Helen,
That's really useful information about the donation links and the Adani
coal mine. I didn't know about the coal mine before.
As for Scott Morrison and his government, I think there's more to it
than sheer stupidity. As with Trump and Boris Johnson, there's a
right-wing populist agenda at play, which is all about protecting and
promoting the interests of big business, but it sustains itself in power
by appealing to certain lowest-common-denominator prejudices in the
minds of the voting public, and serving up what are basically lies to
reinforce its appeal. So Morrison has now moved on from claiming that
the link between bushfires and global warming is all in the minds of
urban woke greeny loony lefties; he's now claiming that he never denied
that link in the first place; but he's also making out that the
bushfires are particularly bad because the greeny loony lefties have
been blocking bushfire hazard reduction measures in the national parks.
This is rejected as nonsense by bushfire experts, but the claim doesn't
have to be accurate to make its impact. And that's the problem. Populist
politics has found the faultline in modern democracy, where things don't
have to be true, or even make sense, to influence voting patterns; they
use tactics of misinformation and misdirection as a deliberate policy to
sustain themselves in power. And the left/green parties haven't yet
found a way to counteract those tactics, or to tap into the huge
groundswell of opinion which is undoubtedly building behind
environmentalist causes, particularly amongst the young. In countries
like the UK young people just take it for granted that something
urgently needs to be done about the environment; but they don't have any
faith in the political parties to deliver the required changes. So their
convictions don't translate into votes. And you can't blame them. The
environment hardly featured as an issue in the election we just had.
Things are going to change, I'm sure. But how much damage is the planet
going to sustain before the changes happen? It's a frightening prospect.
Edward
On 05/01/2020 13:10, Helen Varley Jamieson wrote:
hi alan,
it is truly devastating & catastrophic what is happening in australia,
& outrageous that the government there continues to be so fucking
stupid. i heard that scott morrison (the prime minister, who chose to
have a hawaiian holiday in the midst of it all) would fly out to china
to discuss trade negotiations, including coal mining, immediately
after meeting with fire chiefs. his inability to make the connections
is staggering.
i have many family and friends in australia and everyone is affected
in some way; some have lost property, everyone is affected by the
smoke, my family & friends in new zealand are also seeing and
breathing the smoke. yes, an estimated half a billion birds, animals &
insects have died. and the fires are still burning, many out of
control, and no end in sight. this level of catastrophe has been
predicted - but not for another decade; everything is accelerating.
what can we do? suzon posted this list of donation links:
https://www.abc.net.au/classic/read-and-watch/news/bushfire-donations/11823676
- there are plenty of places to make financial donations & if you are
in australia there are practical things you can do to help.
we can write to scott morrison (@scottmorrisonmp on twitter) and other
australian politicians, urging them to take the climate emergency
seriously (australia is one of the worst countries in the world in
terms of climate policy:
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/australia-s-climate-change-policy-ranked-57-out-of-61-countries)
a related campaign that is well worth supporting is the long struggle
against the adani coal mine - is a major fossil-fuel extraction
project which will contribute massively to global warming as well as
being totally unethical. the queensland government illegally rescinded
native title to allow the mine to go ahead, & the wangan & jagalingou
indigenous people have been bankrupted trying to stop the mine.
https://wanganjagalingou.com.au/pledge-to-stand-with-us/
https://www.acf.org.au/email_siemens_global
it's hard to wish a happy new year in the face of all of this (not to
mention the tragic zoo fire in germany, 30 primates killed thanks to
someone's carelessness) but i can only hope that the scale of
devastation will force politicians to accept that they must act,
urgently, and that we will enter into a decade of positive change ...
h xx
On 03.01.20 20:26, Alan Sondheim wrote:
(Apologies for a 2nd post today; I think the situation warrants it.
How do we, as a community, respond to this? To the approx. 480m
killed? To a Ballard future collapsing around us? How do we stop from
harming ourselves, how can we act intelligently with this like this -
on top of all the other horrors? Because this is going to spread of
course; the ash on NZ glaciers accelerating melt. What do we do? What
do we do as a community?)
Fires in Australia
http://www.alansondheim.org/Victoria.jpg (map)
http://www.alansondheim.org/Victoria.mp3 (radio)
In Pennsylvania, we had house-destroying floods, mine fires,
highly polluted air. We went back and explored the area (around
Wilkes-Barre/Kingston) last April. I've had my own things
destroyed in floods several times, oddly including a storage
container in Los Angeles, a closet in Providence, my parents'
house in Kingston. But nothing, ever, like this. Reading Ballard,
the world's future is spelled out as a scenario for now. Teaching
"The Year 3000" back in the early 70s, I was face-to-face with
the statistics. I've continue to talk and write and think about
this. I was influenced by post-modern geography, and by the
collapsed flora of the Carboniferous/Pennsylvanian, which I
collected. I grew up negative. I've been following the fires and
started interviewing a few people by Skype, people from eastern
Australia. I'm trying to make sense of this, trying to find
optimism in a situation which I see as the beginning of something
problematic, horrifying. (I'll send the interviews out to the
lists.) I listened late last night (here) to the radio - a short
segment is above. The map gives some indication of locations.
There was a report that 480 million animals have died in the
fires. It's inconceivable, as is the number.
Best, hopefully, Alan
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helen varley jamieson
[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
http://www.creative-catalyst.com
http://www.upstage.org.nz
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