Robbing the future

phill Parsons

APEC is meant to ensure a peaceful and stable future but instead is going to act to rob us of one.

Howard is likely to get a non binding, target free deal out of the leaders participating in APEC this week and try and sell it to the Australian public as the solution to all worries about the climate chaos we are only seeing the edges of at the moment.

A target free program is supposed to allow countries to proceed to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions at a rate their economies can afford.

One would be surprised if there were any other outcome as this should have been stitched up well before the event even though leaks to the Australian media had to be denied the day after as they were premature. Not all had agreed.

Sounds very reasonable to me, especially in comparison to the Kyoto process where performance, and thus failure, can be measured against targets agreed by all. After all who would not want speed limits to be a non binding target, to only pay the taxes they can afford and to generally live it up beyond their means leaving it to future generations to pay.

And such irresponsibility will return to the countries that attended to become the norm, approved by a meeting of the venal for the benefit of the greedy at the behest of the US President, who will not accept targets on behalf of king coal and queen oil and their cruel jester, the US automobile industry.

Evidence please. US petrol consumption per head 1645 liters, Canada 1206, Oz 907, Europe 276. Is it any wonder that the US attacks countries or attempts to interfere in their internal affairs for the stuff.

This President is moving to the lame duck stage of his regime, Congress held by the other old party and his unpopularity at home reflected in the polls in Australia where the strong links with Bush are impacting on Howard.

Well, its been the UK’s earliest spring and wettest summer on the modern record and is predicted to be the foggiest autumn. Animals with small and thus endangered populations have, along with the many humans, been flooded out of their homes.

The humans of course can return, clean up their nests and expend their wealth on more works to hold back the tide of climate chaos whilst not addressing the causes comprehensively, effectively and in time, stupid monkeys that they are.

Animals must suffer the vagaries of unseasonal chaos, as they attempt to alternate their generation [raise a family] in a world where humans constrain the space available to them and are sending the climate upon which they have evolved to depend upon into chaos.

As we are all dependent on natural systems there is a clear lesson to be taken from the events affecting the animals with just a little bit of climate chaos. Have a look at the report at http://environment.independent.co.uk/climate_change/article2917360.ece

The longest drought continues

And for those who think it is too far away or are of a political bent, note the troubles the Victorian government now faces with the dams supplying Melbourne so empty that the politically difficult Stage 4 water restrictions appear unavoidable. Unless they are hoping for some climate chaos to fill the water supply dams, flood the low lying countryside and return the Murray Darling Basin to a viable environmental and economic unit making the inland of Victoria, NSW and southwest QLD productive again.

That ain’t the 3 month forecast and then hey, its summer time for cricket, hols at the beach and hoping it will all go away.

As the southern Australian climate drifts in to the desert latitudes through shifts in the pattern and the changes in the southern oscillation, where the heat islands become permanent effects, the drying of a sunburnt land will become a feature across the formerly productive farmlands.

Howard knows this is the outcome, he has the reports from the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology. So to fool the farming community he has given life to the myth of northern development as a great saviour of the agricultural industries.

The climate change deniers of yesterday including that devil may care flying fool and PM, John Winston Howard, remain stuck in their mode, forming different guises that will fool some, he hopes enough for long enough so he can waste more time on inaction whilst strutting the political stage.

This will make the costs of the impacts of the deepening chaos that the climate will present unaffordable for many. The northern part of Australia will also suffer from the impacts of change with the temperature and cyclone intensity increasing and rain becoming less predictable as the monsoon is impacted by the non binding targets Howard will attempt to set in train this week, a continuation of a business as usual approach to greenhouse gas emissions.

Turning that around may seem difficult but it can start with one little step. Everyone should act to ensure that this major failure of the Howard government to protect the lives and property of its citizens from climate chaos does not continue when the election is called.

phill Parsons