Doctor and activist


Notice: Undefined index: hide_archive_titles in /home/chesterf/public_html/wp-content/themes/modern-business/includes/theme-functions.php on line 233

Category: Environment

AUKUS- time to make a RUcKUS

6 February 2024

The decision to buy Australia nuclear submarines was one of the worst military decisions ever taken in Australia, not to mention the opportunity cost of $360 billion in terms of the useful things it could do to improve Australian society.

Nick Deane of the Marrickville Peace Group punches well above his weight because of the dire state of peace activism in Australia. He writes excellent material in a very understudied area.

He makes the point that a few submarines cannot defend Australia if it were in danger of a serious attack. But of course that much money could buy a lot of other military material, so we are actually a lot weaker for having the subs.

The other reason given is ‘deterrence’. Presumably this relates to China, but given the huge arsenal the US already has, whether a few submarines are Australian-flagged or US-flagged will not change their thinking one iota.  China is a power that is going to rise whether we like it or not, their current economic problems notwithstanding. Anwar Ibrahim, the excellent Malaysian Prime Minister has pointed this out at the ASEAN meeting in Melbourne.

We are not going to stop China’s rise and we should try to get the US to accommodate this as they will not be able to stop it either. We should simply deal with China as a trading partner, not sell them our strategic assets and get a fair price for our wares.  Their interest in the Eurasian continental mass will be far greater than invading a farm and a quarry of far less economic significance.

My own view is that it quite dubious whether a nuclear submarine will be of any use in any case. The battleships that fought in WW1 were rendered totally obsolete by their vulnerability to seaplane attacks in WW2. Submarines can currently hide because changes in water temperature make them hard to detect.  Conventional submarines get found when they come up for air, but nuclear submarines can stay submerged for very long periods. But nuclear submarines produce a lot of hot water from their reactors, which they cannot turn off. If they stay in the same place quite a plume of hot water goes up from them.  It is hard to believe that satellites will not be able to notice this temperature difference.  The Russian Black Sea fleet is being sunk by numerous relatively cheap drones, and it is difficult to believe that a pattern of surface drones guided by a satellite would not be able to locate and then destroy a submarine twenty years hence.

The UK wants to sell us submarines and wants to lock us in on their side in a confrontation with China. But the  US has other objectives. Apart from selling us submarines at vast profit, we will have to have a base capable of supporting them. Then they will be able to use that base, presumably at minimal cost, so we are locked into having US nuclear warships in our ports at our cost and becoming targets for China in the confrontation.

The pro-nuclear lobby has also pointed out that Australia will also have to hugely expand our nuclear knowledge capability with at least another reactor larger than our modest one at Lucas Heights. We cannot just have submarines and not be able to operate and maintain them.

The defence procurement has been an a mess for years, one suspects because some of our strategic planners want us to ‘operate seamlessly’ with the US, which assumes that our military policy is in total lockstep with theirs, and other planners want an independent Australian capability, fearing the US under Trump  might go into isolationism as it did just before both world wars. What do you procure if you have not solved this internal wrangle?

So along comes Morrison whose popularity is sagging just before an election and makes a big decision that allows him to pretend he is a big statesman with a US President and a UK Prime Minister. Photo op a bargain at $360 billion!

Labor, ever-fearful of being criticised by the Liberals for being ‘weak on defence’ (or border security or tax cuts) has just gone along with this. And of course decades of dithering for the reasons above have meant that there is no properly thought out and costed alternative.

We need to recognise that the US will always act in its own interest as it did in delaying its entry to WW1 and WW2 and in selling arms now. We need our own defence policy and to recognise that the US may help us, but only if it has the resources available at the time and there are not other priorities. Once we have a defence policy, we can  fix the muddled thinking and get a defence procurement strategy.  But we will have to make enough noise to get rid of the AUKUS deal, which will tie up so much money that nothing else will get a look in.

Here is Nick Deane’s article from John Menadue’s Pearls and Irritations:

 

How did Australia get seduced by AUKUS?

Continue Reading

Power: the 50-25-25 rule

16 December 2023

When I was in Parliament someone said to me that big business had 50% of the power, all governments together 25%, and every other power group 25%.

It seemed a strange concept at first, but on reflection, I think it is about right.

Only after revolutions does it change much and historians argue over for how long.

Senator David Pocock, the Canberra independent, spent a lot of time trying to get the Government to release documents between Santos and themselves about the Barossa gas development in the Timor Sea.

THe reason for this was the Environmental Protection (Sea Dumping) Amendment (Using New Technologies to Fight Climate Change) bill 2023.

Santos is the front partner and 50% owner of the Barossa gas field with SK E&S, a Korean company having 35% and JERA, a Japanese company, 15%. They wanted to develop the largest fossil fuel project in Australia, (natural gas), just when Australia is supposedly getting towards net zero carbon dioxide. Quite apart from the fact that methane burns to carbon dioxide, natural gas, having been formed from the decay of carbon products, is usually found with large amounts of carbon dioxide in with the methane. The Barossa gas is worse than usual at 16-20% carbon dioxide. Santos therefore wanted a permit to separate the carbon dioxide, capture it and store it.

Jennifer Rayner of the Climate Council is one of the many environmentalists who point out that CCS, Carbon Capture and Storage has never been done successfully and is just a fudge to continue fossil fuel use. But it gets worse. When the carbon dioxide is supposedly all captured, it is to be piped to a supposedly exhausted gas field, Bayu-Undan, in East Timor 100 km away and injected into the wells there. What could possibly go wrong? East Timor is not a signatory to the Paris Climate agreement. And if that were not enough, the pipeline to East Timor will not be finished until 5 years after the methane is being shipped, so 5 years worth of carbon dioxide waste is simply to be exhausted to the atmosphere.

All thai was pointed out in Parliament by Pocock and the Greens. There is a carbon offset scheme, where Australian Carbon Offset Units (ACCUs) could be bought, but estimates have been that not enough of these could possibly be created to offset the amount of gas produced by projects currently in the pipeline and the price of ACCUs would rise. The Sea Dumping bill was passed with support from the Coalition. The Greens and Pocock held out, unsuccessfully.

The government resisted releasing the Santos correspondence until after the bill was passed and the correspondence said that Santos’ decisions had already been made and considerable investments undertaken and it would upset the Korean and the Japanese investors if the project were stopped or delayed. It seems that the Koreans and Japanese pressured Penny Wong and the Foreign Affairs Ministry and overcame Chris Bowen and the Environment Ministry. .


All this happened at the same time as the COP28 (28th Conference of the Parties of the 1992 Agreement)in the UAE (United Arab Emirates). UAE is the second largest economy in the Middle East after Saudi Arabia and exports 3 million barrels of oil a day. The president of the COP meeting was Dr Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, who is also Minister of Industry of the UAE and head of the Abi Dhabi National Oil Company. How anyone could have expected a resolution to phase out fossil fuels to come from a meeting so constituted defies understanding. The whole setting seemed beyond satire. The final text, which seems very hard to get actually agrees to phase down fossil fuels but gives no timetable and allows gas as a transition fuel, which is effectively a loophole to increase gas production.

Environment Minister Chris Bowen said that it was ‘no small thing’ to agree to ‘transition away’ from fossil fuels. But what is all this worth with no timetable and no commitment to phase them out?

Pocock is an ex-Rugby player. My local rugby club has the motto ‘Facta non Verba’= ‘Deeds not Words’ and Pocock is true to the breed.

He said ‘As a country we’ve got to make the choice. Do we put our futures and the ..future..ahead of the short-term profits of a handful of companies like Santos?’

The answer it seems is ‘Yes’. Santos tells the Labor government what to do, and the Labor government does it. The Liberals opposed initially as they usually oppose everything, but when they found out about what Santos and the Japanese and Koreans wanted they quickly came on board.

The rule about 50-25-25 seems to hold good. 50% quickly became 75%, then 100%.

It is very hot today, and summer is not yet here. It would be nice to think that next year will be better, but it won’t, maybe ever…

Here is the story in The Saturday Paper. You might wonder why it is not in the other papers.


www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/environment/2023/12/16/emails-reveal-labor-caved-santos#mtr

Continue Reading

Climate Change- a Depressing Update

23 November 2023

In Australia the Labor government struggles mightily to get legislation through to allow Woodside to pipe carbon dioxide to East Timor’s territorial waters for supposed CCS (Carbon Capture and Storage) to allow them to develop a new gas field. East Timor is not a signatory to the Paris Accord- convenient eh?  Supposedly the carbon dioxide will be pumped into a reservoir that used to have gas, but Woodside has a track record of not meeting its CCS targets; if you think CCS is a real thing and not a cop-out farce.

 

Evidence suggests that the world is on target for a 3 degrees temperature rise, which may make human life unsustainable in its present form.  Petrostates are installing lights at beaches so that people can go for a night swim to cool off because it is too hot in the daytime!

 

The graphs below show world energy consumption tripling since 2000 and continuing that upward trajectory.  If one considers that the production of energy by a human is about a kilowatt a day, one realises that the amount of energy consumed now per person is many times that, and far higher in developed countries, the situation is unsustainable. The invention of the steam engine in 1690 and the internal combustion engine in 1872 and the use of fossil fuels, which has resulted in the energy and carbon dioxide stored as carbon over tens of thousands of years being released in a century.  It is ridiculous to think that reforestation can capture this amount of carbon as the total area of forests in the world is still declining.

 

COP28 (the 28th Conference of the Parties) of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), will start on 30 November in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), chaired by Sultan Al Jaber, the CEO of the UAE state oil company ADNOC. How much good is this likely to do?

 

COP-out: Why the petrostate-hosted climate talkfest will fail

Continue Reading

FB Post to School Students 4 Climate

17 November 2023

School students had a strike today and marched to Tanya Plibersek’s office to demand more action on climate.  I posted this to their Facebook page ‘School Students 4 Climate’

I note your slogan ‘Take back the power’. This is good and very important.. While 2 political parties can both be bought by vested interests we will never have the power. The Swiss constitution has citizens able to get a petition and overturn any government decision at quarterly referenda. They have 3 levels of government like us, but any level can be overturned. Politicians are part-time and limited to 2 terms so they cannot climb at party hierarchy, and they keep their original jobs while they are in Parliament and go back to them when their term expires. They also have a number of political parties so the government never has an absolute majority and has to debate and negotiate over every bill. The Swiss model was suggested in 1898, but Aust. went with the US/UK model. The Swiss model gives power to the people. We should work towards it as a better model. When Winston Churchill wrote the German constitution after WW2 he made certain that no single political party could ever have an absolute majority. Look at how polarised the US and UK are and we are going the same way. We must get power back to the people, not the political parties. To get the power back we need a change to the Australian Constitution. It is a long-term project. Can the schoolkids do it?

Continue Reading

Advocacy to Delay the Silica Benchtops Ban

18 October 2023

I wondered why the NSW Government was delaying the ban on silica-containing benchtops until July 2024.  Infectious diseases have no political friends, but industrial diseases do. Below is a full page ad in today’s Sydney Morning Herald advocating a delay on the ban and some regulations about how to cut the benchtops with no dust.  They also point out correctly that other benchtop materials have some hazards, and there are a lot of other products that produce silica dust when cut or dug. And they point out that a lot of people are involved in installing benchtops.

 

It is true about other products being harmful. But it is also true that there are readily available non-toxic alternatives that could be used. It is a bit rich for an industry that did precious little to stop the development of silicosis now to ask to be regulated.  The obvious solution is to minimise the harm from all sources of silica including cutting concrete and digging sandstone foundations.  That requires regulations that often actually exist, but Safework does few site inspections and relies on ‘self regulation’ and a ‘notify us’ system of light regulation, based on a fundamental contempt for OHS as soon as it inconveniences business.

 

The government must be forced by publix pressure to ban silica benchtops, which are basically all silica except for a bit of binder chemical, and to enforce other regulations with filtered air and barriers with PPE (personal protective equipment) as a last resort. Concrete or sandstone must be cut with water on the saw so that there is minimal dust.

 

It is depressing, but not surprising that those who have created so much of a problem by setting up an import system for this toxic product now have the gall to lobby against effective government action.

C:\Users\chest\OneDrive\Pictures\SMH Silicosis Ad 231018.jpg

Continue Reading

UN Security Council Rejects an Investigation into Nordstream Pipeline Sabotage

29 March 2023

On 27 March the UN Security Council rejected a Russian motion to have a UN investigation into the sabotage of the Nordstream pipelines on 22 September 2022.

Interestingly there were 3 votes in favour, Brazil, Russia and China and 12 Abstentions.  No votes against!  The abstentions were from the US, UK, France, Gabon, Switzerland, Ghana, Ecuador, Malta, Japan, Albania and the United Arab Emirates. The reason mostly given for the abstentions was that there are already investigations going on by Germany, Denmark and Sweden.

China’s representative pointed out that the UN investigation could encompass and cooperate with all these, and that blocking the Council from launching and investigation only raises suspicions that ‘something is being hidden’.  He tactfully did not say that any national investigation would have to be filtered through that country’s foreign policy considerations.

Of course, the elephant in the room was the report published on February 8 by renowned journalist Seymour Hersh which claims that U.S. President Joe Biden and his senior White House staff ordered the Pentagon to take out the natural gas pipeline that runs along the Baltic Sea bed from Russia to Germany.

https://press.un.org/en/2023/sc15243.doc.htm
Continue Reading

Fracking for Gas Destroys Farmland

15 March 2023

Some years ago, I was a farmer in New Zealand.  I met a cashed-up American who was in NZ trying to buy farmland.  I asked him why he was NZ rather than Australia.  He said, ‘Australia is fuc*ed , mate.  The governments have let them frack it all, and soon they won’t be able to farm’. 

He was from the US and had seen it happen there. The problem is that politicians are mostly  lawyers and accountants and do not know what they do not know.  Perhaps they are easily conned by lobbyists in suits.  The fact is that the surface of the earth is like a layered cake with rock strata that stop water simply going to the lowest level.  If an underlying impermeable level is broken, the water which may have been kept in the overlying soil drains to a deeper level.  So big mines or fracking, which means fracturing and cracking the stratum, allows gas to be released upwards, but also allows the water to flow downwards. This leaves the topsoil without water, which eventually will turn it to sand as the organic matter dies. 

The nett effect is that the gas is released once, but the water escapes forever. The gas company makes its money and moves on- the yield of the land is forever damaged. The farmer is the first economic casualty, national production notices it more slowly.  The chemicals used in fracking also pollute the groundwater, so bores used for stock produce undrinkable water. There is no method for removing these chemicals from the groundwater.

The advocacy group, ‘Lock the Gate’, are doing their best but are still losing the political battle and the gas companies are still expanding activities.  Some of the best agricultural land is the Darling Downs in Queensland and the Liverpool Plains in NSW, which are both under threat.  What is also likely to happen is that they will frack near the Great Artesian Basin, which is a huge water body under a third of Australia. It is currently unpolluted by fracking chemicals, but if it becomes polluted, which seems inevitable, there will no usable water in huge areas of arid Australia. It will be a national ecological disaster.

The words of the American entrepreneur are ringing in my ears.

Continue Reading

The Triple Lunacy of Westconnex

17 February 2023

Westconnex, the underground freeway network will open later this year.  Few realised the extent of it and for a period, trafffic will flow more smoothly.

But it was, is and will be a triple lunacy. 

  1. Nowhere else in the world are governments building freeway networks, let alone tunnelling them undergroup at vast cost. Cities like London have congestion taxes, some European cities are even closing their major roads, and it a subject of significant discussion (ww:://h2020-flow.eu/news/news-detail/when-roads-are-closed-where-does-the-traffic-go-it-evaporates-say-studies/).  The world is trying to have more public transport to lessen the need for private cars, their cost, their parking and their greenhouse gases- except NSW!
  2. The underground freeways will be privatised, so represent a huge subsidy  from the taxpayer, as the private monopolies have a track record of huge tolls and guaranteed revenue.  The tolls are already subsidised to lessen commuter pain, which amounts to continuing payments to the toll operators. Chris Minns’ Labor election platform is to subsidise motorists who spend more than $60 a week on tolls. Who are these and how many of them are there?  Logistics companies?  Couriers?  Or tens of thousands of commuters?  Naturally there will only be  a few toll operators.
  3. The money spent on road tunnels was not spent on a decent Metro system, that would have made most trips unnecessary and taken the cars off the roads.  Of course a train tunnel is smaller than a road tunnel, much cheaper to build per Km, carries far more people and does not require ventilation (or very little).

One might ask why all this happened.  My theory is that the RTA engineers were far more politically savvy than the State Rail Authority.  The RTA were dealing with politicians and building motorways all over the state, wherever they could get the government to pay for them.  The SRA confined its thinking to the existing rail network, and thought in terms of better train technology and industrial relations problems, rather than building their network and having a big part in urban planning.  And of course the lobbying was probably helped by big bankers and big construction companies and by ex-politicans at Infrastructure  NSW, which was set up in 2011 by Barry O’Farrell with ex-Premier and ex British-American tobacco executive, Nick Greiner in charge- a great privatiser.

WestConnex has beavered away at vast but unperceived cost and only attracted attention for its ventilation shafts in suburbia, or the chaos on existing roads as its portals were constructed. Now, for the next few years the affluent and the through traffic will have an easier time of it, and we can continue to lobby for the Metro system.

graphic-0

Web of steel, concrete and cable takes shape below

WestConnex is on track to open late this year, writes Matt O’Sullivan. (SMH 17 February 2023)

The scale and complexity of the final stage of the $17 billion WestConnex motorway project, buried up to 60 metres beneath inner Sydney, becomes clear the deeper workers venture into a twisting maze of road tunnels, ventilation passages and giant caverns for jet fans and substations.

Above ground, inner-city residents and motorists get a sense of the scale – and disruption whenever they pass a massive construction depot for the project on a site that was once the Rozelle rail yards, next to the City West Link roadway. However, the surface work represents only a fraction of the motorway junction below, which features three layers of tunnels.

All up, Australia’s most complex motorway project comprises 24 kilometres of tunnels beneath Rozelle and Lilyfield, about seven kilometres of which motorists will never see because it will be used mostly for ventilation. Once opened late this year, the $3.9 billion interchange will connect the recently opened M4-M8 Link between St Peters and Haberfield, the City West Link, the Anzac Bridge, Iron Cove and, by 2027, the planned Western Harbour Tunnel.

Almost four years after construction started, Rozelle interchange project director Steven Keyser said the focus was now on fitting out the finished tunnels and connecting ‘‘everything together, so it all talks to each other’’ as the targeted completion date looms. ‘‘We have the body built, but we need the brains,’’ he said of the mechanical and electrical systems.

Keyser said other road tunnel projects built in Sydney in the past decade had taught his team that fitting them out with mechanical and electrical equipment often took longer than anticipated. ‘‘We’ve got 1.7 million metres of cabling to run through all those tunnels. It’s a real spider network of cabling,’’ he said. ‘‘The back end takes a lot longer, and we’re scheduling far more intensely to get that right. And so we’re in a good position to open at the end of the year.’’

Keyser said that, while facing disruption from the 2019-20 Black Summer bushfires, the pandemic and wet weather, the biggest logistical challenge for the project had been ensuring equipment and componentry arrived in the correct sequence. ‘‘We had 23 road-headers [excavating] and 500 blue-collar workers starting and stopping each day, getting in and out of the tunnels. This is one of the biggest logistical exercises and that’s all hidden,’’ he said.

Like the rest of WestConnex, the Rozelle interchange has been contentious due to the disruption caused to inner-city residents, and the eyesore it has created near Sydney Harbour during the years of construction.

Transport for NSW’s deputy secretary of infrastructure and place, Camilla Drover, said the project would have been far more controversial if early plans for the interchange had been pursued. ‘‘The original scheme for this was all above ground. Can you imagine? It would have been viaduct and overpasses. But the fact that it is now all underground, and we have a park instead, that is the evolution people forget about,’’ she said.

The 10-hectare park, which includes two sporting fields, on the site of the old rail yards, will open late this year when the interchange is completed.

And Keyser said the public would see the construction site change quickly over the coming months as the park began to emerge. ‘‘We’re getting to the stage where you can see what the finished product will look like,’’ he said.

Underscoring the complexity of the underground junction, the state’s transport agency took control of the project in 2017 from a corporation set up to oversee WestConnex after only one bid from contractors to build it was received in the initial tender process. The interchange was also separated from construction of the M4-M8 Link, which forms the other part of the third and final stage of the 33-kilometre motorway project. The upshot is that the risk of delivering the interchange ultimately rests with the government.

While the tunnels for the interchange average 35 to 40 metres beneath the surface, a sump where water is collected before being pumped out is about 60 metres deep. Twin tunnels for the $27 billion Sydney Metro West rail line between the CBD and Parramatta, which will include a train station next to White Bay power station at the so-called Bays West, will be dug even deeper beneath a part of the interchange over the coming years.

For tunnellers, ground conditions have presented a constant challenge during construction. ‘‘It’s always challenging with ground conditions, no matter where you are in the world. Each time we’re digging the tunnels we’re checking the reactions of what’s happening,’’ Keyser said. ‘‘We’re always a step ahead, probing things, making sure that things are only moving to the model. We have probably 5000 instruments around measuring.’’

While sandstone is easier to excavate, softer soil conditions required so-called rock bolts to be installed closer together in the tunnel walls to provide extra support. The closest the tunnels get to each other is about 10 metres. ‘‘You’re basically doing what the Romans did – you’re creating an arch [in the tunnels],’’ Keyser said of the tunnelling techniques.

About a quarter of the $3.9 billion cost of the interchange, being built by contractors CPB and John Holland, has been spent on a labyrinth of ventilation tunnels and related facilities. Three exhaust stacks about 35 metres high, which are connected to the interchange below, have been built on the site of the old rail yards. Large caverns – some about 23 metres high – also had to be dug deep underground for electricity substations and to house giant fans for the ventilation system.

Part of the reason for the mammoth size of the ventilation facilities is the need to design the interchange to cope with a catastrophic event. ‘‘You’re always catering for what is the worst case, which is if something catches fire in the tunnel,’’ Keyser said. ‘‘The standards now are quite high and the design caters for that emergency situation. In the roof, you have a fire deluge system, which is going through its testing.’’

Greens MP for Balmain Jamie Parker, who has been highly critical of WestConnex, said the interchange’s construction had caused major disruption to nearby residents over the past four years. ‘‘Everyone is relieved that it will be over. But the local community feels like they have had such widespread impacts on their homes, and now they have to deal with the longer-term consequences of the three exhaust stacks which should be filtered,’’ he said. ‘‘The impact is really significant, and it is ongoing.’’

While acknowledging the disruption to locals from construction, NSW Metropolitan Roads Minister Natalie Ward said the interchange, along with the rest of WestConnex, would result in significant travel-time savings for motorists once fully completed. ‘‘There are always challenges in construction – it’s messy; it’s disruptive,’’ she said.

‘‘The upside is it gives local roads back to local communities. This area, you might remember, was just disused rail yards; it was overgrown … [and] you couldn’t enter. We are transforming this to see community benefits.’’

Continue Reading

The IR Bill- two problems and a suggestion

25 November 2022

When I buy petrol, I sometimes ask the attendant how much he or she is paid.  Often they glance at the CCTV camera and say that they cannot answer that.  But the other morning early I asked an attendant who looked like a very tired student from the Indian subcontinent.  Yes, she had worked all night, a 12 hour shift for $10/hour cash.  I asked her how she thought she might get a decent wage.  She replied, ‘Well, an Australian boss might help’.  I took this to mean someone who paid an award wage.

As small business tries hard to exempt itself from ‘sector-wide’ bargaining, I wondered how she will fare if there is still no industry-wide award or no enforcement.  What will change?

I have a friend who runs a small business and he says that although wages have not risen, neither have small business profits.  I asked why?  He said that the supply chain had ‘consolidated’ and took a larger share of the final price. One might note that Deliveroo just left food delivery, Amazon is taking an increased percentage of online retail sales, Airbnb takes an increasing percentage of accommodation spending, Uber has increased its percentage take from its rides, and Spotify pays very little to those who make their music.  It is the Monopoly game in real life, the big get bigger and the frail are pressed to the rail. The view that the biggest problem small business has is big business seems a neglected truism.    The question is whether this will or indeed can be addressed by Federal Parliament.   The point is that competition drives down prices, but cartels and oligopolies develop if not stopped. A new book looks at this problem, Chokepoint Capitalism www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/culture/books/2022/11/30/chokepoint-capitalism#mtr

Another aspect is that the system seems totally unable to restrain is the salaries of top executives.  One person I know advised, ‘I always vote against the management salary increases at the AGM’.  There is legislation that salary rises have to be approved by the shareholders, but it seems that the top executives always have enough proxies to ensure that they salary rises come despite the efforts of small shareholders like my friend.  So I suggest legislation that stipulates that no executive may get more money than, say, 20 times the full time equivalent hourly rate of the lowest paid person in the organisation.  It seems that a few hundred thousand at the top does not matter, but a few dollars at the bottom do. This needs to brought into perspective.

Continue Reading

Australia’s Role in the COP 27 Farce in Egypt.

24 November 2022

It seems that there is a growing view that gas is part of decarbonising the world to save it from Climate Change.  The term ‘Climate Change’ is itself a euphemism for ‘Global Warming’ as the latter is a bit more threatening, like we have ‘new prices’ rather than ‘price rises’.

Natural gas is largely methane, which is carbon and hydrogen and burns to carbon dioxide and water. But methane is itself also a greenhouse gas, far more potent than carbon dioxide in terms of its warming effects, and quite a lot of it escapes into the atmosphere unburnt, especially if it is released by fracking.  One may remember Jeremy Buckingham’s videos of him lighting the gas coming out of the river in Grafton. Carbon Capture and Storage or CCS is a bad joke, with the fossil fuel industry getting grants to research this.  My view it is merely a tactic to play for time, like the search for the ‘safe cigarette’. It allows them to keep doing what they are doing, as regulators hope for a technofix.

The fossil fuel industry was in Egypt and seems did quite well, getting agreements to cut down on coal, but not gas and oil.  And Australia’s approval for more gas was not criticised here, presumably because Europe is in such a mess with no Russian gas that they had become dependent on.

The cost of extracting gas has not changed, but Australia’s gas companies can just charge the world’s prices and can pocket the extra margin, known in economics as ‘super normal profits’.  It might be noted that silly Liz Truss in the UK was going to subsidise gas for the people, i.e. simply give the extra profits to the gas companies by creating a taxpayer debt; a Tory idea of ‘welfare’.  In Australia we just let the money go from consumers to the companies with few royalties. Norway and Qatar benefit from their resources- we don’t.

It seems that the COP meeting in Egypt was overshadowed by the G20 and the ASEAN meetings, but it is also likely that Egypt was leaned on by its affluent neighbours, the Middle East fossil fuel producers. 

Here is a summary- it is not encouraging. The much-praised Albanese government has not done enough!

Continue Reading