Critical Times

by Nat Wasley
March 10, 2010

It has been a very busy couple of weeks since Martin Ferguson announced new legislation targeting Muckaty as the preferred site for the federal nuclear waste dump.

1- Senate Inquiry- submissions due NEXT MONDAY MARCH 15

There will be a Senate Inquiry into the proposed new dump legislation- the National Radioactive Waste Management Bill 2010-which is largely recycled from the previous Howard government Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Act.

Link to the Bill: http://www.

by Renfrey Clarke

When a respected scientific journal carries a peer-reviewed article branding the key technology behind “clean coal” as “profoundly non-feasible” , you’d expect governments and coal corporations to react in some fashion.

After all, the proposed Waxman-Markey climate bill in the US reportedly promises “clean coal” a staggering US$60 billion in subsidies. Here in Australia, the Rudd government last year pledged to spend A$2.

Click on the link below to view the video, “Unmineable Minds” on YouTube. It is a plea to save Arkaroola from the devastation of mining this world heritage geological feature of South Australia.

http://www.

by Renfrey Clarke

How to sum up the Liberal Party’s “direct action” scheme for global warming mitigation? Well, how about “a fraud wrapped in demagogy inside a delusion”?

The delusion is that the measures outlined in the scheme would represent a meaningful contribution by Australia to saving nature and humanity from climate change.

The demagogy lies in the decision by the Liberals to issue the policy even though many of them – if not most – remain unconvinced that global warming is even a problem. Opposition leader Tony Abbott assured a meeting in country Victoria last October that climate change was “absolute crap”.

Source: Stop the Intervention Collective Sydney

On February 13, 2010 there will be a national day of action against the NT Intervention and for Aboriginal rights.

This will mark the 2nd anniversary of the Apology to the Stolen Generations, when Prime Minister Rudd committed the government to, “a future where this Parliament resolves that the injustices of the past must never, never happen again”.

But ongoing NT Intervention policies reek of the same paternalism and commitment to assimilation that created the Stolen Generations.

Source: The Guardian
by Bob Briton

The federal government’s long term plans for public education took a giant leap forward last week with the release of school test data on the “My School” website. It crashed shortly afterwards following what the government insists was a rush of visits from interested parents. Education Minister Julia Gillard was at pains to point out in the weeks and months leading up to the launch that it would not rank schools in a league table of achievement in the Commonwealth’s NAPLAN testing.

Source: Vanguard
by Ned K.
In October this year, the largest rubber and tyre manufacturer in the world, Bridgestone, announced it will close its Salisbury tyre plant in the northern suburbs of Adelaide by 30 April 2010. 600 workers will lose their jobs as a direct result of the closure.

by Renfrey Clarke

The target posed by James Hansen of stabilising atmospheric carbon dioxide at 350 ppm is increasingly understood in conjunction with the need to keep cumulative emissions within a tight global “budget”. While the point at which budgeted emissions occur is not in theory crucial, in practice there is a need to ensure that emissions peak early and decline swiftly thereafter. Low or zero-emissions energy generating plant needs to be built out at an accelerated rate, with the time-frame seeming to exclude nuclear power.

Source: Vanguard

The fingerprints of US imperialism were all over the Copenhagen Conference, and the handwriting on the flimsy ‘Copenhagen Accord’ also matched that of the main environmental criminal.

Unwilling to accept any responsibility for its historic and current contributions to global climate warming, and determined to resist any restrictions or imposition of costs on its polluting industrial monopolies, US imperialism has, until recently, opposed any effective international action to deal with it. Unable to deny the science any longer, US imperialism was forced to participate in the UN process or lose all credibility.

by Humphrey McQueen

Note from Critical Times: For those interested in a Marxist interpretation of the workings of capitalism, Humphrey McQueen provides a number (8 to be precise) of insightful explanations. His article will give the reader intense but enjoyable reading over the holidays. To use his own words, ” knowing how to identify each form of capital depends on recognising its function in the social patterns of exploitation.

Source: Solidarity Online

NASA climate scientist James Hansen shocked many climate activists when he declared that it would be better if the Copenhagen talks collapsed. Spash’s paper will tell you why carbon trading schemes are fundamentally flawed and why Copehagen will not deliver meaningful action that can stop climate change.

Clive Spash, an environmental economist with the CSIRO, was censored by CSIRO management a few months ago.

Australia’s largest day of action on climate change

Saturday, 12 December, 11am

Victoria Square/Tarndanyangga to Rymill Park/Murwillaburka

Be a part of the biggest ever Walk Against Warming and join millions of Australians demanding action on climate change. Why is this year’s walk so important? It coincides with the critical United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, where world leaders are gathering to decide what actions they will take for a safe climate. The Walk Against Warming is Australia’s contribution to the International Day of Action on Climate Change, as people gather en masse across the globe to have their voices heard.

Eureka oath to be led by President of the Legislative Council, Thursday 3rd December.

Today at 1.15pm, President of the Legislative Council, Bob Sneath, will lead a gathering on the steps of Parliament in reciting the oath first taken by the miners of Ballarat at the famous Eureka Stockade.

Source: The Guardian

by Peter Mac

The Rudd government has so far failed to take advantage of a golden opportunity to acquire the vast southern Queensland irrigation property, Cubbie Station. The huge consumption of water in this and other irrigation properties in the St George area has drastically reduced water flows into the upper Murray River for years, just when flows have been shrinking because of climate change.

Cubbie Station’s dams, which have the greatest capacity of any irrigation property in Australia, can hold 530 billion litres, almost as much as Sydney Harbour.

MEDIA RELEASE
Climate Emergency Action Network SA (CLEAN SA)

Monday, 9 November 2009 – For Immediate Release

“A war of attrition against the people of Adelaide”, is the way that one local climate action group today described the expected record heatwave for the city, saying that the continuous heat should be an urgent wake up call to all politicians about the need for urgent action on climate change.

“This November heatwave is likely to cause more deaths among the elderly and the isolated, like the 30 pensioners who died of heat-related causes during the heatwave earlier this year,” John Rice, spokesperson for CLEAN SA, the Climate Emergency Action Network, said today.

“Adelaide’s unprecedented November heatwave is classic climate-change weather.

Source: The Guardian
by Bob Briton

The questions were bound to be asked at some stage. If climate change is causing polar ice caps to melt and low-lying island nations are already starting to disappear, how long can it be before coastal settlements in Australia come under threat from rising sea levels and extreme weather events? How ready is Australia to deal with this unfolding challenge? What about the planning and insurance issues?

Should affected property owners be compensated, relocated or barricaded against the swelling tides? Some deep official thinking has been going on but the results so far are not comforting for the 80 percent of Australians who live in our coastal zones.

A bi-partisan House of Representatives committee has spent the past 18 months looking at these and other climate change-related questions.

by Renfrey Clarke

If the Weekend Australian devotes a whole broadsheet page to a proposed solution to global warming, the editors must want to inform the public on how best to combat climate change. Right?

Hardly. If the Weekend Australian cared about our climate, it wouldn’t draw its text from one of the strangest travesties of climate science ever to issue from a printing press.

by Renfrey Clarke

Admit it: you’re just a little disturbed when industrialists, fossil-fuel lobbyists and the Liberal and National parties thunder that big, quick cuts to carbon emissions would bankrupt Australian business. Well, aren’t you?
Rest easy. Australian capitalism has ample money – and technical resources too – that could be used to cut emissions drastically in as little as a decade.

Source: Ark’s Tribe Blog

The Senate will soon vote on the Bill to replace the ABCC with a new Building Industry Inspectorate.
A Senate majority report recommended that the Bill is passed, with some amendments. The coercive powers in the construction industry could stay, and a construction worker like Ark Tribe could still face jail for standing up for his rights on site.

Below is a letter from Spirit of Eureka (NSW) to the Sydney Morning Herald contrasting ABCC’s treatment of building workers and unions (and Ark Tribe) with the treatment of Michael McGurk, Sydney’s multi-million property developer murdered in Sydney last weekend.

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