28 September 2015, Renew Economy, Coalition dumps chief climate denier Newman, Hunt still hamstrung. In one of the surest signs yet that the Malcolm Turnbull-led Coalition is making a departure from the climate denying, anti-renewable energy thinking that has guided the party’s policy-making from the top down, Maurice Newman will not be reappointed as chairman of the prime minister’s business advisory council. Newman, a far-right conservative and outspoken denier of climate change, was appointed to the role by Tony Abbott in one of his first acts after becoming Prime Minister in 2013, and has been a key influence on Abbott’s policy direction since then. His controversial views on climate change – essentially that it is not happening, and ratherit’s global cooling we should be worried about – have been given a regular airing in a weekly column Newman writes for The Australian. Newman was also behind the push to investigate whether the Bureau of Meteorology was exaggerating temperature data records as part of what he saw as a broader climate change conspiracy. A push that, according to recent evidence revealed by the ABC, was knocked on the head by environment minister Greg Hunt. And so, Turnbull’s decision not to reappoint Newman now that his chairmanship has expired – one of the eight things we recently suggested the new PM could do to show support for renewable energy and climate change – is good news, not least for Hunt, who is now overseeing these departments in a so-called environment “mega-office”. Read More here
Yearly Archives: 2015
27 September 2015, Truthdig, Big Tech May Be Getting Way Too Big—Here’s Why. Conservatives and liberals interminably debate the merits of “the free market” versus “the government.” Which one you trust more delineates the main ideological divide in America. In reality, they aren’t two separate things and there can’t be a market without government. Legislators, agency heads and judges decide the rules of the game. And, over time, they change the rules. The important question, too rarely discussed, is who has the most influence over these decisions and in that way wins the game. Two centuries ago slaves were among the nation’s most valuable assets, and a century ago, perhaps the most valuable asset was land. Then came another shift as factories, machines, railroads and oil transformed America. By the 1920s most Americans were employees, and the most contested property issue was their freedom to organize into unions. In more recent years, information and ideas have become the most valuable forms of property. This property can’t be concretely weighed or measured, and most of the cost of producing it goes into discovering it or making the first copy. After that, the additional production cost is often zero. Read more here
24 September 2015, Hot Air, Dutch government to re-open Urgenda climate change case, The Dutch government has said it wants to re-open the groundbreaking climate change case in which a judge ruled it must cut emissions by at least 25% compared to 1990 levels by 2020. The case was brought by campaign group the Urgenda Foundation and judges ruled in their favour on 24 June 2015, saying the government must do more to protect people from climate change. The government said it would appeal the ruling, but has today raised the stakes by saying it wants to re-open the case entirely. This would give the government and Urgenda the chance to present new arguments, and could take up to three years to complete. In the meantime, the government is legally obliged to comply with the original ruling (to cut emissions by 25% by 2020). Read More here
23 September 2015, The Conversation, Sustained economic growth: United Nations mistake the poison for the cure. On September 25 world leaders will meet in New York to formalise the new Sustainable Development Goals. These 17 goals will guide efforts to reduce poverty and increase well-being, without destroying the Earth. The Conversation is looking at how we got here, and how far we have to go. On the surface, the Sustainable Development Goals, soon to be confirmed by the United Nations, seem noble and progressive. They seek to free the human race from the tyranny of poverty and hunger while creating sustainable and resilient societies. But look beneath the surface of this pleasant rhetoric and one comes face to face with a far more ominous vision of development: a vision that is fundamentally compromised by corporate interests and ultimately doomed to failure, if not catastrophe. The defining flaw in the United Nations’ agenda is the naïve assumption that “sustained economic growth” is the most direct path to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. This faith in the god of growth is fundamentally misplaced. It has been shown, for example, that for every $100 in global growth merely $0.60 is directed toward resolving global poverty. Not only is this an incredibly inefficient pathway to poverty alleviation, it is environmentally unsupportable. By championing economic growth, the Sustainable Development Goals are a barely disguised defence of the market fundamentalism that underpins business-as-usual. But in an age of planetary limits, sustained economic growth is not the solution to our social and environmental ills, but their cause. Read More here