Earth Hour 2010: A warm and fuzzy failure

Earth Hour 2010 – that’s EH10, if you must – was last night. Earth Hour started in Sydney in 2007. The idea’s to turn off all lights for an hour from 8:30 p.m. I didn’t turn mine off: First, on a practical level, my electricity’s solar, so turning off lights hardly lowers CO2 emissions. Second, on a symbolic level, my house can’t be seen from any public road or any neighbour’s house, so no-one but me (and Sergey and Larry via Google Earth) would know if I turned off my lights or not. And third, on an ideological level, my opinion hasn’t changed since I wrote this a year ago. Meanwhile the 15th UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, i.e. (forgive me) COP15, generated massive media hype but no real progress towards changing this graph. So apart from its feel-good effect – which though warm and fuzzy is of no practical import apart from swelling the coffers of its organiser WWF – on a bottom-line basis EH09 failed abjectly. EH10 will too. For though actions (and inactions) of individuals can do much to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and thus global warming and climate change, the necessary massive changes can only occur by the unified policies of all governments world-wide. But politicians need to be popular – because those in democracies want to be re-elected, and those in totalitarian regimes want not to be overthrown. So despite EH10 the CO2 graph will continue to rise – likely more steeply. Ho hum.

farmdoc's blog post number 626

A day or two after COP15 ended last 18 December, prime minister Rudd said Australia will do ‘no more and no less’ than other nations to fight climate change. What an attitude. It makes me abhor Mr Rudd for his manifest mediocrity. He’s a middle-of-the-road man. Bland. Insipid. Gutless. Because of him, my country, which could be a leading nation in the fight against global warming and climate change, is destined to remain in the international ruck. Obscure. Undistinguished. Insignificant. I write these words having just read this article by Evan Osnos in the 21 & 28 December New Yorker. Titled ‘Green Giant: Beijing’s crash program for clean energy’, it’s an expose of China’s innovative and promising green energy program. Which is astounding. Exciting. Hopeful. The same day Mr Rudd announced his (and Australia’s) mediocrity, here’s what Thomas L Friedman wrote in the New York Times about Denmark’s green energy initiatives. Denmark’s population’s under 25% of Australia’s, yet the Danes’ initiatives put us to shame. They make me envious. Ashamed. Despondent. What’s the difference between China and Denmark (on one hand) and Australia (on the other)? Leadership quality, obviously. Also Denmark has no coal resource. And China sees the idiocy of burning coal; and its leadership’s not beholden to the coal industry. Trouble is, in this Australian election year prime minister Rudd’s subservience to the Australian coal industry won’t lessen, and neither will opposition leader Abbott’s. Thus will my nation be prevented from distinguishing itself in responding to the greatest challenge of our time. Ho hum.

farmdoc's blog post number 604

Every week I listen to the This American Life podcast. Each episode comprises a few stories on one theme. Today’s Farmdoc’s Blog post copies that format. The theme’s ‘money’:

I wrote last Sunday that COP15 grinds on. Now, with four days to go, it looks to be inexorably headed toward a stalemate, or an at best meagre agreement. Look at its sponsors. I don’t know of them all, but I see four car makers, an airline and a transport firm. Who the sponsors are mightn’t affect the deliberations of apparatchiks, but it’s unethical and improper for a UN conference – not to mention a climate change one – to have privates sponsors at all let alone this lot of carbon mega-polluters.

Fighting terrorists and terrorism militarily is expensive, and going by recent experience it’s not so effective either. So what to do? As per the old adage, follow the money. The Jerusalem Post reports that 18 months ago a US Federal Court froze US$2B of Iranian money which is at the centre of a legal struggle between US Marine victims of a 1983 Hizbullah terror attack on a Marine barracks in Beirut, and a Luxembourg bank (which I guess is an Iranian proxy or front). Terrorists needs lots of money. So hit ’em where it hurts. In the wallet.

Meantime President Obama and the US Congress are hitting greedy, amoral, unrepentant Wall Street leeches with a host of new measures aiming to rein in their excesses and increase their accountability. Will these measures work? No-one knows yet. But there’s no downside to trying.

Finally I’ve just read here that if Australia’s successful in its bid to host FIFA’s 2018 or 2022 soccer World Cup, it’ll cost A$2.9B. Thank you, but no thank you, FIFA.

farmdoc's blog post number 602

Yesterday was darling Kate and Brendon’s 10th wedding anniversary. To me, their wedding day seems…not like the proverbial yesterday, rather a few weeks or months ago. But when I think about what they’ve achieved in the last 10 years – farm, family, friendships, community and much much more – I remember that as you age, your perception of time speeds up. Even so, I can hardly believe I’m the father of a woman who’s been married ten years. On Kate and Brenno’s wedding day, the CO2 concentration in the air was 368 parts per million by volume. Today it’s 386. That increase is no misperception. It’s an incontrovertible hard scientific fact. Right now, COP15 is about halfway through. And so far I’ve heard no news to assuage my pessimism. Yesterday’s Walk Against Warming was intended to put pressure on those in Copenhagen to come up with the goods – though there’s no universal definition of ‘the goods’. Despite good turnouts at the Walk locations, I reckon the main outcome was some exercise and camaraderie for the walkers. Because to have impressed the apparatchiks in Copenhagen, millions of people needed to turn out in each country. And clearly this didn’t happen. So yesterday’s Walk was, predictably, what Thomas L Friedman has called a ‘green party’. Whereas what’s needed, he says, is a ‘green revolution’. I wonder what the air’s CO2 concentration will be on Kate and Brendon’s 20th anniversary.

farmdoc's blog post number 596

Today COP15 – the 15th United Nations Climate Change Conference – opens in Copenhagen. Given this graph, it’s for sure the most important conference this year. Probably this decade. And maybe this century. My country produces only about 1% of my planet’s carbon emissions. But we’re the largest per capita carbon emitter. So we have a responsibility to lead at COP15 – not to follow. Despite whatever words prime minister Rudd and minister Wong may utter, it’s actions that count. So in the three days preceding COP15, what’s the highest profile event in Australia? Not a global warming/climate change demo. Oh, no. It’s the Sydney Telstra 500. A 3-day car racing carnival around a street circuit in Sydney’s Olympic precinct. Of course the racing cars aren’t zero-emission Formula Zero, but gas-guzzling V8 Supercars. To make matters worse, the event’s sponsored by the NSW government – which should know better. Damn it. And also Telstra. This week I was invited, and I agreed, to be a panellist in My Telstra Experience – an online group of Telstra customers who feed back to Telstra their telecommunications and media experiences. I’ll be telling Telstra what I think of motor racing. And especially its sponsorship of it. I’m only one person, but I’ll do what I can. Meantime COP15 runs until 18 December. I’m pessimistic about the outcome. I hope I’m wrong.

farmdoc's blog post number 553

Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Wikipedia says that though they’re best known from the writings of Lewis Carroll (1832-98), their names were first used by George Byrom (1692-1763). Whether the Tweedles are twins or brothers or unrelated, these days their names signify two people who are alike and never contradict each other. I was going to write that regarding global warming and climate change, prime minister Rudd and opposition leader Turnbull are Tweedledum and Tweedledee. But they’re not. Because they’re competing with each other to see who’ll give the biggest subsidies (aka kickbacks) to Australia’s big polluters under the carbon pollution reduction scheme. Messrs Rudd and Turnbull are men with children and without consciences. And the latter prevails. Clearly. Yesterday was International Day of Climate Action which, via 4,500 events in 181 countries, was the most widespread day of environmental action in our planet’s history. Its symbol is 350 – because 350 ppm CO2 in the atmosphere is the safe limit. It’s now over 384 ppm. And rising. Yesterday, ordinary people called for strong action and bold leadership on the climate crisis. Whether Messrs Rudd and Turnbull are the Tweedles or not, we’re wasting our time if we think they’ll provide it. (P.S. Here is the countdown to the United Nations Climate Change Conference [COP 15] in Copenhagen, 7-18 December 2009.)