Critical Times

Source: Vimeo

The Story of Cap & Trade is a fast-paced, fact-filled look at the leading climate solution being discussed at Copenhagen and on Capitol Hill. Host Annie Leonard introduces the energy traders and Wall Street financiers at the heart of this scheme and reveals the “devils in the details” in current cap and trade proposals: free permits to big polluters, fake offsets and distraction from what’s really required to tackle the climate crisis. If you’ve heard about Cap & Trade, but aren’t sure how it works (or who benefits), this is the film is for you.

By Renfrey Clarke

“When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” Attributed to economist J.M.

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.

Source: Green Left

by Simon Butler
13 February 2010

The December 7-18 United Nations climate conference in Copenhagen was supposed to “seal a global deal” to tackle climate change. It failed miserably.

A number of commentators have put forward a simple explanation: China did it.

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 Prof. JOSE MARIA SISON
Chairperson, International League of Peoples’ Struggle

Human societies have created the bases of our survival, sustenance and advancement through the use of our natural resources in production with rudimentary tools and rising levels of science and technology. Yet in no time in history has environmental destruction been systematically brought about in most parts of the world.

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.

by Renfrey Clarke

Climate change deniers, conservative politicians and right-wing newspaper columnists were all but incontinent with delight. Deluging the internet in mid-November were thousands of documents and private emails that had been exchanged over more than a decade by prominent climate scientists. The materials were posted anonymously after hackers penetrated the server of one of Britain’s main climate change research centres, the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia.

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.

(Map, above, shows Port Augusta at the top of the gulf, and both Leigh Creek and Copley sandwiched between Lakes Torrens and Frome)

A small contingent of protesters calling for the closure of the polluting coal-fired Port Augusta power station last weekend were easily outnumbered by the corporate world’s protectors, the state police.

About 35 supporters of the Climate Emergency Action Network (CLEAN) took the 3-hour road trip from Adelaide to Port Augusta. They held a community forum on Friday night and marched on the power station the following morning.

by Renfrey Clarke

Not in so many words, mind you – frankness has rarely been the strong suit of News Corporation journalists and editors. The editorial in question, published in Rupert Murdoch’s Australian on September 10, argued in support of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) – in other words, “clean coal”.

“By launching Australia’s Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute earlier this year,” the editorial intoned, “Kevin Rudd recognised that coal would continue to be our major source of power for decades to come….

by Julie Jordan & Richard Bulmer

As Rod Quantock puts it – If you’re not scared shitless you don’t understand the science.

The climate science gives us good reason to be scared shitless. The government’s response gives us good reason to be pissed off and bloody angry.

Source: The ecosocialist

by Cam Walker

a community response to the recession – a Green ‘New Deal’ for Victoria?

This is a proposal for a collaborative and integrated response to the triple crunch of recession, climate change, and peak oil.

A recent poll (1) suggests that while Australians appreciate the bonuses they are getting from the federal government, they are not convinced that they are the way to find our way out of economic recession. Instead they believe that we should be investing in infrastructure.

by Renfrey Clarke

If combatting climate change is left up to the governments of the world’s wealthy nations, much of humanity is likely done for. That’s not the message that was supposed to emerge from the July summit meeting in Italy of leaders of the G8 group of countries – Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the US. But apply a little climate science, and such is the unmistakeable conclusion.

Source: Vanguard May Issue

In the first decade of the 21st Century, scientists of different disciplines are alerting people and governments to a second crisis of capitalism, a crisis bigger than the current economic crisis. That crisis is the destruction of the environment caused by the ‘growth at all costs’ logic of capitalism. The enormity of the crisis is summarised in the following statement by the Swedish Talberg Foundation 2008 Report, Grasping The Climate Crisis; A Provocation:
“The world at present faces a breakdown of the global financial system.

13 JUNE 2009
ADELAIDE BRISBANE CANBERRA HOBART MELBOURNE PERTH SYDNEY WOLLONGONG

ADELAIDE 11am Victoria Square

JOIN THE RALLY FOR:

GREEN COLLAR JOBS NO JOB CUTS – 100% RENEWABLE ENERGY BY 2020

GLOBAL CLIMATE JUSTICE – AUSTRALIA SHOULD TAKE THE LEAD

CLIMATE POLICIES THAT MAKE THE BIG POLLUTERS PAY

LETS RE-POWER AUSTRALIA!

The National Climate Emergency Rallies
are an initiative of Australia’s Climate Action Summit

Why we need to oppose the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS)

The CPRS locks us into inaction on climate change until 2020.

The CPRS includes the pathetic emissions targets of 5% by 2020, with the potential for up to 15% depending on international targets. These targets completely ignore the science that tells us we need to reduce emissions by a minimum of 40 -60% by 2020 to be on the road to achieving the safe climate level of 300ppm atmospheric CO2.