Leaving aside Australia's unwillingness to engage with their apparent national misogyny, which has been longstanding and only now coming to the national table for true debate, Australians are (finally) waking up to their country's dirty secrets. The sort that undermine their stated aims on climate change and stewardship of the country; for Australia is the world's second biggest coal exporter ( >350 million tons of coal) and still relies on fossil fuel for its own electricity needs, refusing to give up coal whilst making net zero pledges This fact was exposed to the wider world by 3000 Australians who converged at the Newcastle (NSW) coal export station for a 30-hour (weekend) blockade of it's shipping lane. Surprisingly, some would say, it was approved by the local police.
Unsurprisingly, 109 protesters became a little heady with their 30-hour success and 104 were subsequently arrested and charged for their refusal to leave the harbour channel when the time came to get the money flowing again. Ah! - big cash business vs global climate change again; which confirms what many global authorities already think: Australia is a "climate laggard". The fact that four new coal mine licenses have recently been granted also shines a light on Australia's cynicism, much to the delight of "the greens".
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| Australian coal protestors at Newcastle (NSW) |
The press in Australia talking about their greenhouse gas emissions as "a national disgrace", which they are; indeed the latest statistics regarding CO2 emissions per person make Australia the 10th highest polluting country (out of 208). Leaving aside minor states (Palau, Qatar, Kuwait, UAE, Bahrain, Trinidad, Brunei, Gibraltar) only Canada is worse at 9th. In numerical terms Australia has a value of 15.12, whilst the UK value is 5.00 and many countries are openly asking, What is Australia doing about climate change?
We here in the UK are being financially thrashed in the name of saving the planet, whilst the Australian parliament seems to have their heads up their collective arse on this. I have friends and family members who are Australians (for 40+ years) and their consensus is that Australian politicians are self-seeking power brokers, too busy looking big for their local voters, who squander time in office by being mostly ineffective and unable to address national issues such as housing, finance, banking, misogyny, agriculture and land management. (Scathing or what?) Of these a dysfunctional housing market has precipitated 122,000 homeless people - half of 1% of a 27,000,000 population.
It is not all bad news from Australia, as pure ("gold") Hydrogen was added to the list of permitted natural substances in 2023, when 18 companies were granted exploration licenses across 570,000 square kilometres (32%) of the state of South Australia. This followed the discovery of a large gas field by a company called Gold Hydrogen, which intends to bring it on-stream as soon as possible. This will alleviate some measures of CO2 and other gaseous emissions, which are slowly falling in response to internal efforts and energy generation is improving, but with regard to coal exports, merely thinking "we export coal but WE don't burn it" could be likened to "we sell poison but don't force anyone to take it" and does not absolve them, when their coal is burnt in the furnaces of less enlightened (or caring) customers, who indirectly are screwing one of Australia's ecologies and biggest tourist attraction.
Australian coal exports will become a major embarrassment as Australia's greenhouse pollution from coal is higher per person than any other developed country! Not good when air quality is already bad in the large cities.
If I could ask Australia one thing, it would be this. "You have the most polluting neighbours in the world (China and India), but do you want to remain in that club when you have wind and sun aplenty and a huge landmass on which to generate electrical power; so why won't you?" Australia used to look forward, but at this time it is looking away.
COP28 took place in Dubai, with little progress and others will follow, but will oil and coal producers actually take note and why are the Australians even bothering to attend, for many will just laugh at them. See how your country is doing.
P.S. Trees of any kind (maybe not Palm oil plantations) are good for the earth as they soak up all sorts of crap, air air-born gaseous pollutants and give us Oxygen, whilst enabling many forms of biological diversity amongst them; so if you are able, please plant a tree and nurture it as best you can, if not for yourself but the children of the next 200 years. Perhaps checkout this site as well.
As an aside, surely this cannot be acceptable; even though I understand there are long-standing strains and injustices between authorities and indigenous (Aboriginal) citizens (especially in the Northern Territory) it seems to me that criminalising 10 year olds is a good way to seed a criminal underclass of the future.
