Lethal Heating: 10/14/19

14/10/2019

Parliamentarians Deserve Our Wrath For 30 Years Of Inaction, Not Climate Protesters

The Guardian - Greg Jericho

Supposedly progressive leaders like Annastacia Palaszczuk make you wonder if Gen X is worse on climate than baby boomers

‘Our media discourse this week was flooded with comments by 40- and 50-year-olds wondering who the Extinction Rebellion are trying to convince: “I’m all for action on climate change, but ...” and “Don’t they realise you catch more flies with honey?” ’ Photograph: Dave Hunt/AAP

One of my favourite lines in an article on the climate crisis is by American science journalist Sharon Begley: “If a rich technologically advanced nation won’t put its own house in order, then developing countries have a perfect excuse to do nothing.”
She also wrote in the same article: “For those who fear that the greenhouse will arrive – and no responsible scientist denies that possibility – it seems imperative to take immediate steps to mitigate it.”
Great lines. Written 30 years ago.
Begley wrote them in the same 1989 Newsweek magazine that reported on the fall of the Berlin Wall.
It is astonishing how little has changed.
In the same article she noted that car companies like Ford were strongly opposing any moves to introduce emission cuts that targeted the industry – “it would throw industry into a tailspin and have minimal environmental impact”, one spokesperson suggested. This week the Guardian found that car manufacturers have “been pouring millions of dollars through industry bodies into lobbying efforts to challenge attempts to tackle global heating in the past four years”.
And in the 30 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall that nothing has changed is a damning indictment on our political and media systems.
But it would be wrong to blame only those in power 30 years ago, for what we have seen this week is that blame can be well and truly passed down to the following generation of political leaders.
Gen X is as guilty as the much-maligned baby boomers.
As a member of that most cynical and sarcastic generation, who spent our youth mocking baby boomers who preached revolution and then sold out into the Me Generation as soon as a high-income tax cut and four-bedroom home with a two-car garage was dangled before their eyes, we must acknowledge that the answer to the question of “Are we the baddies?” is yes.
All that cynicism has mostly been translated into complacency.
Our media discourse this week was flooded with comments by 40- and 50-year-olds wondering who the Extinction Rebellion are trying to convince: “I’m all for action on climate change, but ... ” and “Don’t they realise you catch more flies with honey?”
We thought we were Rage Against the Machine but we are really FM Easy Listening.
Thirty years of inaction. Thirty years of waiting. Thirty years of playing nice.
If you think that strategy has worked, then you probably think the Queensland Labor party is a progressive government.
You can understand the reaction to protesters by arch-conservative Gen Xers like the home affairs minister, Peter Dutton, who it appears sees a day without stripping people of their civil liberties as a day wasted. But when you see notionally progressive Gen X leaders like the Queensland premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, rushing through legislation to prevent these protests you have to wonder not only what is the point of the ALP, but whether my generation is worse on climate change than baby boomers.
Palaszczuk tweeted that “everyone has the right to protest in this state” but then added the caveat: “It’s when extreme protesters using dangerous devices put at risk our emergency services & hinder people going about their daily business that it oversteps the mark.”
Forget that there is zero evidence that anyone in the Extinction Rebellion movement is using dangerous devices, but if hindering people going about their daily business is the new standard, then protest in the state has effectively become something allowed only in cases when it is neither seen nor heard. Which, it seems, would suit Palaszczuk just fine.
It is rather disappointing that she is so eager to embrace laws that Joh Bjelke-Petersen and any number of conservative autocrats would embrace. After all she had to battle oppression and malevolent forces all through her youth to get to the point of *checks notes* taking over the safe parliamentary seat her father held for over a decade.
Still, at least her opposition to climate change protest is not one that will see her alienated in the ALP. This week, federal MP Joel Fitzgibbon suggested Labor should adopt the LNP’s Paris agreement target of a 26%-28% cut in emissions from 2005 levels. That cut in reality is closer to 15% once you take into account carry-over credits and dodgy accounting, and which is massively short of the minimum 45% cut that scientists argue is needed.
It is rather disappointing that Fitzgibbon is so eager to capitulate to the government. After all he had to had to battle oppression and malevolent forces all through his youth to get to the point of *checks notes* taking over the safe parliamentary seat his father held for over a decade.
Look I get it – it is annoying to have you day disrupted. But don’t come at me with arguments that amount to basically doing what has been done for 30 years and expecting anything real to happen.
The problem is it has been easy to ignore climate-change activism and as a result ignore the issue completely. Non-violent resistance is about resisting, not just being non-violent.
And it is about provoking the inevitable overreaction by those in power – the same overreaction that occurred during civil rights and anti-Vietnam war protests. An overreaction that saw the New South Wales and Victorian police demand bail conditions on protests so onerous you would assume they were dreamed up in a Palaszczuk-Dutton group chat.

'The arrests make a point,' say Extinction Rebellion protesters in Australia.

Thankfully those like the ALP’s Mark Butler quickly condemned Fitzgibbon’s suggestion, and others in the party have criticised Palaszczuk’s new laws, so perhaps there remains some hope for it (but, as Richard Marles would suggest, prepare to be disappointed).
This week also came a report from the IMF that suggested even with a $111 carbon price, Australia would be unable to meet its Paris target. When the Gillard government introduced a carbon price seven years ago it was just $23.
That is the price of inaction.
At some point we need to get angry, but if your anger is directed at those protesting rather than at parliamentarians then I suspect you have consigned yourself to expecting nothing to change.
That’s fine, but own it. Realise if you are annoyed by them it’s because you have become more annoyed by protest than a lack of action. Don’t pretend to still be seeking change when your anger is directed at those trying desperately to make up for the past 30 years of wasted cynicism and complacency.

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If You Are Under 34, You Have Never Experienced A Month Of Below Average Temperatures

The Guardian - Greg Jericho

Of course the Extinction Rebellion protesters are angry. You should be too

Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP

This week has seen a mass worldwide protest on climate change. The Extinction Rebellion is playing for keeps, and the protesters are setting out to make noise and force politicians and authorities to deal with them.
If you think those protesting are just a bit too angry and annoying, let us remember the situation is urgent and is no longer something for future generations to worry about – we are at a point where a majority of Australians now living will be affected by its impact.
Last month came the news that July 2019 was the hottest month on record.
No big deal, just the hottest global average temperature in the 140 years of records kept by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Not coincidentally, in the same month, Arctic sea-ice coverage hit a record low of 19.8% below average. Down our end of the planet, Antarctic sea-ice also shrank to an unprecedented level – some 4.3% below the 1981-2010 average.
The northern hemisphere summer just gone was the hottest on record as well. All this during a period when there was no El Niño to drive higher temperatures.
Oh, for the days when the deniers could proudly (if incorrectly) say “the world hasn’t warmed since 1998”. Back in 2008 Andrew Bolt was suggesting that was something that the mainstream media wanted to hide.
By 2010 he had changed to saying “the world hasn’t warmed since 2001”.
Here’s the reality: 16 of the past 21 years have been warmer than 1998.

At some point you would think the deniers would admit they have been found completely wanting. But no. Why do that when there is money to be made and votes to be won from making stuff up.
Here’s a little statistic to wrap your head around. The last year to experience global annual temperatures below the 1951-1980 average was 1976 – so if you are less than 43 years old you have never experienced a year with below average temperatures.
If you are under 34 you have not even experienced a month of below-average global temperatures – because the last such month was February 1985, and even that was a bit of an oddity as it was just the second such month in six years.
Even if you are 65 years old and ready for retirement, 79% of your life has been spent in a world with above-average temperatures:

But looking at total life is somewhat deceptive because of the past 42 straight years of above-average temperatures.
One way to show the real change is to look at what it was like for people’s first 40 years. If you are under 40 obviously you are stuffed – every year and almost every month has been above average.
The first lot of baby boomers – those born in 1946 – spent 52% of their first 40 years in a world with above-average temperatures. That is essentially what you would expect.
By contrast, I was born in 1972 and 89% of my first 40 years were hotter than the 1951-1980 average.

So it is clear the climate crisis is something that has affected younger people more, but let’s not be too suggestive about it being a young person’s problem. Because here’s the thing, 57% of Australia’s population is under 43 years old. Thus a sizeable majority of our citizens have never experienced a year with below-average global temperatures.
It’s a point that also makes you realise that “millennials” are not young any more. They are in their 30s and now getting to positions of power, but they remain a minority.
While 57% of our population has never experienced a year of below-average temperatures, only 45% of people above voting age can say that. And of current parliamentarians, just 18% of MPs and 11% of senators have never known a below-average year.

So you might understand why some are getting a tad impatient with the lack of action by those in power, and why they are not so impressed with talk about meeting Kyoto targets when it is obvious that accounting tricks are used to ensure Australia can say we are reducing emissions.
And you can understand why people are getting rather antsy about the fact that even with the carry-over credits and dodgy accounting of land use, we are still unlikely to meet our Paris target of 26% below 2005 levels.
And what is worse is that if we exclude land use, that 26% cut is a mere 15% below 2005 levels:

You can understand why people are ready to annoy those in authority when we look at where temperatures are going.
If we start from the climate-change deniers’ landmark year of 1998 (when climate change was said to have stalled), even a linear trend to the future has global temperatures reaching 2C above pre-industrial levels by 2056.
But no one thinks it will be a linear trend. The path suggested by the IPCC is closer to an exponential trend, in which we will hit 1.5C above pre-industrial levels by 2029 and 2C by 2042, when my daughter will be 10 years younger than I am now.

My father, a baby boomer, lived his first 40 years experiencing average temperatures. I, a typical Gen-Xer, spent 80% of my first 40 years with above-average temperatures, and my daughter faces a world where temperatures will be 2C above the pre-industrial average by the time she is 40.
Half of Australia’s current population is younger than 37. By 2042, the oldest will be just turning 60 – not even retired.
So are those involved in the Extinction Rebellion angry? You’re damn right they are.
And so should you be.

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It's No Accident That Girls Are Leading The Climate Movement

Sydney Morning Herald - Niamh O'Connor Smith*

I was sitting around a campfire at the beach when I started organising a strike for the first time. Six months later I was stepping onto the stage to MC the largest climate strike in Australian history – Melbourne’s September 20 School Strike for Climate.

Tens of thousands stood in solidarity with Climate Action then marched through the streets of Melbourne. Credit: Chris Hopkins

It was exhilarating yet nerve-racking, getting ready to speak to the sea of people in front of me, all there because they care about climate action and climate justice. It brought me such a powerful feeling, of hope and courage, that together we will create a safe future for everyone.
School Strike for Climate started with just one girl: Greta Thunberg. Now it is a huge movement; 7 million people strong. In Australia, Milou, Harriet and Callum started the strikes in my home town, Castlemaine.
You may have noticed some of the key players in this movement are girls. The person who started it all is a girl. Two of the three people who got the strikes going in Australia are girls. This empowers me and fills me with courage for the future of girls in leadership.
All over the world girls are leading this movement. But we are not alone. And we need everyone, regardless of age, gender and nationality to stand with us to call out the people in power for their inaction; to show the world we need climate justice action.
Getting everyone involved is the key to the movement. When more people get up and strike, it makes our collective voice stronger.
Girls possess a valuable quality of encouraging people to use their voices for what they believe in and empowering others around them. Not every girl has to lead, but through the many conversations they have every day, they spread the message and make people believe in a power everyone possesses inside of them.
Spreading courage and hope and being able to instil this power in others is an asset girls bring to this movement. With this strength, the climate strikes will only become more powerful.

Castlemaine schoolkids strike for the environment.

As the movement grows, it will reach more people and our government will have to listen and take action.
Often people come to the strikes calling for a safe green future. This is a major reason many choose to strike. A lot of them don’t realise people are already suffering the effects of the climate crisis. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and Pacific islanders are on the front lines of this crisis, facing rising sea levels, worse storms and crop failures. That is why climate justice is an integral part of School Strike for Climate in Australia. The strikes can raise the awareness of the hundreds of thousands who attend.
I must admit it’s frustrating when adults in positions of power tell us to go back to school, when they won’t listen to the science. If they took the advice of the world’s best climate scientists, we wouldn’t have to take days off school to strike.
As the strikes have grown in size, some politicians and commentators have chosen to criticise and bully. This will not stop us. In fact, it makes us stronger. With support from those around us, we will continue to fight through their torments because it means we are winning.
They say we as a nation are doing enough to tackle the climate crisis, while at the same time they are approving new coal mines and subsidising fossil fuels with taxpayers' money.
Our government is clearly not doing enough. We see the broken structure that is letting our planet die. As young people and girls, we are in a unique position to change the system, and so we strike.
Then they say that as students we should value our education. We do. We value our education very highly. As organisers, we dedicate many hours of our free time to making these strikes happen.
We make a choice to sacrifice our education on strike days because as students we don’t have the right to vote, so this is a way to make sure people in power hear our voices.
Everyone has a voice. For some of us, it is harder to use that voice and harder to make it heard. But when we band together, we can use our voices to fight for what is right. To fight against the injustice that is being dealt to this planet and its people.
As a girl, I have stepped up as a leader, and so can you. You can be the one stepping on the stage, making your voice heard and changing the world.

*Niamh O'Connor Smith is one of the original organisers of the Australian climate strikes.

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