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Free Speech Again

October 4, 2019

I’ve written a fair few articles about the way the Right react to disagreement. There was a piece on this in general, a look at the way Jordan Peterson reacted to Foucault and Peterson’s modes of silencing discussion, some considerations of responses to Greta Thunberg’s speech at the UN [1, 2, 3], and lots of stuff on Religious ‘Liberty’ to persecute. This is just a continuing footnote.

Firstly Peter Dutton’s reaction to people engaging in Extinction Rebellion protests was that these people “should be jailed until their behaviour changes”. He implied that they were “bludgers”, who should have their welfare payments stopped. He gave no evidence for this position, and I know people in the movement who definitely hold down jobs, and plenty of businesses seemed happy for people to attend the climate strike, so I presume this was an attempt to discredit them in the ways that he and his government attempt to dehumanize and punish people on NewStart in general. Of course, he did not explain why people on NewStart should not be able to protest against government policy. He just assumed that such a position was normal and acceptable. People who are relatively weak or poor, are obviously immoral. He also requested that “People should take these names and the photos of these people and distribute them as far and wide as they can.” In his view, it seems surveillance must be total, and encourage people in general to get at those with what he considers to be deviant views. His problem seems to be that judges were not imprisoning people for dissent, even though people are being charged with offenses and fined, some of them had even tried to embarrass him – How dare they…..

Assuming that the government acts on these arguments, the next step could well be to threaten people with pensions and uni-students on loans, and then anyone on any government money, including university lecturers, public servants, people doing research, probably people who receive money from the government for contracting work and so on… There is no real end to this – and perhaps that is the point. It is also possible he is just sounding the media out to see if he can get the usual righteous shouters on board.

Secondly, the coalition has been encouraging business to speak on public issues for quite a while now. They like polluting businesses speaking up against pollution taxes, they did not complain when the minerals council claimed responsibility for overthrowing a prime minister of the other party, they liked businesses speaking up against inquiries into the banking system, they liked businesses speaking in favour of corporate tax cuts, deregistering unions for action, and other policies they were proposing. They never stop saying how these kind of comments from business show how their policies are in the national interest.

However, we have recently witnessed the strange phenomena of businesses deciding that maybe we should talk about climate change. Ecological destruction will eventually affect earnings, there is the risk of stranded assets, there is “Carbon risk” , there is risk from massive storms and destruction, there is risk of flooding from sea level rise. There are all kinds of risks which affect business if climate change gets worse and the government continues to do nothing. Given the long delays that the Coalition has supported, it is possible that it is now too late and we are stuck with the probable danger of economic collapse through ecological collapse.

However the Righteous reaction to criticism (as opposed to support) is that companies should shut up, or that companies are loud, or that companies are cowards yeilding to activists (sure!), or that ecological destruction has no economic consequences. In general, it appears their attitude is that you only have the right to praise the Right.

Third, in NSW there has been a rare loss of planning permission for a coal mine, because emissions cannot be confined and have an effect on global climate change. The Minerals Council (or the union for mining companies) is upset about this. Previously the government has passed legislation to ensure the prohibited mine is acceptable by changing the requirements, which then apply retrospectively. The government is now considering legislation that could limit the ability for planning authorities to rule out coalmine projects based on the climate change impact of emissions from the coal. The planning minister, Rob Stokes, has said it was “not appropriate for state governments to impose conditions about emissions policies in other countries”. Oh those poor other countries. But aren’t we always being told that if we don’t sell them the coal they will buy it elsewhere? So we cannot imposes conditions about emissions on other countries, we can just refuse to participate in the destruction here and overseas. But righteous virtue always has to be easy and profitable. The government is also trying to discourage protest and is proposing a new law which punishes unlawful entry to ‘enclosed lands’ with up to three years in jail and increases fines from $5,500 to $22,000. Other laws are being proposed to curb inconvenience to business and private owners, presumably because this is more important than allowing people to protest against government policy in a way which is noticed.

Just to make it clear this is not unique to Australia. In the US:

  • The Department of Agriculture relocated their economists who published findings showing financial harm arising to farmers because of the administration’s trade policies.
  • The acting White House chief of staff apparently instructed the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to support the president’s assertions about the path of hurricane Dorian. It was reported that they threatened to fire top officials if they did not do what they were told.
  • The Interior Department reassigned its top climate scientist to an accounting role after he mentioned the dangers of climate change.

Homeland security and the Patriot act, set up to defend the US from terrorists is now being used to defend mining and fracking operations from the objections of local people. Given the FBI’s constant preference for policing left wing activists rather than rightwingers this should not be a surprise.

The obvious point is that dissent from the righteous view of the world has to be punished or threatened. It is much more important that they be correct, than that they change their minds to deal with new data, or new understandings. People who have different understandings and who opposed them, are by definition ‘evil’ and to be crushed.

This idea they must be right, and dissent must be punished, is fundamental to their understanding of the world. It is like the request that religious people should have the right to sack or namecall anyone because of that person’s differences, but maintain the right to be protected from being sacked or namecalled for their own differences. Indeed the issue may even originate in Christianity’s persecution of heretics and people of other religions. Perhaps, this monotheism cannot accept that any deviance can be anything other than satanic, and to be purged? Perhaps it is just that Capitalism as a monotheism that makes profit its only value is authoritarian?

Equity of action is not understood at all. It appears to be govenment by dogma, and threat, and the righteous have to be right, and they will stop at nothing to assert being right. They certainly will not normally discuss anything, or accept they could be wrong.

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Thunberg’s are Go! 04

September 28, 2019

The third example of the anti-Thunberg argument comes from Amanda Vanstone. An ex-minister in the Coaltion government. Often thought of as a moderate. This should be the place were we can find a way into discussion about the issues. Sadly, it is not.

She begins.

It’s a measure of where we’ve come to in public debate that I have thought more than twice about writing this piece. The days of civilised debate, of accepting different opinions seem to be disappearing.

None of us likes being yelled at or chastised for our views. The pleasure of exchanging opinions, exploring them and in the process better understanding or modifying our own is one of the hallmarks of a free society.

Vanstone would have been much more persausive here if she had made this comment when the Right started its head kicking of everyone who disagreed with it, in the eighties, or perhaps if she had gently asked her old companion Tony Abbott to use a little politeness everynow and again. But its only nowadays that its a problem, when people speak back to the right in the same way that they are spoken to…. But we can perhaps hope that she is going to engage in discussion rather than abuse.

The Greta Thunberg circus has become a complete farce.

That is a really good example of exchanging opinions and exploring them. Beautifully done.

Then follows a passage about Thunberg travelling by emissions free boat is “first-world fake melodrama at its best”. Ok we have quickly gone past expecting civilised debate, and lack of being chastised, but its interesting, how the soon the idea can be discarded, after it is brought up.

We could get the idea from the generally virtue signalling right wing social injustice warriors (see what I did there?) that whatever Thunberg did to produce her message would have been inadequate – unless nobody had heard about it. Then it could be bypassed without comment. Travelled by plane, used Skype all of these would have shown her hypocracy because of the emissions involved, just as not producing emissions was not enough.

It’s a personal choice but I don’t think telling people they’ll never be forgiven, berating them with “how dare you”, does much to bring people on board.

Neither does the kind of language that Vanstone uses. However, Thunberg’s short message, less I believe than 500 words was to the point. If leaders do not do something, when the problem is as clear as it is, how can they be forgiven, or praised? They may want praise for ignoring the problems, but that does not mean they will get it from everybody. And the short speech has certainly provoked a lot of dismisal.

Usually it has the opposite effect. It’s just another sad example of serious and complex political issues being reduced to “I’m right and you’re an idiot”. That kind of discourse just pollutes the town square. It’s fractious and shuts others out. It is toxic to democratic debate.

Exactly what Vanstone is doing. She is so good at this.

The whole trip, the hype and the expense was one big media circus.

Cliche after cliche about why people should not listen to Thunberg. No dealing with her arguments, no civilised exchange. And of course no lack of chastisement. Tut!

Given the over-dramatisation of global warming by some, including Thunberg, we now have a generation of children worried about being burnt to a crisp.

Do we have any evidence presented that climate change effects are being Over-dramatised? No, not necessary clearly. Even if scientists keep saying that the effects are proceeding more rapidly than the official predictions. And should people be relaxed about their ecologies and futures being destroyed? Really? Tell that to farmers.

Out of all the 16-year-olds in the world, why is it that just one features in the media worldwide? There are other kids who care as much, are just as articulate, just as concerned. If you think the world focussing on this one young girl was just some happy accident you are plugged into a faulty socket.

Gently plugging into the conspiracy theory socket here. All this concern is media manipulation. Probably Soros lurks in the background, with his evil tendrils everywhere..

Hmm, we have just had right wing speakers, criticising and dimsissing all these intelligent, caring kids who went on strike, and often refusing to engage in polite discussion with them as well. So we don’t have to look at what happens to one 16-year-old to know what will happen, but we get the idea. Every concerned, caring kid has to worry about retaliation for being bold enough to suggest that people should do something.

I’ve seen the photo of her outside her school on her first climate strike. Posed to draw on the haunting concept of the lonely outsider who (surprise, surprise) becomes the involuntary hero. Who took that photo and, more importantly, why?

Yes it is deeply suspicious that in this age of everyone having mobile phone cameras that anyone (including her parents, teachers or school-friends) would take a photo of her. It must have been planned malevolance, that is the only possible explanation.

Now we have kids all over the world skipping school for the day to show how much they care.

Yes indeed we have another example of Vanstone engaging in civilised debate with all these “kids skipping school”. Evil disobedient creatures that they are.

I’d be more impressed if they gave up their free time to make their statement.

Plenty of them probably have, and have been ignored.

Even more impressive would be if they organised to collectively make a lasting statement by doing something useful. If everyone who skipped school had planted a tree in pre-agreed areas that needed revegetating, that would have made an impressive statement.

Yes they could have been praised and ignored. They could have been more quiet Australians who agree with the Government being ecologically destructive. They would have suggested that planting trees was enough, and we could just ignore the wholesale destruction going on. It would have been much more comfortable for those who don’t care.

If all the protesters focussed on a few areas, whole suburbs could be made better places in which to live. All it would take is commitment and elbow grease. Just skipping school gives you no skin in the game.

Yes, it would be nice if our government did even that much to lead by example, but hey the Coalition likes land-clearing, so we don’t expect leadership, and we are not disappointed. That everyone else should do something, is always a good argument.

Perhaps the Australian protesting kids could all decide to not own a car and to use public transport instead. At home they could not use air conditioning: my generation grew up without it.

Individually they could give up all devices, maybe bar a simple phone and use a shared family tablet or computer.

Careful, she is calling for the end of comsumerism.

Would these striking students be able to pass a simple test on the positive things both sides of politics have done in Australia? Don’t hold your breath.

Certainly it would be hard to pass a test on the positive things that the Coalition have done in the last 10 years, but note the spurious sign of even-handedness.

Everyone can and should play their part. More to the point is how globally we address this. The plain fact is that China and the US produce more than 40 per cent of world emissions followed by India and Russia. The top 15 countries produce more than 70 per cent of emissions. Unless these countries change their ways what we do will make little difference.

Indeed and Australia is one of the top 15 to 20 countries in terms of total CO2 emissions depending on your source (closer to the top if you factor in emissions from coal and gas exports) and is extremely close to the top in terms of emissions per capita. And its getting bigger. We can’t ignore Australia. But she seems to imply we can. Odd. Or is this another example of how it is really everyone else’s problem and we don’t have to do anything?

That’s not a reason to shrug our shoulders and walk away. Not at all. But it does provide some perspective. Did our school protesters think that Xi Jinping, or Modi or Putin gave a damn about their protest? Did they even think about that?

I don’t know, of course, I’m sure some people did think about it. But they did not expect Xi, Modi or Putin to listen. These people are not going to listen to people from Australia. But then Scott Morrison did decide to lecture China on its emissions, while increasing those in his domain. Did he expect China to listen? and he apparently decided not to lecture President Trump who is going out of his way to increase emissions. But Morrison and Trump’s efforts to make things worse will not be commented upon, in an article which is asking us to dismiss Thunberg and student strikers.

Greta Thunberg seemed angered at the presence of President Trump arriving at the UN. She may have just been realising the missed opportunity to get more headlines by berating him.

Anyone who is concerned about emissions is likely to be angry about Trump’s continual efforts to boost them. But it was Trump and his followers who were snarky about Thunberg, not the other way around… The idea that Thunberg is realising a missed opportunity in that moment, is really showing how Vanstone’s mind works, not Thunberg’s. Thunberg could have run after him, if she had wanted, but she didn’t…. Absence of action is somehow proof of intent?

That’s what she does. People have grown tired of that trick.

Hopefully people will get tired of the trick of pretending to be interested in debate while slagging off at people who think there is a problem….

Its depressing. Were any of these three anti-Thunberg writers remotely interested in an opening for discussion? Not as far as I can see. They seemed to be just looking for excuses to put her down, and put concern about climate change down.

That is all.

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Thunbergs are Go! 03….

September 28, 2019

More writing against

This second post was forwarded to me, by an intelligent guy, he was just helping me to know what people thought.

This post is not from the wilder fringes of paranoia either. There are much more excessive examples.

She’s all over the news these days, but 16-year-old Greta Thunberg isn’t homegrown or grassroots. Her climate schtick is completely a product of George Soros and Company, which feeds Thunberg her lines

The right seems plagued with fantasy. Take the whole George Soros thing. After he retired, Soros made a couple of mistakes.

He wrote some abstract books about the complexities of the market, which implied that you could make money out of markets because they were not optimal – which contradicted rightist dogma. He made it clear, in more popular books, that the neoliberal revolution of looking after big business first, did not deliver what it promised for ordinary people and, as a ‘master of finance’, his words might have some influence so he had to be discredited. The Republicans reacted as usual with fantasy, innuendo, abuse, and assertion that markets were the best, and that anyone who thought otherwise was after your liberty. He also tried to help to support democracy in Eastern Europe and ran foul of the Russian State, with the usual consequences. He then supported help for civilians in Syria, and of course the Kremlin rounded on that pretty heavily accusing him of supporting ISIS and terrorism etc… Whole heaps of pretty obviously fabricated stories circulated. Why would Soros support Isis? he’s Jewish to start with, and it contradicts everything he has ever said or done…. but coherence, or plausibility, does not count to those who would discredit him.

Yes people even insist that Thunberg is his granddaughter or pet robot or something.

as she traipses around the world pretending to have come up with all this climate hysteria on her own.

Hmm I’ve never seen or heard anything from Thunberg which suggests that she pretends to have come up with “all this climate hysteria” on her own. Is this writer pretending to have come up with climate denial hysteria on their own? I doubt it, but perhaps they are? Perhaps they are trying to pretend to be a completely original and independent thinker? I don’t know. But I guess the statement is dimissive, so it might sound persuasive, if you were already inclined to dimiss Thunberg and global warming, and weren’t reading with that much attention..

In truth, Thunberg is never without her handler, Luisa-Marie Neubauer, a 23-year-old, far-left activist from Germany who’s the “Youth Ambassador” for an international lobbying and campaigning organization known as the “ONE Foundation,” which is funded by George Soros, Bill & Melinda Gates, and Bono, among other celebrity names.

Thunberg associates with a few people who have similar ideas!!! Oh wow. People like Alan Jones, or oil company executives, would never do that! They wouldn’t use the Atlas Network or anything. They have way too many principles for that.

“Far left” clearly means anyone who thinks the kind of argument being put forward in this anti-Thunberg email is silly.

Besides the fact that Thunberg herself comes from a family of freemasons, her mother supposedly having ties to Bavarian Illuminati founder Adam Weisshaupt,

Her family are supposedly freemasons. No evidence is given, but let’s assume its true even if the name dropping of Adam Weisshaupt, pretty much implies the writer has no evidence but lots of fantasy. The “supposedly” is neat, because if anyone can be bothered to show that it is bullshit then the writer can say it was only supposedly, they weren’t asserting it was true…..

But it is true that the founders of the US were nearly all freemasons. They must also be involved in this conspiracy as well!!!! They plotted all those years ago so that a Swedish teen would try and take on the oil and coal companies!! to instigate their plan for world communism and wealth redistribution!!!

Well it’s as rational.

Neubauer, her controller, works for a major globalist entity that’s working to implement Agenda 2030 in Germany via the Paris Climate Accord.

Her controller? Do we have any evidence for that? No? What is the Sinister “Agenda 2030”? It’s a UN plan for sustainable development involving the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Must be evil. We want unsustainable development now!!! non of this survival crap. And Germans are in favour of cutting emissions. It’s A NAZI-COMMUNIST-FREEMASON-UN PLOT!!!!

Neubauer is also a member of Alliance 90, The Greens, and Green Youth, three communist organizations that are using the “threat” of climate change as a cover to push for sweeping policy changes all around the globe – changes that will, of course, eliminate freedom and liberty in order to “save the planet.”

We need freedom to destroy the planet, or we are not free??? Ok, that is a bit weird, but I guess these people have never heard the conservative saying that with freedom comes responsibility. And they assume that everyone opposing them can be described as communist – even those pro-capitalist people like Bill Gates who think climate change is likely to be true.

No matter how many times climate change is exposed as a total hoax, there’s still a contingency of the populace that believes it to be the gospel truth – especially when little girls appear all over the news to reprimand the world about the “science” behind it.

No matter how often climate change denialism is revealed to be a total hoax and the facts all wrong, a tiny number of denialists keep repeating their hoax as if nothing had changed. They appear all over the media, to reprimand or supress anyone for listening to scientists.

Whatever the case may be, it’s obvious that Thunberg isn’t coming up with the many scripts she reads before Congress, the media, and most recently the United Nations. Heck, she doesn’t even speak English as her first language, yet somehow we’re supposed to believe that Thunberg is able to come up with a nonstop flow of professional speeches to present on any given day?

And she is Swedish and speaks English competently – Must be Rosemary’s baby!!!! No teenager could speak English competently, even if most younger Swedes speak English, extremely well.

“So-called ‘climate change’ remains the greatest fraud being perpetrated on humanity,” wrote one commenter at The Gateway Pundit. “It is nothing more than a multi-trillion dollar taxation and wealth redistribution program scheme designed by the U.N. to destroy America by destroying capitalism.”

Wow, A Commentator? Wonder what science they specialise in? Wonder who pays them? Yes let’s just say people who accept the science are hoodwinked, and those who accept propaganda are free thinkers. If we repeat it often enough, it must be true.

Let’s be real…. Climate change denial remains the greatest fraud being perpetrated on humanity. It is nothing more than a multi-trillion dollar taxation and wealth redistribution program scheme designed by the corporate elite to destroy America and the world by supporting big business and ecological destruction. I’m not supplying any evidence for this position either, but at least it’s plausible, because that is what it does….

The right often seems very weird. I suspect it is because they are supporting policies that spell destruction for most people, and have to promote culture wars, fiction and endless abuse, because that is all they have to get people on side.

I’ve always been interested in varieties of conspiracy theory, because I don’t think you can understand modern politics if you don’t consider it to be (more or less) central to mainstream righteous political discourse.  

It is important to realise what kind of (dis)information circulates as ‘fact’ amongst large amounts of the population, and how little it appears to connect with reality, and how many strands of imagination can be connected in a few words.

People, who I knew, in the centre and moderate left in the US did not even know what most people believed was fact about Hilary Clinton. To them, it seemed completely unbelievable that anyone could believe this kind of stuff, and yet it probably helped bring about Donald Trump. Trump’s real misdemeanours where not in the same league as those imagined about Clinton. Possibly Trump could not continue without the widespread tolerance of idea of the great left-wing conspiracy which firmly controls government bureaucracy, universities, business and media.

Once you understand the terms, the evil leftist conspiracy is even hinted at by respectable people like Amanda Vanstone who should be above using it, but is not, as we shall see in the next piece. Certainly her more outré readers would get the references and implications.

Those on the right who know this has to be rubbish, may tend to respond by thinking that all information is equally rubbish, and become cynical about ‘everything’. Nothing is true, nothing is accurate, there is nothing to do except just keep on keeping on. Climate change might be a hoax too – certainly if they don’t like the solutions which are proposed.

The “Info-wars” site and its like, seem almost mainstream nowadays amongst the right, but I can’t think of anything even remotely comparable on the left – apart from those very few supposedly Labor people who tell me the Greens deliberately set out to get Scott Morrison elected – but they seem to rouse more scorn than acceptance… They are not mainstream in the same kind of way.

Is it possible to discuss anything with people who proudly break all the procedures of logic and evidence? I’d like to think so, but how do we do it????

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Thunbergs are Go! 02: writing against

September 27, 2019

Climate change denial warriors have been berating Greta Thunberg all week for daring to say we need to look after the world, for suggesting that adults were letting her generation down, and for suggesting people should take science seriously.

I thought it might be useful to look at some of the styles of argument employed in the next couple of articles on this blog. This require several conditions. First off, I could not select the articles themselves, as I might knowingly, or unconsciously, choose badly argued or stupid articles. The articles had to be recommended to me, by people who were intelligent and who agreed with them. Secondly I had to try and restrain myself from being rude. The Second point was probably more difficult – oh let’s be clear, by the end of it I failed. These people did not want a discussion and they just handed out abuse, and a demand to shut up about climate change..

The first article was a broadcast by Australian right wing ‘shock jock’, Alan Jones. This guy is highly influential; newspapers write feature articles about him, his words get wide circulation, he is hostile to anything to do with climate change, although he often opposes fracking and coal mining near his many property holdings. He can be said to be central to the Australian media, and its self-image. The speech was recommended by an American, so that shows he has international repute among the right.

The speech is here. To be fair he is reporting a letter written to him that he thinks is a wonderful response to teenagers protesting aganst climate change.

He starts by asserting climate change is a hoax. Ok there is a hoax here, but its called ‘denialism’ Or perhaps more accurately, the “don’t do anything, because it will affect our sponsor’s profits” move; there are lots of motives we can imagine for denying the problem or its severity, but we don’t know what he, or the person he is quoting, is about, so let’s not pretend we do – it does not seem a courtesy that will be extended back.

He then attacks young people for:

1) Having airconditioning in class rooms (Yes its getting hotter and no the kids probably did not agitate for this, but parents might have done. It is obviously unfair to agitate to stay alive. If you know anything about NSW classrooms a lot of them are demountable and made of metal which heats up quite a bit in summer. Education department figures show there are 10,000 classrooms in NSW with no form of air conditioning or evaporative coolers. <https://www.smh.com.au/politics/nsw/where-summer-is-stifling-the-nsw-schools-with-and-without-air-con-20180711-p4zqsx.html>
Of course Alan Jones and his like, oppose using solar panels to keep things below heat stroke territory in summer. He might need to get his facts right).

2) TV in every room and computers (Hmm, the kids buy TVs for every room? The kids do not manufacture the TVs nor promote them for sale, nor pay for them. Neither did they design a workplace which requires computerisation, or for people to use mobile phones to be in constant contact. Nor do they spend millions of dollars trying to convince people to upgrade their phones even if the old ones are still working. Kids are really so powerful, that they did all this???? I presume Alan Jones and his team, who are signalling virtuously here, do not use computers or smart phones at work, or demand that they be available – or is it ok to use them because they deny climate change is a problem?)

3) The kids all decide to be driven to school (really? not the parents deciding its not safe for kids to walk to school? I assume he has done some research on any of what is being asserted here? No…? Wow he just knows stuff like he knows that climate change isn’t real. This is so convincing….)

4) Then he avoids even the suggestion that the economic system could be generating endless consumerism – its all the kids fault – not the fault of business, not the fault of profit seeking. We can’t suggest capitalism is to blame – it’s got to be the kids. These kids are so powerful they can bend the whole economic system – no wonder he is scared of them.

5) Then he asserts the climate strikers are supported by people who want to boost population. Actually, it’s pretty obvious that there are people who encourage inflating the population are on his side of politics. The Coalition have been driving population increase since John Howard – they mix this with penalising refugees who come by boat, so as to distract people from what they are doing. They reckon its economically necessary to provide for the aging population, make up for the low birthrate, and to keep wages down… Some of those supporters of population growth are the religious right who want everyone to obey God’s commands to keep breeding. They don’t care about the ecological damage this does…. so again this is twisted at best

6) Final killer argument, young people are “virtue signalling little turds” – that is a real reasoned argument for you… more evidence that the righteous have nothing to offer but abuse, and threat… (after they have done the misdirection)

7) Wait! There’s more: “Wake up, grow up and shut up” – well again if you can’t beat people by facts or rational argument just get them to shut up and stop disturbing you in your pursuit of profit and sponsors. This is the righeous love of free speech. They get the right to lie and abuse anyone, but everyone else gets to shut up.

This speech could not be even remotely persuasive to anyone who did not already agree with his position.

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The Australian Labor Party and Coal

September 26, 2019

Someone was telling me that the one thing you could bet on was that Labor supported renewables and did not support the Adani coal mine in Queensland.

However:

Before the election the Queensland Labor government apparently gave Adani unlimited water rights, for the mine. This looks like enthusiastic support at the cost of many people in Queensland, especially with the current drought.

Labor, did not have to run their recent election campaign by accepting the fictional job figures that Adani promoted out of court, but severely diminished in court, and they did not have to avoid proposing any alternative projects which would bring more employment in the area.

Labor did not have to ignore the possibility the Adani mine could damage the water table, and destroy farms all down central Qld and NSW. They could also have made it clear they were not happy with the mine.

Labor did not have to support fracking in the Northern Territory against the wishes of the Aboriginal landholders, to show how eager they were to support renewables.

After the election, Labor did not have to support and help pass two motions in the Senate saying how wonderful the Adani mine was.

After the election, the Queensland Labor government did not have to rush to approve the mine, nor did they have to strip away the right of aboriginal owners to object. Nor did they have to drop prosecutions against Adani for breaking environmental conditions. They could have moved slowly, rather than with avid enthusiasm.

After the election Hunter Valley Labor candidate Joel Fitzgibbon was saying that Labor should have made it clearer that they were not anti-coal, during the election. Nobody, corrected him, so we can assume they are happy for that to stand.

After the election, Queensland party president John Battams gave a speech saying “Queensland Labor supports the coal industry” which most people would take as support for Adani.

If this is not supporting the mine, what would they do to support it?

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Character and leadership

September 26, 2019

It is sometimes stated (often in defense of President Trump, and often by Evangelist Christians) that a leader with bad character can still be a great leader.

Yes character might not matter that much, unless you were a real conservative, in which case you could think differently.

Conservatives used to think that good character (or at least the pretense of good character) was vital in a leader as the leader is an exemplar of behaviour, who others will imitate. Bad character and immorality ‘rub off’ on to others, especially onto followers.

Having a leader with overt bad character will lead to followers imitating that bad character and gaining bad character, and that will lead to the election of further leaders with bad character, which will lead to a nation with bad character. Eventually nearly everyone will lose their way, and the nation will decay and collapse.

No real conservative could support Trump through cold pragmatism, because the ends do not justify the means. They realise that the unintended consequences of apparent success, may well lead to disaster. Real conservatives aim to conserve what is good, not junk it.

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Thunbergs are Go! 01

September 25, 2019

Someone on Facebook pointed out that Forbes was one of the few places that got Greta Thunberg’s message about the Green New Deal. However, Forbes smoothed over the problems quite noticeably, suggesting the problems were made by the ‘left’ being political….

The Forbes author (Jeff McMahon) wrote:

The climate crisis is a universal cause [not a political cause].

Conservatives need a way to get on board. It’s difficult for them to support a policy that evokes the New Deal. And conservative opposition will relegate the Green New Deal to the realm of fantasy at least until a cataclysm arrives like the one that inspired the original New Deal.

Fair enough one might think, especially given the propensity of leading politicians and academics for travel in limousines and planes, which the author remarks on, and the problems conservatives have with responsibility towards others which the New Deal idea invokes, and which the author does not remark on.

Anyway, in her speech, Thunberg apparently said:

The science doesn’t mainly speak of ‘great opportunities to create the society we always wanted’. It tells of unspoken human sufferings, which will get worse and worse the longer we delay action….

This is not primarily an opportunity to create new green jobs, new businesses or green economic growth. This is above all an emergency, and not just any emergency. This is the biggest crisis humanity has ever faced.

So let’s be clear here, the Forbes argument is that a “green new deal” both cannot solve our problems, and politicises the problems alienating so-called ‘conservatives’….

The author is missing Thunberg’s implication that pursuing business opportunities as usual also cannot solve our problems, even if this pleases ‘conservatives.’

We might be pushed to wonder why is it that staying on the road to profit for some and destruction for most, cannot be described as political, while necessary change for survival is necessarily described as political? Perhaps the suggestion that preserving established power/wealth relations might have something to do with that, is too obvious….

However, a more important paradox is that people will not take the political action to move away from the situation we live in, if they don’t have a vision of where they are going. And it is hard to have a vision of where we are going that is not political.

To survive, we may need radical change. We probably need some form of ‘degrowth’. At the least, we probably need a change in capitalism, and ideas of ‘development’ – otherwise why would we not continue on as we are doing? Any change challenges what we have now.

Those who support the inequalities, destructiveness and comforts of the current system (and who usually call themselves ‘conservatives’), will probably never “get on board” and support doing anything useful about climate change because they are likely to see it as political, as it involves changing the arrangements we have now. The more change becomes necessary, the more they are likely to see it as politically inspired, and thus resist it….

So if action seeming to be political in conservative eyes, is to blame for us refusing to change, then we will never take positive action, because such action is inherently prone to being seen as political…

We can probably never take such people with us. So people who want to change, and who want to make change, have to go on without self proclaimed conservatives. Rather than asking for fairness, we might have to allow them to freeload, until they get the message.

We need climate generosity not climate justice.

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Random remarks on climate and politics

November 4, 2018

There are at least two ways of looking at the planet: one as isolated being, and one as relational being in which the planet exists in the cosmos, in relation to the sun, the solar system, vast emptiness and so on.

With the first view you can imagine manipulating and dominating the planet, because that is all there is. With the second the planet is what keeps you alive in the vast emptiness of space; without it we cannot survive, it is something that needs tending and repairing as best we can. It is our vehicle of life. There is no practical alternative, we cannot all move to Mars.

You cannot do politics the way we normally do politics with the planet because it does not negotiate – it just acts. In particular it has no truck with authoritarian politics, where people tell others what will happen and there is no negotiation or little interest in the way things work, because an ideology is more important than checking if that ideology works. I suspect the less well the ideology works, the stronger this tendency can be when bonded to group loyalty.

One problem with Republicans is not that there are not Republicans who don’t admit climate change, but it seems far more necessary for them to abuse Democrats than to discuss practical solutions. This is probably because they need to demonstrate that they are really Republicans to other Republicans. If we were of a particular brand of irony, we would call this virtue signalling.

Being virtuous in the face of destruction is not particularly useful, especially when that virtue favours destruction, but at least you know you are not betraying your identity group.

However, while it may not be possible to tell the planet anything, we can try to listen to the planet, paying attention to what is happening, and attempting to perceive what the results of our actions are with the planet. This is almost the exact opposite of geoengineering… Listening to the planet and using basic logic, we cannot keep dumping waste which cannot be absorbed and reprocessed by the system – and this involves changing our economic and manufacturing processes to change the waste we produce.

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