Comment from USA on Australia’s election result
Trrump is doing it here. I hope people will act.
Jeffrey St. Clair, an old time antinuclear advocate, now says the nuclear issue is more serious, than the climate issue. It is in America for sure.
The northern midwest, has been flooding around several nuclear reactors in Minnesota, Nebraska, and Iowa where there are nuclear reactors. Many close calls this spring . The ground there is saturated with water.
The same for the south. Texas, Louisiana, Tennessee. 5 feet of water in Houston. Small towns wiped out, all the way to the STP reactor on the coast of Texas.
Hurricane season is starting . Many places with reactors have flooded with high and have high, geound saturation levels. Trump and Perry have gutted supervision, of reactors in the USA. A fukushima event or two here, will effect the whole world. It will effect australia too.
The world’s happiest people already have a Green New Deal, and they love it, by George Lakey — Rise Up Times
The Nordics [are] in the top tier of nations for equality because they adopted a radically different economic model…
Morrison’s reelection is a disaster for the future of the country — and the world
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‘We have lost Australia for now,’ warns climate scientist in wake of election upset The unexpected victory of conservatives in Australia’s election is bad news for the future of global climate action. https://thinkprogress.org/we-have-lost-australia-warns-climate-scientist-scott-morrison-upset-92008fabb597/?fbclid=IwAR2pfAFrP0d2JOTKR5QaIqt8cBVZGfTE_cwjY82DyE8603QnDRp_clnc-q The unexpected victory of conservatives in Australia’s election Saturday is bad news for the future of global climate action, warn climate experts. Polls had suggested that the Labor Party, which supports strong climate action, held a narrow lead in recent days. But in the end, Prime Minister Scott Morrison won re-election as his Liberal Party (which is actually conservative) swept to victory. “Australians elected someone who once brought a lump of coal into Parliament urging us to dismiss the warnings from climate scientists, and to dig up more coal instead,” Professor Stephan Lewandowsky, an Australian cognitive scientist, told ThinkProgress in an email. “There is little doubt that his government will do precisely that.” “We have lost Australia for now,” warned Penn State climatologist Michael Mann in an email. “A coalition of a small number of bad actors now threaten the survivability of our species,” he said. These include “the fossil fueled Murdoch media empire, which saturated the country with dishonest right-wing campaign propaganda” working with a few “petrostates including Saudi Arabia, Russia, Trump’s America, and now Australia.”
In re-electing Morrison, a long-time opponent of climate action, Murdoch and his allies have triumphed again. In fact, Morrison first became prime minister back in 2015 following a party coup against then Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who supported the climate action. Turnbull’s efforts to cut carbon pollution and promote clean energy rankled right-wing members of his ruling Liberal Party, whose stances were closer to President Trump’s pro-coal (and anti-immigrant) policies. Ironically, 2019 has already seen the hottest summer on record for Australia. The temperatures have been so brutal in South Australia, in fact, that heat-stressed bats are literally falling out of trees. Australia is one of most vulnerable countries to climate change, since much of it is already very hot and dry — and so much of its population lives along the coast, which is threatened by rapidly rising sea levels.
Morrison’s reelection is thus a disaster for the future of the country — and the world, since avoiding catastrophic climate change requires a collective effort. And so “we must redouble our efforts to make sure that the rest of the world works even harder to act on climate,” said Mann. “The stakes are too great to simply give up.” |
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Australia stuck with pro-nuclear. climate sceptic, government – theme for May 19
The election result was not what was expected. Progressive Australians are still reeling from the shock – of another 3 years of a government whose loyalty is to the fossil fuel industry and to the nuclear lobby.
The Scott Morrison government has no plans, no idea at all, about how Australia might genuinely aim to meet its Paris climate change commitments.
It seems that most Australians were taken in by Scott Morrison’s simplistic message “I alone can manage the economy, cutting taxes (for the wealthy) is all that is needed” . The message of Labor and The Greens comprehensive policies did not come across.
A Trump -like victory, a Brexit like victory – grim years ahead for Australia.
The goal of a clean, positive programme for energy, climate, water, and the environment must not be abandoned. Progressive Australians, whether in Parliament, in the Senate, in the media, or in the environmental movement will not give up.
Reflecting on the catastrophic failure of the opinion n polls that consistently predicted a Labor win , I realised the deep division in Australia between the (mainly city-dwellers) and rural Queensland. We who see ourselves as “progressives” are in general,, followers of ABC and SBS, readers of The Guardian, Sydney Morning Herald, and our friends on social media. The ABCs “Vote Poll” reflects only opinions of ABC viewers, not Australians as a whole.
The unpalatable fact is that most Australians get their information from commercial TV and Murdoch media. Their realities are the struggle for jobs and just managing from day to day. They simply are not getting the facts.
The challenge for progressive campaigns is to get across the message that renewable energy supplies jobs, while coal is being increasingly automated, as well as other messages on the vital importance of managing water supplies, and of saving our one great river system. Action on climate change is essential for quality of life in rural Australia – but this is a message that has not come through to people there.
Antinuclear 