Last Friday, out of the blue, for no perceivable reason and disturbingly reminiscent of the beginnings of political disunity witnessed first in the Gillard/Rudd government and now in the Abbott/Turnbull government, headlines in the West Australian blared out the news that the present leader of the state opposition, Mark McGowan, would not be able to win government by defeating the Liberal Western Australian government of Colin Barnett, and would need to be replaced by former Foreign Minister Steven Smith. I said to myself: "really???"
I live in Mark McGowan's electorate and see him regularly in person. He speaks regularly at my branch meeting. So you may be able to understand my consternation at this pretense of news. Rather than take these headlines as a true representation of reality I disallowed any disruption in my perpetual state of inner peace and waited for the truth to come out. Last night this happened.
The Western Australian State Branch of the Australian Labor Party last night vehemently and resounding closed ranks behind Mark McGowan as leader and next Premier of our sandgroper state.
Loud standing ovations greeted Mark at every turn. No doubt at all was left in the room. There will be no challenge. Any opinion to the contrary or that Mark can not win is simply that, an opinion, with no basis in fact unless evidence is produced in support.
Sources for this headline remain mysterious. Steven Smith himself did not come out and enlighten us until the following Monday. If you are not happy with the leadership of your political party and think its goals are doomed to failure unless someone else you know of within the party becomes leader, then the ethical, harmless, correct and righteous way of bringing about the change you desire is to take your concerns through normal channels and attempt to implement change quietly, not blast it out for all to see in the local media. What this episode has achieved is to project a little hint of disunity in the mind of the voting public. In politics, as has been noted, and displayed grandly at federal level, disunity is death.
We can call it the great political disease of the twenty-first century. Generated by the increasing compression of the news cycle caused by the acceleration in the IT revolution, politicians with ambition take to the media. It's like a need to be noteworthy, if not through fame, then through infamy. It infected Keven07, quickly spread to Gillard, Back to Rudd, and now has mutated to a more virulent strain in Abbot and Turnbull.
The policies WA Labor is taking to the election in 2017 are wide-ranging, right-headed, far-sighted and well thought out. Their implementation, to put it mildly, will make this state a better place for everyone. This is what everyone should want. I'm not sure absolutely everyone does actually desire this outcome, but I look forward to finding out.
Tuesday 15 March 2016
Friday 11 March 2016
Goodbye 2015, Good Ridance, Hello 2016
So the cycle turns again and here we are at both an end and a beginning. The year 2015 will be remembered for much evil but also much good, as most years are, but should be judged according to what was actually resolved, beyond words and so in deed.
Humanity continues to dance on the existential abyss of a Malthusian moment. How much longer can our cleverness and technology counteract the logic of Malthus? We are going to find out, not next year but soon.
Make no mistake. Climate change is an existential threat that has wiped out species in the past and will continue to do so. Humanity has developed the ability to control small parts of nature, but can still reap the destructive whirlwind of hubris. We recently saw some small signs of hope in Paris, but we must be realistic. A 2C world may not be possible under the time constraints our leaders (if you want to call them that) have left us with, since the problem was first identified back in the early 1960's.
Since the "Industrial Revolution" began to accelerate around 1850, the CO2e concentration in the atmosphere also accelerated. A large part of this extra CO2e concentration remains in the atmosphere for a very long time. This fact seriously constrains the time in which it is physically possible to change it. The time when it was easiest to fix the problem was in the sixties. It was probably still possible by 2000; possible with difficulty by 2010; and now very difficult indeed. Yet we are still in the talk phase. Action cannot come soon enough.
It has been noted https://theconversation.com/weve-got-a-climate-goal-of-1-5-degrees-so-how-do-we-get-there-52413 that, in order to achieve a 2C world, let alone a 1.5C world, CO2e must be physically removed from the atmosphere. The technology required to do this does not yet exist. Our situation at present is akin to a bet on a race. If our technology wins our species continues; if climate change wins our species is annihilated. The actions of the nations of the world on this issue imply a naive trust in the all-conquering supremacy of our technology. This is hubris and can lead to our destruction. There is a chance that it will not and we have implicitly wagered our existence on this chance. The pigs are taking flight as we speak.
Another gamble of note which has come to light this year is this associated concept of a 2C world, by which is meant a mean temperature of two degrees Celsius above preindustrial mean atmospheric temperature. The nature of the gamble is that these are mean temperatures. The arithmetic mean is a measure of central tendency in a large population of measurements. As such, in a world with a mean atmospheric temperature of 2C above preindustrial conditions, there will be an equal number of measurements within the 2C range above this state as below. Since each measurement corresponds to a geographical location, it becomes a lottery as to whether the place where you live is in the former or the latter category. Maybe you will get lucky.
Another thread in the tapestry was the continuing Middle East Saga; Huntington's 'Clash of Civilisations.' There was a time when I paid little attention to this issue, forming no opinions and ignoring the suffering because it was in the too hard basket. See what happens when you ignore things?
Humanity continues to dance on the existential abyss of a Malthusian moment. How much longer can our cleverness and technology counteract the logic of Malthus? We are going to find out, not next year but soon.
Make no mistake. Climate change is an existential threat that has wiped out species in the past and will continue to do so. Humanity has developed the ability to control small parts of nature, but can still reap the destructive whirlwind of hubris. We recently saw some small signs of hope in Paris, but we must be realistic. A 2C world may not be possible under the time constraints our leaders (if you want to call them that) have left us with, since the problem was first identified back in the early 1960's.
Since the "Industrial Revolution" began to accelerate around 1850, the CO2e concentration in the atmosphere also accelerated. A large part of this extra CO2e concentration remains in the atmosphere for a very long time. This fact seriously constrains the time in which it is physically possible to change it. The time when it was easiest to fix the problem was in the sixties. It was probably still possible by 2000; possible with difficulty by 2010; and now very difficult indeed. Yet we are still in the talk phase. Action cannot come soon enough.
It has been noted https://theconversation.com/weve-got-a-climate-goal-of-1-5-degrees-so-how-do-we-get-there-52413 that, in order to achieve a 2C world, let alone a 1.5C world, CO2e must be physically removed from the atmosphere. The technology required to do this does not yet exist. Our situation at present is akin to a bet on a race. If our technology wins our species continues; if climate change wins our species is annihilated. The actions of the nations of the world on this issue imply a naive trust in the all-conquering supremacy of our technology. This is hubris and can lead to our destruction. There is a chance that it will not and we have implicitly wagered our existence on this chance. The pigs are taking flight as we speak.
Another gamble of note which has come to light this year is this associated concept of a 2C world, by which is meant a mean temperature of two degrees Celsius above preindustrial mean atmospheric temperature. The nature of the gamble is that these are mean temperatures. The arithmetic mean is a measure of central tendency in a large population of measurements. As such, in a world with a mean atmospheric temperature of 2C above preindustrial conditions, there will be an equal number of measurements within the 2C range above this state as below. Since each measurement corresponds to a geographical location, it becomes a lottery as to whether the place where you live is in the former or the latter category. Maybe you will get lucky.
Another thread in the tapestry was the continuing Middle East Saga; Huntington's 'Clash of Civilisations.' There was a time when I paid little attention to this issue, forming no opinions and ignoring the suffering because it was in the too hard basket. See what happens when you ignore things?
If There is But One Iota of Goodness Left in The World
Michael Bradley
"I cannot escape the conclusion that, in 2015, humankind went backwards."
"The positive has been rare. The small ways in which people displayed their humanity - #illridewithyou; the post-Sydney Siege floral sea in Martin Place; the resilience of Parisians against a double dose of horrific terrorist violence; Melbourne's facing down of the arrant Border Force police-state overreach; some parts of Europe's response to the Syrian exodus - were exclusively reactive, responding to and ameliorating the worst of terrorism, governmental excess or xenophobia."
"In the overwhelming sea of awfulness that people and governments inflicted on each other this year, these green buds of progressive thought and empathic action barely registered beyond the social media ripple. And they didn't impede the carnage or the erosion of human rights one bit."
Perhaps a bit of an overstatement but also perhaps not.
It is a defining characteristic of conservative, ie right wing, governments, that they stand for the status quo so that all stays the same from generation to generation. Electorates also fall back on conservative governments when they feel threatened. Do you detect a hint of oxymoronism here? If you want every thing to stay the same, and the present reality is what is threatening, then electing conservatives is the best way to make certain of the continuing recurrence of this reality.
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