A living refutation of Bob Marley's belief that "Jah would never give the power to a bald head" and, hopefully, Australia's next minister of the Environment.
(PS. He dances real nice, too.)
A living refutation of Bob Marley's belief that "Jah would never give the power to a bald head" and, hopefully, Australia's next minister of the Environment.
(PS. He dances real nice, too.)
16 comments:
wonder if he'll make 20,001
From Nicola Smith and Jonathan Leake of the U.K. Times comes a totally predictable inconvenient truth about the newest elitist fad:
the latest United Nations climate change conference on the paradise island of Bali has itself become a major contributor to global warming.
Calculations suggest flying the 15,000 politicians, civil servants, green campaigners and television crews into Indonesia will generate the equivalent of 100,000 tonnes of extra CO2. That is similar to the entire annual emissions of the African state of Chad.
Could it be all those concerned greenies are attending because the conference
is being held in the luxury holiday resort of Nusa Dua on Bali's palm-fringed southern coast.
Attendees are expected to include celebrities such as Leonardo DiCaprio, the actor, as well as Arnold Schwarzenegger, governor of California, and Al Gore, the former US vice-president.
Many are merely "observers" who have no formal role to play in the talks, which largely involve government ministers and officials. Among these observers are 20 MEPs and 18 assistants whose itinerary includes a daytrip to the idyllic fishing and surfing village of Serangan. (snip)
Three ministers in the British delegation are staying in £330-a-night suites at the Westin Resort Nusa Dua hotel, each with their own bedroom, living room and dining room. Such apparent luxury is justified, say aides, by their need for somewhere to hold private meetings.
Maybe they should visit all the palm plantations while they're there. You know, the ones that are responsible for wiping out millions of acres of rainforest in order to produce palm oil for the European "biofuel" powerplants. Palm plantations are thought to be wonderful "carbon sinks" and the fuel oil they produce has very low carbon emissions. Well worth destroying rainforest for I'd say.
Rainforest destruction (a legitimate concern that has only accelerated in recent years) hasn't been fashionable amongst the environmentally correct crowd since the early 1990s. Even Sting doesn't talk about it anymore. Now that global warming is all the rage, who gives a rats ass about some stupid monkeys, reptiles and colourful birds? All the really cool people are joining the carbonista movement. We've got a planet to save - don't distract us with trivial details like rainforest conservation!!
Why the hell Harper isn't boycotting this event, or at least insisting the media follow him on a tour of the Indonesian islands that have been denuded of rainforest to produce palm oil, I don't know. Maybe he's just accepted that global warming is the thing that matters in the polls, and any real environmental progress will be politically worthless. Given the collective yawn inspired by his setting aside of massive tracts of parkland, I can hardly blame him.
"Why the hell Harper isn't boycotting this event ..."
Why would you want Harper to boycott an event at which he may very well end up being the star?
If the world wants Canada to commit to binding targets than big emitters in the developing world like India and China are going to have to come on board for binding targets. Otherwise, no deal. It would be great news for the environment if Brazil, India and China come on board.
I want Canada to act on climate change no matter what but I think it would be the stupidest thing ever to sign an international treaty that absolves the largest emitters in the developing world from acting.
Apparently Dion thinks it fine that India can continue to increase GHGs. Did he misplace his green scarf or something? What a joke.
Harper was the "star" at the Commonwealth gabfest as well. Hell, he controlled the agenda from start to finish. He and Australia stood alone against 51 other nations that wanted to force binding targets on developed countries while exempting poor countries. A day earlier he spearheaded the push to give Musharaff the boot.
And what did he get for his trouble, besides one rather surprising editorial in the Toronto Star praising his "Pakistan Push"? He got near universal condemnation for "standing alone" against binding GHG cuts and "embarrassing Canada on the world stage". That Harper single-handedly maneuvered an alternate (and far more realistic) proposal through to a consensus of all 53 nations has been practically ignored. To stand almost alone against a near unanimous consensus, and still have enough good will left over to be able to forge a new consensus among all 53 nations has to be seen as a masterful piece of statesmanship.
Can you imagine Dithers or Chretien at this meeting? They'd have fallen all over themselves to get in line with whatever idiotic consensus was developing. Then they'd have come home as heroes for signing yet another "binding" agreement that they had no intention of living up to.
Unless Harper wants to start playing that same game of posturing, propaganda and platitudes, these meetings are nothing more than political minefields for him, and he'd be better off staying home.
"If we're all to believe that climate change is a major problem caused by greenhouse gas emissions, then we have to reduce greenhouse gas emissions," Harper said. "And the only way we can do that, is if all major emitters reduce their emissions. It's that simple. So we're not going to settle for anything less."
I'd agree the initial reports on this painted Harper in a bad light (the original ctv.ca story was especially terrible) but now that he's clarified his position he comes out of this looking really good.
I think you also dismiss Canadians too easily. If we wanted empty rhetoric on the issue we would have re-elected Martin, who in my view, made a complete laughingstock of Canada in Montreal. It was hard not to cringe with embarassment as he made his condemnation of the United States.
As for Harper, he actually still needs to put his money where his mouth is on the environment. He's already arguably crossed the great divide in accepting that climate change is a real issue that needs addressing and in proposing targets for Canada, but he still needs to implement (or at least propose) a plan that seriously targets the issue in parliament.
And by a serious proposal, I don't mean a bunch of ad hoc subsidies and government spending programs like previous Liberal and Conservative plans, but some pricing mechanism for carbon that allows the private sector to participate in the solution.
getting back to OZ . . . Rudd believes in God, goes to church every Sunday, says marriage is an event between a man and a woman, believes in emission caps for ALL nations and supports Aussie troops being in Afghanisatn.
Sounds exactly like Harper eh ????"?
"Sounds exactly like Harper eh ????"?"
Or Howardism without the Howard?
Rudd, I'm glad to hear that. It's nice that we can at least count on Australia not to vote in a total radical progressivist fool.
Anon, is targeting carbon emissions even the best way to go about things? My preference would be to target energy efficiency. Energy efficiency would reduce not only carbon emissions, but numerous pollutants as well. It seems that by targeting strictly carbon emissions, we're missing an opportunity to clean up on air and water pollution, as well as becoming a world leader in energy efficient technologies. Personally, I'm in favour of an energy tax. Not a carbon tax, but a tax on all energy consumption. Force people to use less energy - period.
RR,
In practice an energy tax = a carbon tax. They are almost the same thing.
BCL, there is considerable overlap, perhaps up to 80%, but sources like nuclear power and hydro electric power would not be subject to carbon taxes. Since these forms of energy still have environmental consequences, (i.e. flooding and mercury release for hydro, problematic waste disposal and potential for disasters for nuclear) they too should be included.
"Anon, is targeting carbon emissions even the best way to go about things?"
The problem is carbon emissions, therefore you have to target carbon emissions. I don't disagree that other energy sources have their negative environmental impacts and that conservation is something that should be pursued but if what is being predicted in terms of climate change is even half right and man-made CO2 is a driving force, then something needs to be done to target CO2 emissions.
It probably won't even mean the end of the fossil fuel era. Stationary sources like coal plants will probably end up sequestering CO2 underground to avoid paying for the release (I'm curious as to what environmental consequences large-scale sequestration will lead to but we'll probably find out after the fact like we always do) while mobile sources like cars will just eat it since it's probably too expensive to capture CO2 from cars.
Anon 1:49,
I don't know about "large scale" effects, but carbon sequestration can theoretically be deadly if, for example, the pipe carrying it breaks and bleeds C02 into a valley of some sort. Anything that walks into the valley basically asphyxiates (like some of those lakes in Africa).
So, did Garrett donate all his Midnight Oil earnings, seeing how he's one of those white oppressing exploiters, to the Aborigines, who he claims to support? Did he give them the properties he's purchased in Australia? Or did he stash HIS money away for HIMSELF?
That guy'll say anything to get laid. Obviously he needs to.
And so with a new Labour government, Australia will follow England lead down the drain . . .
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