Coalition quietly adds fossil fuel industry leaders to emissions reduction panel (excerpts): The Guardian

"The Morrison government has quietly appointed fossil fuel industry leaders and a controversial economist to a committee responsible for ensuring the integrity of projects that get climate funding.

Critics have raised concerns about whether some appointees to the Emissions Reduction Assurance Committee may have a potential conflict of interest that could leave its decisions open to legal challenge.

The overhaul of the committee follows the government indicating it plans to expand the industries that can access its $2.5bn emissions reduction fund, including opening it to carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects by oil and gas companies."

........

 "Bill Hare, the chief executive and senior scientist with Climate Analytics, said it appeared the government had appointed “mostly people concerned with the status quo” rather than aiming for a rapid shift towards zero emissions.

He said he was concerned the government planned to allow fossil fuel companies to receive climate funding for merely reducing emissions below inflated estimates of what their CO2 output otherwise might be."

............

"The emissions reduction fund has so far operated with limited success in reducing national emissions. The government has paid $740m for emissions cuts and signed contracts for another $1.66bn. Despite this, national emissions had dipped only slightly since the Coalition was elected in 2013 prior to the Covid-19 shutdown.

Government data shows the small reduction was overwhelmingly due to the rise of solar and wind energy, which are not supported through the fund." 

 To go to the original The Guardian article

Compromised: Genie Energy and the Murdoch media’s climate denial (excerpt): Michael West Media

(Pics by this blog)

See the interesting article below. 

The TV series 'The Rise of the Murdoch Dynasty' will soon be screened on ABC TV.

Murdoch series coming to ABC TV

"Rupert Murdoch, Dick Cheney, former CIA director James Woolsey, former US Treasury head Larry Summers, former US Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, hedge fund boss Michael Steinhardt and Jacob Rothschild have something in common. They are all on the board of oil and gas explorer, Genie Energy. Gas industry whistleblower Simone Marsh explores Rupert Murdoch’s fossil fuel interests.

Psychological warfare, or psywar, is the use of propaganda against an enemy, supported by such military, economic or political measures as may be required. Such propaganda is generally intended to demoralise the enemy, to break his will to fight or resist, and sometimes render him favourably disposed to one’s position. 

Book: Hack Attack

Psychological warfare, winning the “hearts and minds” of the civil population, has been integral to the climate war.

And Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation has been integral to the propaganda war; so much so that its Australian business has come under serious pressure this year amid anger over the coverage of the bushfires by major titles The Australian, the Herald Sun, Daily Telegraph, the Courier Mail and Foxtel’s Sky News.

Overnight, Rupert Murdoch’s son James publicly rebuked Murdoch’s Fox News over its climate denialism. Last week, a senior executive, Emily Townsend, took the extraordinary step of going public to criticise her own media organisation for its “dangerous” coverage of climate change. 

Behind the propaganda

Threats to democracy

The Murdoch press has always been avidly in favour of fossil fuels and notorious for spreading doubt about the science of global warming. It is worth looking, therefore, at the formal links between Rupert Murdoch and the oil and gas sector.

For a start, News Corp companies in Australia have extensive commercial arrangements with multinational oil and gas corporations. They take big advertising dollars, although how big remains a secret. Their newspapers stage “roundtables” or corporate conferences at which journalists and executives mingle with fossil fuel executives. Yet, rival media Nine Entertainment and its Australian Financial Review masthead does the same.

Where News is different is in Murdoch’s direct financial interest in oil and gas exploration in the Middle East, investments which also compromise New Corp’s coverage of Middle East politics and Israeli expansionism.

Murdoch has aligned himself with fossil fuel interests globally via the American Australian Association (AAA), and Genie Oil and Gas. Genie oil and gas is a division of Genie Energy and has been involved plans to frack in Israel. Its big project now, however, is exploring for oil in the Golan Heights, which is disputed territory once controlled by Syria."....................................."

Go to the complete Michael West Media article
by Simone Marsh | Jan 15, 2020

Related:  Climate Change is a cause of attacks on democracy

 

The Two Sides to Canada’s Post Pandemic Recovery: by Rolly Montpellier @Below2C

There are two sides to Canada’s post pandemic recovery. On the bright side there’s massive public support for a recovery that puts people before profits and tackles both the climate crisis and the coronavirus crisis simultaneously. Hundreds of organizations all across the land have endorsed these Just Recovery Principles. But there is also a dark side.

Canada's commitment to different energy types since beginning od Covid 19 pandemic

 

1. The Dark Side

“The last time we had a financial meltdown (the 2008-09 recession) it was followed by a record surge in fossil fuel burning,” wrote Barry Saxifrage and Chris Hatch recently in the National Observer. 
 “At the time there was hope that governments would use their huge, future-shaping stimulus to transition to a climate-safe economy.”

Fossil Fuel Burning Annual Totals

Well, that didn’t happen. Instead, the burning of fossils soared in 2010 and continued its upward trajectory every single year since. That is, until the pandemic as the Global Fossil Fuel Burning chart illustrates. The blue dotted line on the chart shows the projection for an 8% decline in CO² for 2020.

Just 10% of fossil fuel subsidy cash 'could pay for green transition' : The Guardian

"Switching just some of the huge subsidies supporting fossil fuels to renewables would unleash a runaway clean energy revolution, according to a new report, significantly cutting the carbon emissions that are driving the climate crisis.

Coal, oil and gas get more than $370bn (£305bn) a year in support, compared with $100bn for renewables, the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) report found. Just 10-30% of the fossil fuel subsidies would pay for a global transition to clean energy, the IISD said."

Link to The Guardian article 


Related:

Coalition's emissions reduction fund labelled 'a joke' after first post-election auction

Related: Can planting trees save our climate?

 

The Trump Administration's Ongoing Energy Insanity : The Green Market Oracle

"The Trump administration's irrational energy agenda is now infamous. This is an administration that in both word and deed has undermined clean energy and supported fossil fuels. Trump's contempt for renewables is bad for the nation and a threat to life on the planet. This is an administration that has eliminated vehicular emissions restrictions and made it easier for companies to spew methane into the atmosphere.
This energy agenda can only be described as insane and a new report makes it clear that there is every reason to believe it is getting even crazier."

Read the Green Market Oracle article 

Related:

10 biggest upcoming Oil & Gas developments in Australia - Fircroft.com

Why Saving the Earth Needs To Become Our Primary Political Obsession: Medium

Greenhouse gases

"Will Steffen, one of the authors of the Hothouse Earth paper, puts it like this:

“Absolutely no new fossil fuel developments. None. That means no new coal mines, no new oil wells, no new gas fields, no new unconventional gas fracking. Nothing new. Second, you need to have a rapid phase-out plan for existing fossil fuels.”

He also goes on to make the point that we need to be on something like a “wartime footing” in order to re-align the trajectory of the planet.

I mean, imagine if climate change, and all the other existential threats we have created, were a giant asteroid hurtling to earth — what resources we’d muster to save the planet! But in disaster movie scenarios, no-one ever objects to being rescued on the grounds that it might negatively affect their profits.

And there’s the crunch.

We need to outlaw fossil fuels."

Read the article

MP's letter to Queensland Premier re coal mine support

Cate Faehrmann MLC

Here is a letter I have sent to the Queensland Premier calling on her to stop approving coal mines if she is serious about responding to the horrific fires devastating the state right now.

- - - - -

Dear Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk MP,
I heard you on ABC radio this morning talking about the catastrophic fire conditions that Queensland is facing. “Unprecedented” was the word you used.

You told listeners across the country that temperatures had broken records by 5 or 10 degrees and that the lack of normally humid conditions in that part of Queensland was making the situation worse.

You’ve previously acknowledged that climate change is real and climate change is happening.

Just two months ago your government released a report warning of the increased risk of extreme floods and fires as a result of climate change.

So I just want to check that you’re aware of the link between burning coal and climate change?

Video: What you can do about climate change

Henrik Kniberg

Published on Apr 8, 2017

This video is a short, sweet, and pragmatic summary of climate change - what the problem is, why, and what you can actually do about it.

Bloomberg Opinion: Big Oil Doesn’t Like EV Subsidies, Just Its Own Giant Subsidy

The lack of a penalty for carbon emissions is the single biggest obstacle to a level playing field.

By

Liam Denning

November 20, 2018

"A far-more efficient method is to put a price on the stuff you want less of and then let capitalism do its thing, pushing consumption away from the undesirables and investment toward innovative alternatives. Indeed, all these letters demand government officials stand back and let the market do its thing — except their version of the market leaves out one essential element. 

Greenhouse gases and the threat they pose are everyone’s problem, but the individual generating them at any given moment doesn’t pay toward dealing with that. Dump your garbage on your neighbor’s lawn and you’ll wind up paying to have it removed and probably a fine, too. Release 20 pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by burning a gallon of gasoline, and it’s a freebie.

This is an enormous effective subsidy for fossil fuels and makes a mockery of market piety. Using Yale economist and recent Nobel-prize winner William Nordhaus’s $31-per-tonne estimate of the social cost of carbon, it amounted last year to $107 billion for energy-related emissions from oil and natural gas in the U.S. Within that, emissions from transportation — the biggest source in the U.S. and the only one still growing — enjoyed a free ride worth $59 billion."

Read complete Bloomberg Opinion article