victorian Parliament’s upper house I explained how Victoria’s group voting tickets (GVTs) gives political parties the unbridled power to allocate preferences from every single above-the-line vote they received to whatever other parties or individuals they wanted — irrespective of what the voter might have wished. These allocations were often made with or among minor and micro on the basis of back-room ‘preference deals’ – many of them brokered by Glen Druery, the well known “Preference Whisperer”. See also Malcolm McKerras’s Chapter 6: “The Preference Whisperer” from his unpublished book: UNREPRESENTATIVE SWILL – Australia’s Ugly Senate Voting System, introduced here and here. The following excerpt quoting Druery re the 2019 Federal Election, sourced from Kate Legge’s article from the 16 March 2019 issue of The Weekend Australian Magazine, says it all:

“Voters want disruption and that’s what I’ve given them. I’ve put the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker, the sex worker into parliament. . .I won’t say my cross bench, that wouldn’t be appropriate, but the cross benchers that are there, that I had a hand in putting them there, all of them except for Nick Xenophon, in one way or another they had my fingerprints.”

p. 7, Chapter 6: The Preference Whisperer – Read the complete article….

Druery did it for money and power. And he has found many takers wanting to be elected under their micro party logos willing to pay him for advice ….. and much more on getting elected.

Monday’s article in the Guardian by Benita Kolovos describes a beautifully just ‘sting’ by the Animal Justice Party that both gives Mr Druery a very black eye, and demonstrates the fundamental corruptness of Victoria’s election legislation still being supported by the major parties. The sting may also represent a win for pro climate-action in the Victorian Parliament. Please read the article:

Preference whisperer Glenn Druery says the Animal Justice party pulled off the ‘most elaborate sting in minor party history’ ahead of the Victoria state election. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian | from the article

By Benita Kolovos, Mon, 14/11/2022 in The Guardian

‘It was a charade’: preference whisperer Glenn Druery falls for Animal Justice party’s Victorian election sting

Exclusive: Having successfully attracted the support of Druery’s clients, minor party switched its allegiances at last minute

It is, as victim Glenn Druery puts it, the “most elaborate sting in minor party history”. For months the Animal Justice party was “negotiating” with the so-called preference whisper to gain the support of other parties working with him – only to direct its own preferences to others at the last minute.

But for Ben Schultz, the state election manager for the Animal Justice party and its lead candidate in the southern metropolitan region, undermining Druery’s preference arrangements just minutes before group voting ticket registration closed on Sunday was a case of righting what he described as some “wrongs”.

“The Animal Justice party does not agree with the wheelings and dealings of a preference whisperer and the backroom deals of predominantly older, white males. That time has come to an end,” Schultz said.

“It’s time that we move Victoria to full proportional representation and abolish group voting tickets so that we don’t have people like Glenn Druery setting up people.”

Victoria’s Legislative Council is the only jurisdiction in Australia still using a group voting system that allows parties to allocate voters’ preferences [read this linked article too!] when they choose to vote above the line on the ballot paper.

Read the complete article….

In Victoria the politically corrupt major parties have no interest in reforming a system that helps them stay in power. In 2018 despite the Greens polling 9.25% of the Upper House first preferences Greens went from 5 seats to 1, losing all 5 seats they won in 2014 and winning only one new one. By contrast, micro parties won 10 seats, where Derryn Hinch’s Justice Party (where Druery was a paid staffer) won 3 seats with 3.75% of first preferences, Shooters, Fishers & Farmers Vic won 1 on 3.02%, Liberal Democrats won 2 on 2.50%, Animal Justice won 1 on 2.47%, and 3 other parties each won 1 seat with between 1.37% and 0.62%.

By arranging their group voting tickets to ensure that their residual preferences were distributed to a micro party ahead of Greens candidates, Druery’s cabal kept any of the incumbent Greens in the Upper House from being reelected, despite the fact that a fair proportional distribution of preferences would have seen them stay in place.

Many parties will discourage voting below the line, because the law grants each party voted [1] above the line the right to distribute that vote’s preferences as they see fit.

The susceptibility of the legal but politically corrupt voting practice to being gamed by backroom preference swaps gives fundamentally sleazy micro parties a real chance to win the fifth seat in one region in turn for helping backroom swap partners win a seat in another region. Almost any ratbag ego tripper with a burning passion who can con 500 people into signing a nomination petition can enter the race. If enough of ratbags make it to the cross bench in Parliament and hold the balance of power between the major parties, the rabble are then in a very strong position to trade their Parliamentary votes with whichever major party forms government for supporting their respective burning passions.

Although this is all quite legal within the current law, it certainly does not ethically represent the voters’ interests. Major parties have to give out promissory notes to ratbags in order to enact legislation. And, of course, the ratbags have to support whatever other legislation the major party may want to enact irrespective of what their electorate might want — and why should the ratbags care about the electorate? Hardly anyone voted for them in the first place. Any allegiance they owe is to the other ratbag parties in the back room and the preference ‘broker’ they paid and who organized the deal(s) that got them elected.

In our ranking of the minor parties, Vote Climate One does not hold any gains against them that the party may have received from preference swapping. In Victoria, to win you have to play the game. However, this underscores and emphasizes why we warn that if you care about your voting, you must vote below the line!

For the latest information on how the various parties will allocate THEIR “preferences” for distributing YOUR vote in their group voting tickets for the present election, see The Bludger article by William Bowe. Short circuit their dodgy deals by voting below the line!

Who are the ratbags

Vote Climate One has looked at the kind of game the major parties have organized. And, given the nature of the game, it is inevitable that whichever major party is in power will work to maintain the benefits it provides to the leading party. It is now time to look at the parties and candidates sucked into playing the game. Some are basically ethical and some aren’t. But all of them have to play the politically corrupt game if they are serious about getting elected (why else would you run for Parliament?).

I would argue that there are only four fully developed political parties with complete platforms in Victoria: two major parties (Labor, Liberals); and two middle sized parties (Greens – 88 Lower House candidates incl. 3 incumbents and 40 Upper House candidates incl. 1 incumbent; and Nationals – 10 Lower House candidates incl. 4 incumbents and 6 Upper House candidates with no incumbents).

And then, thanks to the possibilities group voting tickets give them for being elected, there are 20 minor and micro parties, including some working to become fully developed, a host of ratbags, and a few ‘community independents’ that cobbled some friends so they could be listed as a party for above-the-line, single choice voting.

Given my background in biology, I cannot help but try to group parties with common features to make them easier to discuss [the color of the bullet in the right hand column indicates Vote Climate One’s Traffic Light assessment of each party]:

Group nameCharacteristicsParties
“Don’t tread on me!”Anarchic libertarians: anti-government, anti regulation, antivaxers, anti-Dan Andrews● Angry Victorians Party;
● Restore Democracy Sack Dan Andrews Party
“Follow God!”“Put the family first”: Hard-line conservative values with tendencies towards theocratic enforcement (e.g., anti abortion, public health mandates/anti science, strong policing, militaristic● Democratic Labor Party [Catholic];
● Family First [Protestant]
“Follow the Leader”Personality cults following the founder’s extremist ‘thinking’, generally with a strong law and order and enforcement component ● Derryn Hinch’s Justice Party;
● [Isaac Golden’s] Health Australia Party;
● Pauline Hanson’s One Nation;
● [Clive Palmer’s] United Australia Party
“Follow Mammon”Pro development (especially fossil fuels, forestry & environment), remove & prevent public health regulations (support ‘alternative’ medicine’ practices)● Freedom Party of Victoria;
● Liberal Democratic Party
“Single track mind”Virtually total focus on a single issue● Companions and Pets Party [commercial breeding, racing & farming];
● Legalise Cannabis Victoria [commercialization of cannabis]
“Follow the Community”Party representing a particular ethnic or economic community● National Party [rural people and interests];
● New Democrats [Aspirational Indians & South Asians];
● Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party;
● Transport Matters;
“Sustaining our Futures”Party focused on sustaining human welfare into the future — more-or-less in the face of global warming and the climate emergency● Animal Justice Party;
● Australian Greens;
● Reason Australia;
● Sustainable Australia Party – Stop Overdevelopment / Corruption;
● Victorian Socialists;
Categories of minor parties

The following section summarizes where I think each party (excepting the majors, Labor and Liberal) stands in relation to action on the global climate emergency — the only issue that really matters. These assessments are based on my scientific understanding of the crisis, assessment of the parties’ policies and the parliamentary performances of any elected representatives on climate and environmental issues. Finally, the views expressed here are mine, and do not necessary represent those of other Vote Climate One members.

Comments on all the parties

Green Light

  • Animal Justice Party: Going along with care and respect for the animals we share a planet with, Animal Justice has a strong policy of care, respect, and protection of our common environment. They also have the best voting record next to the Greens. This is backed up with a very strong policy on the climate emergency.
  • Victorian Greens. The Greens have strong, considered, and progressive policies on almost everything founded on humanistic and science-based deliberations. This is backed up with significant Parliamentary experience. Well qualified to inform and stimulate actions to deal with the climate emergency.
  • Sustainable Australia Party – Stop Overdevelopment / Corruption: They have initiated legislation in the Upper House to support and empower local government planning policies, which are often negated or overruled by the State Government, or completely disregarded in VCAT and legislation to insert environmental and native species protection into the planning scheme. Further, they have proposed legislation to force responsible authorities who issue permits for developments, large and small, to take into account mitigation and adaptation to climate change. All of these environmental issues have been resisted so far by the major parties. Finally, they have a strong progressive platform with a practical focus on science, technology, government operations including climate.
  • Victorian Socialists. The most urgent item on their policy agenda is to recognize the magnitude of the climate emergency and to respond to it in ways that are as fair as possible to those who are directly affected. Overall broad, humanistic, and well thought out policies on climate and many other areas.

Orange Light

  • Reason Australia. Focus on humanism and feminism. “Reason commits to backing any policy, from any government, of any political persuasion that will improve the health and wellbeing of women in Australia”. Strong policy on the climate emergency but state explicitly that will horse-trade anything for what they really want.

Red Light

  • Angry Victorians. Spinoff of Australian Values. Ego trip for Chris Burson? Victorians “focused on rebuilding the economic and social foundations of our State responsibly, with strong priorities on Mental Health, Small and Family Businesses and our Veteran Community”. Australian Values has reasonable climate & energy policies, but individual candidates seem to have their own independent agendas – especially in Victoria. Not to be trusted on climate.
  • Companions and Pets Party. Could equally be placed in the ‘Follow Mammon’ category. I can’t prove it, but it looks like CPP was formed by commercial interests specifically to counter the Animal Justice Party. Mirage News makes this very clear. Not to be trusted on climate.
  • Democratic Labor Party. Supports “traditional family values”. See policies: “Energy Affordability” – strongly pro fossil fuel generation and denigrates renewable energy; “Restoring Agriculture” – remove all government controls on land use and farming. Strongly anti controlling anything relating to human ‘freedom’, but for the strong enforcement of biblical sexuality well to the right of the Coalition parties. Would probably fight to stop action on the climate emergency.
  • Derryn Hinch’s Justice Party. Derryn Hinch’s policies to harden policing, courts, imprisonment, and tracking for sexual crimes and family violence. Anti-public health regulations relating to Covid. Not to be trusted on climate.
  • Family First. Fighting “against the radical anti-family attitudes and policies of modern politics”. Policy supports “family, life and faith” from “radical political correctness”: “Economic freedom for families” strongly and specifically promotes the fossil fuel industry. “Education” – “Centre the curriculum around the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic. Restore the primacy of Western Civilisation and the Australian achievement”. No mention anywhere of environmental concerns or issues. To Hell with climate science and climate action??
  • Freedom Party. The movement: “Freedom Party of Victoria is the result of three years of dedication towards building a credible and reliable alternative for Victorians who have suffered enormously under the watch of an incompetent and corrupt government that needs to be changed.” Policy: Energy – deregulate and promote fossil fuel industry; Pandemic Management – repeal all regulations; Timber Industry – protect timber production not the forests; Fire Arms – “gun ownership is a right not a privilege”, “hunting is a divine right” No mention anywhere of environmental concerns or issues. To Hell with climate science and climate action??
  • Health Australia Party (HAP). I’ve done a lot of research on this party, because they appear to have a good progressive health policy, but they gave us a slightly ambiguous response to our Climate Lens question as to whether they would “support a national declaration of an ecological and climate emergency.” The assessment committee took this to represent a somewhat ‘libertarian’ response, so I investigated further to reveal a real can of worms.
    Much more concerning is that HAP has many features of a personality cult around its leader, Isaac Golden: National Secretary, Victorian President of the party, and First Candidate for the Western Metropolitan Region. [Isaac’s daughter Leiah Golden is the second candidate for this Region]. Questions to HAP candidates in other regions and in the districts, seem to end up being answered by Isaac.
    According to several of his autobiographical profiles, after “an early career in finance and financial accounting, Isaac changed career paths to natural medicine and has been a practitioner of “Hannemannian homeopathy” since 1984, and teaching it since 1988. The only educational qualification he lists in his Linked-in profile is his “PhD” on “homeopathic immunizations” from 2000-2004 at Swinburne University. To be completely clear, homeopathy has been proven scientifically many times over to be fake or fraudulent medicine.
    The Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, in its article in its 2006 article, A Brief History of Homeopathy, states: “If there was ever a medical system which cried out for a careful scientific trial it is homeopathy. One of the early trials, carried out in 1835, is astonishing because it was very close to a double-blind, randomized controlled trial, undertaken with great care long before the mid-twentieth century when most of us believed that such randomized trials were first devised and carried out. It showed, incidentally, that homeopathy was ineffective.”
    At best, homeopathic medicine is a placebo. Anyone practicing it is either a gullible fool or a total fraud. Isaac Golden has been in this kind of business for a long time and has exploited many different spin-offs (e.g., explore what he is claiming on his Homstudy and other web sites: Isaac Golden Education, Natural Immunization Research, Dr Isaac Golden – World Authority on Homeopathic Vaccination).
    I do not think Isaac Golden is a fool. He established the Health Australia Party in 2015 as a vehicle to help deny the science that shows homeopathy to be more than a placebo. See his paper, “A Political Response to Attacks on Homeopathy in Australia” that unequivocally describes his aims for the party.
    Beyond Isaac Golden’s practice and promotion of fake medicine, there are a variety of published allegations that Isaac Golden is not a person of good character that that he has not refuted in court. The most telling allegations are in Chris Johnston’s 21/12/1019 article in the Sydney Morning Herald, “Cult member, homeopath, Senate candidate: The bizarre past of Isaac Golden“. Johnston alleged that Golden was a “key member of of a bizarre quasi-religious cult whose leader [Ian Lowe, now deceased] was jailed for sex crimes against the children of cult members”…. “Corporate records show Lowe was a business partner of Dr Golden’s in a Victorian-based natural medicine business called Aurum at the time the child rapes were occurring”. The article provides a lot of additional detail on Lowe and the cult.
    Most of HAP’s other candidates I have checked are associated with various alternative medical practices or show some direct association with Golden. The fundamentally narcissistic nature of [Isaac Golden’s] Health Australia Party is also evident in his Official Statement to Party Members of 29/09/2022.
    The bottom line is that although Health Australia Party appears to have a good climate policy, nothing they say they will do should be trusted. We recommend that you do not vote for any of their candidates!
  • Legalise Cannabis Victoria. Other than decriminalizing the sale, possession, and all forms of Cannabis use, the bulk of policy seems to be focused on commercializing all aspects of the plant. The Victorian Party seems to be indifferent to climate issues. We recommend that you do not vote for them
  • Liberal Democratic Party. Policies to eliminate government restrictions – especially on fossil fuel development and use and land use. End gov’t support for renewable energy. Minimize uses of gov’t emergency powers. “Every candidate for the Liberal Democrats takes a public pledge to never vote for an increase in taxes or a reduction in liberty if elected.” LDP would probably work to inhibit government responses to the climate emergency. Do not vote for them.
  • National Party of Australia. Where Victoria is concerned in terms of their existing representation and 2022 contests, the Nationals for Victoria are clearly an average sized micro party seeking to maintain their representation of country electorates. They say nothing about climate, but surprisingly are offering households subsidies to take up renewable energy: “Our Power to the People Plan will provide 1 million households, including for at least 100,000 rental properties, with a rebate of up to $1,400 for solar panels and $3,000 for a home battery”. Nevertheless, given their affiliation with the Liberals and history in the Federal Parliament, we consider Nationals to be a dangerous choice if you are concerned to see action on the climate emergency.
  • New Democrats. This party fits quite well in three different categories.
    First, [Kaushaliya Vaghela’s] New Democrats has many signs of the “Follow the Leader” personality cult. She is the an incumbent member of the Legislative Council, elected as the third Labor Party MLC in the Western Metropolitan Region, apparently recruited into the party by Adem Somyurek and was caught in the crossfire following on from the IBAC hearings on “red shirts” and branch stacking. She resigned/was expelled from the Labor party, accusing Dan Andrews’ office of persistent bullying, and went on to establish the New Democrats on 28 July as the Party Secretary. Using her high profile in the widespread community of aspirational Indian and South Asian immigrants, she was able to find candidates for the party to run in all Victorian Upper House Regions and most of the Lower House Districts in the Western Metropolitan Region. As founder and Party Secretary she is the designated contact person for all candidates.
    As a Labor MP, Vaghela established herself as “the” representative for this extensive community throughout Victoria and seems to have done a very good job of this. Now, as an independent member of Parliament she with some justification presents herself as the Indian/South Asian community independent.
    However, there is little doubt that much of Vaghela’s core policy places the New Democrats firmly in the “Don’t Tread on Me” category of anti-Dan Andrews parties with a strong emphasis on libertarian values.
    I have found no mention anywhere that New Democrats have any policy relating to the climate emergency. Even if you are a member of Vaghela’s “Indian and south Asian community”, if you are concerned about the future of your family, we suggest that because of their angry libertarianism the New Democrats will be a dangerous option where effective climate is concerned, and that you put them near the last in your below-the-line preferences.
  • Pauline Hanson’s One Nation (PHON). The Party is definitely Federal Senator Pauline Hanson’s angry, bigoted and racist personality cult that particularly appeals to the far right fraction of Queensland’s population. Additionally, PHON also provides a trumpet mouthpiece for Federal Senator Malcolm Roberts. I have had several personal exchanges with him over years. Roberts is a ‘retired’ coal mining engineer who is one of the most rabidly antiscientific climate science deniers in the whole Australian Population. PHON’s Climate and energy polices reflect this. Thanks to Roberts, PHON will likely fight climate action tooth and nail. Put them last!
  • Restore Democracy Sack Dan Andrews Party. Ex Labor Party staffers and whistleblowers totally focused on removing Dan Andrews. “The Restore Democracy Sack Dan Andrews Party intends to do what it says on the tin, and stands for:” No perceptible interest in climate and energy issues, so probably could not be trusted on climate issues. Put them near the bottom of your preferences.
  • Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party represents and promotes rural libertarians and could just as easily be placed in the “Don’t tread on me” category. Compared to the more measured Federal Policy, The Party’s Victorian policy wants no legal rights for animals, strong limits to councils’ abilities to manage land use and to declare climate emergencies, opposes pandemic related mandates and lockdowns, no limits to land use and forestry, absolutely minimize restrictions to hunting and shooting, promotion of fossil fuel extraction, etc., maximize farmers’ rights to exploit their lands. This Party will clearly try to prevent effective actions against the climate emergency. Put them close to the bottom of your preferences!
  • Transport Matters Party (TMP). This party fits clearly in my “Follow the Community” category, as its national policies and those expressed by the Party’s founder Rod Barton, a Victorian incumbent MLC, almost exclusively represent the broad community of transport workers. Unlike other red-light parties, TMP is not especially libertarian or anarchic, and it actually has a reasonable favorable climate and environment policy: federal / Barton. Vote Climate One has given TMP a red-light flag, because of Barton’s voting record in the Victorian Parliament. However, he offers an interesting justification for his support of the EV Road Tax that should be considered:
    “In May 2021, I negotiated with the government regarding the Electric Vehicle (EV) road user charge to ensure that there would be a substantial investment and subsidy package in place to encourage EV uptake in the short term. This became a $100 million package that provided 25,000 subsidies for EV buyers and investment in charging infrastructure. Subsidies do not need to be provided once price parity is reached, which is expected to occur anywhere between 2025 and 2030.“
    Nevertheless, in other Parlamentary votes he has sided with measures to protect the fossil fuel industry, suggesting that TMP would not reliably support the kinds of climate action we need to save our species. Considering everything, we advise that TMP candidates should still be preferenced near the bottom of your list, but among the least worse of the red-light candidates.
  • [Clive Palmer’s] United Australia Party Victoria. Definitely multi-billionaire Clive Palmer’s personality cult. A con job financed to the hilt to support his passions: fossil fuel, anti-science (e.g., vaccination, Covid mandates, climate emergency), and general libertarian anarchy. None of his promises can believed. It is very likely that any one he elects will be obliged to fight climate science and any strong action against climate change. Put this party at or near the bottom of your preference list.

How they voted for their parties

The following graphic (prepared by Rob Bakes) shows how minor party and independent incumbents voted on several climate-related issues during the current Parliament. It is discussed in more detail on our How They Voted page.

Ranking the many independents

The insidious implications of Victoria’s electoral laws relating to Group Voting Tickets for so called ‘preferential’ voting in the Upper House led to the formation of an unusually large number of parties. We had to spend substantially more effort evaluating parties than we anticipated to understand the legal but highly unethical and secretive preference swapping that gives (and even encourages) microparties to apply the voter’s above-the-line [1] vote to apply THE PARTY’S preferences to elect 4 other candidates in the voter’s region.

Given the large number of micro parties, each of these parties then had the opportunity to endorse their own candidates in many or even all Lower House districts as well. Many of these micro party candidates will have strong anti-climate action biases due to their party affiliations. Also, it is likely some of the independents will be distractors encouraged to nominate by anti-climate major parties to draw votes away from pro-climate parties and independents. And then, there are a large number of genuine “community independents” encouraged to nominate by the success of the “teal” independents in the federal election, where Climate200 supported 23 independents and 10 were elected/reelected. Note that all these independent candidates were nominated by and worked to represent what their local communities wanted from government — Climate200 supported them because they had similar values.

Because the Victorian electoral law gravely minimizes the support independent candidates can receive compared to what major parties can do Climate200 is only able to provide limited support to four candidates in the present election. And even then there is a great deal of misrepresentation from the major parties as to what community independents are.

The fact is that there other community independents running that deserve green-light ranking for their climate policies, but are not necessarily easy to identify because they lack Climate200 support.

The above is a long-winded way of saying the Vote Climate One has lacked the resources in time and effort to rigorously survey all independent candidates for their climate action credentials. Some of these may be flagged with our default red-lights in our Voting Guides simply because we not seen evidence to rank them any other way.

If you are an independent candidate and think you deserve better than we have marked you, please contact us immediately with your climate credentials, and we will reassess your ranking

Hopefully, before Election Day itself, we will be able to complete our assessment of all independents. As this assessment work progresses, rankings updated.

Why are we at Vote Climate One going to all this effort to try to help you?

If we don’t stop global warming soon, we’ll have fueled enough positive feedbacks that runaway warming to Earth’s ‘Hothouse Hell’ state will virtually guarantee human extinction.

However, if we can help get climate savvy governments in power soon enough, they may be able to mobilize enough action so we can survive our accidental disruption of Earth’s Climate System so our kids and grandkids inherit a world they can live in….

Let’s hope that we can stop global warming soon enough to leave them with a future where they can survive and flourish
Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.

We’re racing down “highway to climate hell” (UN Chief)

William P. Hall on November 8, 2022

UN Chief, Antonio Guterres warns world leaders at COP 27 summit that nations must cooperate or face “collective suicide” from climate change.

Guterres pulled no punches in his opening address to heads of state and other national leaders attending the climate summit: “Humanity has a choice: cooperate or perish,” “It is either a Climate Solidarity Pact or a Collective Suicide Pact,” he added…. “We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator,”

Chart showing a collection of indicators of human action and impact on the climate / AFP — from the article

by Laurent Thomet and Kelly Macnamara, 7/11/2022 in PhysOrg/Earth/Environment

World risks ‘collective suicide’, UN chief warns climate summit

The UN’s chief warned Monday that nations must cooperate or face “collective suicide” in the fight against climate change, at a summit where developing countries reeling from global warming demanded more action from rich polluters.

Nearly 100 heads of state and government are meeting for two days in Egypt’s Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, facing calls to deepen emissions cuts and financially back developing countries already devastated by the effects of rising temperatures.

“Humanity has a choice: cooperate or perish,” Guterres told the UN COP27 summit.

Read the complete article….

In his own words:

These are no empty words — Guterres is reporting on what the best science available to us we must do to avoid the highway to climate hell

Supporting Guterres’s stark warnings is a vast array of physical evidence (i.e., satellite and direct measurements) on climate change and theoretical modeling. This shows beyond any reasonable doubt that humanity is indeed accelerating down the “highway to climate hell”. Some of this evidence was reviewed in David Spratt’s series of articles in Climate Code Red, beginning in January. Those articles and my contextual comments covering them discussed some of the tipping points we may be passing on our progress towards the point of no return where positive feedbacks in Earth’s climate system.

The featured image in the present post and in my seven posts on the Spratt series is from a 2018 article by Steffen et al. in the prestigious science journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), “Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene“. The image is a highway map showing the alternative roads: to “climate hell” and suicide, or to planetary stewardship and survival on a “Stablized Earth”.

The “Trajectories” paper identifies various tipping points in the climate system where intrinsic temperature-related positive feedbacks would continue driving global temperatures higher when global warming reached those points. If the warming is not stopped, a “planetary threshold” (i.e., ‘point of no return’) will soon be reached where the intrinsic feedbacks become so strong that nothing humans could plausibly do would stop global temperatures being pushed high enough to produce a “Hothouse Earth” and global mass extinction (including humans). Fig. 1 (below) and the featured image provide a map illustrating how humans might be able to divert the evolution of our climate away from the heat driven highway over the planetary threshold (point of no return) where societal collapse and extinction becomes more-or-less inevitable.

Fig. 1. A schematic illustration of possible future pathways of the climate against the background of the typical glacial–interglacial cycles (Lower Left). The interglacial state of the Earth System is at the top of the glacial–interglacial cycle, while the glacial state is at the bottom. Sea level follows temperature change relatively slowly through thermal expansion and the melting of glaciers and ice caps. The horizontal line in the middle of the figure represents the preindustrial temperature level, and the current position of the Earth System is shown by the small sphere on the red line close to the divergence between the Stabilized Earth and Hothouse Earth pathways. The proposed planetary threshold at ∼2 °C above the preindustrial level is also shown.

As Guterres said, if we act soon enough and with enough vigor to stop carbon emissions and do whatever else is necessary, we may be able to find the left turn off the highway to climate hell. By being good stewards of our limited resources we may be able to find our way along the less probable road to a “Stabilized Earth” where Earth’s climate can return to the kinds of tolerable conditions humanity evolved and flourished in. After 45 years of hiding from the problem and allowing it to become progressively worse, saving our species from the highway to hell will take global mobilization of a monumental effort.

Otherwise, If we continue with business as usual supporting our fossil fuel puppet masters, the highway to hell will inevitably take us over the cliff to our doom. We have a choice. “Cooperate or perish”.

What must we do?

In Australia our present governments are still at least partially in league with the fossil fuel industry. Science tells us that we must stop all carbon emissions as fast as we possibly can. Yet all of our governments continue various subsidies for the industry, allowing them to continue developing new projects, trying to extend the life of coal-fired generators and selling cheaply produced natural gas (even in the states where it is produced) for some of the world’s highest prices to make astronomical profits for mostly foreign owners. Most of these schemes were perpetrated under COALition governments, but today’s national and Victorian Labor governments continue to support them.

We need to work to ensure no major party/coalition can achieve government without Greens and/or climate friendly community independents in the balance of power. This was achieved by one vote in the Senate (the ACT’s David Pocock). In Victoria, Labor’s Dan Andrews enjoys a presently dictatorial lead over a Liberal/National Party coalition. If we are to achieve the kinds of sweeping climate goals we need, Community oriented climate activists are going to need to be elected in both COALition and Labor Party held seats. Vote Climate One’s Climate Lens is designed to help you select climate friendly and trustworthy candidates, and to use Victoria’s preferential voting scheme most effectively to give your selected candidates the best opportunities to win the seat.

Using our Climate Lens in Victoria

In Australia, states probably have more capacity for effective climate action than the national government. Victoria’s upcoming state election should be an election focused on the only issue that really matters, climate.

The Victorian ballot is far too complicated and is deliberately designed to keep all the power in the hands of whichever major party is in the majority.

Vote Climate One emerged to help people cope easily with complex ballots to focus on electing the kinds of candidates who we think can be trusted to legislate and lead effective climate action. We do this in two major ways: using our Climate Lens help you assess who is pro climate vs those who are not; and using Climate Sentinel News’s searchlight to highlight and explain the facts that show why climate change is so dangerous and climate action is so important.

Featured Image: Stability landscape showing the pathway of the Earth System out of the Holocene and thus, out of the glacial–interglacial limit cycle to its present position in the hotter Anthropocene. The fork in the road in Fig. 1 is shown here as the two divergent pathways of the Earth System in the future (broken arrows). Currently, the Earth System is on a Hothouse Earth pathway driven by human emissions of greenhouse gases and biosphere degradation toward a planetary threshold at ∼2 °C (horizontal broken line at 2 °C in Fig. 1), beyond which the system follows an essentially irreversible pathway driven by intrinsic biogeophysical feedbacks. The other pathway leads to Stabilized Earth, a pathway of Earth System stewardship guided by human-created feedbacks to a quasistable, human-maintained basin of attraction. “Stability” (vertical axis) is defined here as the inverse of the potential energy of the system. Systems in a highly stable state (deep valley) have low potential energy, and considerable energy is required to move them out of this stable state. Systems in an unstable state (top of a hill) have high potential energy, and they require only a little additional energy to push them off the hill and down toward a valley of lower potential energy.

Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.

I’ve asked for years. Why won’t we save ourselves?

William P. Hall on November 7, 2022

For 45 years we have known that fossil fuel emissions caused global warming that could kill us — and have done nothing effective to stop them. Why?

In today’s Conversation three social scientists explore this conundrum that is both horrifies and fascinates them to consider. We’ve known the dangers. “Why do we condemn today’s children and future generations to live on a dangerous and hostile planet?” Their article tries to answer the question.

How long can fossil fuel hegemony continue as weather events become more extreme? Marcus Kauffman/Unsplash, CC BY / from the article

by Christopher Wright, Daniel Nyberg, & Vanessa Bowden, 7/11/2022 in The Conversation

A technologically advanced society is choosing to destroy itself. It’s both fascinating and horrifying to watch

We’ve had decades to act.

Like watching a slow-motion train crash, the world’s leading climate scientists have for decades warned of the dangers of ever-increasing greenhouse gas emissions.

Political and corporate leaders knew of the threat more than a decade before it was key public knowledge. Back in 1977 [follow this link – it is important!], United States President Jimmy Carter was briefed on the possibility of catastrophic climate change. That same year, internal memos at one of the world’s largest oil companies [ditto] made it clear that continued burning of fossil fuels would dramatically heat the planet.

So why, in the 45 years since, has there been so little action in response? Why do we condemn today’s children and future generations to live on a dangerous and hostile planet?

Read the complete article….

Most of the articles in Vote Climate One’s Climate Sentinel News explore aspects of this conundrum. Our condensed answer to “What can be done?” is that we have to begin acting by changing our governments. We must evict the puppets of the fossil fuel industry who have largely worked to BLOCK effective action, and replace them with candidates who take the climate emergency and the need to act on it seriously.

In Australia, states probably have more capacity for effective climate action than the national government. Victoria’s upcoming state election should be an election focused on the only issue that really matters, climate.

The Victorian ballot is far too complicated and is deliberately designed to keep all the power in the hands of whichever major party is in the majority.

Vote Climate One emerged to help people cope easily with complex ballots to focus on electing the kinds of candidates who we think can be trusted to legislate and lead effective climate action. We do this in two major ways: using our Climate Lens help you assess who is pro climate vs those who are not; and using Climate Sentinel News’s searchlight to highlight and explain the facts that show why climate change is so dangerous and climate action is so important.

Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.

We’re almost out of time to save our species!

William P. Hall on November 5, 2022

The Guardian article shows we’re perilously close to the point of no return where global warming will be unstoppable. The UN says act now! Victoria needs to have a successful climate election as this is the only issue that really matters.

The featured image (from the Guardian article) shows no hint that the rising greenhouse gas emissions driving global warming have even slowed, let alone begun to reverse. In fact, as evidenced over the last three years (shown in the circle) methane emissions are currently accelerating. Over 100 years methane has more than 30 times the greenhouse potential than CO₂ (more than 80 X over 20 years!). Accelerating methane release from soils and permafrost is a highly dangerous source of temperature related positive feedback capable of driving temperatures higher than humans can possibly stop – to produce ‘runaway’ feedbacks forcing Earth’s climates into the ‘Hothouse Earth‘ state within a century or so that would most probably cause human extinction.

We face a real and existentially stark climate emergency. For humanity to have a future, WE MUST STOP AND REVERSE GLOBAL WARMING. Because this is a global phenomenon to have any hope of success, governments must coordinate and lead actions.

The UN environment agency’s report found there was ‘no credible pathway to 1.5C in place’ amid ‘woefully inadequate’ progress on cutting carbon emissions. / Photo Lukas Schulze/Getty Images

by Damian Carrington, 28/10/2022 in the Guardian

World close to ‘irreversible’ climate breakdown, warn major studies

Key UN reports published in last two days warn urgent and collective action needed – as oil firms report astronomical profits

The climate crisis has reached a “really bleak moment”, one of the world’s leading climate scientists has said, after a slew of major reports laid bare how close the planet is to catastrophe.

Collective action is needed by the world’s nations more now than at any point since the second world war to avoid climate tipping points, Prof Johan Rockström said, but geopolitical tensions are at a high.

He said the world was coming “very, very close to irreversible changes … time is really running out very, very fast”.

…

All three of the key UN agencies have produced damning reports in the last two days. The UN environment agency’s report found there was “no credible pathway to 1.5C in place” and that “woefully inadequate” progress on cutting carbon emissions means the only way to limit the worst impacts of the climate crisis is a “rapid transformation of societies”.

Read the complete article….

However, as dire as the UN’s predictions are, they almost certainly understate the magnitude of the risks. Government action is essential and urgently needed! Where Victoria is concerned we can elect such a government in less than three weeks.

In Australia, state governments probably have the most power to control and stop human sourced greenhouse gas emissions (CO₂ and methane) through licensing, permitting, and regulating (environmental and development). Even though the Andrews Labor Government in Victoria is doing a lot to act on the climate emergency, the voting record and its campaigning shows that Labor continues to support fossil fuel developments that will continue adding yet more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. This will keep pushing us ever closer to the point of no return beyond which warming will run away to a Hothouse Earth and likely human extinction. This is a very real climate emergency!

Thus, the upcoming State Election gives Victorian voters a chance to shift our government towards prioritizing action on climate change. What we need to do is to elect enough climate friendly independent, minor party and Green representatives in present Labor seats to put climate activists into the balance of power. As demonstrated federally, fossil fuel puppets and other losers will undoubtedly shout to the rafters that a hung parliament is a recipe for chaos and disaster, but recall that in terms of passing legislation the Gillard Minority Government was arguably one of the most successful governments in Australian history.

Vote Climate One shows Victorians how you can use your preferential voting system to maximize the power of your vote to elect a climate friendly representative.

Our Climate Lens Traffic Light Assessment process has determined where every candidate in every electorate stands on climate issues and ranks them in one of three classes: Green Light – trustworthy supporter of a strong climate policy; Red Light – bad climate policy, voting record or other history suggests can’t be trusted to support a good strong climate policy, or position on climate cannot be determined; Orange Light – weak climate policy and/or record but definitely better than those ranked Red Light.

For the Victorian Election, our Voting Guides for each electorate do not tell you who to vote for. However, if you want to elect a climate friendly government, we provide information about every candidate’s climate policies and an easy to follow voting strategy to maximize the chance to elect a person with a good policy.

Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.

Hawthorn: Show climate action is your top issue

William P. Hall on October 30, 2022

Why Vote Climate One thinks Hawthorn is a key seat

In the Victorian election, Labor, Liberal and Green parties plus a ‘teal’ independent are contesting the seat of Hawthorn on climate.

From Vote Climate One’s perspective, how candidates will respond to the present climate emergency is an existential issue. For us, it is the only election issue that really matters.

If we don’t stop and reverse global warming, our carbon emissions and the accelerating global warming feedbacks driven by emissions will drive our planetary climate system into a Hothouse Earth within a century or so (a geological instant of time). Much of Earth’s surface will become too hot for humans and most other large and complex species to survive because the change will be far too rapid for slowly reproducing organisms to adapt. If our elected governments fail to solve the climate crisis, there will be no civil society left to worry about any other issues the government we are electing in November might or might not have solved.

Where the election in Hawthorn is concerned, clear choices exist: The incumbent Labor Party retiree pushing Labor dogma (including support for new and extensive fossil fuel production projects); a vigorous Liberal Party progressive and previous MP for Hawthorn still tied by Party discipline to Party’s anti-scientific support of its fossil fuel patrons; a young Green who should be trusted to follow the Green’s strong Party line on climate; and a mature ‘teal’- colored community independent who is strong on climate and very well qualified to be in Parliament.

The 29 October Age, provides a comprehensive review of the District and these candidates by Clay Lucas in his article “Will Hawthorn go back to blue, remain red or could teal lightning strike again?”

From Clay Lucas’s 29 October article in the Age, Will Hawthorn go back to blue, remain red or could teal lightning strike again?

The following links will take you to these candidates websites: John Kennedy (Labor incumbent); John Pesutto (Liberal); Melissa Lowe (Green Light Independent); Nick Savage (Green). Two other candidates not surveyed by the Age are also running: Faith Fuhrer of the Green Light Animal Justice Party who is a communications consultant concerned about animal welfare; and Richard Peppard of the Red Light Liberal Democrats (from the linked candidates’ page you will then have to use your browser’s search function to find “Peppard”). Peppard is a neurologist claims to value “science, the environment and good values”, but is staunchly anti- Labor, Greens, and teal independents, thus clearly following the Lib Dem’s libertarian point of view.

How does our Climate Lens Traffic Light Assessment deal with these alternatives.

In this contest, it is highly likely that the seat will be decided on the basis of preferences. If you are concerned about government support for action on climate change, how you manage your preferences may be critically important.

If you accept that effective climate action is really the only issue that really matters in today’s circumstances, you should vote [1], [2], and [3] for the three Green Light candidates.

In this electorate we recommend [4] and [5] for Kennedy and Pesuto. Although Labor policy is consistently better than the Liberals, the Labor Party is marked everywhere with Orange Lights, because Labor’s policy supports their fossil fuel industry patron’s continued growth in terms of opening large new production projects. Liberals and Nationals are marked with Red Lights in most electorates’ but in Hawthorn we give Pesutto (Liberal) an orange light. On a number of grounds (as discussed in the Age article) he seems to be a better choice to be elected than many of his Liberal colleagues contending for other seats. Thus if you are voting climate first, Kennedy and Pessuto are ranked [4] and [5].

(If you are a ‘rusted on’ liberal and intend to vote [1] for Pesutto, but still concerned about climate you should rank our our Green Light candidates [2], [3] and [4]. This gives you three chances to support election of someone who can be counted on to give their full support for climate action before Labor and/or Liberal. Similarly, if you vote [1] for Labor, you should also rank our Green Light candidates [2] – [4].

All Liberal Democratic candidates are marked with Red Lights wherever they are running because of the Party’s libertarian stance against Labor, Greens and teal community independents because these candidates accept that governments will have to be heavily involved if climate action is to be effective. In Hawthorn, Peppard has clearly expressed his allegiance to this anti-government policy, so that puts him last [6] in the preference list.

Hawthorn should be an interesting bellwether seat to follow in terms of support for strong climate action.

Finally, you may also be interested in our Traffic Light assessments for the Upper House in the Southern Metropolitan Region (in which Hawthorn District is included).

Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.