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  • From: Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [permaculture] Fwd: Real reason for most recent middle east conflicts leading to war: Mediterranean Middle East countries' new oil and gas discoveries 2013 - Google Search
  • Date: Sat, 7 Sep 2013 13:17:02 -0400

Australia’s Great Barrier Reef ‘In Danger’: The Threats, The Plan And What
We Stand To Lose
http://www.ibtimes.com/australias-great-barrier-reef-danger-threats-plan-what-we-stand-lose-1401215
Abbottalypse Now <http://www.monbiot.com/2013/09/05/abbottalypse-now/>

http://www.monbiot.com/2013/09/05/abbottalypse-now/
Posted: 05 Sep 2013 12:53 AM PDT
Tony Abbott intends to trash Australia on behalf of the super-rich.

By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 5th September 2013
His views have changed, but don’t expect Tony Abbott to acknowledge this,
let alone apologise to Australians for misleading them. In 2009 he
maintained that
<http://www.theaustralian.com.au/politics/the-town-that-turned-up-the-temperature/story-e6frgczf-1225809567009>manmade
climate change is “absolute crap”. Now he
says<http://www.abc.net.au/insiders/content/2012/s3838363.htm> “I
think that climate change is real, humanity makes a contribution.” But he
has merely switched from denying global warming to denying the need to act
on it.
Abbott is following a familiar script, the 4 Ds of climate change inaction,
promoted by fossil fuel lovers the world over. Deny, then defer, then
delay, then despair.
His Direct Action programme for reducing emissions is incapable of
delivering the cuts it promises, absurdly underfunded and surrounded by a
swarm of unanswered
questions<http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/09/coalition-direct-action-tony-abbott>.
Were it to become big enough to meet its promises, it would be far more
expensive<http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/29/coalition-climate-change-modelling-shortfall>
than
a comparable carbon trading scheme, which Mr Abbott has falsely claimed
would incur “almost unimaginable” costs. But it won’t be big enough,
because he refuses to set aside the money it requires. Direct Action is a
programme designed to create a semblance of policy, in the certain
knowledge that it will fail to achieve its objectives.
Why? The answer’s in the name. Coalition policies begin with Coal: getting
it out of the ground, moving it through the ports, stripping away the
regulations that prevent mining companies from wrecking the natural beauty
of Australia – and from trashing the benign climate on which we all depend.
The mining boom in the world’s biggest coal exporter has funded a new,
harsher politics.
Like the tar sands in Canada, coal has changed the character of the nation,
brutalising and degrading public life. It has funded a vicious campaign of
mud-slinging against those who argue for the careful use of resources, for
peace and quiet and beauty and the health of the living planet. Australia,
like Nigeria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, suffers from a resource curse.
To those four Ds you can add an R: retreat. Like Canada, Australia is
slipping back down the development ladder, switching from secondary and
tertiary industries towards primary resource extraction. Note Abbott’s
disparagement of what he
calls<http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/election-2013/tony-abbott-unveils-plan-to-lift-tasmania-out-of-the-economic-doldums/story-fn9qr68y-1226697572826>
a
“restaurant-led economy” in Tasmania, and his intention to replace it with
the businesses that preceded it: logging and pulping, mining and
unregulated fishing. A 21st-Century nation is returning to a 19th-Century
economy. It makes no financial sense, but mining and logging corporations
are more powerful lobbyists that restauranteurs and eco-tourism companies.
That R also makes the difference between coal and coral. If, as we can
expect, Tony Abbott allows a massive expansion of the coal port
<http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-06-13/abbott-on-coal-green-veto/4067856?WT.svl=news0>at
Abbot Point, which means the dredging and dumping of 3 million cubic metres
of material inside the Great Barrier Reef marine park, it would threaten
coral, dugongs, turtles, dolphins and much of the rest of the reef’s
profusion of life. If it happens, it will be a simple declaration that
nothing – not even the Great Barrier Reef, on which so much of Australia’s
image and revenue depends – will be allowed to stand in the way of
extraction and destruction.
Abbott will dump coal onto the bonfire of environmental protection lit by
some of the state governments. He intends to cut what he calls “green tape”
– the rules that protect humankind’s common heritage from greed and
selfishness – and withdraw the federal
powers<http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/03/labor-national-parks-federal-oversight>
that
are often the last line of defence against state governments captured by
the industries they are supposed to regulate.
None of this is to suggest that Labor has distinguished itself on these
issues. The announcements of the past few weeks look like a last minute
scramble to help voters forget its record of vacillation and cowardice.
Labor’s failure to protect the natural world ensures that Abbott’s
philistinism is harder to contest. As usual, it’s only the Greens who have
consistently been advocating responsibility and statesmanship.
It’s been bad enough under Gillard and Rudd. If Tony Abbott is elected, the
natural wonders that distinguish this nation will gradually be rubbed away
until it looks like anywhere else: a degraded landscape and seascape,
supporting just a few generic exotic species.
The country will be run exclusively for the class to which Gina Reinhardt,
Clive Palmer and Ivan Glasenberg belong: the one per cent of the One Per
Cent. Forget the pious rhetoric and nationalistic bombast. Abbott’s
policies are really about removing the social and environmental protections
enjoyed by all Australians, to allow the filthy rich to become richer – and
filthier.
www.monbiot.com



  • [permaculture] Fwd: Real reason for most recent middle east conflicts leading to war: Mediterranean Middle East countries' new oil and gas discoveries 2013 - Google Search, Lawrence London, 09/07/2013

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