As predicted, the Rudd government continues to pursue Big Business- and fossil fuel friendly-policies while showing the usual mere PR ‘concern’ for climate change, and not even that for Peak Oil. Money speaks louder than PR words. The proof of the pudding is usually in the Federal Budget. Being ‘fiscal conservatives’ , the Labor budget continues corporate welfare/socialism. There is no talk of cutting and redirecting the $10 billion per year given to subsidising fossil fuels in Australia. On the contrary.

Consider the budget figures. For every dollar for research into renewables, two dollars will be spent on the corporate ‘clean coal’ farce. For every dollar spent on tackling climate change, $28 will be spent on fossil fuel subsidies and $44 on military spending. Funding of the Department of the Environment has been cut by $50 million. Road transport and coal export infrastructure has been again favoured over rail and non-road transport. (Source: Jill Redwood, Potoroo Review, Winter 2008, p. 14).

In their more adult moments, most people probably intuit that Government is the handmaiden of Big Business. Our taxes are being used to fund coal expansion and thus our own destruction. Renowned US climate scientist James Hanson has proposed putting the CEOs of the big oil companies on trial for crimes against humanity, given their years of denial and successful outright sabotage of any tackling of climate change. Perhaps a good case could also be made for their political representatives in government to join them there? A million dead Iraqi men, women and children for imperial oil region control (and the right to continue increasing global warming) is surely another crime against humanity. Unfortunately however, such a court does not (yet) exist.

 

peter General

I propose the following motions for discussion at the AGM-Revisioning Meeting on 9 March.

1. That Canwin’s main focus for the next six months be on a local elections-oriented PEOPLE’S PLAN FOR TRANSITION SHIRE WINGECARRIBEE.

2. That Canwin develop a DRAFT PEOPLE’S PLAN (DPP) with specific proposals for a transition to a low carbon shire within c. two weeks based on the general philosophy of Transition Towns/The Simpler Way.

3. That the key phrases used in the DPP be: Climate Change, Peak Oil/POP (Price of Petrol), Energy Security, Food Security, Unsustainability of Sprawl, Higher Quality of Life.

 4. That the key specific issue addressed at the beginning of the DPP be the highly charged local one of NO PUBLIC LAND SELL OFF/NO LEISURE CENTRE  as being unsustainable in terms of Climate Change, Peak Oil/POP and Financial Responsibility.

5.  That living standard and ‘battler’ issues like the price of petrol, price of food, heating/cooling costs, lack of public transport, local swimming pools, outlying village shop prices be made central to the DPP.

6. That the main sections of the DPP be headed: Energy Security, Food Security, Water Security, Transport, Shelter, Community Cohesion & Cooperation.

7. That the DPP be both emphatic and open to feedback/modification by residents (e.g. at Canwin street stalls) and council election candidates.

8. That the DPP be finalised by June/July and then passed as the People’s Plan for Transition Shire Wingecarribee at a general public meeting at Council’s Moss Vale Theatrette.

9. That council election candidates be asked to support and, when elected, mandated to help implement the People’s Transition Plan in close cooperation with the community’s own initiatives and to report back to the public on an ongoing basis.

 Peter Lach-Newinsky

peter General

With regard to the usual dismal election circus and spectacle, a quote from Ted Trainer (UNSW) might help set things in perspective:

“What governments, economists and people in general seem incapable of grasping is, there is no possibility of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to safe levels unless we face up to a massive reduction in the volume of producing and consuming going on; i.e. cut GDP to a small fraction of what it is now. This society, obsessed with high levels of economic output, high ‘living standards’ and keeping GDP rising for ever, is totally incomapatible with sustainability. It’s far beyond sustainable levels of resource use and environmental impact.”

 So what’s the solution?

According to Trainer: ” The huge and alarming global problems we face cannot be solved within a society committed to affluent living standards, economic growth, market forces, the profit motive, and individualistic, competitive acquisitiveness. How long will it take for this to be understood? The problems can only be solved if we shift to a simpler way of living frugally in small, highly self-sufficient local economies with no growth, in more participatory and cooperative ways. (For the detail see socialwork.arts.unsw.edu.au/tsw/) Our ‘leaders’ will never take us in this direction. If we are going to make the changes needed, ordinary people will have to start building alternative communities within existing towns and suburbs. When petrol gets very scarce this will jolt us out of our complacency; people will see they must quickly build local economic self-sufficiency. Cap and Share campaigns [radical form of carbon trading] can be valuable in raising awareness about the global situation, but don’t imagine such proposals can avoid the need for massive, radical system changes.”

 This is a position you won’t even find the Greens sharing at all (they tend to believe in the quick technical fix of renewable energy without questioning the growth and market and profit and consumerism paradigm). I imagine not many in Canwin share it either. Pity. But, as Ted says, maybe petrol prices will focus minds most sharply on re-localising the economy. But then again, maybe not. Who knows.

peter General

Not sure whether more than a very very few reads these blogs. However, might as well give it a go here. Unless I’m mistaken, there would seem to be two issues that need resolving at the moment, and probably before the next scheduled meeting: (1) Canwin’s support or not of the climate change bill, (2) the best democratic way of maintaining discussions (emails, blogs or neither) between meetings.

Ad (1): As far as I can see, I don’t think Andrew’s blog below has got it right on the climate change bill issue. It’s neither a matter of some attempt at consensus-finding failing nor one of semantics and commas in the climate change bill. My understanding is that Rob has now changed his position to recommending that Canwin not support the Bill because the Bill itself has changed in a way he considers somehow ‘unrealistic’.  After no doubt substantial feedback, the Bill has (thankfully in my view of course) dropped the ‘nuclear as a last resort’ option and does not mention a ‘clean coal’ option, both of which Rob favours. Rob also seems to consider the Bill’s position on banning old growth forest logging as somehow unsatisfactory. One could argue that Canwin’s Federal government proposals passed on July 31st also exclude the ‘last resort nuclear’ and ‘clean coal’ options and that we could therefore as an organisation support the Bill, a position I think Sandra has taken.  (As for old growth forests, well one might have thought that self-evident in a group like this but I’m no longer surprised by anything much…). If Rob cannot now support the Bill and does not want Canwin to support it despite our Federal proposals, then I guess we just need another (quick) meeting to cast our votes on the issue.

 Ad (2): Andrew has made a good point about the problem with just sending emails on important issues to a select group of people with emails (not all Canwin members with emails receive these emails, e.g. those of Rob and Sandra on the Bill issue). The blog is used by just a very few keen people to post or comment. Blogging seems better suited to voicing opinions and discussions on issues anyway, it seems. Perhaps that is what it should continue to be while the democratic procedure would be that emails go out to ALL people with email addresses and the rest have to get the same information by snail mail.

peter General

Bob has suggested that we start posting blogs so as to stimulate Canwin discussions on various apparently more controversial issues upon which we cannot, as yet, find consensus (the ‘b list’). Bob suggests we do this by posting suggested Federal policy points, as modelled in the points passed by majority at the last GM (the ‘a list’). Good idea. So I’d like to start with the nuclear fuel cycle. Here’s my suggested formula:

Phase out uranium mining and prohibit the establishment of the rest of the nuclear fuel cycle in Australia.

Clarification: It is a convenient myth to think one can just talk about nuclear power plants. These in fact cannot be separated from the whole nuclear fuel cycle: from uranium mining, via uranium enrichment, nuclear power plants, nuclear fuel reprocessing to nuclear waste disposal, nuclear transports between all these facilities and eventual plant de-commissioning. This whole nuclear fuel cycle creates a whole complex series of various forms of routine contamination and extreme danger. Here are just some of them.

• Uranium mining creates huge mountains of millions of tonnes of radioactive tailings which wind and water then spread into the environment for thousands of years.
• All nuclear facilities emit radioactive isotopes even under routine conditions. Routine radioactive emissions from uranium enrichment plants and fuel reprocessing plants are much higher than those from nuclear power plants.
• Even when routine emissions are considered ’small’, radioactive isotopes (e.g. cesium 137, strontium 90) must inevitably bio-accumulate up the food chains and contaminate food , breast milk etc., further adding to our toxic loads and those of our children, born and unborn, creating more terrible suffering of various kinds
• All nuclear facilities may undergo catastrophic accidents (e.g. Chelyabinsk, Sellafield, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl), releasing volumes of radioactivity into the environment that may dwarf the radioactivity released in Hiroshima
• The Russian Academy of Sciences estimated the deaths from Chernobyl at 200,000
• All of these facilities are an inherent security risk in that they provide all terrorists or wartime enemies with dream targets with which to get maximum destruction with minimum means
• The ‘peaceful’ nuclear fuel cycle is inherently linked to the spread of nuclear weapons of mass destruction and the undermining of nuclear non-proliferation
• The nuclear waste issue has not been solved, and in fact cannot be since no toxic materials can ever be artificially kept from the environment for thousands of years without the possibility of any leaking
• The whole nuclear cycle could not work without massive inputs of fossil fuel to keep it going and thus contributes to climate chaos
• The nuclear fuel cycle contradicts every single one of the five basic precepts of ecological sustainability formally accepted by all levels of Australian government in 1993 (ecological integrity, intra-generational equity, inter-generational equity, internalisation of external costs , the precautionary principle)
• It is thus purely and simply unethical from beginning to end.

Add to this list the generally accepted fact that nuclear power cannot exist without massive taxpayer subsidies and not enough can be built quickly enough to make any substantial difference to reducing greenhouse gases within the timeframne needed (the next ten years), and the whole case for nuclear power crumbles into a heap.

To support nuclear power - even as a so-called ‘last resort’ – would be to unethically add wholesale radioactive contamination to an already ecologically devastated and over-heated world. No climate change group can support it without losing all ethical credibility.

Peter

peter General

I think it is reasonable to assume that those who mainly got us into climate chaos are not going to get us out of it. Business and political elites are pursuing business as usual or re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Carbon trading will be based on corporate ’self-regulation’ and will thus, by definition, not work. It will merely help nuclear and ‘clean coal’ become ‘more competitive’. These latter two technologies in turn will mean an even greater wrecked future of nuclear contamination and more carbon emissions (to maintain the nuclear cycle, as escaping gas from underground storage). Our leaders are thus playing Russian roulette with the atmosphere, risking horrific climatic tipping points, just to maintain the capitalist industrial system and their power within it. Objectively, they are thus a grave danger to the security of our children. To appeal to them is naive and pointless. The challenging fact is: WE OURSELVES are the people we have been waiting for to provide the solutions. Rationally, only our actions (or lack thereof) can provide any hope for a lower carbon future. I would suggest that re-localisation of the economy and civil disobedience are the only realistic way to go. Some of the specific possibilities of the former are being talked about in the Food Group and could be further discussed in CanWin. Here are some first ideas to get the ball rolling on the latter: 1. BOYCOTT (climate killing products, events and companies, attack their PR images) 2. OSTRACISE (all order-givers in climate killing business and politics, no longer talk to them) 3. DISINVEST (get churches, councils, funds to disinvest in all climate killing and nuclear companies) 4. OCCUPY (offices of climate killing and nuke companies and political Fed reps till all taxpayer subsidies to fossil fuel and nukes are redirected to energy and water conservation and renewables, 90% emissions cuts by 2050,  environmental refugees are accepted) 5. CREATIVE BILLBOARDING  6. GREEN GUERRILLA (planting of useful seedlings for fruit, nuts, coppice in public areas and nature strips).

Peter

peter General