Our governments should be ashamed for decades of neglect in reducing carbon and methane emission. Writers: In the Federal Election, we must vote for a change in monopoly politics Gerry Georgatos.
To expand Alexsandr SolzhenitsynAuthor of The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956 — governments lie. They know they lie. They continue to lie.
Governments lie religiously. So, it means, contextually, they don’t care that we know. They care that we can’t do anything about it.
All governments rule by tyranny.
Our mortal home – Earth – is made up effectively of three layers: the crust, the mantle and its core. It is vulnerable even to the human eye.
The Earth isn’t a solid rock immutable in a celestial canvas that guarantees permanence. It is an imperfect storm of thin density rock, basalt and granite layered over hot rocks that temper above molten rocks, where at the Earth’s core, temperatures Reach up to 50,000°C.
In 2018, I was invited by the Organizing Committee to make a few presentations. Melbourne Writers Festival. I mentioned two books that have helped me understand my responsibilities to the common good.
Rachel CarsonAn environmental scientist, he wrote Silent Spring. It was published in 1962, the year of my birth. I read it when I was nine, after being inspired to learn more of our world following multiple reads of the Dr Seuss booklet, The Lorax.
Carson documented adverse effects of synthetic pesticides on the environment as well as humans. She was shellacked by fierce rebuttals from chemical companies.
Carson would not live to see the USA’s nationwide ban on DDT — the toxic chemical compound, dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane, originally developed as an insecticide. It would be decades later before DDT could be used effectively. Prohibited globally. Despite the USA’s nationwide ban, American chemical companies exportedIt can be used in other countries.
Disinformation is a dangerous marketing tool that assists in the making of massive profits for chemical companies. I often argue that the ability of disinformation is more important than the ability manifest deceit.
Carson’s posthumous legacy was to inspire an environmental movement, leading to the crafting of the USA’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
In the 1970s, there was the brimstone shock of understanding that our planet was heating up. There was as much baseline understanding of this then as there is today but for two decades on either side of this century, disinformation shellacked humanity as it had Carson and her supporters. In the meantime, the planet’s atmospheric temperature has Increased by about 1°C.
The Earth’s surface is drying, the seas are warmer and rising and what we are doing to the planet’s lithosphere below us is yet to be fully understood. We do know what we are doing. we are doing to the Earth’s filament – the surface of its crust and the residue oceans, seas and rivers – and to its atmospheric strands.
How can we trust each other? Who will be the leader?
“Godly” powers in the hands of humans have led to wars and abominations — Nagasaki & Hiroshima; the obliterative vanquishingIn just seconds, 200,000 lives are saved every day. What lies ahead for our unborn will indict our generations’ sins as we damn the sins of reprehensible and cowardly inactions of previous generations.
We have seen more species during our butterfly-brief lives ExtinctionMore than ever in human history. We ignore warnings. We do not heed rising temperatures — atmospheric and of the seas. We don’t pay attention to the effects of the maddening deforestation The planet. We don’t pay attention to the layers and veils of human-made pollution permanence.
Parliaments fail us — there is no science-based leadership. There are slagging and slogans but no proposed Bills to address excess dangerous emissions, educate the nation and cut through to caveats, protections, calibrations, balances and legislation. We must protect our environment by legislation, not get lost in the maze of promises, intentions, and pledges.
The Australian Senate should be ashamed of itself for decades of absence of proposed Bills to scale back carbon and methane emissions. There should have been Bills after Bills, categorical to half the emission types that are threatening the survival of all life on the planet.
Instead, the psycho-educative isn’t happening and the firmament of science has been reduced to bylines. We are all still held hostage to this public spectacle of obscene slagging.
We need Independents to score their way into the Senate – and into the House of Representatives – to erode monopoly politics. The government cannot control the balance of power. Catchcries by political parties – major and micro and any Independent – which beg voters for a “balance of power”, suggest a lack of understanding of what democracy means. The purpose of a political career should not be about control and power, but rather about voice and education.
We need leaders who understand the premise, “first, do no harm”. If our senators – our legislators – do not understand this, then hope is lost.
Methane is anywhere up to 100 times More toxicCarbon dioxide is more harmful to the environment that carbon dioxide. Most people – parliamentarians – do not know this. Horrific levels of exploitive animal agribusiness produce the equivalent of 7.5 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide annually – accounting for 15 per cent of greenhouse Emissions – more than the aggregated emissions of all motor vehicles, planes and other types of transports.
Animal agribusiness-generated emissions, if not challenged in the decades ahead, are projected to produce half the world’s greenhouse gases. We are rapidly heading towards an abyss. Sixty billion of the world’s 80 billion farmed animals are Factory farmed — the majority cruelled into miserable lives.
It’s not about where to start, but when? What are authentic clean energies? What are real renewable energies? What do we know so far about “all” greenhouse gasses? We need to be informed rather than misinformed.
Ten years ago, coal-based emission were unacceptable. Limited by 2050 so as to stay within the prospect of a 2°C rise in temperature by the end of the century. Independent Senate candidates may be our only shot at helping the environment – if they can get elected – and if they have understood science and mathematics.
Voter disillusionment is a long-standing problem. Unfortunately, many voters drown. The current larger-than-usual number of Independents suggests there might be more genuine candidates than usual. Voters can end the cyclical duopoly. “Polypoly” is a way forward — government by the many.
We need government to serve the people and the planet and not presidential-type tyrannies created by factions bent upon power and control. We need to get rid of all power and control and throw out the shambolic slogans about a balance of power. Anyone who calls for a balance of power does not understand the meaning of democracy. The balance of power should be held by no one. It can make many people invisible and lead to corruption.
Not the nation they serve but the nation they represent, governments must reflect that nation. They must be bastions of humility and service, crafted into assisting the nation — not leading but, rather, in service to all, marginalising no one. Government must be a voice for education and collaboration.
Any politician or candidate who begs for your vote to ensure any form of balance of power (power and control), well… no government should ever be allowed to control both parliamentary houses. This is a recipe for disaster.
Inexpert persons – many who are lobbyists for prejudices and divisive harmful idealogues and some who are operatives for vested excessive self-interest groups – majorly comprise the present duopoly. Voters can revolt, take the first steps to a fairer and safer political system and refuse to vote for the duopoly. They can vote to end monopoly politics.
Our children and the unborn deserve better inheritance than this cyclical duopoly. Power and control survive by eroding universal rights and civil liberties — they cannot co-exist. Social justice and human rights are not going to thrive in a system of power and control-based manifests.
Gerry GeorgatosHe is a suicide prevention and poverty researcher with a strong experiential focus. He is the national coordinator of the National Suicide Prevention & Trauma Recovery Project (NSPTRP). Follow Gerry on twitter @GerryGeorgatos.
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