Puppet politics: Majority governments work for themselves

William P. Hall on May 11, 2023

Labor puppets will work to benefit fossil fuel industries’ continued hyper-profitable exploitation come hothouse hell or high water flooding! How do we know this?

In the feature article here, Fake Reform: Jim Chalmers’ itsy-bitsy tax “hit” is a gift for foreign fossil fuel giants, Michael West Media compares the Australian experience with fossil fuel exploitation with the way Norway has managed their resources.

Gas giants are grinning too. Image: Jim Chalmers, AAP / from the article

Michael West – 07/05/2023, Michael West Media

Fake Reform: Jim Chalmers’ itsy-bitsy tax “hit” is a gift for foreign fossil fuel giants

Jim Chalmers’ long-awaited tweaks to the PRRT are the itsy-bitsyest “reforms” about, the equivalent of recycling old Christmas presents with a fancy new bow. Michael West reports on how the Treasurer is merely returning a couple of billion in gas sector subsidies, and only for a while.

“Chalmers slaps $2.4bn tax hit on oil and gas,” cried Murdoch’s The Australian. “$2.4bn gas tax hit on energy giants,” declared the AFR. Santos chief Kevin Gallagher was nowhere to be heard with his “Soviet-style” scaremongering. Is Australia still going the way of Venezuela and Nigeria, Kevin? 

Not on your Nelly. The foreign gas giants are profiteering from Australia’s resources like there is no tomorrow, and paying pocket fluff in tax to boot. Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ long-awaited tweaks to the PRRT are itsy-bitsy, the equivalent of recycling old Christmas presents with a bright new bow, really just “up-fronting” a piddling amount of gas revenue for the next few years, a clawing back of subsidies for a while. 

You know it’s a fake “hit” when the fossil media talks it up as a “hit” but the gas lobbyists from APPEA say it gets “the balance right”. Reality is there is no balance, just ongoing pillage.

Clearly our Government is receiving or expecting to receive some kind of quid pro quo that they think will help them stay in power. Staying in power is clearly more important to the party that has the majority in government than doing whatever is necessary to stop and reverse the carbon emissions currently forcing us all down the road to hothouse hell and global mass extinction.

How else could the robber barons of the FF industries count on our Government helping them to rip off such extraordinary profits from their pillaging of so many Australian non-renewable resources?

In Michael West’s article also see the linked video, “Another year of record fossil fuel subsidies. What’s the scam?“, and the more detailed article, “A tale of two fossil superpowers: what Australia can learn from Norway“.

Following this theme a little further, see the news from Alberta, Canada, that is currently burning to a crisp. This gives some of the evidence demonstrating how FF puppetry works through its ‘influence’ on the media:

Alberta Burns Due To Climate-Change Fueled Wildfires, Yet Provincial Government & Media Refuse To Mention It

The stark reality is that the successful puppetry of the fossil fuel industry to protect and possibly even enhance next year’s earnings is driving us ever faster down the global warming road that leads to human oblivion in the 6th global mass extinction. Even if the heating doesn’t kill us directly, the die-offs of increasing numbers of keystone species, will cause whole ecosystems (including human agricultural systems) to collapse, taking our species along as well.

The weather causing the fires in Alberta today is a sign of the times:

Note: The normal progression of waves in the Jet Stream is from west to east. In this time series, the Jet Stream is so disordered that the eddy is actually moving the heat dome from east to west!

What we are seeing here is the operation of a positive feedback look driven by increasing global temperatures. As the Arctic grows warmer, temperature differences driving the jet streams diminish. This change allows the streams separating frigid polar air from much temperate zone air to slow and meander both far north and south of their normal paths. As demonstrated above, this is how the monster heat dome causing the Alberta fires formed. Amongst other things, slow overall warming accompanied by periodic heatwaves like this over most of the world’s boreal forests has allowed bark beetles, normally killed off every year by winter freezing, to proliferate to the point that they are killing vast numbers of trees. This increases the forests’ vulnerabilities to fires and the ferocity of the fires themselves. Not only does this turn the carbon content of the trees into greenhouse gases, but the fires are often hot enough to ignite the peaty soil to release that carbon as greenhouse gases as well.

The feedback loop is further extended as underlying permafrost exposed by burning off of the insulating layers of vegetation and peat begins to release the vast accumulations of greenhouse gases held as icy gas hydrates.

In sum, fossil fuel interests have convinced (1) our government to protect and even extend fossil fuel’s profits from producing and burning Earth’s carbon stores into energy and greenhouse gases, and (2) our press from advertising the facts of this pillage to the people whose futures will be destroyed by the consequent global warming.

Governments controlled by political parties in majority are easy targets for special interests, especially when the parties operate on the basis that the only issue that matters is to retain control of the government. They will represent the special interests of any person/group/industry they think can help them keep that control before the interests of the people in their electorates or people in general.

To mobilize and coordinate the necessary forces to turn off the downhill road to Earth’s Hothouse Hell, our governments need to work for us humans, not vested interests:

  1. we need to convince our elected and candidate representatives that we will absolutely not vote for them if they put a vested interest before our interests;
  2. that we need to elect enough independents from our own communities who will represent us to ensure that no major political party can form a majority government in its own right.

Item 2 ensures that community interests can veto legislation favoring special interests put up by the party in power.

Featured Image:

A protest against the US government’s decision to exit the Paris climate deal in 2017. ‘Ignorance-building strategies’ by fossil fuel companies have bred climate change scepticism among conservatives in the US and Australia. Photograph: Anthony Anex/EPA | from the Guardian article by Graham Readfearn (08/05/2018), “‘It’s all about vested interests’: untangling conspiracy, conservatism and climate scepticism“)

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.

VC1’s submission to UN’s First Global Stocktake

William P. Hall on October 11, 2022

Vote Climate One submitted Dr Andrew Norton’s 22 Aug. paper, “Recipe for disaster: ‘We are only responsible for our domestic emissions’” to the UNFCCC’s First Global Stocktake.

Dr Norton is a specialist in theoretical physics and applied mathematics who has applied his analytical mind to issues relating to climate change and its dangers to humanity.

The UNFCCC is the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change – The intergovernmental body responsible for COP and IPCC processes relating to the understanding of and acting on the ongoing process of climate change.

The Global Stocktake established in the Paris Agreement (GST) is a process for taking stock of the implementation of the Paris Agreement with the aim to assess the world’s collective progress towards achieving the purpose of the agreement and its long-term goals (Article 14).Decision 19/CMA.1 outlines the modalities and sources of input for the GST.

The Vote Climate One submission states:

3.1 Best available science shows that supply-side action is required [Q5a]


The Paris Agreement has been relying on demand-side action (via emission reduction NDCs) to reduce the global GHG pollution rate. The world’s governments have been too slow to respond. Best available science shows that supply-side action to reduce fossil fuel (FF) production is now also urgently required: it is now physically impossible for reductions in GHG emission rates to alone suffice in preventing the climate chaos and catastrophic environmental losses that will ensue if warming is not limited to 1.5◦C.


3.1.1 Planned over-production of fossil fuels [Q1, Q4]


The Production Gap Report [1] — first launched in 2019 — tracks the discrepancy between governments’ planned fossil fuel production and global production levels consistent with limiting warming to 1.5◦C or 2◦C. Key findings of the 2021 report (page 4) include,

• “the world’s governments plan to produce more than twice the amount of fossil fuels in 2030
than would be consistent with limiting warming to 1.5◦C”
• “Global fossil fuel production must start declining immediately and steeply to be consistent
with limiting long-term warming to 1.5◦C”


The question of which countries need to take action on fossil fuel production is answered in the report (March 2022), Phaseout pathways for fossil fuel production within Paris-compliant carbon budgets [2].


From the Headline Finding on page 6: Based on a 50:50 chance of not exceeding 1.5◦C,


• “The report makes absolutely clear that there is no capacity in the carbon budget for opening
up new production facilities of any kind, whether coal mines, oil wells or gas terminals.”
• “A transition based on principles of equity requires wealthy, high-emitting nations to phase
out all oil and gas production by 2034 while the poorest nations have until 2050 to end
production.”

Read the complete submission…..

The bottom line is that:

the Federal Government is still planning to rapidly expand Australia’s FF production and FF exports:

• There are 114 fossil fuel major projects in the Australian Government’s approvals pipeline [4]
• The report (May 2022), “Carbon Bombs” – Mapping key fossil fuel projects [5], finds that Australia is planning 23 of the world’s 425 carbon bomb projects (each exceeding 1Gt CO2).


When Prime Minister Albanese was recently asked why Labor would not consider the Greens policy of “no new FF mines”, the final point he made to terminate the discussion was that the UN, “measure emissions based upon where they occur, not where the product comes from” [6].
Similarly, when Australia’s new Environment Minister, Tanya Plibersek, was asked if the fastest way to reduce emissions wasn’t simply to say “right, no more coal mines”, she was obliged to reiterate Labor’s position [7]:

“We are responsible for the carbon pollution that we emit here in Australia.” [i.e. Our governments have no responsibility for Australian produced carbon that is burned overseas….]

Read the complete submission…..

Both Federal and State governments have many levers available to them that could stop or reduce the production of fossil fuels, irrespective of their claims (or not) to be working to reduce or eliminate fossil fuel emissions that are driving the climate towards lethal runaway global warming. Clearly, both major political parties are still working hand in glove with the special interests to keep the fossil fuel industry growing through subsidies and permitting activities.

This is likely to continue as long as the special interests’ supporters are comfortable that they can work for their patrons and still get re-elected. This cozy connection between Parliamentarians and the fossil fuel industry will continue until the puppets are replaced by genuine representatives of voters who care about the future of our climate and the world their children and grandchildren will live (or die) in.

Stopping and reversing global warming is the only issue that really matters

There is a vast array of scientific and observational evidence showing that not only is the world growing ever warmer (thanks to the profligate burning of fossil carbon beginning with the Industrial Revolution), but that we have now warmed our planet enough that we are beginning to cross ‘tipping points’ for a number of positive feedback processes in the Earth System that will continue driving temperatures still higher even without further human intervention. Once positive feedback takes control of the thermostat, Earth’s temperatures will continue rising at an accelerating rate in a runaway global warming process until semi-stable ‘Hothouse Earth’ temperatures are reached. These temperatures will like be too hot and be reached too fast for large slowly reproducing organisms like humans to survive. The result will be our planet’s 6th global mass extinction event. At least two or three of the previous mass extinction events in our fossil record also seem to have been the result of runaway global warming.

Note: Straightforward laws of physics will produce this result unless humans can stop and reverse the process – and we are approaching a point of no return where no conceivable human intervention will be able to stop the feedback process before the fuel is exhausted or the system self-destructs.

Given that we are major users and producers of greenhouse gas emitting fossil fuels, we have to take the responsibility to do something about this….

We need to turn away from the the Apocalypse on the road to hothouse hell, and we won’t do this by continuing cosy relationships with fossil fuel producers and consumers.

In our present situation where most of our governments are still supporting and even funding fossil fuel production and use, the most effective actions we can take as individuals is to change our governments to prioritize action on climate change above all other things. Nothing else matters if we have no future….

States are probably even more important than the Federal Government where climate action is concerned

States enable and regulate mining and production of fossil fuels, and many of the important sources of emissions. Planning, industrial, rural, public safety and others are all primarily state concerns where political and administrative decisions may have considerable impact on regulating carbon emissions. Thus, if you are concerned to influence how your state acts in relation to the climate emergency, you need to elect representatives who will do this rather than bow down to wealthy patrons and vested interests who want to protect their short-term profits rather than humanity’s longer-term future.

The Victorian state election on 26 November is our next opportunity to begin focusing our state parliaments on the need to prioritize climate action. For Victorian voters, this may be the most important vote you ever make: Do you support major parties in their business as usual financial and regulatory support of the fossil fuel industry, or will you vote for a party or independent who is clearly focused on promoting and facilitating climate action?

Applying your decision to preferential voting on the ballot

If you believe that our present Labor government will govern in your interests rather than protecting and supporting their patrons in the fossil fuel and related industries, then go with the flow and don’t concern yourself with the likely consequences of going down their fossil fueled road towards runaway global warming. On the other hand, if you think it is better to work for a sustainable future where your children and their children can hope for a happy future, Vote Climate One can help you elect a government that will actively lead and support this effort.

Our Climate Lens Traffic Light Assessment process will help you to do this most effectively in both houses of Parliament. Also, our Climate Sentinel News provides access to factual evidence about the growing climate crisis to support your thinking, In the May Federal Election, our Traffic Light Voting System made it easy to use factual evidence about where each candidate in your electorate ranks in relation to their commitment to prioritize action on the climate emergency. We have modified this for the Victorian State Election in November.

Peter Trusler’s Self Portrait: Reduction

Featured Image Fig. 1 from Dr Norton’s submission to the UN’s Global Stocktake for the Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 27, etc.). Shows that when a country like Australia produces fossil fuel, the carbon emissions from that fuel end up in the atmosphere, wherever in the world

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

CO₂: If you can measure it, you can control it

Climate News Links on April 2, 2022

A new satellite system and atmospheric modelling can separate changes in anthropogenic CO₂ emissions from natural environmental variability.

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain via the Article

by Jessica Merzdorf Evans, 01/04/2022 in Phys.org

First-of-its-kind detection of reduced human carbon dioxide emissions

For the first time, researchers have spotted short-term, regional fluctuations in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) around the globe due to emissions from human activities.

Using a combination of NASA satellites and atmospheric modeling, the scientists performed a first-of-its-kind detection of human CO2 emissions changes. The new study uses data from NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) to measure drops in CO2 emissions during the COVID-19 pandemic from space. With daily and monthly data products now available to the public, this opens new possibilities for tracking the collective effects of human activities on CO2 concentrations in near real-time.

Read the complete article….

Read the source report: Brad Weir et al, Regional impacts of COVID-19 on carbon dioxide detected worldwide from space, Science Advances (2021)

Featured image: Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations at Mauna Loa, Hawaii since 1958. Source Delorme – Data from Dr. Pieter Tans, NOAA/ESRL and Dr. Ralph Keeling, Scripps Institution of Oceanography via Wikipedia (which see for more details) / License: licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International.

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

Start fast to slow the rate of global warming by stopping “super emitters'” methane leaks

William P. Hall on February 7, 2022

by Brady Dennis, 03/02/2022 in The Washington Post Climate & Environment
Cracking down on methane ‘ultra emitters’ is a quick way to combat climate change, researchers find: Latest study underscores how satellites are exposing emission sources around the globe. ‘It’s a harbinger of what’s to come,’ one expert says.

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