NYT: Australia Is Committing Climate Suicide

[crazytown]

Last edited Sat Jan 4, 2020, 07:49 AM - Edit history (1)

Australia Is Committing Climate Suicide

As record fires rage, the country’s leaders seem intent on sending it to its doom.

BRUNY ISLAND, Australia — Australia today is ground zero for the climate catastrophe. Its glorious Great Barrier Reef is dying, its world-heritage rain forests are burning, its giant kelp forests have largely vanished, numerous towns have run out of water or are about to, and now the vast continent is burning on a scale never before seen.

The images of the fires are a cross between “Mad Max” and “On the Beach”: thousands driven onto beaches in a dull orange haze, crowded tableaux of people and animals almost medieval in their strange muteness — half-Bruegel, half-Bosch, ringed by fire, survivors’ faces hidden behind masks and swimming goggles. Day turns to night as smoke extinguishes all light in the horrifying minutes before the red glow announces the imminence of the inferno. Flames leaping 200 feet into the air. Fire tornadoes. Terrified children at the helm of dinghies, piloting away from the flames, refugees in their own country.

(snip) Since 1996 successive conservative Australian governments have successfully fought to subvert international agreements on climate change in defense of the country’s fossil fuel industries. Today, Australia is the world’s largest exporter of both coal and gas. It recently was ranked 57th out of 57 countries on climate-change action.

In no small part (PM) Morrison owes his narrow election victory last year to the coal-mining oligarch Clive Palmer, who formed a puppet party to keep the Labor Party — which had been committed to limited but real climate-change action — out of government. Mr. Palmer’s advertising budget for the campaign was more than double that of the two major parties combined. Mr. Palmer subsequently announced plans to build the biggest coal mine in Australia.

(snip) With no effective opposition from a Labor Party reeling from its election loss and with media dominated by Rupert Murdoch — 58 percent of daily newspaper circulation — firmly behind his climate denialism, Mr. Morrison appears to hope that he will prevail as long as he doesn’t acknowledge the magnitude of the disaster engulfing Australia.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/03/opinion/australia-fires-climate-change.html

Elections bought by the fossil fuel billionaires; the MSM poisoned by Murdoch. Sound familiar? There a Bill before the legislature criminalizing environmental boycotts, so I won't suggest that tourists give the place a miss for the sake of the planet - the fact that wildfire smoke is creating a public health emergencies in Sydney, and elsewhere, is reason enough.

In other (not news) Murdoch moves wildfire reports off the front pages of his newspapers.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/jan/04/the-australian-murdoch-owned-newspaper-accused-of-downplaying-bushfires-in-favour-of-picnic-races?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

[dewsgirl]

1. These right wing assholes are destroying the whole world.

[rickyhall]

2. THIS IS OUR FUTURE!

And if dump wins it will happen sooner than later.

He may close the EPA altogether.

[Kaiserguy]

5. The toxic influence of big money

is destroying our world. We need to put an end to it's ability to buy elected officials and to sell its lies by owning the MSM. What they want is nothing short of all out fascism with them running the show and us having no say. We need to stop them before its to late!!

[BlancheSplanchnik]

8. How?

[Kaiserguy]

20. I wish I had a good answer

at this point all we can do is try to vote out the GOP and if we gain enough seat to change the law.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

22. Yeah.... 😪

I wish there was something more we could do.

[sarge43]

3. Preview of coming attractions. n/t

[lunatica]

21. Yes, unfortunately.

[MFM008]

4. It would be

Heaven to see them eliminated.
Out of power.
Method? Any.

[Ponietz]

10. We'll have to weave our own cloth and march to the sea for salt

Stop using what they pander. Disconnect from the Matrix.

[TheFarseer]

6. Unbelievable

With the evidence staring them right in the face they choose desertification of their country. It’s just so stupid. I can’t believe people fall for this RW nonsense.

[US4u2]

9. Sorry to say...

It's all about the benjamins. Any time that Murdoch character is involved, you know some politician sold out.

[NRaleighLiberal]

7. since their rapture is pure bullshit, they are creating their own...

The problem is, it will take the rest of us with them

[Martin Eden]

11. They are entitled to burn in their own hell ...

... but when they make hell on earth for the rest of us they have to be driven from power.

[spanone]

12. So is the USA

[bucolic_frolic]

13. Housing bubble crash, time to Make Australia Great Again

[crazytown]

14. Time to join the coalition of the witless

going to Iran.

[paleotn]

15. Australia has always been on the edge.

Water is a precious commodity over most of it's land mass and the weather there is fickle. That gets magnified many times over by climate change, so it makes sense they get the worst of it first. Same to varying degrees with South Africa, the African Sahel, southern California, the Mediterranean coast of Europe, parts of East Africa and others.

[CousinIT]

16. Similar to Bolsonaro in Brazil....Humans had better wise up and FAST

and stop electing greed-driven climate change deniers who seem hellbent on exacerbating the problem even as the World burns around them.

[Kid Berwyn]

17. Mineral Extraction @ 120 degrees Fahrenheit

Australian coal goes to China and India (and other nations) where they use it to generate electricity.

Tim Buckley, the director of Energy Finance Studies at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, says his frustration at the government’s intransigent defence of increasingly technologically obsolete thermal coal (coal burnt for energy rather than steel manufacturing) at the cost of effective climate change policy and international reputation is compounded by his view that the industry has commenced its drawn-out death throes, sustained by political muscle rather than economic reality.

https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/the-world-has-made-the-link-between-australian-coal-fires-and-climate-20200103-p53omu.html

[UniteFightBack]

18. When is the next election over there? I'm ready for the world pendulum to swing back. nt

[JudyM]

19. Murdoch should fry in that fire. That is all.