News Corp – a propaganda machine for the mining industries
Veneer of ‘impartiality’ no longer needed
When it was founded in 1923, News Limited concealed its mining company connections at the same time it promised the public that its news would be “independent” and “impartial”.
Lip service or not, notions of balance and the public interest were important then. This was because News Limited’s founders knew that respect was an important precondition for influence, and that newspapers had to be responsive to the communities they served in order to attract a wide audience and prosper.
News Corp’s recent behaviour suggests it now sees such notions as quaint.
From attacking the decision of the jury in the sexual assault trial of Cardinal George Pell to last week’s Daily Telegraph attack on Bill Shorten using his deceased mother as ammunition, there are mounting signs of panic and folly at one of Australia’s largest media companies.
If the next generation of Murdochs starts looking to sell unprofitable assets, the Australian newspapers have reason to be concerned. Because they are no longer financially valuable to the newly slimmed down company, the Australian papers seem to be trying to prove their worth by being politically useful while they still can.
Women excluded, disparaged, in the “priesthood” that runs nuclear security
| The Nuclear Weapons Sisterhood, It’s hard for women to be hired, promoted or taken seriously in the national security establishment. NYT, By Carol Giacomo, Ms. Giacomo is a member of the editorial board, May 15, 2019 In the mid-1990s, Laura Holgate, then a senior Defense Department official, was in Moscow leading a delegation to discuss ways the United States could help the Russians secure plutonium from dismantled nuclear weapons.
After a male Russian official gave a confusing explanation about the Kremlin’s storage plans, she sought clarification. The Russian, his voice dripping with sarcasm, offered to “put this in terms a woman would understand” and then described loading plutonium into a “cooking pot and putting a lid on it.” ……. For women, people of color and transgender people, sexism, discrimination and harassment are often barriers to being hired, promoted or taken seriously in the national security bureaucracy — overseas and at home. …….Women are particularly underrepresented in senior positions dealing with nuclear issues, according to a study by New America, part of a growing effort involving various groups and individuals to make the fields more welcoming to women. Part of the problem is the discipline itself, the study found. Policies involving the building, deployment, targeting and use of nuclear weapons have long been the province of an insular, innovation-averse group of men. Discussions by this “priesthood” conflate national security and manliness with sexualized jargon about vertical erector launchers and thrust-to-weight ratios. The demand for nuclear orthodoxy has excluded outsiders, particularly women, placing them in a “consensual straitjacket” of conformity in a male-dominated world. Just consider Donald Regan, the former White House chief of staff, who before President Ronald Reagan’s summit with Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987 said women were “not going to understand throw-weights” or other national security issues raised at the meeting. The numbers show how this order became so entrenched. From the 1970s to 2019, the study found, women held 11 of 68 of senior positions dealing with nuclear weapons, arms control and nonproliferation at the State Department, 13 of 109 of these jobs at the now-defunct Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, five of 63 at the Defense Department, five of 36 at the Energy Department and two of 21 national security adviser positions. …… o be successful in these posts so critical to national security, women pay a “gender tax,” performing “the constant mental and emotional calculus that comes with implicit sexism; explicit sexism and discrimination; gender and sexual harassment; and gendered expectations,” according to the New America study, based on interviews with 23 women who held senior government positions. Nearly all of the 23 said they were harassed or saw others harassed, and when a foreign official was involved, the stress was magnified because it could cause an international incident. During a round-table discussion with Global Politico in 2017, Laura Rosenberger, who spent 11 years at the State Department and the National Security Council, talked about wearing more pantsuits and baggier tops as a defense mechanism “to make myself seem less attractive in the workplace.”
To encourage progress, Pamela Hamamoto, who served as United States ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, began a program called Gender Champions to identify international leaders committed to advancing women, and Ms. Holgate, a former United States ambassador to the United Nations in Vienna, replicated it in the United States. …..https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/15/opinion/women-national-security.html |
The UK has a national climate change act – why don’t we?
 The Conversation, CEO at ClimateWorks Australia, Monash University, Anna Malos,  Project Manager, climate and energy policy, ClimateWorks Australia, Professor of Environmental Economics, University of Oxford, May 15, 2019 No matter who wins the upcoming federal election, both the ALP and LNP are committed to remaining in the Paris Climate Agreement.This means every five years Australia is expected to submit progressively stronger targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and report on progress. And by 2020, Australia is expected to submit a long-term emissions reduction strategy showing how to get to net zero emissions.
Regardless of what policy mix is chosen to achieve this, the process of hitting the Paris targets is now a permanent feature of economy-wide decision-making, one that will need credible ongoing support from government and businesses. Policy uncertainty, and a lack of national framework, has reduced investment confidence. The UK has shown how national climate change legislation can guide institutional action, and not only dramatically cut emissions, but also promote economic growth. Victoria rolled out similar legislation in 2017, one of the first pieces of legislation in the world to be modelled on the Paris Agreement. But Australia lacks a national version of Victoria’s or UK’s legislation. We have national targets, but not yet ongoing systems embedded in departments. These systems would include measures to ensure continuous target-setting every five years (as used in other jurisdictions) with guidelines and progress reporting obligations. A lack of national legislation means the community and businesses lack transparency about Australia’s long-term direction, pace and progress. How national climate change legislation would work……..How Victoria did itIn 2017, the Victorian Labor government rolled out state-wide climate legislation, the Victorian Climate Change Act. This legislation recognises how addressing climate change needs a whole-of-government approach, extending obligations to each state government portfolio. And it has already catalysed climate change reporting and planning activity across government. An independent committee has been tasked with advising on the first ten years of emissions budgets. Government departments are preparing adaptation plans for each sector, reviewing operational guidelines and establishing regular reporting of emissions in sectors and their future plans. The UK’s success storyThe UK passed its Climate Change Act in 2008 with a near unanimous vote. It has guided government decisions on national energy and industrial policy ever since…….. https://theconversation.com/the-uk-has-a-national-climate-change-act-why-dont-we-115230 |
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Distinguished Australians, and over 60 scientists press the government for immediate action on climate change.
SBS 16 May 19 A group of more than 60 scientists and experts have penned an open letter to the next Australian government, calling for immediate action on climate change.
A group of more than 60 Australian scientists and experts are calling on the next government to prioritise action on climate change.
The 62 experts, including Nobel Prize winners and former Australians of the Year, have penned an open letter to politicians, which features a prominent graph showing Australia’s emissions have been rising since 2014.
“The consequences of climate change are already upon us – including harsher and more frequent extreme weather, destruction of natural ecosystems, severe property damage and a worldwide threat to human health,” they wrote.
“The solutions are all available to address climate change, all that is missing is the political will.”
The group includes former Australian of the Year and Nobel Prize winner Peter Doherty, former Australian of the Year Fiona Stanley and former premier of Western Australia Carmen Lawrence.
“Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions are rising, moving the country further away from its Paris Agreement obligations,” the letter says.
“Whichever party wins government on Saturday, urgent action on climate change must be a top priority for the 46th parliament of Australia.”
Climate change has emerged as a top issue of the federal election ……https://www.sbs.com.au/news/pm-says-climate-goal-will-end-lib-conflict
Australia’s opportunity to become a low carbon, renewable energy, superpower
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Australia can be ‘superpower of post carbon world’, says Ross Garnaut, SMH, By Peter Hartcher, May 15, 2019 Australia has the opportunity to surpass other rich countries to become more prosperous than ever before in a post-carbon world, according to the eminent economist Ross Garnaut.Australia could become “the superpower of the post-carbon world economy”, said the former economic adviser to prime minister Bob Hawke and author of the Hawke government’s strategy for economic engagement with Asia.
The Australian political debate has been preoccupied with the cost of moving to a lower-carbon economy, but new work by Professor Garnaut finds that the economic costs would be far outweighed by economic gains. “Embrace the post-carbon economy, and Australia will greatly expand new minerals processing and chemical manufactures, way beyond the limits of coal, gas and the industries they supported in the past,” he said in a Melbourne University lecture on Wednesday night. New developments in renewable energy and Australian advantages have made it clearer than ever that the country could “prosper exceptionally in the post-carbon world”. Intelligent climate policy would mean that wholesale electricity prices would fall “substantially”, he said, a source of competitive advantage……. He said that Australia could plausibly achieve zero net carbon emissions by 2040, making its contribution to the global effort to limit global warming to 1.5 per cent, if it embraced the Labor party’s emissions target. The Labor policy is to cut emissions by 45 per cent from 2005 levels by 2030. However, he said that it was “implausible” to reach net zero in that time if Australia continued with its existing Paris commitment under the Coalition to cut emissions by 26 to 28 per cent….. https://www.smh.com.au/federal-election-2019/australia-can-be-superpower-of-post-carbon-world-says-ross-garnaut-20190515-p51nsb.html?utm_source=newsletters&utm_medium=email&utm_term=SMH+AM+News |
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Pacific leaders have voiced frustration over Australia’s failure to curb its emissions
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UN secretary-general meets Pacific leaders to discuss ‘global catastrophe’ of climate change ABC
Regional heavyweights had gathered at an historic climate change summit convened with the UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres. Mr Guterres is intent on building global momentum for sharper cuts to emissions, arguing that drastic action is necessary to stave off ecological disaster. The Pacific is on the “front line of climate change”, Mr Guterres told the meeting. “It has a unique moral authority to speak out. It’s time for the world to listen.” Senior Australian officials at the meeting could do little else; sent in the place of Prime Minister Scott Morrison only days before the federal election, they were bound to observer status by the caretaker conventions. As a result, Australia did not sign up to the final statement by Pacific leaders, which declared climate change a “global catastrophe” and called for “transformative action” to stop it…… while Pacific leaders have praised New Zealand’s announcement that it wants to go carbon neutral by 2050, many are frustrated that Australia has failed to curb its emissions. One Pacific official told the ABC the meeting’s call for radical action on climate change “really was aimed at the whole globe” but “for those in the room [it] was a message for one country”.
The outspoken Prime Minister of Samoa, Tuilaepa Sailele, went much further, wading straight into Australia’s election campaign during the post-summit press conference……. decision makers in Canberra also know that the Pacific is increasingly impatient about Australia’s long and painful debate on climate policy. The argument will flare up again in only months when regional leaders gather for the Pacific Islands Forum on tiny Tuvalu, which has long been a vocal champion for drastic climate action. And this time, Australia will not be sitting on the sidelines. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-16/guterres-antonio-un-pacific-meeting-climate-change/11115816 |
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Primatologist Jane Goodall calls on Australia’s leaders to take greater action on climate change
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ABC By Claire Campbell 15 May 19, World-renowned primatologist Jane Goodall has weighed in to Australia’s federal election campaign, calling on the nation and its leaders to take greater action on climate change.
Key points:
Dr Goodall told ABC News she was seeing the impact of climate change everywhere she travelled around the world and there was no time for complacency. “Any leader, any individual has to realise that climate change isn’t something that might affect their country, it’s actually affecting everywhere around the world,” she said. “A lot of them do nothing because they don’t know what to do, they feel helpless. “Sea levels are rising, people have had to leave their island homes … hurricanes are getting more frequent and disastrous and the same with flooding and drought. We just have to do something about fossil fuel emissions and the methane from breeding cattle.” ……. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-15/jane-goodall-calls-for-more-action-on-climate-change/11116766 |
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Fukushima plant radioactive water could be stored in tanks long term: gov’t source — Fukushima 311 Watchdogs
Heading toward 1.37 million tons of strontium-90 tea, enough to give a 500ml portion to 2.74 billion people May 13, 2019 The Japanese administration is considering keeping the enormous and still growing volume of radioactively contaminated water at the disaster-stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in storage tanks for the long term, a source close to […]
Tokyo 2020 – The Radioactive Olympics — Fukushima 311 Watchdogs
In 2020, Japan is inviting athletes from around the world to take part in the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games. We are hoping for the games to be fair and peaceful. At the same time, we are worried about plans to host baseball and softball competitions in Fukushima City, just 50 km away from the […]
via Tokyo 2020 – The Radioactive Olympics — Fukushima 311 Watchdogs
Global CO2 emissions surpass record 415ppm, just as Exxon predicted in 1982 — RenewEconomy
Global carbon dioxide emissions have surpassed 415ppm – in line with Exxon Mobil’s catastrophic climate change forecasts which they then buried. The post Global CO2 emissions surpass record 415ppm, just as Exxon predicted in 1982 appeared first on RenewEconomy.
via Global CO2 emissions surpass record 415ppm, just as Exxon predicted in 1982 — RenewEconomy
Climate Change Election: where do parties stand and what can we expect after Saturday? — RenewEconomy
In 2019, climate change has re-emerged as the key issue in the minds of voters. RenewEconomy takes a look at the key parties and independents ahead of the election. The post Climate Change Election: where do parties stand and what can we expect after Saturday? appeared first on RenewEconomy.
Australian bus builder Volgren to produce its first all-electric vehicle — RenewEconomy
Volgren commences production of Australia’s first all-electric bus, anticipates major shift in public transport vehicles towards all-electric options. The post Australian bus builder Volgren to produce its first all-electric vehicle appeared first on RenewEconomy.
via Australian bus builder Volgren to produce its first all-electric vehicle — RenewEconomy
May 15 Energy News — geoharvey
Opinion: ¶ “Donald Trump Can’t Stop America From Going Green” • Despite Donald Trump’s vows to save coal, American oil companies (!) are investing in cleaner technology, according to a report from two World Bank economists. And state governments are filling the regulatory breach left by the do-nothing regime occupying Washington. [WBUR] Science and Technology: […]
Tony Abbott a no-show at solar industry meeting in Warringah — RenewEconomy
A meeting of NSW solar industry representatives and candidates for the federal seat of Warringah was missing the sitting member. The post Tony Abbott a no-show at solar industry meeting in Warringah appeared first on RenewEconomy.
via Tony Abbott a no-show at solar industry meeting in Warringah — RenewEconomy
The week that has been in climate and nuclear news – Australia
Climate change – climate crisis might be the more accurate phrase. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in New Zealand, said the political will to fight climate change has faded at the same time as it is getting worse for those feeling its effects.
Some videos of this week’s news on the effects of global warming -Arctic Ocean Coastal Temperatures Surge to 84.2 F 11 May https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rk4sTnfsVcQ -Global Sea Ice Plunges to New Record Lows https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ukc7-OVMx_Q . A tiny bit of good news: Rooftop Panels of Tiny Plants Can Cleanse Polluted Air at 100 Times the Rate of a Single Tree.
Nuclear news – the focus this week has been on international politics. While nuclear competition between India and Pakistan is accelerating, Stimson’s South Asia Program offers ways to reduce tensions. Trump administration’s maximum pressure campaign: paving the way for war against Iran? Donald Trump likes strutting on the global ‘nuclear summit’ stage, but is not interested in genuine arms control.
AUSTRALIA
Federal election on 18 May. If the climate-denying, nuclear-loving Liberal Coalition gets back in, I reckon that there’ll be wholesale emigration to New Zealand, where they have decent and compassionate policies, and a Prime Minister with integrity!
Australia’s role in the species extinction crisis.
Australia’s major parties’ climate policies side-by-side. Climate emergency is here, whatever the election result . Missing in action’: hunt goes on for Coalition’s invisible environment minister. Bill Shorten urged to declare climate emergency if Labor wins.
Yeelirrie uranium approval, Adani coal – Australia needs new and stronger national environment laws.
CLIMATE.
- Climate change still key in election social media. Labor to remove Coalition’s “climate fig leaf”, push funds to clean energy. Former UN climate leader supports MP Zali Steggall, Kerryn Phelps, Mayo MP Rebekha Sharkie, and MP, Julia Banks. Scott Morrison on “cutting green tape” – commentators respond savagely and sceptically. Scott Morrison’s fib: claims that the Liberal Coalition saved the Great Barrier Reef!!
- Protesters scale Sydney Harbour Bridge to declare ‘climate emergency’ . CSIRO unsure on Adani coal project’s water plans, but Minister For Coal, Melissa Price gave it environmental approval anyway. Adani project faces another hurdle – another groundwater review. Wangan and Jagalingou Country The Frontline In ‘Adani’s Federal Election’.
- Port Augusta power station sale to mark final closure of South Australia’s coal. Age of cheap coal power is over for Australia, says Bloomberg New Energy Finance.
- Global fossil fuel subsidies reach $5.2 trillion, and $29 billion in Australia. $571 billion loss by 2030 estimated for Australian property values due to climate change.
- Torres Strait islanders to United Nations – allege Australian government failure to act on climate change. Bill Shorten urged to declare climate emergency if Labor wins.
NUCLEAR. Duplicity of the Australian government on nuclear waste dump (“Temporary” means “Indefinite”) At last – HENRY COX, a Senate Candidate with the guts to fight the nuclear waste dump plan ! Confident Clive Palmer predicts tax-payer funding for nuclear power.
RENEWABLE ENERGY. Solar’s stunning rise takes big chunk out of coal in daytime market. Numurkah solar farm, to help power steel works, Melbourne trams, begins production. First turbine completed at Tasmania’s Cattle Hill wind farm. Western Australia to fund solar farms in six remote indigenous communities. Rooftop solar kills summer peak demand in W.A., as renewables nudge 50% share. NSW green-lights 100MW solar farm plus battery for Riverina region. Solar and storage to power disability housing in first of its kind. Australian mayors want more ambition on climate change, 100% renewables.
INTERNATIONAL
Radioactive fallout could be released from melting glaciers. Deep ocean animals are eating radioactive carbon from nuclear bomb tests.
Deep divisions between nations as preparations made for next year’s review of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Global paralysis in weapons control agreements as a new arms race begins.
The problematic arrival of Artificial Intelligence for Nuclear Weapons.
The vulnerability of nuclear weapons systems to cyber threats.
Nuclear power is subject to human error. — and that makes it a poor solution to climate change.
The World Blows Over $5 Trillion A Year On Oil And Gas Subsidies: Report
1 This month.
Australians deserve the truth
about
AUKUS – https://aukuspublicinquiry.com/
Australians deserve the truth
about AUKUS
PETITION – To: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the Australian Labor Government
of the week – Australians for War Powers Reform (AWPR)
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