Australia’s embarrassing fossil fool Prime Minister
Dear oh dear! It’s such an embarrassment!
Australia, (population 23 million, about the size of one city in Asia) has a Prime Minister who confidently lectures the whole world against taking any effective action on climate change. Tony Abbott’s on a whirlwind trip to Canada and USA to preach his gospel of promotion for fossil fuel industries
US President Barack Obama speaks out forcefully on the need to act, on carbon pricing as the most effective action, and has introduced significant action to cut greenhouse gases. China has started 6 regional emissions trading schemes.The World Bank’s survey found that 39 countries and more than 23 States and provinces have adopted emissions trading schemes or a carbon tax. No worries. Abbott pronounces that there is “no sign” that such schemes are being adopted.
The Australian tragedy of all this is that – Abbott is probably not lying. He is ignorant. He got into power via the money of the fossil fuel lobbies and the propaganda of the Murdoch media. Abbott gave a wonderfully informed and authoritative description of the theory of man-made climate change. He said it is “absolute crap” Yes, we have a fool for a PM, and it’s a national embarrassment.
Wait to see the blackly funny side of this. Tony Abbott is a firm supporter of the nuclear industry. When he has destroyed all action on climate change in Australia, and when he has stopped renewable energy development there – watch Abbott suddenly believe in climate change ‘action’. That’s when Tony Abbott will come all out in favour of nuclear power as the ‘solution to climate change’ –Christina Macpherson, 11 June 14
Barack Obama and Tony Abbott at odds over climate change
Climate change gulf looms between Barack Obama and Tony Abbott, Guardian, 11 June 14, US president’s call for action in US TV interview stands in stark contrast to the attitude of the Australian prime minister Climate change may be the most significant long-term challenge facing the planet, Barack Obama has said in a newly aired TV interview, emphasising the growing differences with Tony Abbott who insists it is certainly not the most important issue facing the world.
As Obama and Abbott prepare for their first formal meeting in Washington on Thursday, the differences between their positions on global warming are clearer than ever, and according to diplomatic sources the president will not seek to downplay them.
Obama’s remarks in an interview broadcast on US television on Tuesday night come as his administration increases its diplomatic push to achieve a successful new international agreement on greenhouse reduction efforts next year and unveils the detail of tough new rules to force reductions in emissions from US power stations……….
Abbott has downplayed the link between climate change and extreme weather events. For example during severe bushfires last year he said: “Climate change is real, as I’ve often said, and we should take strong action against it … but these fires are certainly not a function of climate change – they’re just a function of life in Australia.” When the executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, Christiana Figueres, said the fires showed the world is “already paying the price of carbon”, Abbott said “the official in question is talking through her hat”……….
The Coalition’s Direct Action policy is designed to meet only the minimum target of a 5% reduction by 2020 – despite advice from the independent Climate Change Authority that preconditions for a higher target, which previously had bipartisan agreement, have been met. The Coalition has said it will participate in the Paris meeting but has not given any indication of what Australia’s post-2020 target will be, or how it will be determined.
Australia’s policy is entirely voluntary. Companies can choose to bid into a series of “reverse auctions” for government funding. The new US policy requires power generation to reduce emissions by 30%, with states determining the mechanism by which they achieve this. States such as California which have emissions trading schemes will use them to achieve the goal……..http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jun/11/climate-change-gulf-looms-between-barack-obama-and-tony-abbott
Muckaty Aboriginal landowners don’t want money: they want clean non-radioactive land
Muckaty Station: Traditional owners reject $12 million compensation offer for nuclear waste dump June 11, 2014, Traditional owners who have opposed a nuclear waste dump on Muckaty Station in the Northern Territory say they had no interest in a $12 million compensation package offered by the Commonwealth……..Traditional Owner Ronald Morrison said current generations were guardians who inherited the land from long family lines.
“From our ancestors and our elders, from our elders down to us and from us we’d like to pass it on to our young ones,” Mr Morrison said.
Another traditional owner, Jeannie Sambo, said the money would run out, but the land would be there forever.
“Our land is more important than the money that we live on because as aboriginal people we have more food than buying things from the shop.”
Bunny Nabarula, a Milwayi woman, earlier described the compensation package as “dirty money”, telling the special sitting on country that she was passionate about keeping her land pristine. https://au.news.yahoo.com/a/24209801/muckaty-station-traditional-owners-reject-12-million-compensation-offer-for-nuclear-waste-dump/?source=wan
Northern Land Council threatened Aboriginal opponent of nuclear waste dump?
NLC threats over Muckaty waste dump: court, 9 News 10 June 14If Aboriginal clans at Muckaty wouldn’t accept a nuclear waste dump on their land, the Northern Land Council threatened to decide for them, the Federal Court has heard.
The clans say their will was overruled by a fifth clan who worked with the NLC to approve it……
Yapa Yapa traditional owner Dianne Stokes told the court on Tuesday that she had had a loud disagreement with Kwementyaye Lauder, who drove the decision to accept the site nomination and has since passed away.
She said the NLC’s principal legal officer Ron Levy threatened to take the decision out of her hands.
“(He) said, ‘if youse don’t do this, we’ll do it for you’,” Ms Stokes said, alleging that Mr Levy said he would sue her for going to the media about the issue…….
Outside court, researcher Paddy Gibson, of the Jumbunna House of Learning at the University of Technology Sydney, called on the federal government to drop the nomination after eight years of struggle.
“The Commonwealth government needs to face up to what it’s done to this community, pushing forward this incredibly divisive proposal, and it needs to back off,” he said. http://news.ninemsn.com
Australian government offering Aboriginals basic services in exchange for hosting radioactive trash?
Nuclear waste dump would ‘dispossess’ Indigenous landowners in NT Australian Associated Press theguardian.com, Wednesday 11 June 2014 Researcher says commonwealth’s offer of financial help should not be conditional on outcome of court case over proposed site The commonwealth government is dispossessing Indigenous people by seeking to place a radioactive waste storage facility on their land, a researcher says.
The federal court is sitting in Tennant Creek this week to hear from traditional landowners, who say they were not consulted when the Northern Land Council (NLC) and the commonwealth decided to put forward the site for consideration in 2007.
Four clans from the Muckaty area, 120km north of Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory, say they were cut out of the process in favour of the Lauder family of the Ngapa clan.
The family were paid $200,000 and promised a further financial package of $12 million to pay for a road, educational scholarships and other initiatives benefiting all indigenous groups on Muckaty Station.
Paddy Gibson, a researcher with the Jumbunna House of Learning at the University of Technology Sydney, said the money should be released to the traditional owners regardless of the outcome of the case.
“It’s not money going into people’s back pockets as cash, it’s money they’re saying is going to be spent on basic services,” he told reporters in Tennant Creek on Tuesday.
“It’s an absolute disgrace that Aboriginal people in this region, who are some of the most impoverished people in the country, are being told they’re not going to be able to access basic services if not for establishing a nuclear waste dump.”……
“Our ancestors passed it to our elders and our elders passed it to us and we want to pass it to our young ones,” said Ronald Morrison of the Milwayi. “The dump would destroy our land and bush tucker for our living and for our next generation. We want to keep it clean for all of us.”…….http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/11/nuclear-waste-dump-would-dispossess-indigenous-landowners
Analysts warn on the demise of the uranium market
Making the price collapse even worse, Uranium recently slumped to $28 per pound — the lowest level since June 2005.
This very low market price is significant because the vast majority of uranium mining operations around the world require a $60 per pound market price to continue mining profitably.
Evidence of how poor the outlook for uranium prices actually is…….
Uranium: The Green Metal Has Lost its Glow, Uncommon Wisdom Daily, James DiGeorgia | June 10, 2014…….Japan Wants More Power … Just Not Nuclear The Japanese public, more than three years after Fukushima, is STILL massively against re-opening ANY nuclear power plants. Japanese fears over nuclear power are well-founded, and shouldn’t be dismissed.
The panic and chaos of 160,000 Japanese as a result of the meltdown of three units of Fukushima Dai-Ichi Nuclear Reactor has only fanned their fears of nuclear power. These fears understandably linger after the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which brought an end to the Second World War.
But that’s not all. The reality is, all of Japan is at risk for earthquakes and many of Japan’s reactors have been built with substandard designs and materials — all of which is frequently reinforced by Japan’s media……..
The Japanese government hasn’t helped to bolster public confidence, especially after a long series of egregious missteps it made in the aftermath of the Fukushima crisis.
As Reuters recently noted, a March survey shows that roughly 80% of the people in Japan would prefer to see the country move away from nuclear power……..
As for uranium … It’s become clear in the last 30 days that Uranium prices aren’t going anywhere.. Continue reading
Ukraine situation raises danger for its nuclear reactors
Ukraine crisis raises risk for nuclear reactors, DW 10 June 14, Ukraine’s volatility exacerbates the risk for the country’s 15 Soviet-style nuclear reactors, warn German experts. They demand more attention for the country where the world’s worst nuclear accident took place The recent news of a water shortage due to a broken pipeline affecting thousands in 
strife ravaged Eastern Ukraine spells trouble for the safety of the country’s nuclear power plants.
That’s because the security and reliability of a country’s critical infrastructure like its electrical power and water grid is essential to safely run nuclear reactors.
“Once you have decided to operate a nuclear power plant or like in this case a nuclear reactor park, you must guarantee you don’t have unstable social situations and you definitely can’t have a war,” Michael Sailer, chairman of the German Nuclear Waste Management Commission and member of the German Reactor Safety Commission, told DW. Continue reading
Aboriginal clans do not want their land poisoned by nuclear waste
Nuclear waste will poison land: elder https://au.news.yahoo.com/a/24214130/nuclear-waste-will-poison-land-elder/
NEDA VANOVAC June 11, 2014, The spirit people of Muckaty don’t want “poison” stored on their land in the form of a nuclear waste dump, the Federal Court has heard. The court is sitting in Tennant Creek this week to hear evidence from four clans who are against the radioactive waste storage facility being placed on their land, 120km north of the Northern Territory town.
The clans say their will was overruled by a fifth clan which worked with the Northern Land Council (NLC) and the Commonwealth government to approve it.
Milwayi woman Pamela Brown originally agreed to the radioactive waste storage proposal, thinking it would be a rubbish dump that would hold predominantly medical waste. “They said they would put gloves and gowns there from the hospital, that it’s not poisonous,” she told the court on Wednesday.
But her younger sister who was living in Adelaide reminded her of the long-term health effects experienced by Aboriginal people living at Maralinga, near Woomera in South Australia, in the aftermath of the British nuclear weapons tests in the 1950s and 60s. Ms Brown said she was also concerned by the explosion at Chernobyl.
“I don’t want any poison on our country,” she said. “I want my country for the future generations so I can teach them and they can get out there. “If the dump goes ahead, there will be destruction (of the land),” she said. “The spirit is alive. The spirit people don’t want any rubbish put on their country.”
Muckaty Station covers 221,000ha and seven Aboriginal groups claim land within it.
One of the key issues of the case is determining who owns the roughly two square kilometres which would house the dump: the Lauder family of the Ngapa clan have been acknowledged as traditional owners by the NLC, but the Milwayi people say the land is theirs.
Ms Brown told the court that maps used for the successful land rights claim of 1993 showed the Milwayi were traditional owners of the site, but said the maps had since been redrawn.
“All these names got juggled up by the new map the NLC did … they moved the sites around,” she said. “They changed the whole map.”
But the NLC says there was no claim that the land belonged to the Milwayi when the site was first proposed in 2006.
The hearings continue.
Queensland Competition Authority finds Renewable Energy Target not causing electricity price rises
CEC: Renewable Energy Target not power price villain: Queensland Competition Authority http://ecogeneration.com.au/news/cec_renewable_energy_target_not_power_price_villain_queensland_competition_/087591/ Tue, 10 June 2014
The Queensland Competition Authority (QCA) confirmed on Friday what the clean energy industry has been saying for years – that the Renewable Energy Target is not a major factor in rising power prices.
Clean Energy Council media release 2 June 2014
Clean Energy Council Policy Director Russell Marsh said the latest price determination from the QCA showed that in 2014-2015 the cost of the Renewable Energy Target to Queensland households will fall, while all other parts of the average electricity bill will rise.
“In particular, power bills are set to jump due to the increasing cost of gas and the costs of the poles and wires in the electricity network,” Mr Marsh said.
“The Renewable Energy Target makes up less than 3 per cent of the average power bill, supports thousands of jobs and is an insurance policy against the future cost of gas power, which some analysts predict may be the defining energy challenge of this decade.” The Renewable Energy Target is designed to ensure at least 20 per cent of Australia’s electricity comes from renewable energy such as wind, hydro, solar and bioenergy like sugar cane waste by 2020 – at the lowest cost. The policy is currently under review, leading to uncertainty which has frozen investment in the sector until it has been completed.
Mr Marsh said the cost to consumers was a major part of the current review process, and four studies this year had shown that power prices would actually increase slightly if the Renewable Energy Target was removed.
“Removing the Renewable Energy Target would mean that we need to source more power from increasingly expensive gas, driving up costs for energy users such as mums and dads and manufacturers. We have already seen the start of this in Queensland with the latest price determination from the QCA.
“The Australian Industry Group, which represents some 60,000 businesses including many manufacturers, has also recognised that there would be no benefit to consumers if the Renewable Energy Target was reduced.”
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