Contemporary politics,local and international current affairs, science, music and extracts from the Queensland Newspaper "THE WORKER" documenting the proud history of the Labour Movement.
MAHATMA GANDHI ~ Truth never damages a cause that is just.
Similar to the VHS versus Beta debate in the 80s, the
battle between different types of green motoring could see
hydrogen-fuelled cars come out on top over conventional battery-powered
electric vehicles in the next five years.
Key points
Hydrogen fuelled cars could be on the road commercially by 2025
Hydrogen cars are quicker to recharge than conventional electric cars
Car companies and state governments are investing millions of dollars into the future of hydrogen-powered cars
Hydrogen cars have been proven to refuel quicker and
have a longer driving range — which some say makes them the future of
green motoring.
"The advantage of hydrogen cars is that it takes
the same time to charge them as it takes to fill your car with fossil
fuels — no more than about three minutes," Motor Trades Association of
Queensland's chief executive Brett Dale said.
"With hydrogen you're more likely to use the same behaviour as you would to go into a fuel station and refuel your car.
"Although we use the language recharge, with hydrogen it's more like refuelling."
"The only emission produced by hydrogen is water, the by-product is water and a little heat," Mr Dale told ABC Radio Brisbane's Craig Zonca and Loretta Ryan.
"Electric
vehicles are generated using coal-powered grids, power that's been
generated by coal, so this [hydrogen] is a cleaner option if we get it
right.
"We could be seeing hydrogen-fuelled cars on our roads commercially by 2025."
He
said the beauty of hydrogen cars over conventional electric cars was
the distance they could travel and the quicker refuelling or charging
time.
"You get 1,000 kilometres per tank, which is great for [long distance] road travellers," Mr Dale said.
"This technology counters the range anxiety many people have with existing electric vehicles.
"It's very convenient and there are really positive signs with the work being done to bring it to market."
Making hydrogen transportable for a new kind of fuel station
"The work that the CSIRO has done to make it
capable using ammonia to transport hydrogen is similar to what they do
with new fossil fuels," Mr Dale explained.
"We now hope that old fuel stations transition to new fuel technologies, making it easier for consumers to make the switch."
He said hydrogen-fuelled cars would complement electric cars in the commercial market, but not replace them.
"It's an alternative for consumers and if it can be cost-effective, there's certainly space for it in the future," Mr Dale said.
"It's very expensive in its current process but the reality is that if we get this right it promises a lot."
Expanding the future of hydrogen
Recently
in Queensland, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk announced that
hydrogen-powered Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles (FCEVs) would be integrated
into the government's vehicle fleet as part of the $19 million
Queensland Hydrogen Industry Strategy 2019–2024.
"Governments like
Queensland are looking at the storage and transportation strategies
needed for the hydrogen technology," Mr Dale said.
"They're investing in the back-to-base infrastructure that's needed for the very expensive hydrogen storage system."
QUT
currently hosts the state's only hydrogen refuelling station and
recently took part in the first production and export of "green"
hydrogen derived from water from Australia to Japan.
"The challenge really is storage and transportation," Mr Dale said.
"The current focus is around this and when that's right we will be able to do it like we do for fossil fuels."
Trump with Fox News host Sean Hannity at a rally in Las Vegas last
September. In Thursday’s segment, Hannity’s colleague Cavuto catalogued a
series of Trump’s lies.
Photograph: Ethan Miller/Getty Images
The honeymoon between Donald Trump
and his TV network of choice is showing signs of strain. Following a
series of swipes at Fox News from the White House this summer, Neil
Cavuto has become the latest network personality to push back against
the president’s expectations of uninterrupted praise.
Cavuto said on Thursday: “First of all, Mr President, we don’t work
for you. I don’t work for you. My job is to cover you, not fawn over you
or rip you. Just report on you – call balls and strikes on you.”
Cavuto was responding to a Wednesday tweet in which Trump suggested his supporters look for another channel.
The president tweeted: “Just watched Fox News heavily promoting the
Democrats through their DNC Communications Director, spewing out
whatever she wanted with zero pushback by anchor, Sandra Smith. The New Fox News is letting millions of GREAT people down! We have to start looking for a new News Outlet. Fox isn’t working for us any more!”
Last month Trump took aim at Fox News with a host of grievances, including a suggestion that their polling is treating him unfairly.
“Fox has not changed,” political anchor Bret Baier said on his
program in response. “We have a news side and an opinion side. Opinion
folks express their opinions. We do polls.”
In Thursday’s segment, Cavuto catalogued a series of Trump’s lies,
dismissing the president’s “fake news” motif – something he has begun to
wield against the traditionally uncritical network.
Cavuto said: “I’m not the one who said tariffs are a wonderful thing.
You are. Just like I’m not the one who said Mexico would pay for the
wall. You did. Just like I’m not the one who claimed that Russia didn’t
meddle in the 2016 election. You did. I’m sorry if you don’t like these
facts being brought up, but they are not fake because I did. What would
be fake is if I never did.”
He went on: “Hard as it is to fathom, Mr President, just because
you’re the leader of the free world doesn’t entitle you to a free pass.
Unfortunately, just a free press.”
Earlier in the week, Fox News’ Brit Hume jabbed back at Trump,
reminding him that although it may often seem the network is an
extension of the administration, that is not actually the case.
Other Fox News personalities such as Sean Hannity, Jeanine Pirro and Laura Ingraham remain devoted to the president.
Operating systems from iOS 10 to iOS 12 were targeted in the hack.
Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian
An unprecedented iPhone
hacking operation, which attacked “thousands of users a week” until it
was disrupted in January, has been revealed by researchers at Google’s
external security team.
The operation, which lasted two and a half years, used a small
collection of hacked websites to deliver malware on to the iPhones of
visitors. Users were compromised simply by visiting the sites: no
interaction was necessary, and some of the methods used by the hackers
affected even fully up-to-date phones.
Once hacked, the user’s deepest secrets were exposed to the
attackers. Their location was uploaded every minute; their device’s
keychain, containing all their passwords, was uploaded, as were their
chat histories on popular apps including WhatsApp, Telegram and
iMessage, their address book, and their Gmail database.
The one silver lining is that the implant was not persistent: when
the phone was restarted, it was cleared from memory unless the user
revisited a compromised site. However, according to Ian Beer, a security
researcher at Google: “Given the breadth of information stolen, the
attackers may nevertheless be able to maintain persistent access to
various accounts and services by using the stolen authentication tokens
from the keychain, even after they lose access to the device.”
Beer is a member of Project Zero, a team of white-hat hackers inside Google
who work to find security vulnerabilities in popular tech, no matter
who it is produced by. The team has become controversial for its
hardline approach to disclosure: 90 days after it reports a bug to the
victim, it will publish the details publicly, whether or not the bug has
been fixed in that time.
In total, 14 bugs were exploited for the iOS attack across five
different “exploit chains” – strings of flaws linked together in such a
way that a hacker can hop from bug to bug, increasing the severity of
their attack each time.
“This was a failure case for the attacker,” Beer noted, since even
though the campaign was dangerous, it was also discovered and disrupted.
“For this one campaign that we’ve seen, there are almost certainly
others that are yet to be seen.
“All that users can do is be conscious of the fact that mass
exploitation still exists and behave accordingly; treating their mobile
devices as both integral to their modern lives, yet also as devices
which when compromised, can upload their every action into a database to
potentially be used against them.”
Google said it had reported the security issues to Apple on 1 February. Apple then released an operating system update which fixed the flaws on 7 February.
Last-minute injunctions have stalled the deportation of a Tamil family who have spent years fighting to stay in Australia.
The
plane carrying the Sri Lankan couple and their Australian-born
daughters had already left the tarmac at Melbourne Airport when a judge
granted a reprieve over the phone.
Here's what we know about the family's case:
Priya and Nadesalingam, also known as Nades, came to Australia separately by boat in 2012 and 2013.
Friends and support groups say the pair fled Sri Lanka because of the persecution of the Tamil people.
The couple married and settled in the Central Queensland town of Biloela, where they lived and worked for about three years.
Their two daughters, Kopika and Tharunicaa, were born in Australia and are now aged 4 and 2.
It's understood Priya and Nades's visas expired between January and February 2018.
The
Department of Home Affairs has repeatedly said that the family's case
has been comprehensively assessed over many years, and they have
consistently been found not to meet Australia's protection obligations.
The family also had their appeal rejected by the Federal Circuit Court in June last year.
In
that judgment, the judge noted that Nades had returned to Sri Lanka on
three occasions during the civil war and there was no evidence to
suggest his family still living in Sri Lanka was at risk from
authorities.
She also noted the passage of time since the Sri Lankan civil war, which ended in May 2009.
Just after 8:00pm on Thursday, advocacy group Home to Bilo tweeted the family were being deported.
A friend of the family said they were taken to Melbourne Airport without warning.
The friend said Priya was put in one van and the girls were put in a different van.
Dozens of people responded to Home to Bilo's call to go to the airport in a bid to stop the deportation.
As
the plane departed just before 11:00pm, an interim injunction was
granted over the phone by a judge to prevent them from leaving the
country.
The plane landed in Darwin shortly before 3:00am Friday and the family was taken from the aircraft.
On Friday morning, the family was being held at a hotel at Darwin Airport.
"It would be pretty inhumane to separate the family at this time," she said.
Friday
on Channel Nine's The Today Show, Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton
said he wanted the family to accept they weren't refugees and wouldn't
be able to stay in Australia.
Somalians have been left reliant on aid as continued hot and dry weather impacts crops and livestock.
Photograph: Cem Genco/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Somalia faces a new humanitarian crisis with more than 2 million people now threatened by severe hunger, aid agencies say.
A further 3 million people are uncertain of their next meal, latest assessments suggest.
The new emergency comes two years after the threat of a major
disaster in the unstable east African state was averted by timely aid
from the international community.
Experts describe the crisis as a “climate emergency” and say communities are still struggling to recover from the lengthy drought that ended in 2017.
So far donors have promised less than half of the $1bn (£0.8bn) the UN and other agencies say is required.
The average number of people reached with food assistance from
January to May this year was only slightly more than half the total over
the preceding six months, aid officials say, with many agencies forced
to cut back in some areas because the humanitarian appeal for Somalia
was so poorly funded.
Richard Crothers, Somalia Country Director at the International Rescue Committee, said, “The
international community must scale up its response … now, or many in
Somalia, especially children under five, will die from starvation.”
The crisis has been aggravated by continuing conflict between
al-Shabaab, the Islamic extremist movement that has been fighting for
more than a decade to impose strict religious rule on Somalia, and
government troops, which are backed by regional forces and US air
assets.
Sharifo Ali Mohamud, 30, fled her home town in Middle Shabelle, one
of the agricultural regions in Somalia worst hit by the drought, in
February.
“The drought hit our village. We used to grow maize in the farm but
it became dry. We did not have anything to eat. Then the fighting
started,” said Mohamud, who travelled for three days with her seven
children to reach Mogadishu, the capital.
“Life is very difficult here. We don’t get enough water and food and
[if] I return to my village, I am afraid the harsh drought condition
will be bitter.”
Many rural people have been forced to leave home, unable to grow crops or raise livestock. Photograph: Kate Holt/Unicef
The April to June period, initially forecast as an average rainy
season, is now thought to be one of the driest on record in more than 35
years.
In recent years, the frequency and duration of these dry spells has increased.
The failed rainy season followed abnormally hot and dry conditions since October last year and was partly caused by cyclones in the southern Indian Ocean.
Two-thirds of the country’s population live in rural areas and are
completely dependent on the rains for their crops and livestock.
Nur Ali Ibrahim, a 53-year-old farmer and a father of 11 from the
Middle Shabelle region, said he had travelled to a displaced camp in
Mogadishu’s Abdiaziz neighbourhood because his family could no longer
survive when his farm “went dry and no crops grew”.
The area around Ibrahim’s village, about 40km (25 miles) north of
Mogadishu, was controlled by al-Shabaab, making it difficult for
humanitarian organisations to deliver aid there.
Kenya is urging the UN to list al-Shabaab under the same sanctions as
al-Qaida and Islamic State, but foreign donors say the move could stop
aid reaching millions.
The proposed listing could take effect as soon as Thursday and could
mean organisations that have any interaction with the extremists will
face serious penalties.
“A measure like this will have the effect of criminalising
humanitarian aid,” said Eric Schwartz, president of Refugees
International. “Any measure that would impact the current provision of
aid would have extremely serious and substantial implications.”
Al-Shabaab is already targeted under broader sanctions imposed by the
UN on Somalia, which is heavily aid-dependent after three decades of
conflict and economic ruin.
Currently UN agencies and humanitarian organisations are exempt from
these sanctions, which enables them to deliver urgent aid without
prosecution when they venture into territory controlled by al-Shabaab.
The Islamist insurgency group, which is affiliated with al-Qaida, has
long tried to regulate the distribution of humanitarian aid in the
areas it controls, often seeking to levy taxes on NGOs.
Ibrahim said food aid did not reach his village because al-Shabaab
demanded money from the organisations who wanted to deliver it.
“Some
of the NGO workers were arrested by al-Shabaab. People told us if you
stay here then no food aid will come because of al-Shabaab,” he said.
Aid organisations warn UN sanctions on al-Shabaab could hamper food deliveries. Photograph: Giles Clarke/Getty Images
More than half a million displaced people are now estimated to be in Mogadishu, according to Somalia’s National Commission for Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons (NCRI).
“We are worried the situation will be much worse if the coordination
between the local governments and the aid organisations is not scaled up
in the coming few months,” said Nuro Ismail, aid coordination officer
at NCRI.
Muhubo Aden, 41, left Wanlaweyn, 90km from the capital, when all her livestock died.
“After all our animals perished, we had nothing to eat and we ran out
of money. Then our neighbour told us [to] go to Mogadishu to get food
aid. My sister was very sick and weak due to malnutrition. We left
Wanlaweyn in the morning but her ailment worsened and she died,” Aden
said.
“If I could get my cows back, I would not have stayed here in the
camp. I wish I could earn my life as a herder instead of staying in the
IDP camp hopelessly and getting nothing.”
Move would be the latest in a series by the Trump administration easing emissions controls on the oil, gas and coal industries.
Photograph: Dave Thompson/PA
The Trump administration
is rolling back requirements that oil and gas drillers correct leaks of
methane – a potent heat-trapping pollutant contributing to the climate
crisis.
The Environmental Protection Agency announced the proposal on Thursday, against the wishes of some major oil companies.
Trump will reverse standards issued by Barack Obama that forced
companies to install controls to curb methane releases from drilling
operations, pipelines and storage facilities. The EPA is claiming the
changes would save the oil and gas industry $17m to $19m a year, or up
to $123m by 2025.
Agency
administrator Andrew Wheeler, a former energy lobbyist, said methane is
valuable so industry already has an incentive to minimize leaks. He
called existing rules “unnecessary and duplicative”.
The Trump administration has moved to erase all of Obama’s climate
policies and to ease other pollution controls for oil, gas and coal
companies. Not all of industry has supported those changes. For example,
car companies are currently pushing back against a weakening of mileage standards.
The advocacy group the Clean Air Task Force said the EPA is ignoring
decades of its own precedent and mountains of evidence that cutting
methane is easy and extremely important.
“If the EPA manages to finalize and implement this illegal proposal,
it will have devastating impacts on our climate for years to come,” said
the group’s attorney Darin Schroeder.
He said the EPA’s methane rollbacks will lead to industry “dumping an
additional 1.2m tons of methane into the air in 2025 – which will warm
the planet as much as the pollution from 22m cars.”
Janet McCabe, a top air official under Obama, noted that methane has
about 25 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide. Its impacts
could be even larger. And methane makes up about 10% of warming
pollutants in the US.
A study by the advocacy group the Environmental Defense Fund also
argues the oil and gas industry is releasing more methane than is
reported.
McCabe said the rule changes are a “rejection of the vast – the
increasing – body of science that shows that climate change is affecting
humans around the globe”. She said the rule changes would make
regulations more uncertain for companies.
Some of the companies that have already made investments in eliminating their methane leaks agreed.
The oil trade group the American Petroleum Institute supports the rollback, but Exxon, Shell and BP have spoken in favor
of restrictions. Smaller oil producers say the Obama standards would be
too expensive and would make it hard for them to compete with the
majors.
The API argues that nixing the rules will “strengthen emissions
standards” by reducing duplication with existing state programs,
providing clarity for industry and making it easier for operators to use
“new, innovative technologies”.
Congressman Don Beyer, a Democrat from Virginia, said it should be telling that the industry itself is split over the changes.
“Last month the planet experienced its hottest month in recorded
history. The threat of climate change to human life and livelihoods has
never been clearer, and yet the Trump administration is acting to allow
an increase in the dangerous emissions which cause it,” Beyer said.
Under threat from fire, deforestation and Bolsonaro, Xikrin people take matters into own hands
Fabiano Maisonnave in Trincheira Bacajá indigenous land
Xikrin warriors return to Rapko after an expedition to expel invaders.
Photograph: Lalo de Almeida
Threatened by fire, deforestation and invasion, the Xikrin people of the northern Amazon are fighting back.
While the authorities stand idle and the Brazilian president, Jair
Bolsonaro, tries to undermine their territorial rights, the indigenous
community have taken matters into their own hands by expelling the
loggers and ranchers who illegally occupied their land and set fire to
the forest.
Armed with rifles and wooden batons, groups of Xikrin warriors have
swept through their extensive territory in the state of Pará over the
past week. Whenever they encountered fire-scarred land, illegal
clearances and habitations, they went from hut to hut, ejecting the
invaders and confiscating chainsaws and other tools.
At the end of the 40km expedition, the warriors felt empowered. In a
war ritual, they marched back to their homes in Rapkô village. As their
families gathered round, they showed mobile phone clips of the raid they
had conducted on the intruders’ huts.
“Why are we protecting our land? So we can hunt. So our sons and
grandsons can live well on this land,” said Tikiri Xikrin, one of the
oldest warriors, during a ceremony to mark the group’s safe return.
“Only if I die will the kuben [white people] occupy the land.”
By law, this ought to be the task of the federal police. The
1,651,000-hectare Trincheira Bacajá indigenous territory was officially
recognised by the government in 2000. Nobody but the 1,100 members of
the Xikrin community has the right to live on it.
But the elders know there is scant hope that the government will
enforce their rights. The land-grabbers first started to creep into the
area in June last year, using a rough road that had been cut into the
forest by illegal loggers. The Xikrin filed complaints to official
agencies several times, but to no avail.
A Xikrin warrior observes a demarcation sign. Photograph: Lalo de Almeida
Last month, the slow trickle of deforestation became a flood across the Amazon, with a 278% increase
over the same time last year. One of the worst-affected areas was the
supposedly protected land of the Xikrin. In July, land-grabbers razed an
area of pristine forest the size of 1,500 football pitches in their
territory, according to the independent monitoring group Imazon.
The problems have a long history, but Bolsonaro has made
things worse. Instead of defending the territories from crime, critics
say he repeatedly undermines indigenous residents in his speeches and
through his policies. During a meeting with Amazon region state
governors on 27 August, the nationalist president alleged native
communities have been used by foreign interests to limit Brazil’s
growth.
“[Indigenous peoples] don’t speak our language, but they have somehow
managed to get 14% of our national territory,” Bolsonaro said recently,
adding: “One of the purposes of this is to impair us.”
Bekara
Xikrin, the chief of Rapkô village, said the land-grabbers had been
encouraged by the president. “One guy [among the invaders] told us the
land is freely accessible, that Bolsonaro granted access to it, that
this is not indigenous land.”
The invader claimed he wanted to help the indigenous community to
work their land. Bekara gave him short shrift. “I told him: this
indigenous person doesn’t want help, the old warriors don’t want help. Deforestation is not allowed here,” he said.
The Xikrin’s self-defence actions have not scared off the
land-grabbers. In an audio message circulated by WhatsApp, one of them
warned that close to 300 people were preparing an attack against a
nearby indigenous village.
To prevent violence, the federal prosecutor for the region, Thais
Santi, formally requested action by the police on 26 August. She said an
operation should be carried out within 24 hours, but two days later
nothing had happened.
“The Trincheira Bacajá case involves widescale negligence by the
government,” Santi said. “The Xikrin registered a complaint against the
occupation of their land. Because the police failed to act in time, the
invasion spread.”
Xikrin warriors gather in Rapko village. Photograph: Lalo de Almeida
Many other indigenous lands in the Xingu river region are under
similar pressure. This basin – one of the biggest in the Amazon – has
been opened up by the Belo Monte hydroelectric dam, which brought an
influx of business people and labourers. The municipality around the
main city of Altamira now ranks first in Brazil for fire outbreaks.
From 1 January to 26 August, the municipality experienced 2,566
blazes, an increase of 459% over the same period last year, according to
Brazil’s national space research institute, Inpe.
Neighbouring the Trincheira is the Apyterewa indigenous territory of
the Parakanã people, which has suffered a huge invasion by cattle
ranchers. In July, 28 sq km were deforested in this area – the largest
inside a Brazilian indigenous territory that month, according to Imazon.
Apyterewa illustrates how the federal government’s inaction predates
Bolsonaro. In 2015, the federal supreme court (STF) ordered the eviction
of hundreds of invaders but, four years later, the ruling has not been
enforced. In fact, the number of land-grabbers has increased.
In the same region, Ituna/Itatá indigenous territory lost 9 sq km of
forest last month. These three indigenous lands are the worst affected
in Brazil in recent weeks, according to Imazon.
A deforested area inside the Trincheira territory. Photograph: Lalo de Almeida
Holding a sickle in his hands, Tikiri Xikrin was defiant: “I am not
afraid of the white invaders. I have courage. We have courage. If the kuben start a conflict, we will fight.”
Even in such a divided and troubled country, there is hope. Between us we can beat the climate destroyers
Illustration: Thomas Pullin
Dear Greta,
Thank you for travelling across the Atlantic to north America to help
us do the most important work in the world. There are those of us who
welcome you and those who do not because you have landed in two places, a
place being born and a place dying, noisily, violently, with as much
damage as possible.
It has always been two places, since the earliest Europeans arrived
in places where Native people already lived, and pretended they were new
and gave them the wrong names. You can tell the history of the United
States – which are not very united now – as the history of Sojourner Truth,
the heroine who helped liberate the enslaved, as that of the
slaveowners and defenders of slavery, as a place of visionary
environmental voices such as Rachel Carson and the corporate powers and profiteers she fought and exposed.
Right now the US is the country of Donald Trump and of Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez, of climate destroyers and climate protectors. Sometimes
the Truths and the Carsons have won. I believe it is more than possible
for Ocasio-Cortez and the Green New Deal
to win, for the spirit of generosity and inclusion and the protection
of nature to win – but that depends on what we do now. Which is why I’m
so grateful that you have arrived to galvanize us with your clarity of
vision and passionate commitment.
"To be a climate activist anywhere on Earth now is to stand at a crossroads: heaven on one side and hell on the other"
Not long ago I talked to a powerful climate organizer who began her
work when she was only a little older than you, and she told me that her
hope right now is that people recognize that this is a moment of great
possibility, of openings and momentum, and a growing alarm and
commitment to what the changing climate requires of us. Something has
changed, thanks to you and to the young people who have brought new
urgency and vision to the climate movement. Many people have become
concerned and awake for the first time, and the conversation we need to
have is opening up. People are ready for change, or some of us are. This
is what’s being born in the US and around the world: not only new
energy systems, but new social systems with more room for the voices of
those who are not white or male or straight or neurotypical.
The old energy system was about centralized control and the
malevolent power of Gazprom and BP, Shell and Chevron, and the
governments warped into serving them rather than humanity. The new
system must not only be about localized energy, but democratized
decision-making, about the rights of nature and the rights of the
vulnerable and the future, over profit.
Some of this is already here: not only the larger groups you’re surely heard of – the Sunrise Movement, 350.org, the Sierra Club, Rainforest Action Network
– but countless local and tribal groups that have arisen to stop this
pipeline or that coal port or these fracking projects, to protect this
forest or this mountain or these waters. They are not visible the way
the United Nations or the US Congress or European Union is, but their
work matters, and perhaps we will build a lot of this transition out
from below – but we need the big policy agendas set from above as well.
Everywhere I see remarkable things happening. No matter how much you
see of this big country, this huge continent, there is more than you can
see. I hope you have a chance to see some of the beauty of the American
landscapes, from rainforests to deserts; there is also beauty in the
passionate commitment around the country. Coalminers in Kentucky have
been blocking a coal train track for a month, because their bankrupt company stiffed them on wages, and coalminers elsewhere recently spoke to this newspaper
about their clarity that coal is over and that the Green New Deal and
its jobs are welcome. The gigantic coal-burning, sky-polluting Navajo
Generating Station in Arizona will shut down later this year, and, Scientific American reported,
“Its average annual emissions over that period are roughly equivalent
to what 3.3 million passenger cars would pump into the atmosphere in a
single year. The Navajo Generating Station isn’t alone. It’s among a new
wave of super-polluters headed for the scrap heap,” including giant
plants in Kentucky and Pennsylvania.” Last year, US coal plants with
annual emissions of 83 million tonnes of carbon were shut down.
'A massive wall of fire': wildfires rage in California – video
Several states – California, New York, Hawaii, New Mexico – have made
commitments to 100% renewable electricity in the near future, and while
the federal government tries to push us backward, many states lean
forward. This summer Texas began to get more energy from wind than from
coal. Iowa in the midwest now gets 37% of its electricity from wind, not
because of idealism alone, but pragmatism: wind is cheaper. Science
magazine reported last month,
“Solar plus batteries is now cheaper than fossil power,” and a
Connecticut newspaper recently announced that Chubb, the largest
commercial insurer in the USA, will stop insuring coal plants and coal
mining.
Worldwide,
we are in the midst of an energy revolution that dwarfs the industrial
revolution: human beings will for the first time not use fire, will not
release carbon into the sky, to get most of our energy. We will
inevitably transition away from fossil fuels as a primary energy source,
and the question is only when. If we do it swiftly, we minimize damage
to the climate; if we wait, we maximize it. The damage is here, and it’s
not only destroying nature, it’s killing us. When the California town
of Paradise burned down last November, at least 86 people burned to
death or choked on smoke; millions suffered from the smoke that spread
across the region. Heat deaths are up in the south-west, where 235
people died in Arizona alone from this cause during 2017.
But we also know that there are so many uncounted deaths from
poisonous fossil fuels. We know that many of the refugees on the USA’s
southern border are climate refugees, driven out of their homes in
Central America by the failure of agriculture from unpredictable and
violent weather, heat, and drought. We know that Alaska was this month
for the first time ice-free all along its coast, and the hot dry weather
inland led to horrific wildfires. “Starting on the fourth of July and
lasting multiple days, temperatures across Alaska were 20 to 30 degrees
above average in some locations,” reported National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration.
To be a climate activist anywhere on Earth now is to stand at a
crossroads: heaven on one side and hell on the other. Heaven because the
transition we need to make and are making – just not big enough or fast
enough – is not only an power-generation revolution, but a
decentralization of political power, a shift away from the big energy
companies who used governments to make wars and make profits for them, a
shift away from the poisonousness of fossil fuel. Hell because the
destruction of what it took nature millions of years to create – the
exquisite balance of ecosystems, of bird migration in harmony with
seasons, of symbioses between species, of the great Himalayan and Andean
glaciers whose waters feed so many people, of rainforests and temperate
forests – is hideous as well as terrifying. The Amazon is burning
because of one rightwing leader and a system that rewards agricultural
products but not forest protection, even though we need rainforests more
than we need the soybeans and beef raised on the land stolen from the
rainforest and its indigenous inhabitants.
I’ve mentioned a bit of what is going on in my troubled, complicated
country, the US, but of course these are global conflicts and global
situations, and the solutions are advancing almost everywhere, because
they are good solutions to terrible problems.
You have come to help us choose the former over the latter, and more
of us thank you than you will ever be able to see or hear. More than
that, we’re with you, trying to realize the goals that the climate
demands of us, to make a sustainable world for those who are young now,
those yet to come, and for the beauty of the world that is still with
us.
• Rebecca Solnit is a journalist and author.hough we need rainforests more
than we need the soybeans and beef raised on the land stolen from the
rainforest and its indigenous inhabitants.
I’ve mentioned a bit of what is going on in my troubled, complicated
country, the US, but of course these are global conflicts and global
situations, and the solutions are advancing almost everywhere, because
they are good solutions to terrible problems.
You have come to help us choose the former over the latter, and more
of us thank you than you will ever be able to see or hear. More than
that, we’re with you, trying to realize the goals that the climate
demands of us, to make a sustainable world for those who are young now,
those yet to come, and for the beauty of the world that is still with
us. • Rebecca Solnit is a journalist and author.
Plastic pollution: ‘I’m giving up. You probably should too’ – video
A father of three who has led volunteer beach cleans for the last four years in west Wales is quitting because of the insurmountable plastic problem around Britain’s coastlines.
When Alan Cookson, 46, started cleaning Aberystwyth’s beaches he says there were 5.5tn pieces of plastic in the sea. Now there are at least 51tn.
“It’s like you’re trying to mop up a flood but the tap’s still
running.” Cookson feels like he’s spent the last four years on the
losing team: “If it was a football match you would have changed tactics
by now.”
He first noticed the sheer amount of plastic littering west Wales’
beaches when he started collecting driftwood to make Christmas trees. It
quickly turned him into an anti-plastic activist.
Four
years on and his house is like a marine plastic museum. In the garage
he has 1,731 cigarette butts collected in an hour and half from the
town’s north beach. Each are made of tiny particles of plastic which take at least 15 years to biodegrade.
Inside he shows us a piece of lego that traces back to a ship spill
that dumped millions of pieces off the Cornish coast in 1997. And there
are toy soldiers – apparently a valued find for beach cleaners.
He also has a huge map on his kitchen wall with Wales’ main
watercourses marked out. The main road into Aberystwyth, the A44,
crosses the Rheidol river multiple times and there’s a very good chance
that the plastic that litters the lay-by will end up in the sea.
Cookson, a former Surfers Against Sewage (SAS) volunteer, is deeply
critical of the charity sector. When it comes to the anti-plastic fight
“they are not even in the ring”.
He also says that initiatives like SAS’s “plastic-free communities”, and charity campaign “keep Wales tidy” are not working.
He’d like to see charities challenge “corporate consumer capitalism”,
by which he means companies like Coca-Cola, who are producing 3m tonnes of plastic packaging ever year – equivalent to 200,000 bottles every single minute.
A Coca-Cola spokesperson said: “We don’t want to see any of our
packaging end up as litter. We are supportive of reforms, including the
introduction of a deposit return scheme here in Great Britain, to help
us get more packaging back. In Great Britain, all our bottles and cans
are already 100% recyclable. When disposed of properly, our bottles can
be recycled into new bottles over and over again.”
For his final beach clean Cookson has enlisted the help of his friend
Gilly Thomas who, when she started paddle-boarding three years ago,
found two balloons stuck in a tree and the top of a cleaning bottle.
She now devotes her spare time to fishing plastic out of rivers.
The pair are also working with the National Citizen Service, who have
assembled 40 teenagers on a summer course at the University of
Aberystwyth. Cookson calls them “generation plastic” and tells one boy
that the bottle he is drinking Coke from will take at least 400 years to
biodegrade.
It comes as 16-year-old activist Greta Thunberg arrives in New York
after a zero-carbon yacht trip across the Atlantic to speak at UN
climate conference, and in a year in which she has inspired thousands of
kids to walk out of school demanding urgent action to fix the climate
crisis.
On the beach, volunteer James Philpin, 16, says he is scared about
what comes next. “Obviously I can’t vote yet, but people need to change
things for the better in terms of the climate.” He thinks there is too
much focus “on the older generations. It’s not their world any more.”
As the other teenagers find pens, beauty wrappers and tampon
applicators, Cookson explains that “plastic pebbles” are a feature of
the summer. These are created when people burn plastic rubbish in beach
fires, which gets washed into the sea and forms small, round balls.
Last year Aberystwyth was named a “plastic-free town” by Surfers
Against Sewage. Yet under the “plastic-free Aberystwyth” flag,
holidaymakers drink out of single-use plastic bottles and eat ice creams
with plastic spoons.
Around town there isn’t much evidence of it being enforced either.
One of the few cafes with a visible “plastic-free” sign sells single use
plastic bottles and gives out plastic cutlery. Both Thomas and Cookson
are sceptical that the label has helped the broader battle against
plastic.
Back at the beach, Cookson’s last clean-up is over. He refuses to get
emotional and says he’d happily return to it: tomorrow, or in five
years’ time – but only if can be sure that “the action I’m taking, the
energy that I’m putting in, will actually clean the sea”.
Surfers Against Sewage said in a statement: “We are very proud of our
Plastic Free Communities movement, which starts communities on their
journey to ridding their local environment of avoidable plastics … To
tackle environmental issues such as plastic pollution it’s critical that
action is taken by grassroots initiatives such as this, as well as
through positive environmental policy at government level.”
