Pulitzer Laureate  Posts: 839 Joined: 11 Aug 2008     | |
Paperboy Posts: 49 Joined: 17 Aug 2008     | One of the biggest things that is disappointing me about what's happening is that all the Liberal party leadership infighting is overshadowing the bloody ETS (or CPRS - Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme if you like) in most of the media. Apart from the fact that the bill causing all this isn't really effective enough in the first place. |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 2126 Joined: 17 Apr 2009     | So waitasecond, you consider that a 'political crisis?' I expected to read at least about the prime minister being assassinated while two other ministers disappear under mysterious circumstances and the supreme commander of the army becomes a instant pacifist while the president is visiting Tibet and is out of contact. a crisis as in: a time of intense, extraordinary difficulty and danger in large scale. Not about just some everyday political bickering and backstabbing. So...yeah. great. Whatever. It's not like that will have much of an effect; I once read from somewhere that even if the entire EU manages to adopt a more pro-environment strategy and cuts projected CO2-production by 50%, the global effect will be a few measly percent. That is to say, the effect of the European Union on global scale environmental issues is measured in single-digit percents. In light of this, why should I care about the political views of a single Australian politician, when its India, China and Africa that matter the most? Sure, nice to hear people are still alive over there and that Australia hasn't gone the way of Atlantis, but I fail to see the signifigance of this article. |
Infamous Scribbler  Posts: 619 Joined: 28 Mar 2008     |
Agreed. just get a couple of those aussie hotties out of there (the Minogue sisters,borat's wife Isla to name a couple) and just make the country into one giant park/preserve. Use the local people as wildlife guides,keep them stocked with beer and it'll be fine. |
Press Junketeer  Posts: 460 Joined: 26 May 2009     | Are we experiencing a political crisis? Huh, well i guess that shows how much i pay attention to politics.. *shrugs* |
Infamous Scribbler  Posts: 666 Joined: 7 Apr 2009    | I don't think that Malcolm Turnbull ever had the charisma to pull off party leader. So it's good that he achived something while he had the leadership of the party. On the other hand, I think that the elected party is a reflection of the changing opinions of the people, rather than radical upheaval in parliament. And politics is never that interesting anyway. If we wanted interesting we would live in anarchy. |
Paperboy  Posts: 14 Joined: 22 Oct 2008    | I don't think anyone in the Liberal Party could pull off party leader. And I don't think the crises is that we have no opposition, it's that their deposing of their leader for supporting the government, even though it seems that this is good for Australia (the ETS). If the government can't organise to do something little for the environment, how are we ever going to pull off a great change. |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 2341 Joined: 27 Dec 2008   | This is politics appearing as politics a.k.a politics as usual |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 3136 Joined: 31 Aug 2009   | Umm... I think Political crisis is a little bit too much of an exageration... But yeah, good find on the article...When I opened this up for some strange reason I was expecting it to be Kane toad related >.< |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 1271 Joined: 23 Sep 2009   | Crisis? Tchah. |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 1816 Joined: 15 May 2008  | The fact Tony Abbott won scares me. He doesn't seem right for the job, and I don't know if I can trust a wingnut. For those who think that this isn't a crisis, it is for Australia. Like the OP said, Australian politics aren't too interesting (Atkinson's stance on the R18 rating aside) and this does count as a bit of a panic attack. |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 3335 Joined: 14 Nov 2007   | I live in Australia. We still have politics here? This thread belongs in "religion and politics" by the way. |
Pulitzer Laureate Posts: 839 Joined: 11 Aug 2008 |
oh wow i didnt even know that it was there....else i would have..... shows how often i pay attention to that page lol. Well thanks i will now know in future!
To start with, i only stole that line from the article i was reading because it made it sound interesting :P But I also said it was a exageration and was meant with a hint of sarcasim. The point of this thread, is about politics when it comes to climate change and if you cant see the interest then that is your problem. Yeah it isnt one of the highest populated places in the world, but that is far from the point. This isnt meant to be something that will effect the world in any sorts, but is an example of things that could/may happen because of this global issue of climate change. |
Pulitzer Laureate  Posts: 867 Joined: 6 Jan 2009   | I laughed when I heard that Abbott had become the new leader of the Liberals. Now they don't have a hope of winning the next election. (If he does, I'm leaving this country. Abbott's a cunt.) |
On the Record  Posts: 6745 Joined: 2 Sep 2007   | Wait, forget about the political crisis for a second. You mean people live in Australia? I mean really live there, like towns and stuff? I thought people where kidding me when they told me that. All kidding aside count yourself lucky if that is what passes for a crisis. |
Beat Writer Posts: 196 Joined: 16 Apr 2009     | The whole liberal party has royally cocked things up since the election loss, the only way they could conveivably win an election is if Hocky is in the lead and there has been a period of calm, no matter how good abott and turnbull are at anything no-one likes them. If turnbull had handed the leadership to Hocky and everyone was happy they would be a competitor in the next election but right now, save for Rudd running around bare chested with hammer and sickle war paint on it, there is no hope. Maybe the party will pull itself together for the next election. If the labor party's last loss is anything to go by I would say this is going to happen everytime a party loses power. As for the ETS it needs te be more serious and better or not happen at all, I find it stupid that this constantly comes to being about global warming skepticism, is polution just a non-issue now? we are one of the few countries that doesnt suffer from any serious smog and we should do as much as possible to keep it that way, saving the whole planet is a bonus. |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 1538 Joined: 21 Dec 2007 | We just need a double dissolution and she'll be right. |
Copy Clerk  Posts: 51 Joined: 16 Nov 2009   |
Wait did you just call CO2 pollution because its not a pollution. |
Pulitzer Laureate  Posts: 801 Joined: 11 Mar 2009    | Off-topic: What is it with Australia stealing America's records? They've got the fattest people, the largest houses, and now they're sneaking up on our per-capita carbon emissions! |
Gone Gonzo Posts: 1578 Joined: 21 Mar 2009   | I'm a little surprised you didn't mention Australian farmers and the drought and lack of irrigation with regard to climate change and politics, since climate change seems to be what the policymakers are blaming it on. |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 1902 Joined: 20 Nov 2008   | Australia has a long way to go. Cap-and-trade barely makes the top ten for political crises in the U.S. |
Beat Writer Posts: 196 Joined: 16 Apr 2009 |
Maybe I did, whats it to ya? Anyway wherever CO2 is emmitted outside of organic processes other carbon form are emmitted with it, making everything nice and sooty. Not to mention the nitrates and what not. Although on a different note the largest climate change and mass extinction in the history of the earth is the rise of the cyano bacteria (precursors to plants, the first photosynthesisers) when the filled the atmosphere with all this nasty O2 gas killing the archae-bacteria |
Copy Clerk Posts: 51 Joined: 16 Nov 2009 |
The west has been doing it best to clean gas, petrol, and coal fired power plants and we clean most pollutants like soot, nitrogen, nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxides, fly ash and mercury that is the reason we don't suffer from any serious smog and the only alternative to CO2 power sources is nuclear power nothing else can generate the base load power need all the time. The ocean currently has a pH of 8.1, which is alkaline not acid. CO2 does not acidify the oceans. The complex mixture of chemicals in the ocean comprise a complex buffer system that is difficult to overwhelm with a little bit of CO2. CO2 may acidify distilled water, but seawater is a whole other solution http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/01/oh-snap-co2-causes-ocean-critters-to-build-more-shells/ |
Beat Writer Posts: 196 Joined: 16 Apr 2009 |
whilst we are getting way off topic I shall give my final rebuttal, what we are doing in our burning of fossil fuels is turning large carbon resevoirs back into gasseous carbon forms this is also what has been occuring in the deforestation practiced by humans for quite a while, I beleive the ancient civilisations did fairly well at it. There is no way that this can not create an affect, for scale I have no idea, it could be minimal but is deffinetly there. The oceans being in an equilibrium system with the atmosphere will take in CO2 and other airborne stuff and this will cause change, again I havent done my own research so I have no reliable scale but the buffer system you mentioned may prevent drastic pH change but to do so consumes available salt sediments, that is what dissolving corals is, removing the H+ by reacting it with CaCO3. I'm not saying we are deffinetly doomed and killing the earth, I'm saying the are deffinetly actions we make that deffinetly change the earth. Without my own research into the severity of the changes I'm not going to make a call because from where I sit arguments on both sides have the same amount of reliabilty and anything the common media give me is blatantly wrong because the truth is too hazy for news, also maybe change isnt that bad, change is natural: see my reference to cyano bacteria earlier. I believe we need to start becoming more sustainable etc but I deffinetly dont think it should be at the expense of economic viablity. If we force rapid change and kill the economy we wont have the infrastructure for clean living, we would have to restart the industrial revolution making everything worse but if we can slowly and surely stop emmitting these toxins and cutting down forsets, then replant them, the world can be alot healthier. I've been to edinburgh and london and seen the smog and smelled the poultion and if we dont at least stop expanding our use of these fuels Australia will become unpleasant to. You seem to have mistaken me for a rabbid greeny which is far from true I'm usualy the skeptic in arguments because the media polarise their view too much and their minions are so far left its hard for a sane person to be anywhere near them. |
Copy Clerk Posts: 51 Joined: 16 Nov 2009 |
Yes we are getting way off topic sorry if i mistook you for a rabbid greenie but living in a rural area has made me not a fan rabbid greenies and yes change isn't bad. change is just change there is some good change and some bad change but you have to ask your self is more CO2 bad or a good thing but back on topic i hope this tax never gets through it will do nothing to lower CO2 but it will cost us a lot of money. |
Gone Gonzo Posts: 1538 Joined: 21 Dec 2007 |
And unfortunately we've had a larger gun massacre than you guys. |
Muckraker  Posts: 329 Joined: 11 Jun 2009 | The ETS,billions of dollars thrown down a black-hole for a non solution that will have next to zero effect on global warming. |
Beat Writer  Posts: 190 Joined: 6 Jan 2009  |
Completely agree with you there. The fact that when I read the papers and websites and see Rudd claiming that Abbott is looking for a "magic pudding" solution makes me laugh. After removing the subsidy for home-owners for solar power, as well as effectively banning all nuclear power stations, Rudd has now nailed it into his head that the only way to "combat" Global Warming is through the ETS. I now realised that I perhaps pay way too much attention to politics for a 15-year-old. |
Ok I know Australian politics isn't the most interesting thing and most people from other countries dont really pay much attention to it, But i think something that is happening right now in Australian politics is something people should be taking note on because I think these issues and political circumstances are going to be popping up around the place. It is only a slight exaggeration to say that Australia is experiencing the world's first political crisis of the climate change age.
Now to give you a basic run down of what is happening
(I took this from http://www.guardian.co.uk/ as they could sum it up better than I could)
Australia, one of the world's highest per capita carbon polluters, stood aside from the Kyoto protocol until John Howard's right-of-centre coalition was defeated by Kevin Rudd's Labor in 2007. After that, Australia moved into the mainstream on climate change, and the Liberal party elected Malcolm Turnbull, as the opposition leader.
Turnbull is interesting - he was the lawyer who took on the British government in the Spycatcher case, then championed an Australian republic, and, as environment minister in the Howard government, he was the greenest member of the cabinet. To the Australian right, he's always been a bit suspicious: a flash Sydneysider from Australia's richest constituency whose got enough money to indulge environmental concerns.
In opposition, he's been struggling, hit by bad poll ratings and a car crash of a crisis a while back when he called on the prime minister to resign on the basis of some emails that turned out to be fake. His rivals have been manoeuvring. In the past week they have pounced, after Turnbull forced through a controversial vote to back the government's emissions trading scheme in the Australian senate.
Without at least some Liberal support, this scheme will not pass, since Labor doesn't have a majority in the upper house. If you want to be generous, you could say that Turnbull has decided to sacrifice his leadership for his principles - a "climate change martyr" as the Sydney Morning Herald put it. Or you could say he is trying to face down his critics on an issue where he can hold the moral upper hand, and that this whole saga has more to do with egos than climate change.
Either way, Turnbull is toast: a large chunk of his frontbench resigned rather than back emissions trading, and at least one member of it, Tony Abbott, has confirmed he will fight Turnbull for the leadership tomorrow, on an anti-emissions trading ticket. Tony Abbott is a known climate change sceptic.
So the votes went in and Turnball lost by a single vote to Tony Abbott.
So im just curious about what other people around the world think about what is happening, I think it is interesting, which is unusual for for Australian politics.