bkRE: https://mastodon.social/@mikeolson/116018577225689442
“Things change” : On the demise of #DirtyEnergy in #Europe , etc. ( by the essential @pluralistic )…
EndemicEarthling(continued)
Even during the dying days of the 2009 Turnbull era, #Coalition #ClimatePolicy extended as far as tepid support for the deeply flawed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme introduced by #KevinRudd and his #ALP government.
Rudd's #CPRS had a 2050 emissions target of a measly 60% reduction from 2005 levels, had no mechanism for increasing ambition, grandfathered in a generous gift of pollution certificates to the worst polluters, and did nothing about Australia's massive and rapidly growing #DirtyEnergy exports (Australia's worst climate crime, dwarfing domestic emissions—a grand atrocity yet to be addressed in earnest by either side of the duopoly).
But the CPRS was nonetheless a climate policy with mechanisms that might have actually reduced Australia's domestic emissions over time, something the Coalition have never embraced in the almost-sixteen years since then.
Dropping the #NetZero2050 fig leaf is on brand.
(NB Once Abbott rolled Turnbull, PM Rudd could have easily passed his signature legislation if he had been at all willing to negotiate with the Greens under #BobBrown, who would have voted for the CPRS as literally better-than-nothing, with just one or two small tweaks—tweaks later conceded by #JuliaGillard in minority government. But Rudd wouldn't even talk to Brown.)
On 26th Oct 2021, Australian PM Scott "don't-be-scared-of-coal" Morrison announced the Coalition's #NetZero2050 #ClimateTarget.
That same day, I read the document containing Morrison's 'plan'. It contained nothing to get Australia anywhere near the (already compromised idea of) #NetZero.
There was no plan, no modelling, no change in actual policies. The #ScottMorrison 'commitment' to net zero was still completely consistent with decades of #Coalhugger #Coalition policies. The target was toothless, an exercise in getting a headline to quiet the conscience of the news-skimming voter whose grandkids keep telling them climate is bad but who really wants to vote for hurting marginalised people and/or retaining their current tax loopholes (and who hasn't realised how much the #ALP embraces both anyway).
So with this week's news that #SussanLey has dropped that pretence, at least now there is one iota less dishonesty in Australian politics (albeit one with its own new lies and contradictions).
The last time the Coalition's #ClimatePolicy slightly departed from utter loyalty to the #DirtyEnergy industry was the morning of the 1st Dec 2009 in the hours before #MalcolmTurnbull was deposed as leader of her Majesty's Opposition and replaced by #TonyAbbott by a single vote.
Sameer Kankali Ⓥ☮🌈✌🏼🌱💚🐸🐮🐷📚📖♟️✊🏼While the #ALP enjoys shooting fish in a barrell by wedging the #Coalition over their inability to decide whether or not to be honest with voters about the degree to which they outsource their #ClimatePolicy to their #DirtyEnergy donors/owners, don't miss the fact that successive ALP Environment Ministers haven't been able to decide whether the world's largest collection of thousands upon thousands of paleolithic petroglyphs (including depictions of extinct fauna and the oldest known artistic depiction of the human face) a true wonder of the world recently awarded UNESCO World Heritage Status (belatedly, due to threats from what follows), deserves to be protection by environmental regulations from the *massive* industrial operations of a major dirty energy hub operating next door. This is a piece of #DirtyEnergy infrastructure that the ALP have recently given permission to operate for another 45 years, during which time it will enable the combustion of a massive climate-wrecking bomb 13 times larger than Australia's annual emissions.
Court rules against Environment Minister's 'unreasonable delay' in doing his job: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/aug/25/murray-watt-advised-by-own-department-to-declare-protection-order-over-part-of-burrup-peninsula
@MelissaBenyon Yes, without key pieces of context for that very misleading final quote:
“This [North West Shelf] project is subject to those reforms, which means this plant is required to bring their emissions down each year and reach net zero by 2050 under the safeguard mechanism.”
Context: by "their emissions", the (unnamed) government spokesperson does *not* include the >4b tonnes of CO2 emissions that will result when the gas extracted from the project is burned (called 'scope 3 emissions' in technical jargon), and is only referring the (far smaller) emissions that result from the extraction process itself. However, most readers of the article are unlikely to be aware of this crucial distinction and so miss the verbal sleight of hand at play.
Also missing: even these latter emissions are very likely underestimated by current Australian government methods of accounting for gas extraction, which are not based on the latest research into the scale of methane leakage that occurs during extraction, processing and transport of #FossilGas.
Also also missing: the safeguard mechanism allows #Woodside to 'reduce' 'their emissions' via dodgy #CarbonOffset scams that frequently fail to do anything like what is claimed on the tin.
#Auspol #ClimateJournalism #NorthWestShelf #DirtyEnergy
This week, the freshly re-elected #Albanese Labor government scandalously approved a forty-year extension on the operational life of the gas hub, a move that not only threatens the priceless petroglyphs, but represents permission for #Woodside (the massive gas company that basically runs the state of Western Australia) to profit off a #CarbonBomb that will, once extracted and burned, add somewhere between four and six billion tonnes of climate-wrecking ocean-acidifying carbon dioxide to the active carbon cycle. The cumulative climate pollution from the life of this one project will thus considerably exceed the sum of Australia's projected national domestic emissions for the next decade or more.
Of all the legacies of this Labor government, this decision (alongside giving the green light to dozens more coal and gas projects) will ultimately be the most impactful. The carbon released for the short-term profits of a wealthy few will contribute to massively disrupting and degrading the habitability of the planet for everyone, continuing to shape life on Earth for at least the next forty thousand years.
/web/20250529055300/https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/may/28/approval-of-woodside-lng-project-gambles-with-ancient-heritage-for-short-term-gain
#Auspol #FossilFuelIndustry #DirtyEnergy #DirtyEnergyDirtyPolitics #FossilGas #Murujuga #BurrupHub #NorthWestShelf #Woodside #ALP 2/2
No one committed to Paris goals can seriously argue Woodside’s LNG project should operate until 2070
Forty-year extension of North West Shelf gas project granted by environment minister Murray Watt will result in huge greenhouse gas emissions, putting the already degraded Indigenous rock art at risk
Murujuga (Burrup Peninsula) on the western coast of the Australian continent is home to the world's largest collection of paleolithic petroglyphs (rock carvings), an ancient art gallery containing around one million images carved into the rocks, some dated to at least 45,000 years old. Many of the images depict Australia's distinctive fauna, including extinct creatures like the thylacine, as well as the oldest known representation of a human face. The rocks are themselves noteworthy as coming from some of the oldest igneous bedrock in the world (around 2.7 billion years old). And the region is home to five #Aboriginal nations who are the inheritors of fifty thousand years of continuous human occupation and culture.
The place is an obvious candidate for #UNESCO World Heritage protection.
However...
The Burrup peninsula is also the location of the #NorthWestShelf gas hub, a massive piece of #DirtyEnergy infrastructure that has played a significant role in placing Australia at or near the top globally of liquefied natural gas exporters. #LNG
Over the last forty or fifty years gas industry activity on the peninsula has measurably degraded the artworks, which have survived intact for forty or fifty thousand years.
#Auspol #FossilfFuelIndusrty #CulturalHeritage #Aboriginal
1/2
Headlines you won't see, but ought to: "Today's celebration of health and fun brought to you by the purveyors of death and planetary ecological breakdown."
#Sportwashing is the practice of sanitising the reputation of a government or corporation through sponsoring sporting events, associating their organisation with the significant public goodwill attached to sports.
A new report by a climate research group called the New Weather Institute calculates that #DirtyEnergy megacorporations have collectively spent at least US$5.6b in such deals.
From the report: “Fossil fuel companies are seeking to associate their product, whose #AirPollution alone is estimated to kill over 5 million people a year, with sport’s immense #SocialCapital and positive health impacts.
“They do this for many of the same reasons that #tobacco companies sponsored sport before it was largely banned – to portray themselves in a positive light and normalise their activities in the eyes of billions of sports fans.
“These types of sponsorship deals buy so-called ‘social licence’ to operate, in an attempt to divert attention from their role in fuelling the climate crisis and harming human health.”
#ClimateCrisis #FossilFuels #FossilFuelledFascism #SocialLicence #advertising
See also #greenwashing
Steve Dustcircle 🌹