Logging is continuing in NSW forest north-west of Coffs Harbour in bushland that is proposed for the Great Koala national park.
Photograph: International Fund For Animal Welfare
The New South Wales
Forestry Corporation has continued to log unburnt forest that is
habitat for some of the most imperilled species in the aftermath of the
state’s bushfire crisis.
Logging operations have continued in the Styx River state forest on
the north coast that is now remnant habitat for endangered species
including the greater glider and the Hastings River mouse.
Both the federal and state
governments have identified the mouse, which had 82% of its habitat
burnt, as one of the species most at risk of extinction as a result of
the bushfire disaster.
Trucks have also moved into an area of the Lower Bucca state forest
north-west of Coffs Harbour in bushland that is part of the proposed
Great Koala national park.
Twenty-four per cent of koala habitat in eastern NSW was burnt in the
fire crisis and the environment minister, Sussan Ley, has said up to 30% of the koala population on the mid north coast may have been killed.
Environment groups and the independent state MLC Justin Field have
expressed dismay that NSW Forestry Corporation has been able to continue
with harvest plans in unburnt forest that is now important remnant
habitat for wildlife.
"A tax oncarbon dioxide emissions in Great Britain,
introduced in 2013, has led to the proportion of electricity generated
from coal falling from 40% to 3% over six years, according to research
led by UCL.
British electricity generated from
coal fell from 13.1 TWh (terawatt hours) in 2013 to 0.97 TWh in
September 2019, and was replaced by other less emission-heavy forms of
generation such as gas. The decline in coal generation accelerated
substantially after the tax was increased in 2015."
The story of how fossil fuel corporations lie to us is shocking.
But we may have a green future! Maybe!
"What if we actually pulled off a Green New Deal? What would the future look like? The Intercept presents a film narrated by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and illustrated by Molly Crabapple.
Set a couple of decades from now, the film is a flat-out rejection of the idea that a dystopian future is a forgone conclusion. Instead, it offers a thought experiment: What if we decided not to drive off the climate cliff? What if we chose to radically change course and save both our habitat and ourselves?
We realized that the biggest obstacle to the kind of transformative change the Green New Deal envisions is overcoming the skepticism that humanity could ever pull off something at this scale and speed. That’s the message we’ve been hearing from the “serious” center for four months straight: that it’s too big, too ambitious, that our Twitter-addled brains are incapable of it, and that we are destined to just watch walruses fall to their deaths on Netflix until it’s too late.
This film flips the script. It’s about how, in the nick of time, a critical mass of humanity in the largest economy on earth came to believe that we were actually worth saving. Because, as Ocasio-Cortez says in the film, our future has not been written yet and “we can be whatever we have the courage to see.”
"In September 2019, the editor of The Conversation, Misha Ketchell, declared
The Conversation’s editorial team in Australia was henceforth taking
what he called a “zero-tolerance” approach to climate change deniers and
sceptics. Their comments would be blocked and their accounts locked.
His reasons were succinct:
Climate change deniers and those shamelessly peddling pseudoscience
and misinformation are perpetuating ideas that will ultimately destroy
the planet.
From the standpoint of conventional media ethics, it was a dramatic,
even shocking, decision. It seemed to violate journalism’s principle of
impartiality – that all sides of a story should be told so audiences
could make up their own minds.
But in the era of climate change, this conventional approach is out of date. A more analytical approach is called for.
The ABC’s editorial policy on impartiality offers the best analytical approach so far developed in Australia. It states that impartiality requires:
a balance that follows the weight of evidence
fair treatment
open-mindedness
opportunities over time for principal relevant perspectives on matters of contention to be expressed.
It stops short of saying material contradicting the weight of
evidence should not be published, which is the position adopted
explicitly by The Conversation and implicitly by Guardian Australia." ...........................................................................................................
"Twice we have been evacuated from our home. Twice
we have been among the lucky ones to return unhurt and find our home intact.
From this perspective, media acquiescence in climate change denial,
failure to follow the weight of evidence, or continued adherence to an
out-of-date standard of impartiality looks like culpable
irresponsibility."
"Even as the fires roar at the gates of power, the Murdoch columnist and others argue climate change is ‘overall, a good thing’"
.......
"What to make of Bolt’s most recent concession to the reality of
actual climate change is what his insistent “good thing, overall”
messaging reveals of the new political reality facing the conservative
movement. Unlike an election result that can be willed into existence
through sheer force of persuasion, the planet is not actually
persuadable. The ideological resistance among conservatives to address
the source of climate crisis is so powerful, so historically entrenched,
that flames literally surround the city in which the conservative
Australian prime minister himself has announced that “resilience and
adaptation” amid the fires will substitute for climate mitigation,
prevention, action to make them stop. On cue, the megaphones insist this
nightmare will be good for us.
Three survivors joined Friends of the Earth to accuse ANZ of misleading consumers by investing in fossil fuel projects
One survivor, Jack Egan, claims there is a clear link between ANZ’s
support for fossil fuels and the exacerbated bushfires conditions.
Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP
Three bushfire survivors have joined environment group Friends of the Earth in a legal claim against ANZ, accusing it of financing the climate crisis by funding fossil fuel projects.
"IT'S REMARKABLE that the least resilient, most non-adaptive Federal
Government in living memory should now urge its citizens, in the face of
horrific bushfires, to prove our resilience and adaptability by learning to put up with weather conditions that are hostile to human life.
"And the government is failing again by now
suggesting that our primary focus should be on adapting to climate
change, rather than upping our efforts to tackle the root cause: the
burning of fossil fuels." - Greg Mullinshttps://t.co/4xOsQFGPdS
It’s difficult to argue against this. It will indeed take a
resilience – previously unheard of within humanity – to withstand
record-breaking temperatures, prolonged drought and catastrophic weather
events such as the fires, floods and cyclones we’re certain to
experience if more is not done globally and urgently to reduce
emissions. The question is, why demand this resilience as the way
forward, instead of committing to undertake mitigation and prevention?
Morrison’s latest tactic is a textbook example of behaviour typical of an abuser — also known as "gaslighting".
In order to continue the pattern of abuse that brings gratification of
one kind or another, the abuser must convince the abused that they have
to adapt to the abusive conditions. In order to perform that adaptation,
the abused must develop the resilience both to withstand the abuse, and
to live an outwardly normal life. The abused party must not give any
indication of the dysfunctional nature of their circumstances because
the abuser must be allowed to maintain the illusion of normality for the
eyes of the outside world. Resilience and adaptation are essential to
achieve these goals, as many survivors of abuse will confirm."
