The atmosphere is to the earth as a layer of varnish is to a desktop globe. It is thin, fragile and essential for preserving the items on the surface.150 years of burning fossil fuel have overloaded the atmosphere to the point where the earth is ill. It now has a fever. Read the detailed article, Soothing Gaia’s Fever for an evocative account of that analogy. The items listed here detail progress on coordinating 6.5 billion people in the most critical project undertaken by humanity.Â
Fires caused by the extreme heat wave over the weekend have consumed the NSW town of Uarbry leaving around 100 residents homeless. Over 80 fires continue to burn, 23 of them out of control, across Western and Northern NSW. Those areas report the hottest February temperatures on record, while much of Queensland recorded the hottest temperatures ever as the Summer That Will Not End in Our Lifetime settles in. Climate chaos has led to unseasonal flooding in Western Australia with many rivers rising more than four metres in massive rainfall over the weekend.
Members of seven peak industry bodies have joined forces to demand a coherent and stable renewable policy
Energy producers and consumers including the Aluminium Council of Australia and the Cement Industry Federation have jointly written an open letter demanding stable, long-term, non-partisan energy policy.
Head of the Aluminium Council, Bruce Cox, said that the industry is not concerned how energy is produced, only that it is reliable. “The aluminium industry in Tasmania is very profitable and Tasmania uses around 85% renewables,” Cox told ABC Radio this morning.
The Federal Minister for Energy, Josh Frydenberg immediately blamed the Labor Party for being too focused on renewable energy.
COALition politicians take the farcical approach to debate
Fires caused by the extreme heat wave over the weekend have consumed the NSW town of Uarbry leaving around 100 residents homeless. Over 80 fires continue to burn, 23 of them out of control, across Western and Northern NSW. Those areas report the hottest February temperatures on record, while much of Queensland recorded the hottest temperatures ever as the Summer That Will Not End in Our Lifetime settles in. Climate chaos has led to unseasonal flooding in Western Australia with many rivers rising more than four metres in massive rainfall over the weekend.
Bloomberg Energy reported last week that the renewable energy sector in the US now employs more people than coal and is firmly entrenched in rural America where renewable energy income is keeping farmers on the land. Wind and Solar Energy are now cheaper than new coal, costing less than 100 US dollars to produce one megawatt of electricity. The Australian government’s plans to invest hundreds of millions of dollars more in clean coal has met with widespread derision from the energy sector as well as climate advocates. The US energy sector warned President Trump last week that removing environmental regulations on coal and government funding of renewables, will not keep coal competitive with wind and solar.
You are in the Cage unscripted. Australia is on holiday. The Summer that Will Not End in our lifetimes has begun. It is hot. It is very hot. And the Endless Summer has just begun.
As we huddle in the air conditioning, or wallow in the kid’s wading pool draping wet towels over ourselves to survive the heat we also come to terms with the passing of the social democratic state. The social safety net built with the blood of the unionists, the suffragettes and environmentalists is being dismantled before our eyes.
While we will report and comment on its demise, The focus of The Cage is not to lament its passing but to find ways to build a new people power movement a movement built on community, a movement that operates independently to undermine the controls placed on us in the Cage, a movement that loosens those restrictions and builds a robust, hopeful, loving society that will outlast the death throes of capitalism.
We are here to agitate, educate and organize. We are here to build the post-apocalyptic society into which we bring the new-borns, the to-be-borns and each other. Not a cheery vision perhaps, but at real one, one of courage, one of robust abundance, one based on love, solidarity and the power within. We uncompromisingly refuse to enslave ourselves for the masters of the Cage, even as we use the infrastructure of the Cage to survive.
This project is not secret. There are few secrets in this era of total surveillance. Every phone call you make, every text message you send, every social media post you make is collected, collated and analysed. Our task is not to overthrow the emerging network of networks in which we are simply nodes, it is to engage, evolve and redesign it for a better future.
Recent ABC reports that India is stepping away from coal fail to understand the nuanced report by the Central Electricity Agency (CEA) that predicts falling demand for new coal power. Their report indicates that the government has overestimated general economic growth and individual demand for electricity. Despite this, the government intends to proceed with its Ultra Mega Power Plants projects to rapidly expand India’s coal fired electricity and general electricity consumption. The Paris-based International Energy Agency predicts that India will double coal consumption in the next five years, despite a global slowdown led by China, which consumes half the world’s coal.
Indicating a significant shift in the Indian power sector, the Central Electricity Authority (CEA) has, in its National Electricity Plan (2017-2022), said the country does not need any more coal-based capacity addition till 2022. CEA said India would add massive renewable-based capacity.
