SAVE THE PLANET
  • HOME
  • Why emergency?
  • Policies
  • Become a member
  • DONATE
  • FAQs
  • Contact us
  • NEWS AND EVENTS
  • Blog
  • Newsletters

Vote Planet
BLOGPOSTS

MP's kids held hostage by fossil fuel industry

8/11/2021

2 Comments

 

Some unnamed fossil fuel industry evil-doers appear to be threatening to hurt Auspol politicians’ children if the politicians don’t do the fossil fuel industries' bidding. It looks as though this is also happening to politicians around the world. 


This claim is based on deduction in lieu of direct evidence: blackmail is the only logical explanation for why anyone with some power to avert the coming climate catastrophe, would hurl their own kids into the apocalyptic abyss in coming years, in order to save them from harm today.

There’s the slim possibility that some of the politicians remain wilfully ignorant of climate threats but this doesn’t cut it. Even if the politicians thought there was only a 10% chance of a plane crashing, there’s no way they would put their kids on that plane. And our current chance of a  ‘Global Climate Catastrophe’ is now way over 50%.

It’s worth considering that these politicians are all psychopaths; they don’t care what happens to their kids, or care more for money and power granted by the fossil fuel industry today. However, psychopaths reportedly care about their own fate and these politicians have signed up to a mutual suicide pact, perhaps it is the older ones who think the climate collapse will occur beyond their end of life. 

A climate campaigner asked Mark Butler, then ALP shadow Minister for Climate Change (he apparently knew too much so was replaced last year), ‘Don’t you love your children?’. Because why would anyone that knew so much about global warming and loved their children promote the suicidal target of Net zero by 2050 as safe? 

In response to the question, Mark Butler immediately lost his measured cool (by all accounts for the first time ever), demonstrating that he does in fact love his kids, but more immediate threats than a global catastrophe hang over him and his children .

So how should we save a chamber full of MPs suffering under the most vicious blackmail imaginable? Easy: we vote them out. Then the blackmailers have no hold on them.

Just as with any spy blackmailed into being a double agent, we need to replace these MPs immediately with those who have not yet fallen under the searing hand of the fossil fuel industry.
Picture
2 Comments

European floods 2021 - act immediately to reverse global warming

8/11/2021

0 Comments

 
By Adrian Whitehead

So sorry to hear about the floods in Europe. Best wishes to all those affected and condolences to those who lost loved ones and friends. 


Similar floods in 2002 followed by the European heat wave in 200, triggered the start of my climate campaigning.

​What was obvious back in 2003 was if we didn't want these events to occur with increasing frequency and severity, we needed to cool the planet immediately. Our slogan back then was Zero Emissions Now. 


Eighteen years later the world is planning for 30-50+ years of increasing devastation through the adoption of the suicidal target of net zero emissions by 2050. Net Zero won't even stop the heating because of the degradation of natural systems that are also now heating the planet (loss of carbon from soil, forests, methane from former permafrost, loss of the summer Arctic ice etc).  

This 2050 target is immoral, unethical, and to be blunt, a crime against humanity. 

Society as we know it will collapse if we do not do better. What we need now is an emergency speed program with three key foci: 
  1. reduce our emissions to near zero in under 10 years
  2. simultaneously instigating a massive program to drawdown past emission 
  3. a program to immediately cool the planet (eg by reflecting solar radiation). 

​We call this Emergency Mobilisation.

Our ecology is already collapsing, the collapse of our societies has started, global food production will be pushed to the point where there is not enough food to feed the world. The world's poor will starve and suffer first. 

This future is not set in stone, but to avoid it we must take on our existing politicians and their corporate backers. Our current politicians have shown again and again they are not mentally equipped to deal effectively with the climate emergency.  

If you are in Australia and want to play a part in saving us all please join us at voteplanet.net and help us at the next federal election - this election is one of our last chances to make a real difference and avoid the warming levels that will push us to collapse.
Picture
0 Comments

Why does Australia lead the way in mammal extinction?

8/11/2021

1 Comment

 
Picture
By Andrea Otto

I want to talk about habitat and in particular our native animals and their reliance on trees.


Many of our birds and most of our tree dwelling animals rely strongly on hollows. I think we need an education campaign around hollows because so many people don’t know or understand the interconnection between our birds and animals and hollow trees.

It takes around 80 years for our trees to produce a hollow for our smallest inhabitant. As the tree grows so do the hollows. The home is then too big for that smaller critter and so it moves out and that hollow is then used by something bigger. Even hollows on the ground are important as they provide habitat for many small mammals, reptiles and invertebrates along with fungi’s and other plants.

When we understand this, it isn’t hard to see that the loss of old trees is one of the main reasons that Australia extinction rate is so high.

Protection of our old trees is paramount to native species survival including our own. Australia is one of the worst developed countries in the world for broad scale deforestation; an MCG area of forest or woodland is cleared every two minutes, killing countless native birds and animals.

Vote Planet land use policy includes ceasing land clearing, instead subsidising land owners to regrow and maintain forest, and ceasing logging native forests. Please read more on our policies page.

1 Comment

The appropriate mindset

8/11/2021

0 Comments

 

For a chance at a future, we need to be acting like the house is on fire. Governments have been promising incremental change for three decades, over which time greenhouse gas concentrations have dramatically increased, increasing warming impacts and setting off all the major feedback loops (tipping points) that were theoretical when governments first started promising incremental change.

We need to be reducing greenhouse gas concentrations and reaching huge net negative emissions. It’s all doable and can only be good for us in by any measure, though not so good for the balance sheets of people emitting obscene amounts of greenhouse gases and mining coal and gas. ​
Picture
Picture
We save the planet not via suggestive ‘economic signals’ but by hands on steering down the right path:
  • passing regulation (eg, no more fossil fuel extraction, no more land clearing!) 
  • new-deal-style subsidy for the right direction (almost what the LNP has been doing for fossil fuels) 
  • mobilisation - acting as if it’s WWII and our lives depended on it, because our lives actually depend on it.
​The global Climate Emergency Declaration Movement, which started here in Australia, was based on the idea that a declaration is followed by a mobilisation.

We achieve a safe future by dropping the ponzi scheme of perpetual GDP growth. Instead we adopt a model such as Doughnut Economics (image on right). The idea that we shape society to live within the limiting boundaries of climate change, pollution, ocean acidification, biodiversity loss etc. while maximising societal wellbeing measures across housing, equity, education, political voice, etc. 

So simple, so far removed from what we are doing. What the hell are we waiting for?

Naturally, feel free to facebook like articles on a government taking an incremental step in the correct climate direction, but point out how far they are from where we need to be.

Read more on Vote Planet's policy page.

0 Comments

Alternate uses for $600 million

8/11/2021

0 Comments

 
If the government was serious about energy policy for the country as a whole and the need to cut emissions then Climate Emergency Action Alliance–Vote Planet has the following suggestions for how to spend $600 million:

  • Using this money to go towards improving the two-way transportation of power throughout the national grid to ensure that power produced by small PV is not wasted because the grid can't handle the load.
  • Using the money to increase the return for premises that have solar panels, giving a market signal that it's worth putting panels on and so providing an incentive to the private sector to collect the extra power that's being produced in a battery of some description (lithium ion, stored hydro, flow battery).
  • Improving and duplicating the Bass link to Tasmania, and the other links within the eastern grid to allow a greater sharing of load and to allow Tasmania to become the battery of Australia.
  • Beginning a joint venture to construct a DC cable to WA, thus giving incentive to the WA solar market to take advantage of the time difference and to provide cover for the evening peak in the east.
  • Construct a solar thermal plant in South Australia thus creating not only power but a skills base for a new form of power generation that could be sold around the world.
  • To be put into research because there's no need for a gas fired power plant anyway.
  • Developing an electric car industry here.

By David Lughermo
Picture
0 Comments

    Authors

    Bloggers on this page include Adrian Whitehead, Philip Sutton, Bryony Edwards, Andrea Otto, David Lughermo.

    Categories

    All
    Climate Emergency
    Climate Solutions
    Emergency Mobilisation
    Environmental Restoration
    Federal Election 2022
    New Economics
    Political Corruption
    Take Action
    Targets

    ​Archives

    July 2022
    January 2022
    November 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    January 2020
    October 2019
    May 2019
    February 2016
    June 2015
    July 2013
    May 2013

    RSS Feed

Picture
Vote Planet acknowledges the traditional custodians of country and elders past and present.

Sovereignty was never ceded.
Authorised by K Cordner Hunt, Mansfield Vic
  • HOME
  • Why emergency?
  • Policies
  • Become a member
  • DONATE
  • FAQs
  • Contact us
  • NEWS AND EVENTS
  • Blog
  • Newsletters