Analyzing the 2008 US Presidential election
It is clear to me, viewing Australia's problems with addressing "growth" from viewing the U.S.'s problems in doing so, that both governmental systems are straightjacketed into the same capitalistic premise: that growth is not something to be concerned with; that promoting unlimited growth is possible.
Here's my analysis of the present U.S. presidential campaign that shows the futility of hoping a candidate for such high office will bring any kind of significant change to pursuing growth. Money and power determine their candidacy and their politics. (Although, as usual, I will vote for the one who just might bring a small amount of change, and that is in this case Obama.
Analyzing the 2008 US Presidential Election
By Richard Pelto
Television and newspaper coverage of the election process can be like entering some kind of weird third dimension. Because coverage is essentially secretarial-like rewrites of press releases, and electoral lying is given euphemistic names like "fact-challenged," or "distortion,"the average-citizen reader can only wonder what is going on.
In addition, columns adjoining coverage of the election provide superficial facts but little analysis about an economy being rapidly flushed down a toilet because of widespread excesses of greed, next to a hard-to-justify expensive military "mistakenly" raining bombs on civilians.
Most importantly missing from the journalism 2008 election coverage is how the GOP-Demo campaigns mirror each other on issues like Afghanistan, campaign finance, the death penalty, gun control, housing, immigration, stem-cell research. Only minor, tactical differences separate the two candidates on issues like health care, Iran, Georgia, social security, and taxes. On the abortion issue there is substantive difference. And Obama is now providing welcome fresh-air change of our "globalization" policy.
But even the spin-meisters of the campaigns note similarity. Tucker Bounds, a spokesman for McCain-Palin, made the case that Obama's response to the bail-out of corporate despair was derived from McCain. "Whether calling for a bipartisan oversight board or prohibitions on golden parachutes, Barack Obama is simply following in John McCain's footsteps while trying to respond to this financial crisis, as he followed in John McCain's footsteps when he attempted to respond to the recent crisis in Georgia," he said. "Again, Barack Obama has shown indecision and a lack of leadership at a time when the American people need certainty." The final sentence is representative of the mindless rhetoric that characterizes U.S. elections today.
To analyze what "change" these candidates portend we must begin with the coverage in Iowa which began with the press apparently and slavishly following whatever consistency existed in the two viable party’s electoral narrative. Iowa provided the introduction of Obama’s unquestioned repetition of "change," and, once the campaign was down to two candidates, his opponent, despite the similarities and mirroring noted above, attempted audaciously hijacking the word "change." The journalists tirelessly parrot the terms, print polls that attempt to determine which word struck a deeper chord in various age groups, and then pontificate on consistency of message and the polls’ statistical indicators, assuming apparently that the public was well-informed.
But no reporter seriously asks or presents just what "change" might mean either in an Obama presidency, or the more unfathomable "change" parroted by the GOP-nominee, John McCain. Both are "establishment" candidates, and thus both are beholden to the money/power that buttresses it.
It is a given that the public, today, for many easily-justifiable reasons, is very desirous of "change." and some forms of it is likely with Obama. It is particularly informative, then, to carefully note that Obama’s governmental prescription is similar to decades-long policy. Analysis makes clear one has to wonder how much "change" Obama would bring. On Iraq, he initially did not vote for the war’s authorization. That’s clearly different from Bush who made up journalistically sparse-questioned "facts" that led us into it. But as the many years of our occupation of Iraq passed Obama swung more and more toward Hillary Clinton’s position that an indeterminent number of troops and bases must remain there until some undefined advantageous time to pull them out. Thus, after scratching the surface, Obama’s position isn’t substantively different on Iraq nor with George W’s on the so-called "war on terrorism," especially given Obama has indicated he would aggressively pour those troops taken out of Iraq into Afghanistan and Georgia.
One must then assess the foreign policy philosophy of the candidate. Bush’s present focus on endless (and financially draining) "warring" with Islamic militancy appears to be little different from what Obama’s policy would be, given his appointment of Zbigniew Brzezinski as his chief foreign-policy advisor. This is the man who funneled large amounts of money to a wide range of Islamic fundmentalists like Osama Bin Laden in order to create more resistance to the Soviet Union, and is now advising about the Islamic-like danger posed to Israel by Iran. This "change" is decidedly minimal. In addition, another advisor, Sarah Sewall, who heads a human rights center at Harvard and is a former Defense official, wrote the introduction to General Petraeus’s Marine Corps/Army counterinsurgency handbook, the handbook that is now being used worldwide by US troops in various killing operations. Is she a likely means to "change?" Do these "advisors" help define this great "change" that Obama will bring about that the candidate and press herald?
Many are dissatisfied with the costs and impacts of Bush’s unconditional support of Israel. So what kind of "change" would Obama’s advisor, Dennis Ross, bring to this policy, given he pushed the principle that the legal rights of the Palestinians, the rights recognized under international law, must be subordinated to the needs of the Israeli government to expand into doing whatever they want in the occupied territories. And Ross was one of the people who, interestingly, led the political assault on former Democratic President Jimmy Carter after he wrote a recent book critical of Israel. Would he help in being an agent of "change?"
It is beyond doubt that Obama will exacerbate our present policy of unsustainably importing large numbers of illegal-immigrant cheap labor. He will undoubtedly create an even more porous border policy through his support of a variety of political measures facilitating the importation of millions of illegal immigrants. These measures incentivize immigrants' arrival by rewarding their coming here, either through amnestying the illegality of entry or providing such things as free or subsidized schooling, welfare, housing and medical care. And both candidates promulgate their immigration "changes" before activist Hispanic audiences calling for even more porous borders. Thus they make a mockery of professed concern for population-growth exacerbated problems involving the environment and growth management.
The issues not covered: too rapid population growth, rapidly receding availability of strategic resources, and ever-expanding ecological degradation, cry out for emergency "change." This is made clear by the disconnect that exists between peak oil concerns and the presidential race. As prices at the pump rise, each candidate is now talking about their so-called "solutions" to the problem. None of which seriously address population growth and its exacerbating impacts on consumption. Despite clear new warning signs from Russia, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, and Nigeria that peak oil is apparent, McCain made clear he would remain unwaveringly oblivious to the true causes of rising fuel prices, preferring initially to dwell on irrelevant—actually, counterproductive—measures like suspending the federal gas tax during the summer months or taxing Big Oil. This is akin to thinking one is curing melanoma simply by putting a band-aid on it.
Here’s, first, a quick summary of the two candidates positions on energy, and then a more extensive attempt to analyze their positions and the reasons for them.
Obama incorporates improving national energy efficiency as a central plank of energy policy, in housing and the economy overall. McCain is silent on the topic, utterly silent....Both support clean coal. Both support cap and trade. McCain supports nuclear and more drilling, Obama is silent on both....While both candidates have policies on CO2 abatement, neither even bothers to mention the more immediate, critical issues of sulfur, nitrates, and particulates in our air that cause real, measurable damage to people, plants and all other animal groups. ...Both call for more hybrid cars and electric cars, but neither provides the meaningful financing to encourage the shift to cars that are considerably more expensive than the present auto fleet.
"John McCain is energy illiterate. He's just witless about this stuff," Matt Simmons, prominent oil-industry investment banker and lifelong Republican recently stated at a conference meeting involving a dozen oil and gas men in Lafayette, La. He surprisingly added, "I'm supporting Obama." He then said, "He's just witless about this stuff. McCain says things like, 'Oh, we're going to wean ourselves off foreign oil in four years and build 45 nuclear plants by 2030.' He doesn't have a clue. Here's a man who for at least the past 15 years has strenuously, I mean strenuously, opposed offshore drilling. And now it's 'drill, drill, drill.' And he doesn't have any idea that we don't have any drilling rigs. Or that we don't have any idea of exactly where to drill."
Examining the "oil dependency" positions of the candidates' energy advisers gives us little hope our newly-elected government will meet the peak-oil challenges head-on in 2009. They are Jason Grumet for Obama and James Woolsey for McCain. Woolsey’s public comments do indicate he has at least some understanding of the peak-oil issue. But both Grumet and Woolsey say in the campaign that our "oil dependence" is a problem, and both overstate that plug-ins, flex-fuel vehicles, alternative/renewable fuels can remedy the situation. Obama's adviser serves as executive director of Washington's influential National Commission on Energy Policy (NCEP). The commission's December, 2004 report, "Ending the Energy Stalemate," tells us a lot about what the candidates' advisers are thinking about U.S. oil security. McCain's adviser James Woolsey also serves as one of the NCEP commissioners.
The principal NCEP report co-chair was John Holdren. Dr. Holdren's position on peak oil is therefore of considerable interest in so far as it appears to have influenced the views of the presidential candidates' energy advisers. The question that needs understanding is when will global production of conventional petroleum reach a peak and begin to decline, as U.S. domestic production did around 1970, and as most graphs now show has occurred since 2005. Holdren thinks peak oil is "not very important" because we need to cut our oil dependence in any case because of 1) global warming and 2) supply-side security risks.
Grumet and Woolsey’s position is exactly the same—peak oil concerns are overridden by the environmental (climate) problem and geopolitical risks to the oil supply.
Reaching this peak globally will create what is now occurring: large increases in the price of oil, plus a costly and demanding scramble for alternatives to fill the widening gap created by too-rapid population growth (especially in the U.S.) between the demand for liquid fuel and the supply of conventional petroleum.
The preponderance of evidence says that the peak of conventional oil production is occurring now whereas oil-supply optimists say it probably won’t happen until after 2030, perhaps not until after 2050. Similar arguments go on about conventional supplies of natural gas, the total recoverable resources of which are thought to be not greatly different, in terms of energy content, from those of crude petroleum.
It is clear that the U.S.’s present heavy oil dependence carries substantial economic and political risks in a world where high proportions of the reserves and remaining recoverable resources lie in regions that are unstable and/or controlled by authoritarian governments that have sometimes been inclined to wield oil supply as a weapon. It’s also clear that world oil use is a huge producer of conventional air pollutants, as well as being about equal to coal burning as a contributor to the global buildup of the heat-trapping gas CO2. Given these liabilities, it makes sense to be looking urgently for ways to reduce oil dependence no matter when we think peak oil might occur under business as usual.
A "climate first, peak oil not" view dominates mainstream thinking in Washington, but neither Dr. Holdren, or the presidential advisers say anything appreciative of the importance of the timing of the peak.
In a Mary O’Driscoll interview, Grumet reacted to a question about peak-oil impact, "We were intent, Mary, on not having kind of a Robert Ludlow dirty bomb, you know, airplanes into cooling towers. I mean what we looked at was a number of very, unfortunate, but very realistic events. Civil unrest in Nigeria; unfortunately life is imitating art. I mean we're seeing that now reported in newspapers, coupled with some low-tech terrorism. We looked at al Qaeda hijacking a tanker and crashing it into the Port of Valdez, and at a major explosion at a natural gas facility in Saudi Arabia, which would have taken natural gas off the market requiring them to use crude oil to replace their own domestic energy. And then some terrorism that just caused a real anxiety among the oil producers in Saudi Arabia. You put all that together, you take 3-and-a-half million barrels off the market and let me read to you from my cheat sheet of doom; gasoline prices at $5.74 a gallon, global oil price at $161 a barrel, a recession, two consecutive quarters of a drop in GDP, a drop in consumer confidence by 30 percent, inflation 12.6 percent, a 28 percent decline in the S and P 500, as well as I think some very realistic foreign policy concerns... " Thus rather than focus on peak-oil likelihood and impact, he connects oil dependency with the so-called war on terrorism.
Later Grumet was asked this question by Mary O'Driscoll: Well then, what do we do in the short term?
Jason Grumet: We eat it. I mean this is the reality that I think we were hoping to reveal. You know when the national commission put out its report last December the number one priority issue that we addressed was the need to deal with domestic oil security. I think that we have -- the SPRO is a significant buffer. It's very good news that our economy uses about half as much oil to produce the same GDP now as we did before the first oil embargo. So we are in a better position in some regards than we were before, but we use 25 percent of the world's oil. We possess 3 percent of the world's reserves and we are fundamentally now in a system that is stretched so thin ... now if it wasn't civil unrest in Nigeria it could've been a labor strike in Venezuela. I mean these are very real risks and the answer is prices go up.
Mary O'Driscoll: Right.
Jason Grumet: And we probably wind up using our SUVs a little bit less and saying to ourselves, why hadn't government done something to protect us from this?
Mary O'Driscoll: But I mean you're talking about a recession kind of situation, so I mean will we even be able to drive our SUVs at that time? I mean it's a little unnerving I must say.
Jason Grumet: I did see, I saw the Mad Max movie over the weekend and it kind of prepared me for the realities of $160 a barrel oil.
Mary O'Driscoll: Oh boy!
Jason Grumet: These are career-ending prices for many people in this town [Washington] and I think that, our hope is that collectively the Congress and the administration will start to see that not only do we have to work on these issues as matters of national energy policy, that these are issues of national security, economic strength and our foreign policy prerogative.
It is apparent that Grumet fears the potential effects of a sudden withdrawal of 3.5 million barrels per day (mmb/d) from the world market, and he notes that this would result in "gasoline prices at $5.74 a gallon, global oil price at $161 a barrel, a recession, two consecutive quarters of a drop in GDP, a drop in consumer confidence by 30 percent, inflation 12.6 percent, a 28 percent decline in the S and P 500."
At the end of 2004, the EIA data indicates that world oil production (crude + condensate + gas liquids) stood at 79.905 mmb/d. Grumet doesn’t note that at only 1% annual growth, which is below the historical average since 1983, the average daily oil supply for 2007 should have been 82.326 mmb/d. What was it? Supply stood at 81.190 mmb/d, a shortfall of 1.136 million barrels with respect to the modest 1% growth target. The biggest producer, Saudi Arabia, had basically flat-line production despite repeated promises of increasing production. Most of the "growth" that did occur was in gas liquids, which are not used as a transportation fuel. This has not been a sudden oil shock, but rather forms part of a gradual ongoing oil crunch that some call "peak oil."
Thus, neither Jason Grumet or James Woolsey are completely uninformed about potential oil shocks, but they appear to be very badly informed about the ever-accelerating peak oil squeeze resulting from politically-encouraged population growth mostly in the U.S. but also to a lesser degree in Europe.
The energy plan of Barack Obama generally follows the following NEPC guidelines:
- Increasing and diversifying world oil production while expanding the global network of strategic petroleum reserves.
- Significantly raising federal fuel economy standards for cars and light trucks while reforming the 30-year-old Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) program to allow more flexibility and reduce compliance costs. New standards should be phased in over a five-year period beginning no later than 2010.
- Providing $3 billion over ten years in manufacturer and consumer incentives to encourage domestic production and boost sales of efficient hybrid and advanced diesel vehicles.
"Increasing and diversifying world oil production" obviously did not happen, and it's unlikely to happen. New CAFE standards were enacted in the Energy Independence and Security Act (HR. 6) signed into law in December, 2007, but are belatedly to be phased in by 2020. The NCEP report also advocated ramping up alternative fuels like ethanol to "help to diminish U.S. vulnerability to high oil prices and oil supply disruptions while reducing the transportation sector’s greenhouse gas emissions." Unforeseen cost consequences of this policy soon became apparent, along with its dimunitive impact on our reliance on oil.
Obama’s plan now is to cut oil imports by setting tough new fuel-efficiency standards for cars and trucks and providing retooling assistance to the automakers to help them meet these standards. Also by increasing biofuels production and improving the efficiency of industrial oil use. All these measures would have been undoubtedly helpful 10 years or more ago, but the continuing systemic-growth push mandates (that both Obama and McCain support, or at least seem oblivious of its consequences) means that the industrial cliff is now higher and the gravity pull of peak-oil consequences is much greater.
Obama’s energy-solution steps provide too little help coming too late, an observation which becomes more and more obvious when we consider that a global food crisis is happening at the same time a strategic commodity-availability scarcity is now apparent, and the price of oil recently soared above $140/barrel. Instead of addressing the consequences of peak oil, the candidates are intent on pursuing a politically-correct policy of mitigating anthropogenic climate change so their primary energy initiative is a carbon emissions cap and trade system. This scenario makes problems arising from our oil dependency take a backseat—because they are not perceived as urgent. This approach to our "oil dependency" only makes sense from a climate perspective, which requires us to change our energy consumption and infrastructure over several decades.
The soaring oil price and its underlying causes are the invisible elephant in the room in the presidential race. While many of the candidates' proposals can be chalked up to pandering in an election year, there is no evidence that the candidates get this "peak oil" problem. As the first DOE secretary James Schlesinger said, "We have only two modes—complacency and panic." Complacency rules, and panic awaits and one doesn’t have to be a soothsayer to foresee that anxious day when our leader-to-be exclaims, "Oh, no! Oil is $161/barrel! The economy is falling apart! What do we do now?" This will be similar to the George Bush/Paulson belated decision to institute a public-financed bail out of a suddenly DOA-subprime economy as a last-minute response to a potential disaster.
Of course there is always a range of opinion involved in politics. Even within a political party. Here’s the Democratic Left’s take on Obama: He opposed Rep. John Murtha’s call for immediate withdrawal from Iraq and supported continued funding for the war. He voted in July 2005 to reauthorize the Patriot Act. He did not support an amendment that was part of a bankruptcy bill that would have capped credit card interest rates at 30 percent. He opposed a bill that would have reformed the notorious Mining Law of 1872, which allows mineral companies to rape federal land for profit. He did not back the single-payer health care bill , sponsored by Kucinich and John Conyers. He advocates the death penalty and nuclear power. He backed the class-action "reform" bill—the Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA)—that was part of a large lobbying effort by financial firms, which make up Obama’s second-biggest single bloc of donors. CAFA would effectively shut down state courts as a venue to hear most class-action lawsuits. Workers, under CAFA, would no longer have redress in many of the courts where these cases have a chance of defying powerful corporations. CAFA moves these cases into corporate-friendly federal courts dominated by Republican judges. And history may note that Obama’s support for the bailout was his most egregious act of all.
Maybe the most important point on which to judge the candidates is how they will steer our relationship with China. Barack Obama referred to China's recent space walk as a sign that it was catching up while America floundered. John McCain, attacking waste in Washington, said: "We owe China $500 billion." Mr Obama went one better, saying (more accurately) China "now holds $1,000 billion of our national debt". Linking finance with power, he added: "There has never been a country on earth that saw its economy decline and yet maintained its military superiority." The best that can be said about those comments is that they show both candidates being careful about what they say.
The lesson? Change is definitely needed, but too long-delayed change may have unforeseen consequences. And the Bush Administration’s last-minute economic moves to institute socialism for the rich and capitalism for everyone else makes clear even long-repeated dogma can get thrown out the window, given this government bailout was contrary to the republican party’s long-enduring public statements of non-governmental "interference" in the economy, which may or may not be an indictor of just how desperate the decision-making process was in this process.
Serious exigencies are in the offing. Thus journalists have a serious responsibility to report and present information that will allow voters to cast an informed vote. In order for that to occur better journalism and more analysis by the electorate must occur if we are not to be saddled with a similar eight years of Bush miserable leadership most polls show we now do desperately hope to "change." It is clear that McCain is more of a "Bush Junior" on military and neo-con influenced foreign policy abroad then Obama is, but it is clear the latter is a close second. And both candidates would continue present porous, population-growth immigration policy which exacerbates all our problems, while not being frank or realistic about energy policy. It is clear the momentum toward unsustainability consequences will continue regardless of which candidate wins. And unquestioning reporting probably helped cause Obama and McCain, who are in too many ways more of a Bush "shadow" than a Bush alternative, to be the present, active, viable candidates. That makes clear the system determines the political process, and it is probably important to understand "you can’t buck the system."
This is making one thing crystal clear: It is clearly time to assemble the best possible parachute.
See also: An immigration policy bought and paid for? of 24 Feb 08 by Tim Murray, Obama's Chicago Boys of 12 Jun 08 by Naomi Klein.
The virtual urban-rural water divide
(Illustration: Statue of King Midas who turned water to gold and nearly died of thirst, but later became a worshipper of Pan and nature.)
By Chris Harrison, BAppSc, GDC, October 2008
(This article was also published in Weekly Times Now. See also: Transcript of interview with Maude Barlow, Canadian water rights activist on Background Briefing) of 12 Oct 08.
Two months ago when Premier Brumby told a COAG meeting that there is very little water in the Murray Darling Basin he was stating the obvious. At the time he was justifying Victoria’s apparent reluctance to aid South Australia and provide more water for the Coorong.
This year for the first time in the state’s history the urban population of Melbourne will consume more water than is allocated to the farmlands of Goulburn irrigators. Water availability in the Goulburn Valley is at an all time record low.
The Government knows full well the acute shortage of water in the Murray Darling Basin but is still proceeding with the construction of the North South pipeline. This project has deservedly been widely condemned by grass roots populations, scientists, environmentalists, think tanks and the leaders of every non-labor political party.
The Victorian Government maintains the North South Pipeline is a vital component of Victoria’s emerging water grid. The use of the term “water grid” to describe the pipeline is a misnomer. The pipeline is a one way street. Water can flow in only one direction - from the Murray Darling Basin to Melbourne.
However, the term water grid is valid in the sense that the pipeline allows for the development of privatized water markets in the non-agricultural sector. The pipeline allows investors to purchase water in the Eildon Dam and sell it to Melbourne via the North South Pipeline, to Geelong via the Geelong interconnector and to Bendigo and Ballarat via the Goldfields Superpipe. This network of pipelines gives over 4 million people access to water from Eildon. This population base is expected to double over the next forty years.
The North South Pipeline is strategically important to the Government’s plans to allow urban populations to source their own water, in turn divesting them of a core governmental responsibility. If in the future your town needs water you will be told to go into the market and buy it. The Government will claim they have built the infrastructure to enable you to do this.
The failure to understand some basic principles of water has led the Victorian Government to drive the development of the water grid. This policy will place the state’s urban, environmental and agricultural sectors in competition and at risk.
The neo rationalist economic mantra of water must move to its highest value use has been a monumental failure. The idealism of this mantra has been replaced by the reality, water moves to the place where it can achieve the most financial and political leverage. The Goldfields Super Pipe has already shown us some of these failings, but first some definitions are in order.
When permanent water is traded, the buyer is only purchasing the right to use a specific volume of water on an annual basis. If the dams are empty the buyer has purchased air space in a dam or virtual water. When the dams are full the buyer will receive 100% of the quantity of water purchased, this is real water. The allocation percentage therefore relates directly to how full the dam is and at best it is 100% of what was purchased and at worst no water at all. High security water nearly always delivers 100% of the water purchased and conversely low security water hardly ever delivers the volume purchased. Victorian agriculture uses mainly high security water although there is real evidence that this is no longer the case with the onset of climate change. Over the last 100 years the Eildon dam has not delivered 100% allocation to irrigators on just five occasions, four of these occasions have been in the last six years. The Victorian water grid is based on water sourced from the Eildon dam. The latest connection is the Goldfields Superpipe supplying the rural cities of Bendigo and Ballarat.
The Goldfields Superpipe and associated infrastructure was built at a cost of more than $280 million but it remains essentially dry because the water purchased by water authorities has the same security as in the agricultural sector. The 9% allocation means that of the 20 billion litres of water purchased by Ballarat and Bendigo, less than 2 billion litres of water will be for use this year.
The Goldfields Superpipe experience represents a historic and fundamental change for urban authorities. For the first time urban water security is linked with rural water supply. Urban populations are suffering the same fate as irrigators and the environment.
The Victorian Government is creating water markets forcing rural and urban populations to compete for water. The outcome of this competition will be determined by the relative political and financial strength of each sector. Last year the temporary price of water hit a record high of $1,200 per ML when Adelaide entered the market. The market dramatically fell to just $400 per ML weeks after Adelaide and horticulturalists stopped buying. There was no doubt about the effect of competition.
The problem that we are all facing is that high security water has been very much less secure over the last twelve years. The editor of the Bendigo Weekly has suggested Bendigo purchase more water than is needed to improve the City’s water security. The futility of this approach parallels Penny Wong’s experience. The Federal Government has just spent $50 million for a cited 28 billion litres; just enough to fill several swimming pools of water was available to contribute to the Murray Darling Basin.
Ballarat and Bendigo are looking for 38 billion litres of water from the Superpipe. With water allocations from the Goulburn standing at 9% they will need to purchase 420 billion litres of water entitlement to receive their objective of 38 billion litres of water.
Of course in wetter times when less water is needed, hoarded “virtual” water materializes into “real” water. Perhaps this could be sold through the water market offsetting costs to urban water authorities and possibly government coffers. The temptation urban water authorities have to over secure supply will effectively lock away vast amounts of water from both irrigators and the environment.
The Goldfields Superpipe experience is a blue print for the North South Pipeline and Melbourne. Both the NS pipeline and the Goldfields Superpipe will be tied to irrigation water availability. With Bendigo its allocation percentage is the same as irrigators. With Melbourne, its allocation is tied to water savings generated from the irrigation areas. As Planning Minister Madden said two months ago if it is dry, the North South Pipeline may not have any water. Conditions have worsened since the Minister made that statement however, small amounts of water will only be available to North South pipeline in dry years regardless.
The coalition’s flip flop on using the North South Pipeline is somewhat academic as the Eildon Dam is predicted to take at least 7 years to recover should normal rainfall return. Sufficient water from savings generated by irrigation infrastructure modernization will not be achieved under the scenarios experienced for the past five years. Again the government is misleading the public by quoting amounts of virtual water or the amount of possible savings that can be generated when it is wet. The CSIRO predicts water availability to become scarcer in future and so Melbourne will be forced into the market and that will be to the detriment of urban communities, irrigators and the Murray Darling Basin.
The Victorian Government has failed to understand that cities along with irrigators and the environment need real water, not virtual water. The recent spat between Premier Brumby and Premier Rann, where South Australia was accused of doing little for the Murray River serves to illustrate this point well. Premier Brumby meritoriously claimed Victoria has contributed 120 billion litres to the Murray annually while South Australia has contributed nothing. When MDB CEO Wendy Craik was asked how much of this 120 billion litres was available for the Murray this year at last weeks Senate Committee hearing into the Coorong and lower lakes, she said “none”. The conditions have been so dry that the water only existed as virtual water. The reality is not a cup full of water of the annual 120 billion litres amount has ever been contributed to the Murray.
There you have it, the context is breathtaking.
Bendigo and Ballarat has 20 billion litres of virtual water for the Goldfields Superpipe, but less than 2 billion litres that they can actually drink. Bendigo is expected to harden its stage 4 water restrictions within weeks.
The Murray River has 120 billion litres of virtual water already surrendered from foodbowl irrigation districts (in the 80/20 deal) annually but not a glass full of real water has ever entered the system.
Victorian foodbowl irrigators have over 1,700 billion litres of virtual water but less than 180 billion litres that can actually be used to produce food.
Melbourne’s storages are at 34.5%, 611 billion litres of real water equivalent to nearly 1 ½ years usage, and yet Melbourne wishes to extract 75 billion litres of real water from irrigators and the environment through the North South Pipeline.
Premier Brumby’s promise of ‘NEW WATER’ for all is like the emperors new clothes, just not there.
Those who can’t see the Premiers new clothes are angry and their numbers are growing.
5 reasons why the election results of 14 October was my best Birthday present ever
Canadian Election Results
Conservatives 143 seats
Liberals 76 seats
BQ 50 seats
NDP 37 seats
INP 2seats
Green 0 seats
1. All four parties lost the election. It is another minority government.
2. The Liberals, with their phony “green shift”, in reality a shift into neutral because of their support of immigration policies which would wipe out any gains from carbon taxes, lost 18 seats.
3. Elizabeth May, leader of the counterfeit Green Party, was kept out of parliament when she lost to Conservative Peter Mckay in Nova Scotia. My “strategic” donation was well spent.
4. My own NDP MP, Catherine Bell, lost to Conservative John Duncan. This was like a dagger driven into the heart of politically correct soft greens. Without her as a rallying point, so many of their pet causes will find no patron. Maybe free speech might stand a chance in my community. A contrarian opinion might be heard and printed.
5. Only 58.3% of registered voters voted, the lowest turnout in history. This is not only a resounding rebuke of the alternatives offered, but, I believe of the system of representative “democracy”. Why must I delegate my power to them in the first place? It is assumed that those who don’t vote are apathetic and have deserted their “democratic’ responsibility. I offer an alternative explanation. Perhaps it is those who vote who desert their democratic responsibility by giving legitimacy to them and their system. Have you considered that the 41.7% who didn’t vote are not apathetic but simply wise to the futility of lending credibility to one of these frauds?
Ah yes, but we must make a choice, we are told. Not between black and white but between shades of grey. Really? A choice between McDonalds, Wendy’s, and Arby’s? What if we prefer to fast rather than wolf down fast-food and then purge at leisure? What if we prefer NOT to vote for any of the four GROWTHIST parties and their QUICK MASS IMMIGRATION FIX as a remedy for whatever ails Canadian society. Need skilled labour? Fly in immigrants. Need to support an aged population? Fly in immigrants. Need to stimulate the economy? Fly in immigrants. Need to win over the ethnic vote for our party? Fly in immigrants.
But we don’t need the Economic Council of Canada, the C.D. Howe Institute, the former Director of the Canadian Immigration Service James Bissett , Professor Don DeVoretz of SFU, Dr. Herbert Grubel of SFU or Dr. Michael Healey of UBC or Statscan to file any reports to tell us that immigration is of no net benefit to Canadian society. It is costing us wages, jobs, 60,000 acres of prime farmland a year and putting over 500 endangered species at risk, as well as causing the emission of close to ten million metric tonnes of green house gasses annually.
Those of us who stayed home and didn’t vote actually cast our votes tonight. We cast our votes twice. Once against the growthist one-party state coalition of Conservative-Liberal-NDP-Green, and at the same time, against the system of representative “democracy”.
Call me misguided. But don’t call me apathetic.
Topic:
ACT elections this Saturday
Parliamentary process fails the Murray-Darling
Media Release: 13th October 2008
The rejection of the findings of the Senate Enquiry into the Coorong and the Lower Lakes and the issuing of an alternate minority report#main-fn1">1 by the #appendix2">well-intentioned senators who called for the enquiry is further confirmation that the Murray-Darling crisis cannot be resolved by parliamentary process alone.
On returning to Australia today, the national coordinator of Fair Water Use, Dr Ian Douglas, repeated calls for the declaration of a State of Emergency, giving the Federal Government total control of Murray-Darling water resources and the powers to turn around the progressive ecological and social demise of the Basin, whilst a Royal Commission reviews its administration and governance.
"Australians are rapidly losing patience with its elected representatives on this vital issue", Dr Douglas stated. "We appear to have reached the point where our parliamentarians have run out of options and are left bickering amongst themselves in attempts to gain political brownie points."
"As long as the health of the Basin continues to be subject to the self-interest of state governments which render the Federal Government almost impotent on the issue, it will be impossible to take meaningful action to address the underlying causes and not just the symptoms of the crisis."
"Recent rains may have provided some short-term respite to the Lower Lakes, but this is only one aspect of a Basin-wide predicament and the underlying problem of mismanagement remains. Given BOM and CSIRO predictions, it is frightening to contemplate the state of the Basin in a few years time, if matters are left to take their current course", Dr Douglas concluded.
Catastrophes such as occurred in the Aral Sea clearly demonstrate that social and economic collapse follows close on the heels of ecological degradation.
Fair Water Use has contacted the Prime Minister, the Federal Water Minister and the Federal Minister for the Environment seeking the reasons why they are resisting calls for a State of Emergency and the establishment of a Royal Commission of Enquiry.
Contact: Ian Douglas 0416-022178
Authorised by: Ginny Brown, Media Coordinator media [AT] fairwateruse.com.au +61 (0)414 914248
Fair Water Use (Australia) +61 (0)8 8398 0812
PO Box 384, Balhannah, South Australia 5242
www.fairwateruse.com.au
Footnotes
#main-fn1" id="main-fn1">1. #main-fn1-txt">↑ Both the minority and majority reports can be found within the 1.2M pdf file to be found here.
#appendix1" id="appendix1">Appendix 1: Letter to Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd
13th October 2008
The Prime Minister,
Parliament House,
Canberra
Dear Prime Minister,
Given the failure of the Senate Enquiry into the Coorong and Lower Lakes to come to terms with the underlying anthropogenic causes of the current water crisis, as would be expected given its parochial terms of reference, I am sure that you appreciate that much of the Murray-Darling Basin is still on the verge of ecological collapse.
Should this occur, sadly your government will be remembered domestically and internationally as the regime that oversaw the greatest preventable environmental catastrophe thus-far encountered by this country. The complex and vital ecology of the Basin will not survive the continuing abuse and overuse of its dwindling water resources. Catastrophes such as occurred in the Aral Sea clearly demonstrated that social and economic collapse follows close on the heels of ecological degradation.
As coordinator of this national group, I would like to ask whether you are giving urgent consideration to:
- the declaration of a State of Emergency to enable your Government to override the self interest of the States and allow meaningful action to be taken to address the multiple, non-drought, causes of the crisis.
- the establishment of a Royal Commission of Enquiry into the management and governance of the Murray-Darling Basin: past, present and future.
If you are not contemplating the above actions, we would ask you to detail the reasons why you feel that the crisis does not justify such an approach.
Yours faithfully,
Dr Ian Douglas
National Coordinator
#appendix2" id="appendix2">Appendix 2: Greens Media release Monday 13 October 2008
Greens won't give up on Lakes and Coorong communities
Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young says the Greens will continue to stand up for the communities of the Lower Lakes and Coorong and step up the call for fresh water flows to the parched lower Murray, despite the majority report from a Senate Inquiry saying there is not enough water in the system to help the situation.
The Australian Greens have released a minority report on the Water Management in the Lower Lakes and Coorong Inquiry, recommending 60 gigalitres of fresh water be sourced from the 1500 gigalitres currently available in the southern Murray-Darling Basin.
"The Government has just run up the white flag on this issue," said Senator Hanson-Young.
"It will be the communities around the lakes and Coorong, who are already struggling, who will pay the biggest price.
"If you actually look at the evidence that was presented by witnesses at the Inquiry hearings, it's clear to see that there is enough accessible water in the basin to ensure that we don't go past the critical tipping point.
"What's missing from this sorry situation is the political will. It beggars belief that the Government thinks it's all too hard to source just 60 gigalitres to tide these communities over until spring next year, while we make the necessary changes for the longer-term."
Senator Hanson-Young said that aside from the environmental catastrophe that will ensue if more fresh water is not brought down to the lower Murray, there will be a disastrous impact on the economic and social fabric of the lower Murray communities.
"During the Inquiry we heard from those who live and work around the Lakes and Coorong of the acute impact being felt by the business and wider communities there," she said.
"The Coorong Council tells us that a school there has lost a fifth of their enrolments as young families move elsewhere for better opportunities. The real estate market and tourism industry are both dramatically down on previous years.
"This the human impact of environmental mismanagement."
Senator Hanson-Young called again for a taskforce to be set up to assess the scientific, engineering and economic options for securing the long-term health of the Coorong and Lower Lakes, as was moved for by the Senate last month.
"With the unexpectedly good rain over winter, we dodged a bullet," she said.
"We cannot waste this opportunity to get things right.
"Let's move from talk to action, set up this taskforce, and get solutions underway for the sake of our Storm Boy country."
For more information: Gemma Clark on 0427 604 760
Immigration equals tar sands for greenhouse gases in four years: by Brishen Hoff
Topic:
Stephan Dion and His "Green Shift"
TO THE DELUSIONAL COALITION-MAKERS: How Do You Vote For The Environment In A One-Party Growthist State?
Topic:
Register your community group for 13 Oct dialogue with VCAT
VCAT Planning Consultative Forums
The Planning and Environment List of the Victorian and Civil Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) has advertised "a series of consultative forums with stakeholder groups during 2008" to include Council planning officers, Referral authorities, Lawyers, planners and other consultants who regularly appear at the Tribunal, peak body organisations, and Community planning groups."
The purpose has been given as providing "a forum for users of the Tribunal to raise issues regarding its processes and procedures"; to give "the Tribunal an opportunity to explain any recent changes to its practices within the organisation"; to "encourage discussion about matters of common interest to users generally or specific stakeholder groups, and suggest potential improvements"; and to "Consider the establishment of a small rotating users group that would meet periodically with the Tribunal."
Consultative forums will be held at the Victorian Civil & Administrative Tribunal, Room 2.1,
Level 2, 55 King Street, Melbourne from 4.30pm to 6.00pm on these dates:
17 March 2008 Council planning officers
7 April 2008 Lawyers, consultants, peak bodies
26 May 2008 Referral authorities
7 July 2008 Council planning officers
28 July 2008 Lawyers, consultants, peak bodies
13 October 2008 Community groups
Three combined regional consultative forums will be held for council officers, referral
authorities and local consultants as follows:
28 April 2008 Shepparton
16 June 2008 Gippsland
11 August 2008 Ballarat
“Operation Jaguar”, initiated in 2003, introduced a series of reforms to the operation of the
Planning and Environment List, including the establishment of Friday Practice Day hearings.
The Tribunal claims that it "maintains a process of continuous improvement with respect to its operations" and to be "keen to gather feedback on these reforms from users of the system and on its performance generally, as well as identify further areas of improvement."
The consultative forum will be open to anyone from relevant stakeholder groups provided
they pre-register with the Tribunal. People who are interested in attending should register
their interest by completing a registration form and returning it via post or fax.
For more information contact Lauren Gardiner
Email: Lauren.gardiner[AT]justice.vic.gov.au Telephone: 03 9628 9992 Fax: 03 9628 9891
Plug the Pipe Meets Save the Yarra at Yea, 26 October
The Global market crash and peak oil
(Illustration adapted from Goya's Saturn devouring his children)
[Note: This article was updated on 12 Oct 08 with S&P Graph]
#AreWeThere" id="AreWeThere">Are we there yet?
Global decline in total fuel available should manifest in reduction of total global economic activity.
Does the stock-market sector decline represent a reaction to decline in total economic activity resulting from high oil prices?
(Source is "Oil Price History and Analysis," WTRG Economics' Energy Economist Newsletter, www.wtrg.com/prices.htm. Prices are in 2006 dollars.)
The Dot Com led bubble in the stock market topped in early 2000 then fell pretty much continuously until 2003. Between 2000 and 2003, the market lost approximately 45%. In early 2003, Enron and Worldcom made the global market look as if it was really unraveling. Things looked so grim over 2000-2003 that everyone was very pessimistic. Oil prices had also begun to climb in 2000, but remained well below the levels of 1973 and 1979 oil shocks and dirt cheap compared to prices in 2008. (See diagram). It has also been suggested [1] that the Year 2K preparations had temporarily boosted the popularity of Dot Coms.
On the eve of the Iraq invasion the stock market reached bottom. When the US invaded Iraq, it bounced back.
(Historical NASDAQ composite graph adapted from www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Nasdaq-Composite)
The speculative "dot-com bubble" in information technology over 1995-2001, with its spectacular correction made its former status seem so obviously artificial, that it was expected that the share market would return to more real trading volumes. Instead the market doubled between 2001 and 2006, equivalent to 14% compound interest in that time.
#PropertyBubble" id="PropertyBubble">Property Bubble
Much of this 2001-2006 bubble was predicated on
a) inflated land values which relied on a bull property development market, incorporating new suburbs, new shopping complexes, new roads, and population growth to fuel demand
b) cheap commodities (oil and materials)
The ‘boom’ in property development increased demand for materials and oil, but oil production barely increased at all. So, prices went up. They went up robustly for materials, but they increased spectacularly for oil, as well as increasing for every other form of fuel, energy and electricity – including, coal, gas and uranium.
When fuel and materials prices rose, the margin for profit in property development dropped. One of the ways that industry tends to mitigate the rising cost of fuel and materials is by reducing the cost of labour. Unfortunately, having converted a huge part of the economy to land speculation based on property development, wage reduction had to result in reduction of consumption of property as a commodity, notable by desperate lending and debt repackaging, which accelerated mortgage defaults.
#StockMarket" id="StockMarket">Stock market sound and fury signifying nothing?
The stock-market is an institution which can only survive on an economic surplus sufficient to support the fees it takes from investments. Whilst economic activity, much of it in the property development industry, was growing by up to 14%, fees of 1-3% seemed wearable and the size of the stock market industry grew just like the size of the real-estate industry did with the globalization and acceleration of land-transactions, assisted by new debt-packaging ‘commodities’ like sub primes. But, if real economic activity drops to 2-3% or below, such fees are untenable. To continue to exist in its current size and draw those kinds of fees, or any fees at all, the stock market must radically downsize.
Is what we are seeing in part the cutting back of personnel, agencies and activities in this sector itself?
#HowLow" id="HowLow">How low can the level of economic activities go?
If economic activity is only responding to short-term price variations in a bear market, rather than to total global petroleum limits, then we might expect market indicators in general to continue to see-saw and prices to see-saw. If it is responding to long-term depletion then the level should begin to see-saw between lower and lower parameters since economic activity will not be able to recover in the forseeable future. Any fuels called in to replace petroleum oil and gas will lack that crucial adaptability to our wheeled and air-transport dependent economy. Any developing new technologies for transport will require new infrastructures on a scale which will be difficult and probably impossible to provide without the vast petroleum reserves that the economy has depended on since WW2
#OilPeakWas1979" id="OilPeakWas1979">Global per capita oil peak was 1979
Oil production has not been keeping up with population growth since 1979 and there are signs that it may not be keeping up with economic activity either. There has been widespread belief – the ‘dematerialisation theory’- that the economy became less dependent on oil and other energy since the 1970s oil shocks and so had increased economic production despite declining increase in oil production.[2]
#decoupling" id="decoupling">Does increased efficiency really mean economic ‘decoupling’ from energy?
It is true that industry became less profligate in its use of energy and that real mechanical and technological efficiencies were achieved. A case can also be made that developed economies reduced the amount of fuel calories/joules they used per unit of production since 1973. There is however little or no real evidence to support the idea that using fewer fuel joules amounts to getting more work from less energy.
Investigation indicates that, in reality, industries began to be more careful about the kinds and forms of fuel they used for production, instead of just using any fuel for any operation. Calories and joules in themselves do not accurately reflect the real usefulness of different fuels. Adaptability of particular fuels to different kinds of production is crucial.[2]
Thus, as oil became more costly, we mostly stopped burning it in our home heaters and turned to coal, because coal could immediately be adapted for heating or electricity creation, but not so easily adapted to drive cars and planes. Because oil was immediately available to drive cars and fly planes, it was largely reserved for wheeled and air transport. An early exception to this rule was South Africa when oil was not available due to political embargos, and so oil was made from coal despite huge energy costs entailed by coal liquefaction. No doubt the slave labour conditions in South Africa assisted the economy to adapt.
We now see many more examples of this costly production of synthetic oil from coal, simply because the cost and supply of petroleum is increasingly problematic. China has been making oil from coal for several years now and Australia and other countries are also encouraging investment in this technology. It is not that the process of turning coal to oil has become substantially more efficient, it is that our expectations for economic production have diminished, although governments still rarely admit this. The effect of producing oil from coal will be higher cost for all industrial production using this coal-oil and a reduction in the amount, rate and profit margin of industrial production. As in South Africa, economies newly resorting to coal-oil will rely on reducing the cost of labour in production.
#ResourceAllocation" id="ResourceAllocation">Allocation of resources; wealth and fuel distribution
There was actually a global decline in economic growth from 1973 onwards, but first-world countries did not register this because access to fuels and energy was privileged for them and blocked for third world populations. So it was possible for many of us in the so-called developed economies to believe that there had been a complete recovery from the 1973 and 1979 oil shocks.[2]
Those of us who looked seriously at the decline in living standards, quality of life, ecological health, democracy and political stability in the third world were less confident in the façade of business as usual. Recently signs of similar declines in standards are apparent in the first world.
#OilDepletion" id="OilDepletion">Oil depletion back on the intellectual radar
When the concept of peak oil came back on the radar, especially via groups like Jay Hanson’s energyresources [ AT ] yahoogroups.org in the late 1990s, people who had been aware of the 1973 oil shock were ready to investigate Hubbert Peak calculations of timing of world oil peak and depletion and to look out for market and other signals of peak production not meeting human economic and population demands.
#relationship" id="relationship">Relationship between prices, depletion and demand
Oil prices are often interpreted as an indicator of geological depletion, but they are not reliable in the short term because speculation may drive these prices up, higher costs may cause short term increases in production because more money is available for production, and higher costs will reduce demand for oil, which will eventually cause oil-sellers to lower their prices.
It was generally felt that oil prices in an era of true geological depletion would follow a zig-zag course of supply and demand responses, where high prices would result in what is known as ‘demand destruction’, but would rise again as necessity reasserted demand.
Eventually oil would become a precious fuel and all those things in our economies which formerly relied upon oil would cease to exist except perhaps in some relic industrial communities which might manage to retain strategic access to remaining reserves.
The situation with the ‘First World’ since 1973 and 1979 could represent an early version of such a relic community monopolizing remaining reserves. The method of monopolization could be identified as market sequestration via currency manipulation. Having a currency equal to US dollars, OPEC standard currency from 1974, became the test for inclusion in the monopolizing countries. Oil became very expensive for any country whose currency was of low value vis a vis the USD.
Ironically Russia, which was the first developed country to fall below this access standard, now dominates considerable, if declining, oil and gas reserves, and the US, whose enormous reserves began to decline in the early 1970s, now roams the world in growing desperation, seeking to dominate other peoples’ reserves. Now with its dollar also losing sway, its capacity to monopolise oil reserves via currency domination looks increasingly moot..
#IsOilSupplyAdequate" id="IsOilSupplyAdequate">Are high oil prices an indicator that total oil supply is now not adequate to keep total world economic activity going at its recent rate?
C.J. Cleveland, R.K. Kaufmann, and D.I. Stern's research cited in [3] seemed to show clearly that fuel prices were closely aligned with the economic productivity of the uses they were put to. Expensive petroleum fuels are associated with the most productive industries. This would suggest that as petroleum prices rise there will not be much room for real adjustment by these industries. Passing on the costs to the consumer will result in 'demand reduction', which will result in a slowing of the economy and a smaller stock market index score. Basically, less petroleum means a smaller, slower economy.
The US and other countries' attempts to throw money at the banks in order to induce them to lend for renewed investment are made in the hope that the money will cause a response. Is the absence of response an indication that the banks cannot find any good investments to place? A failure to respond to this credit stimulus may signify that we really have reached a nexus of oil reserves and economic margins, meaning that continuous economic growth and material progress are now things of the past.
#WhatToDo" id="WhatToDo">What to do?
What slack remains in our economic system?
Time.
The pace of economic transactions now requires specialised industries and staff to keep up with. Ordinary people and processes cannot deal with the pace and impact of economic growthism on their environments. Governments have sacrificed democratic engagement to laissez-faire economics because they lack the manpower and time to dedicate parliaments to monitoring and controlling the rate of human engineered material change and disturbance. The languishing world property markets reached extremes of market propulsion before their current collapse.
A slowing down of the economy would be a godsend, but only if we adapt democratically to it.
We can adapt to a smaller, slower economy by forgiving debt, relocalising economies, and working and producing less material things. Operations on a large scale, such as internationally, including telecommunications and travel, should probably become the province of governments to operate, subject to democratic controls. A new, slow and smaller economy cannot afford massive property development just for the sake of cash profits, and it would have to relinquish the daily importation of food and materials from impoverished countries for continuous hectic economic activity. It would have to adapt to local supplies for most things.[4] Population policies, instead of encouraging rapid growth, would need to take advantage of the natural tendency to rein in growth when economic indicators clearly predict shrinking opportunity. We could take advantage of the aging population to slow down activity, anchor communities, and reduce demand. Instead of attempting to replace age with youth through high immigration, we can look forward to the passing of the babyboom through the Australia's demographic intestine and plan for an overall much smaller population.
One thing is for sure, we need a change in political elites, and by that I mean a change in CEOs and mainstream media owners, just as much as in all levels of government. We have been ruled by an elite with an uncritical faith in a reality-divorced notion of continuous economic growth and coasian cash economics. They are not equal to the task of adapting to thermodynamic realities and the system they support disregards serious input from any citizen not endorsed by their own corporate mediatocracy.
#Australia" id="Australia">Australia:
Any Australian having read Wizard Home Loans/Malcolm Turnbull's contribution to the Housing Affordability Inquiry should realise that the much touted genius of Turnbull is only an eidetic reflection of the kind of progress ideology and cash paradigm on which the financial community has pinned its successful ploy for total deregulation, privatisation and ecological vandalism on a grand scale. The opposition offers little or no relief in this leader to our current problems.
Further questions to be answered are: What is the relationship between NASDAQ, Dow Jones, the Australian All Ordinaries, the Hang Seng, FTSE and other stock market measures and total global economic activity?
Contributions to candobetter.org on this and other aspects of the global credit crisis are welcome. Submit them to the “Comments” here or send them to james [ AT ] candobetter org or sheila [ AT ] candobetter org and we will consider publishing them on the front page.
REFERENCES:
Acknowledgement: Thanks to Ilan Goldman for help in describing the recent gains and losses on the market. Thanks to Quark for help with better graph data.
[1] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_bubble (Accessed 8-10-08)
[2] Sheila Newman, “101 Views from Hubbert’s Peak” in The Final Energy Crisis, 2nd Edition, Pluto Press, 2008, citing A. Maddison, Monitoring the World Economy 1820–1992, OECD, Paris, 2000.
[3] Sheila Newman, “101 Views from Hubbert’s Peak” in The Final Energy Crisis, 2nd Edition, Pluto Press, 2008, citing C.J. Cleveland, R.K. Kaufmann, and D.I. Stern, “Aggregation and the Role of Energy in the Economy,” Ecological Economics, vol. 32, issue 2 (2000),
pp. 301–17
[4] Sheila Newman, “101 Views from Hubbert’s Peak” in The Final Energy Crisis, 2nd Edition, Pluto Press, 2008, citing Clive Hamilton, Growth Fetish, Allen & Unwin, Australia, 2003; Pluto Press, London, 2005, last chapter, especially, pp. 218–20:
Relocalization is obviously the best way to develop the solidarity and self-suffi ciency to reorganize work.
Political commentator and climate activist Clive Hamilton writes in Growth Fetish,
"Reduction in working hours is the core demand for the transition to postgrowth society. Overwork not only propels overconsumption but is the cause of severe social dysfunction, with ramifi cations for physical and psychological health as well as family and community life. The natural solution to this is the redistribution of work, a process that could benefit both the unemployed and the overworked."He remarks that “Moves to limit overwork … directly confront the obsession with growth at all costs,” and talks about the liberation of workers “from the compulsion to earn more than they need.”
Because growth is sustained by a constant “barrage of marketing and advertising” Hamilton wants advertising taxed and removed from the public domain, and television broadcast hours limited so as to “allow people to cultivate their relationships, especially with children.”
ASPO Event Barcelona:From Below Ground to Above Ground
The Biosphere and the Lithosphere
Humans live in and from the biosphere. But in the first decade of the
21st Century, 85 percent of the primary energy consumed by the 6.7
billion humans comes from the lithosphere.
About 40 percent of this energy is oil. Another 40 percent comes from
natural gas and coal, and 6 percent more is from uranium.
This represents close to 10 billion tons of oil equivalent, extracted
every year from below ground.
The Technosphere
The technosphere, that recent human creation, transforms the
biosphere, with the extraction, transformation, and transport of
useful materials from the Earth crust at a rate of about 33 billion
tons per year. In addition, about 36 billion tons of the accompanying
ores and some 30 billion tons of earth crust cover are extracted. In
total, the 11 billion tons of equivalent oil of primary energy are
needed every year to extract, transform and transport about 100
billion tons of materials, including the energy materials themselves.
Without that energy, these movements will not be possible. With
decreasing energy supplies, the extraction of materials and the
related services will decrease accordingly.
Nature of this sphere
Being a sphere, the Planet is limited in size. It is obvious,but in
this world needs to be continuously emphasized, that the resources
contained in it are also limited. Geologists in general and the ASPO
community in particular, know very well that the extraction of
resources from the lithosphere is subject to a given pattern that
limits and shapes the extraction rates. It has, more or less, the
form of a bell shaped curve, shown in its logo. It is the Hubbert
curve. Even admitting that the shape of the curve may drift apart in
some cases, from the theoretical one, due to social causes, the
principle is out of question.
Resource peaks and energy flows
And some of us feel that we are reaching the oil peak in our ascent,
and other neighbouring peaks as well, even the present financial
storms and other geopolitical clouds may disguise that cordillera, as
exclusively a monetary problem.
Then, it is a question of flows, diminishing flows, rather than the
end of oil or gas. It is a physical and geological issue, rather than
an economic one. Pouring more paper money into the markets will not
help to realize where we are. Those present frentic movements very
much resemble the classic film scenes of thieves throwing and
dispersing the bank notes of the loot in the middle of a crowd, to
create a momentary convulsion and thus, trying to escape from the
police, while keeping a couple of rolls in the pockets.
Limits of human economics
As M. King Hubbert said: `There's no monetary mechanism in existence
that can find oil that God didn't put there and the price isn't going
to increase that amount of oil'. The same can be applied for all
other materials that humans demand today in increasing amounts.
And there is a clear evidence that global economic growth and global
energy consumption run parallel and are very directly related,
despite some anomalies in specific countries, which claim
improvements in efficiency, in the GPD/Unit of product or service
ratio, while diverting and outsourcing the burden to third countries
o regions. Technology improvements and higher financial investments
help to delay the peak or plateau of the bell curve or reshape it,
but can neither fight the reality of gradual depletion.
There are also clear indicators that greenhouse and other gas
emissions are also directly related to the fossil fuels, extracted
from the lithosphere and burnt to provide goods and ser-vices to
society.
However, classical economists still work, think and behave as if they
lived on a flat Earth with limitless resources to be made available
by Man's ingenuity and market forces.
Very serious issues are at stake caused by the growing gap between
the available fuel supply, which is subject to natural depletion and
the ever growing demand implied by classical economic theory.
Future survival
In the same way as a seed takes time to emerge from the ground and
form a plant, we will soon have to face the paradox and the dilemma
of returning to the biosphere and its resources for survival, and
rely more and more on renewable energy resources above ground.
The Sun projects onto the Earth some 8,500 times more primary energy
than we consume, but it is, again, rather than a question of volumes,
a matter of flows and feasible energy capture rates of this as
beautiful as dispersed energy.
We urgently need to determine the extent to which we can maintain the
present socio-political and technological environment with more of
the renewable energy resources from the biosphere and less from the
lithosphere, by using the human ingenuity and technology; or by
reshaping our way of living; or perhaps and better, a wise
combination of both.
Seventh ASPO International conference in Barcelona, 20-21 October 2008
We will be analyzing and discussing all these important questions in
detail in the 7th. ASPO (Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas) International Conference at the World Trade Center in Barcelona, Spain, on October 20th and 21st.
See the Official program (pdf file) "From Below Ground to Above Ground"
Join us by registering here
For questions and contacts, please address to
For more information http://www.aspo-spain.org/aspo7
Welcome to Barcelona.
Article by Pedro from Madrid, subtitled by Sheila Newman for candobetter.org
Desalination Project Bass Coast - Public Disquiet
SPA response to Andrew Bolt on unsustainable pop growth
THE FACTS ARE IN FOLKS: We Don't Need Growth To Get Rich
Crunch time for Sydney: Rees
Topic:
David Suzuki on population in Cosmos magazine
Topic:
Mt Macedon Ranges under attack by Victorian government
(Photo:Justin Madden, Victorian Planning Minister)
Victorian Planning dictators aim at iconic Macedon Ranges (Hanging Rock region). Where will it end? Call to Victorians and the world ....
We need your help - to help Macedon Ranges.
Background
Revisionist Brumby Planning Dept airbrushes major Planning policy statement
At last Wednesday’s Macedon Ranges Shire Council meeting, Council announced it had received an email from the Department of Planning and Community Development instructing it to remove all references to Statement of Planning Policy No. 8 – Macedon Ranges and Surrounds [SPP8] from the planning scheme. This decision has been made without public consultation.
Significance of SPP8
SPP8 - the ‘Macedon Ranges policy’ – was introduced as State policy underpinned by legislation in 1975. The policy recognises how special, significant and sensitive this area is, and its purpose is to protect Macedon Ranges from overdevelopment and development that damages environmental and landscape qualities.
(Hanging Rock, iconic site of famous schoolgirl disappearance subject of film, Picnic at Hanging Rock)
Since 2000, SPP8 has been downgraded to Local Policy (Clause 22.01). As SPP8 says limit development and maintain rural character, it gets in the way of the current ‘generic’ Victoria Planning Provisions [VPPs] which the government is trying to impose undemocratically on Victorians and their landscape.
Promises, promises...
Since 2004, MRRA has campaigned to have SPP8 reinstated as State policy so it can again take precedence over other policies and sections in our planning scheme. We’ve had promises to ‘protect’ from Planning Ministers, but it still hasn’t happened.
Soviet style revisionism used for capitalist over-development
Now the Department dictates the removal of this critical policy. References to SPP8 have, without consultation, already been removed from the 2007 Gisborne Outline Development Plan. MRRA wrote to the Minister for Planning, Justin Madden, on August 24 2008 asking to discuss this, but has not yet received a response.
Residents disempowered, democracy gutted, environment unprotected
Despite difficulties implementing it, loss of SPP8 will be a mortal blow for Macedon Ranges. There will be nothing left that recognises the environmental sensitivity of this iconic and historic landscape and sets the mysterious and beautiful, geologically remarkable Macedon Ranges apart from other semi-rural places.
Australians and the world must not accept this. Don't let being outside Australia stop you from showing your support to MRRA. Democracy is a concern for responsible citizens everywhere.
SPP8 needs to become Victorian State policy again. It has to take precedence over the ‘one size fits all’ zones and controls in the VPPs, such as the Residential 1 zone and ResCode, which presently prevail. Development under these policies overwhelms local and regional diversity and human rights to self-government.
Action
The concern of Mt Macedon Residents' Association (MRRA) is so strong that they have started a “Keep Macedon Ranges Rural” petition, to the Victorian Legislative Assembly (lower house).
You can leave a brief comment on this site as well.
Hard copies are also available from secretary[AT]mrra.asn.au. Send signed petition sheets back to MRRA: PO Box 359, Woodend, 3442.
The aim is to get an MP to present the petition to Parliament in early December.
The petition sheets have spaces for signatures on the back of them, so twice the signatures can go on one piece of paper (NOTE: the petition text MUST appear on every petition sheet or the sheet will be rejected). If you print double-sided for signatures on the front and the back, make really sure the petition text appears on the front.
Victorians who would like to do more are urged to network, to link to the MRRA petition site; to send this article on to email contacts; to distribute copies of the petition form to local shops, asking them to put it on their counters; to letterbox their street; to tell friends and family and everyone – Macedon Ranges is of State level significance, (and world-famous) and what happens here is of interest to all. Consider passing the petition around and getting people at work to sign up, or even take a petition form to their friends, family or groups.
And let key politicians know what you think of this planning despotism and vandalism. Your local pollie/s is a good place to start but don’t forget some of the other key players as well, such as Premier Brumby, the Minister for Planning, the Minister for Environment and the Minister for Water. Opposition Shadow ministers and the leaders of all political parties and independents would surely appreciate hearing from you as well. Contact details for the main players are at the MRRA website
What type of Macedon Ranges do we want Victorian and Australian children to inherit: An industrial precinct? A high density, metropolitan landscape? Units or high rise on Mt. Macedon? Housing estates up to Hanging Rock?
This will be the last chance for the public to turn things around for Macedon Ranges. Once SPP8 is gone, it’s gone forever. The time to act is now. It is also a good time to act because the global melt-down has exposed for a scam the develop-and-be-damned policy of Australian state Governments.
Make as much noise as possible.
Tell as many people as possible.
Get as many signatures as possible – thousands!
Let Parliament know that the world is watching and that Victoria means it when it says “Keep Macedon Ranges Rural”.
If you need help or have questions or comments: 03 5427 1481, +61 3 5427 1481 (from overseas), secretary[AT]mrra.asn.au
How decades of privatisation has impoverished NSW
A short article in the The Australian Financial Review of 24 September 2008 leaves the reader wondering what exactly was the point of NSW's extensive program of privatisations going back to the 1980's.
The article, "Bits and pieces won't fetch $1 billion" by Tracey Ong purports to show what options are available to the NSW government in its planned mini-budget to cover the claimed $1 billion-plus shortfall in its budget.
The article states, "The problem for Mr Rees is that the once-rich government asset portfolio has been depleted after two decades of reform." This 'reform' left, according to the article, apart from the electricity assets, the sale of which is now politically impossible, "only a handful of assets... worth offloading."
This surely begs a question from those who have held out privatisation to us as the panacea for all of our economic ills: Exactly what of enduring benefit has been achieved by past waves of privatisation?
Two of the principle justifications given for privatisation have been:
- It would free up government money in order that it could be spent on 'core' government responsibilities; and
- It would make the whole economy run more efficiently.
So what then happened to all the money 'freed up' from past privatisations? Why is it, as we are told, that NSW faces a financial crisis? If privatisation is supposed to make economies run more efficiently, how is it that NSW's economy has contracted?
The article lists the "prize assets" already sold: "TAB, State Bank and the Government Insurance Office (GIO)". Other assets that the article failed to mention are the Government Printing Office Printing, the Homebush abbattoir and the State brickworks, privatised by Greiner and FreightCorp privatised by Carr in 2002. In addition, large numbers of government buildings, housing stock and land were sold off, beginning from the time of the Wran Labor Government. That process was accelerated by the Greiner Liberal Government which came to power in 1988.
Much of NSW's roads have also been privatised and turned into toll-ways since the time of Unsworth under the different guise of "Public Private Partnerships", including the infamous Cross-City Tunnel that Carr inflicted upon the Sydney public.
This all begs further questions: How much longer can the process of privatisation continue, and what should the NSW government do to balance its budget once all the remaining assets are gone?
Typically, the article only proposes further privatisation to solve NSW's financial crisis. Other possible measures such as raising loans or obtaining additional revenue are not even contemplated.
Ong gives a list of assets which she tells us could be sold off immediately:
Asset | Value | Operating Revenue |
Forests NSW | AU$3.1billion | $AU280million |
Sydney Ferries | Unclear | AU$119million |
WSN Environmental Solutions | AU$203million | AU$18.5million |
State Lotteries | AU$553million | AU$50.3million |
Others ruled out as politically too difficult include: Ports, Landcom, the four water corporations and, of course, electricity.
The article points out, even if any of the assets were sold, they would be sold at firesale prices.
Canadian Ronald Wright in A short history of progress (2004) wrote of economic neo-liberalism which demands privatisation of publicly owned assets:
"After the Second World War, a consensus emerged to deal with the roots of violence by creating international institutions and democratically managed forms of capitalism based on Keynesian economics and America's New Deal. This policy, although far from perfect, succeeded in Europe, Japan and some parts of the Third World. ...
"To undermine that post-war consensus and return to to archaic political patterns is to walk back into the bloody past. Yet that is exactly what the New Right has achieved since the late 1970s, rewrapping the old ideas as new and using them to transfer the levers of power from elected governments to unelected corporations -- a project sold as 'tax-cutting' and 'deregulation' by the Right's courtiers in the media, ... The conceit of laissez-faire economics -- that if you let the horses guzzle enough oats, something will go through for the sparrows -- has been tried many times, leaving ruin and social wreckage."(pp126-127)
NSW's record seems to confirm that privatisation is, indeed, just old-fashioned plunder as practised by the Conquistadores, Vikings, Mongols, etc. Revenue generating assets paid for over previous decades by taxpayers have apparently been sold off for no better reason than to line the pockets of private investors, bankers and stockbrokers.
The rightful owners of these assets are the public of NSW, who have paid for them through taxes and hefty bills, and no Government has the right to "offload" these assets without their informed consent. Whenever they have been consulted they have rejected it overwhelmingly. This, and not the failure to get the Labor Party's support, as the article implies, is the principle reason why electricity privatisation was stopped.
Whilst it is true that "domestic and overseas players lining up to get a slice of the action" were disappointed, given the harm already done to NSW by these parasites the NSW public surely owes them no more favours.
To the extent that the alleged NSW financial crisis (as opposed to the global financial crisis) is real it should be fixed by the raising of loans or by finding other fair and equitable means to raise revenue. It should not be "fixed" by selling off yet more family silver.
This article was originally posted on 20 Sep 2008
. It was revised on 1 Oct with the help of Sheila Newman, editor of The Final Energy Crisis (2nd edition).
See also: "Media contempt for facts in NSW electricity privatisation debate" of 19 Sep 08.
What about a Child-LESS Benefit Plan? Canadian Elections 2008
Will mass immigration mean mass starvation?
Topic:
In Canada Some Human Rights Are Practically Invisible
Grave loss of native fauna on the Mornington Peninsula, Victoria, Australia
In 1845 the Mornington Peninsula was thick with wildlife: herds of kangaroos, wombats, wallabies, many echidnas and koalas and glorious birds, all unused to man and quite tame and inquisitive. ...wonderful trees, abundance of silver wattles, when in blossom, gilded the country and filled the air deliciously with their sweetness. Now population growth is turning the Peninsula into a desert. Research and graphs by Malcolm Legg and Hans Brunner.
Original fauna
Howitt in 1845 wrote:
“ The Peninsula was thick with wildlife, with herds of kangaroos, wombats, wallabies, many echidnas and koalas and glorious birds, all unused to man and quite tame and inquisitive. He described the wonderful trees and abundance of silver wattles which, when in blossom, made the whole country golden and the whole atmosphere filled deliciously with their sweetness.”
Henry Tuck and others also stated that Kangaroos were like herds of sheep and could never be shot out, and bandicoots and possums were in hundreds and that the native cat was one of the commonest animals.
Ms. Cavill, who lives next to the Moorooduc Quarry Reserve commented in her Masters Thesis:
“In the 1930’s we found bush around us, a whole wonderland of animals, wild flowers, birds, hollow trees, gullies and ground water ways.
Koalas grunted all night, wombats, kangaroos, wallabies, possums, echidnas, bush- and water rats, flying foxes and bandicoots were abundant and tame. At night the frogs roared in the darkness . In the evening, swarms of birds arrived in v-shaped formations and landed on the swamp. Black – and tiger snakes were common around the huge Moorooduc swamp that lay below our property and brown snakes and copperhead were a nuisance around the house.
Our delight in exploring the swamp with its sheets of water, covered with swans and ducks, and its spongy islands of moss and tee-tree was always tempered by fear of these snakes.
On our horse rides their was a never failing source of interest in the discovering new wild flowers, gullies of maiden ferns, orchids, minute wild strawberries, egg and bacon bushes and swathes pink and white heath.
There were several other similar reports made by Wheelwright, Kenyon and Hobson, mentioning also many other species and all describing the Mornington Peninsula as teeming with wild life.
Based on historical and recent records there were at least 37 species of mammals on the Peninsula in those early days.
Much the same could have also been said about the many species of birds, reptiles and amphibians. Hobson in 1837 observed the gigantic crane or brolga and the native turkey ( Australian Bustard ). They are now listed as threatened fauna in Victoria.
The loss of native fauna
With the arrival of pioneers and settlers, timber cutters removed nearly all the mature trees on the Peninsula and shipped them to Melbourne or used them to build railway lines or as fuel to drive stone crushers etc. or to clear land for grazing.
Kangaroos were slaughtered in their thousands on single drives and some of the meat, together with koalas and possums was sent to Melbourne for food. Animals were also destroyed because of competition with sheep and cattle grazing.
Much of the land was then used for farming and for fruit orchards. The clearing of land caused subsequently massive soil erosion and mega-tons of good soil was washed into the sea especially along Balcomb Creek.
With the ever increasing number of people arriving on the Peninsula, the remaining natural bush was gradually destroyed and fragmented.
Chris Tzaros recently worked out that for every 100 hectares of woodland cleared, between 1000-2000 woodland dependent birds are lost. These figures could be even higher for mammals, reptiles and amphibians.
With this drastic decrease of suitable habitat for most native birds and mammals, many species have now become locally extinct. (See graph below).
Doug Robinson has estimated that about 50% of birds which originally existed on the Peninsula are now either locally extinct or are threatened. Ground nesting birds have suffered most, especially because of predation by foxes and cats.
A Mr. Woolley and others also used to shoot ducks in the 1880’s for a living until they were almost shot out.
Later, larrikins delighted in the shooting of wild life when the pubs were closed after 6 O’clock.
In the quarry area bandicoots and kangaroos lasted till about 1940 and wombats and the eastern quoll till about 1960. By 1970 koalas, sugar gliders and antechinuses were still present but have since declined drastically and have become extremely rare and the antechinuses are now extinct in the Frankston area.
There is also a growing concern over a serious decline of invertebrates. Subsequently, there are concerns for the future of many species of bird, mammals and amphibians that feed on them. Habitat loss and habitat fragmentation as well as the over use of pesticides has to be the main reason.
In summary, we have taken over all the prime land on the Mornington Peninsula . The rest of nature is forced to make do with what is left which amounts to less than 5 % of a much- reduced quality of habitat. Plainly, this is the major factor resulting in the ongoing, local species extinction and in an increase in ecosystem stress.
Loss of mammalian species on the Peninsula:
From 37 original species = locally extinct and endangered 25 species = 66%
Loss of mammalian species in the Frankston area:
From 37 original species = locally extinct and endangered 28 species = 76 %
To cap it all, we now have, in a large number of reserves, more introduced mammalian species such as the fox, cat, dog, rabbit, black rat, brown rat and house mouse, than native species. (This does not include all the farm animals such as horses, cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, and deer etc. that take up land originally used by native animals.)
The graph (data from Malcolm Legg ) shows the loss of mammals on the Mornington Peninsula. Since then, two more species had to be shifted to the “extinct” section, namely, the Wombat and the Southern Brown Bandicoot.
The recent, local loss of the Southern Brown Bandicoot is one of the latest examples. In spite of all the lobbying and by-partisan political support, no sufficient efforts have been made to safe this species. This Bandicoot has been in great numbers all over the Peninsula and its disappearance during the last thirty years has been well recognised and documented. This is yet another frustrating, shameful, local extinction story of an iconic Australian species.
Hans Brunner
(Hans Brunner is a Peninsula Wildife Biologist and internationally recognised as a Forensic hair identification expert, through his work identifying dingo hairs in the Azaria Chamberlain appeal and later in identifying a possible new hominid species in Indonesia.)
Arrogant Letter from Victorian Premier refuses to deal with population impact problems
Office of the Premier of Victoria
1 Treasury Place
GPO Box 4912VV
Melbourne Victoria 3002
DX210753
Telephone: (03) 96515000
Facsimile: (03) 96515298
Email: premier [AT] dpc.vic.gov.au
Internet: www.premier.vic.gov.au
22 September 2008
Our Ref D08/321239
Dr Alistair Harkness MP
Member for Frankston
140 Young Street
FRANKSTON VIC 3199
Dear Dr Harkness
VICTORIA'S POPULATION
Thank you for your representation to the Premier on behalf of your constituent, Mr Hans Brunner, regarding Victoria's population. I am responding on behalf of the Premier.
Victoria's population continues to grow strongly, with growth driven primarily by high levels of net overseas migration.
The Government continues to emphasise the importance of migration, multiculturalism and population growth in Victoria. This contributes to our diversity and flexible skills base, giving us an economy that is more innovative and competitive.
In this context, the Victorian Government is comfortable with the current population growth rate of 1.6 per cent per annum and is not intending to review its population or immigration policies.
Thank you again for your letter to the Premier. I hope that this information is of use.
Yours sincerely,
Nicholas Reece
Acting Chief of Staff
Your details will be dealt with in accordance with the Public Records Act 1973 and the Information Privacy Act 2000. Should you have any queries or wish to gain access to your personal information held by this Department please contact our Privacy Officer at the above address.
A tale of two buildings ... Lucas fails Queenslanders
What you can do: attend Virtual Inaugural meeting of Immigrants' Memorial Association to be held 19 Oct 08.
What has been done: Protest at Community Cabinet at 12:45PM on Sunday 14 Sep at Belmont State School, Old Cleveland Road, Carindale to protest Minister Paul Lucas's decision to disallow the appeal.
Yungaba Action Group Inc Media Release 10 September 2008
Originally published 2008-09-12 13:25:54 +1000
The recent action by Paul Lucas, Minister for Infrastructure and Planning, in "calling in" the approval process for the redevelopment of the heritage listed "Yungaba" site stands in stark contrast to the action taken by the Government against the owners of "Keating House" another heritage listed building located at Indooroopilly.
While Mr Lucas has effectively removed the proper planning process from the State owned "Yungaba" by the "calling in" of the development application, thus facilitating the redevelopment of the site, the owners of "Keating House" stand to be penalised to the extent of $75,000 for allowing the building to fall into disrepair.
Ms Delene Cuddihy, convenor of the Yungaba Action Group (www.yungaba.org.au) said that Mr. Lucas, by using his "call in" powers and thwarting the normal appeal process, had demonstrated for all to see just how inconsistent and arrogant the Bligh Government had become.
She said "The actions of Mr. Lucas amounted to nothing short of profound hypocrisy and inconsistency and he should reverse his "call in" action if for no other reason than to show that the legal process was not subject to political tampering other than in the most extreme situations e.g. affecting the security of the State.".
Ms Cuddihy said that Yungaba was a State (taxpayer) owned and heritage listed property with a long and rich history of Queensland's past immigration, directly touching many Queensland families. Unfortunately, as the site is located in a well-known prime real estate precinct, it also has enormous speculative potential.
She said that the privately owned "Keating House", came to the attention of Queenslanders only recently, owing to its alleged state of disrepair. Yet, this type of neglect has been allowed to creep in at Yungaba since the sale of the property started looking as a safe bet for Government.
Ms Cuddihy said that large parts of Yungaba have been condemned as unsafe. She asks "How could they let this happen to one of the ten most significant buildings in Queensland history? This is an indictment on their ability to manage Queensland's heritage. I'm sure they won't fine themselves for allowing the building to fall into disrepair."
Ms Cuddihy said the Yungaba Action Group would continue to make representations to the Minister in an effort to save "Yungaba", but suggested the Minister was now expediting the matter, without public consultation, to ensure it was finalised well before the State election.
For further information on the peaceful Public Rally at the Community Cabinet Consultation Meeting on Sunday 14th September, commencing 1.00pm at the Belmont State School, Old Cleveland Road, Carindale
Media contact: Ms Delene Cuddihy on 0402 597 259
#protest" id="protest">Urgent: please attend protest Sunday 14 September
We are inviting you to our protest at the Community Cabinet. The theme of the protest is "Save Yungaba - excise it from the current development application and save it for future generations of Queenslanders".
The protest is about the failure of the State Government to consult with the community on the sale of Yungaba. It has used it's "call in" powers to shut down the YAG appeal to the development.
Here are the details:
Assemble: 12.45pm for a 1.00pm start.
Date: Sunday 14 September, 2008
Venue: outside Community Cabinet at Belmont State School, Old Cleveland Road, Carindale (on your right after Carindale Shopping Centre if you are coming from the city)
Community Cabinet: We will be able to enter the Community Cabinet if we leave any placards outside. Questions will be taken from the floor at the Forum by the Premier. Get your Yungaba questions ready! Following the one hour Forum, there will be informal deputations to ministers for one hour (2.30 - 3.30pm) and this will be followed by formal deputations to ministers. YAG asked to see Minister Lucas, instead we have been given an appointment with his Parliamentary Secretary at 3.30pm.
I do hope you are able to come out and stand up for Yungaba with us.
If you are intending to come, could you give me an indication?
Delene Cuddihy
Yungaba Action Group
Ph 040 259 250
dc [AT] yungaba org au
12 September 2008
Carbon capture laws dodge liability question
Carbon Sequestration bill up for consideration
According to the Australian Greens, Rudd Government legislation setting up a regulatory framework for carbon capture and storage, vaunted as a 'world first', fails to deal with the biggest regulatory issue the industry faces. They state that, if carbon dioxide leaks, who will carry liability will become a problem without a solution in the legislation proposed.
Australian Greens Senator Christine Milne has made additional comments to the Senate Inquiry Report into the Bill tabled today. It sets out the Greens position that the taxpayer must not be saddled with the risk while coal companies walk away with the profits.
Senator Milne said "Who will carry the liability if and when stored carbon leaks? The Government apparently thinks this question doesn't need to be answered, but it is quite obvious that that approach would leave everybody - supporters and opponents of goesequestration alike - in limbo."
She said that Prime Minister Rudd would have to be prepared for some tough questions on liability. In her opinion, the world would not be coming to Australia for advice about carbon sequestration if it squibs on the biggest question.
"The Greens will work hard to ensure that the coal multinationals do not get away with privatising their massive profits and socialising their risk with geosequestration."
Companies should post bond to cover future liability
Senator Milne stated that "My additional comments to this report set out a proposal under which companies seeking to bury carbon dioxide would post a bond to cover their future liability in case the climate-changing gas leaks after the company moves on."
She said, "That would be a reasonable and responsible approach to take, ensuring that those seeking to make profits also carry the risk.
"While the Coalition predictably wants the taxpayer to carry the can for coal corporations, the Government, inexplicably, thinks it is OK to leave the liability question unanswered. I am committed to working with the Government on amendments to make sure ordinary Australians don't end up hurt by the short-sighted greed of the coal sector."
Australia should be a global solar hub
The senator said that a sensible plan for the future would see Australia pitched as a global solar hub, taking advantage of our world's best solar scientists. There should be a forward-thinking strategy to help coal communities move into a green-collar future.
"Instead, Mr Rudd is deepening Australia's economic vulnerability by locking us into a risky, unproven technofix that is already being leapfrogged by the truly clean renewable energy and energy efficiency alternatives."
(A technofix is a technical solution for a systemic problem which may or may not work and therefore should not be relied upon.)
Source: Greens Press release, Canberra, Tuesday, 23 September 2008
Contact: Tim Hollo on 0437 587 562
The Greens invite people to "Come join the conversation at GreensBlog
Unusual Public meeting to discuss Melbourne City Council Election
Here's some more about the meeting:
"What do we want? Live, work, rest and play."
The CBD residents associations invite you to come to an open meeting to discuss
Our City’s future tonight
Wednesday 24th September 2008
at 6pm
in the Bluestone Room, Coopers Inn
(cnr Exhibition St and Little Lonsdale St)*
* Sorry – this venue has no facilities for wheelchair access.
There will be a CITY COUNCIL ELECTION on 29th November.
It is vital that we all take an active part to ensure that we elect a Council that works for Melbourne.
The current Council spends too much time and effort squabbling amongst itself.
We must have a council that WORKS FOR MELBOURNE
Come and make your voice heard. Let us work together. We can make it happen.
Editor's comment:
This is a sign of the times. People are realising that they must take democracy into their own hands or lose it at government hands.
Truth and immigration
The following article is a welcome relief from the near unanimity of the Canadian newsmedia in regard to immigration. However, I did have two minor concerns in an otherwise helpful and informative article. I have addressed these by adding footnotes to the article. - JS, 21 Sep 08
Rather than climbing over each other promising to increase the number of immigrants to Canada, party leaders should acknowledge that levels are already too high.
James Bissett, Citizen Special
Published in Ottawa Citizen: Thursday, 18 September 2008
We sometimes complain about politicians who don't do what they promise to do after they get elected. Ironically, it is sometimes much better for the country when some of these promises are broken.
Let's hope, for example, that the promises made by our political leaders to raise immigration levels and provide more money for immigrant organizations are not kept.
Either our political leaders do not know that Canada is facing an immigration crisis or they care more about gaining a few more so-called "ethnic voters" than they do about telling the truth about immigration.
There is only one reason why our political parties push for high immigration intake and that is they see every new immigrant as a potential vote for their party#main-fn1">1.
Canada is taking far too many immigrants and the leaders of all the parties are promising to take even more.
There are already close to a million immigrants waiting in the backlog to come here. They have all met the requirements and by law must be admitted. There is also a backlog of 62,000 asylum seekers before the refugee board and even if these are not found to be genuine refugees most will be allowed to stay. In addition, there are between 150,000 and 200,000 temporary workers now in the country and here again it is unlikely many of them will ever go home.
Despite these extraordinary numbers, the Harper government wants to raise the immigration intake next year to 265,000. The Liberals and the New Democrats have said they want even more, as much as one per cent of our population, or 333,000 each year.
These are enormous numbers and even in the best of times would place a serious burden on the economy and on the already strained infrastructure of the three major urban centres where most of them would end up.
Let's face the facts -- when there is a turndown in the world economy and dire predictions of serious recession or worse this is not the time to be bringing thousands of newcomers to Canada. In July of this year Ontario alone lost 55,000 jobs -- so what is the rationale for more immigration? The fact is there is no valid rationale. There is only one reason why our political parties push for high immigration intake and that is they see every new immigrant as a potential vote for their party. This is not only irresponsible; it borders on culpable negligence.
There are few economists today who argue that immigration helps the economy in any significant way. Studies in Canada since the mid-1980s have pointed out that immigration has little impact on the economic welfare of the receiving country and similar studies in the United States and Britain have reached the same conclusion. Comprehensive studies by George Borjas, the world's most renown immigration economist at Harvard have shown that immigration's only significant impact is to reduce the wages of native workers.
Our politicians justify their desire for more immigrants by raising the spectre of an aging population and tell us immigration is the only answer to this dilemma, and yet there is not a shred of truth to this argument. Immigration does not provide the answer to population aging and there is a multiplicity of studies done in Canada and elsewhere that proves this.
(Second page of article begins.)
Moreover, there is no evidence that a larger labour force necessarily leads to economic progress. Many countries whose labour forces are shrinking are still enjoying economic buoyancy. Finland, Switzerland and Japan are only a few examples of countries that do not rely on massive immigration to succeed.
Productivity is the answer to economic success, not a larger population.
Most Canadians assume that our immigrants are selected because they have skills, training and education that will enable them to enhance our labour force but only about 18 to 20 per cent of our immigrants are selected for economic factors. By far the bulk of the immigrants we receive come here because they are sponsored by relatives or because of so-called humanitarian reasons and none of these have to meet the "points system" of selection#main-fn2">2.
This is why over 50 per cent of recent immigrants are living below the poverty line and why they are not earning nearly the wages paid to equivalent Canadian workers.
It also explains why a study published this year by professor Herbert Grubel of Simon Fraser University revealed that the 2.5 million immigrants who came to Canada between 1990 and 2002 received $18.3 billion more in government services and benefits in 2002 than they paid in taxes. As Prof. Grubel points out, this amount is more than the federal government spent on health care and twice what was spent on defence in the fiscal year of 2000/2001. Isn't it time our party leaders were made aware of this study?
In the discussions about immigration we never hear from our political leaders about the serious environmental problems caused by the addition of over a quarter of a million immigrants each year. Most of our immigrants are coming from developing countries of Asia where their "ecological footprint" is tiny compared to the average Canadian but within months of arrival here the immigrant's footprint has increased to our giant size.
We have already experienced the impact mass migration has had on the health, education, traffic, social services and crime rates of our three major urban centres. It may be that cutting the immigration flow in half would do more than any gas tax to help reduce our environmental pollution.
If immigration is to be an issue in the election campaign then let us insist that the real issues be discussed and that our politicians contribute more to the debate than promising higher levels and more money to immigrant groups. Canadians and immigrants deserve better.
Footnotes
#main-fn1" id="main-fn1">1. #main-fn1-txt">↑ James Bissett may have overlooked the "growth lobby". The growth lobby was the subject of Sheila Newman's 2002 "Master's Thesis The Growth Lobby and its Absence : The Relationship between the Property Development and Housing Industries and Immigration Policy in Australia and France". Look for it on candobetter.org/sheila/. Paradoxically, as members of societies such as Canada, become, on the whole, more impoverished as the overall available natural resources, including land, have to be divided amongst ever larger numbers of people, a minority, principally land speculators, property developers and related commercial interests profit at the expense of everybody else. It is members of this growth lobby which are the most generous donors to larger political parties in countries such as Canada, Australia and the U.S. and who these parties principally serve once in government.
#main-fn2" id="main-fn2">2. #main-fn2-txt">↑ This may be problematic point for opponents of high immigration in that it can appear to run counter to another argument often made against immigration, that is, that being that it is immoral for first world countries to set about poaching skilled workers at the expense of other countries, particularly poor third world countries. This has been the acknowledged policy of the pro-population growth Labor Government of the state of Queensland in Australia. Either one or both of current Premier Anna Bligh and former Premier Peter Beattie (I am not sure which) openly stated that they "shamelessly" recruited skilled workers from other countries. In theory, it's possible for a country to gain at the expense of another through immigration, if the component of skilled immigrants is high enough and others within the receiving country are not displaced by the skilled immigrants, but, in practice, both countries, as well as the whole planet nearly always lose.
Canadian electors given Clayton's choice in regard to immigration
In Australia both major political parties support record high immigration. This ensures that it is rarely questioned in Parliament or in the news. In Canada, the situation is even worse#main-fn1">1. Dan Murray reports that Canadians face a 'choice' at the Federal elections scheduled for 31 October of four out of five major parties which see nothing wrong with Canada's record high and growing immigration rate and none which are campaigning to reduce it.
At the end of week #1 of the election, some immigration-related questions for all parties
Four out of five major political parties in Canada seem to think there is nothing wrong with Canada's current high immigration levels.
Here are some details on what Canadians have heard on the immigration issue during Week #1 of the election. Questions for each party follow:
(1) The Conservatives : Prime Minister Harper has indicated that immigrants are an issue, but mostly as a source of potential votes. In the first week, he spent about a third of his time talking to ethnic groups. Significantly, his first photo-op of the entire campaign was in Richmond, B.C. where he appeared with a Chinese family. Although he said the Chinese family was a typical Canadian family, and that he was trying to protect the middle class, he will probably admit that his principal reason for visiting the Chinese family was because high immigration levels have resulted in the Chinese now being over half of the population there. Since 1990, the Chinese have become a large percentage of the populations of many other areas in Metro Vancouver and of areas in Greater Toronto. In another example later in the week, Mr. Harper repeated the tactic of appealing to ethnic groups by speaking to a group of East Indian (Sikh) business people in Mississauga to get their support.
Here are some questions politicians might want to ask themselves :
A. When a political leader makes a point of starting his election campaign with members of an ethnic group and then spends a large amount of time addressing other ethnic groups, particularly those who have recently-arrived in large numbers, what message does he send to other groups, particularly long-term Canadians? Is he saying that he will give priority to the interests of new groups at the expense of those of long-term Canadians?
B. Ridings such as Richmond and others have witnessed extremely high immigrant inflows for no obvious good reason. Is he saying that it does not matter that a surge in the newcomers has created a situation in which new immigrants now outnumber the long-term Canadians in those ridings?
C. Let's be frank with people of all political stripes. The approach of most political parties towards recent immigrants is a mixture of sycophancy and platitudes such as "creating diversity". The attitude that political parties convey is that anyone from anywhere has a right to come to Canada. And Canada's political parties will perform all the obsequiousness that is necessary to satisfy the demands of immigrants, particularly their demands to re-create their countries in Canada. Instead of this approach, why are Canada's politicians not asking these people two questions: If cultural, economic and environmental conditions were so wonderful where you came from (particularly in China and India), why are you here? Is there a good chance that your demands will re-create the same dysfunctionality in Canada that existed in your home countries?
(2) The Liberals : Liberal Leader Stephane Dion has indicated that he too thinks immigrants are an issue, but again mostly because of their votes. He also went to Richmond where he tried to outbid Mr. Harper by promising that his party would spend about $800 million to overhaul the current immigration system in the following ways : increase the number of immigrants; repeal the powers recently given to the Immigration Minister so that immigrants have "due process" ; spend $400 million to modernize information-gathering and otherwise streamline procedures for immigrant and refugee applicants; spend about $200 million over four years on improved language training for newcomers, and another $200 million over four years for internships, mentorship and work-placement opportunities.
Here are some questions:
A. Mr. Dion is saying that he will increase high immigration inflows and make more funding available for immigrant settlement. Is he also saying that in these uncertain economic times, he too thinks that immigrants and their interests (particularly their desire to increase the size of their ethnic groups) should take precedence over the interests of long-term Canadians?
B. By saying that he will repeal powers given to the Immigration Minister, is he saying that he will return Canada's immigration system to the days when the associated Canadian immigration industry sabotaged all efforts to control immigration?
(3) The New Democratic Party : Jack Layton has said that he will try to protect Canadian workers from losing their jobs to other countries by stopping tax cuts to Canadian companies that close Canadian factories and then outsource jobs to cheap-labour countries. He will target investments instead to stimulate innovation ; invest in low-emission vehicle production ; train new and displaced workers through a Green Collar Jobs Fund ; create a Jobs Commissioner to investigate shutdowns ; and develop sector-based industrial strategies. According to an NDP policy statement, New Democrats will commit an average of $2 billion a year to this program, aiming to directly create 40,000 new manufacturing jobs and thousands of spin-off jobs while protecting many more.
Here are a few questions for the NDP and Mr. Layton :
A. From the 1920's to 1990, when Canadians were losing jobs because factories were closing, it was standard federal government practice to reduce immigration levels so that unemployed Canadians would not have to compete with foreign workers. Why is Mr. Layton not recommending that Canada re-institute this strategy now?
B. At the same time as Mr. Layton is courageously recommending that the federal government protect Canadian workers, why is Olivia Chow, the NDP's immigration critic, saying that Canada needs more workers? Why is she saying that Canada's high immigration intake should continue? It is estimated that Ontario and Quebec have recently lost several hundred thousand jobs. How is bringing in 250,000+ immigrants every year supposed to help unemployed Canadian workers?
(4) The Greens : Green Party leader, Elizabeth May, has downplayed the environmental impact of immigration on Canada and said that the Alberta Tar Sands is a much more serious environmental issue. Since high immigration levels began in 1990, Canada has taken over 4 million immigrants and its population has increased by around 6 million. In a CBC radio programme on Sunday, September 15, Ms. May stated that immigration of the kind Canada has had since 1990 has produced economic benefits and created diversity.
Here are some questions for Ms. May :
A. Ms. May says that the problem of environmental degradation in Canada's major immigrant-receiving areas (especially Southern Ontario and Metro Vancouver) can be solved by sending those immigrants to rural Canada. The big problem with this approach is that it is naive. Many people have left rural Canada because there are no economic opportunities there. So why send immigrants there if they too will soon have to leave? In fact, why bring most of them to Canada in the first place?
B. Does Ms. May know that the Economic Council of Canada and individuals/research groups in other countries have concluded that immigration produces almost no significant economic benefits to host countries? In fact, is she aware that the Economic Council of Canada stated that if a country were looking for an economic stimulus, it should not look to immigration? Why is she saying immigration produces economic benefits?
C. Since Ms. May knows that several hundred thousand workers in Ontario and Quebec have lost their jobs, why is she not standing up for those workers by advocating a traditional significant cut in Canadian immigration levels? Is she saying that the creation of diversity takes precedence over the protection of Canadian workers?
D. At this time, all environmental organizations are advocating measures to minimize human impact in order to offset climate change. Why then is she, the leader of an environmental party, not advocating a population stabilization/immigration reduction policy for Canada? Wouldn't this kind of "Think Globally. Act Locally or Nationally." help Canada to minimize its environmental impact? Or are the environmental effects of 4 to 5 million recent immigrants a trivial matter? How about another 4 to 5 million? Is she saying there is no limit?
(5) The Bloc Quebecois: The BQ is the only federal political party to express concern about immigration and its effects. Last May, the BQ asked in the House of Commons that Canada's multiculturalism policy not be applied to Quebec. The BQ has also made clear in its brief to Quebec's Bouchard-Taylor Commission on Reasonable Accommodation that multiculturalism is a negative for Quebec. (In fact , about 83% of all presenters (the BQ included) to the B-T commission said they disapproved of religious accommodation.) The BQ sees that federal high immigration levels , multiculturalism and the Charter of Rights have been responsible for religious accommodation demands in Quebec. Since March 2007, many polls have said that roughly 80% of all Quebec residents said that they did not want to make religious accommodations.
Here are 2 questions for the Bloc Quebecois :
(A) When during the current election campaign will the Bloc Quebecois raise the immigration and multiculturalism issue?
See also: "Truth and immigration" by James Bissett former Head of Canadian immigration Service in the Ottowa Citizen of 18 Sep 08.
Footnotes
#main-fn1" id="main-fn1">1. #main-fn1-txt">↑ The first two sentences of the introductory paragraph above were originally as follows:
Australian public intellectual Phillip Adams has said, on his ABC program, Late night live, that he considers the bi-partisan support for high immigration, which ensures that it is rarely questioned in Parliament or in the news, a 'strength' of Australian democracy. As it happens, Canadian democracy shares this 'strength'.
What I wrote was in accord to my own recollection of what I heard on Late Night Live earlier in the year and also with other things I have heard or read from Phillip Adams on matters directly or indirectly related to population and immigration. However, Phillip Adams e-mailed me today to say:
I've never said that! I have said that a long history of bi-partisan support on immigration issues has sometimes been good....and sometimes very bad - as with White Australia and the refugee scandal.....BUT I'm no supporter of increasing the Oz population by either immigration or an increased birth-rate...for the obvious environmental reasons....
So, if I formed the wrong impression, then I apologise to Philip Admas, but however I may have formed the impression that led me to write what I wrote in the introductory paragraph, this is very welcome news. I look forward to Phillip Adams joining with the likes of Greens Senator Bob Brown in order to challenge the official ideology in support of population growth which is threatening to destroy this country's future.
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