COP 25 Sees Australia As "Totally Disconnected From Reality" - As It Fights For Carbon Loopholes

[hatrack]

Australia has sent Energy Minister Angus Taylor to the final days of a climate summit in Spain, where senior figures from around the world are likely to look at him in dismay. That’s because while much of the east coast burns and Sydney chokes on dangerous levels of smoke, Mr Taylor’s mission is to keep open a loophole that allows the government to fudge the numbers on emission reduction targets.

“It’s a loophole that allows for some clever accounting and makes it easy for Australia to hit its Paris targets, and which its banking on doing most of the work and heavy lifting,” Richie Merzian, director of the Climate and Energy Program at think tank The Australia Institute, explained to news.com.au.

“That loophole is now in jeopardy because a draft decision is being considered to close it. And so, Angus Taylor will be lobbying to keep it open.”

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The climate expert, who’s in Spain for the summit this week, said years of inaction and empty claims of progress made Australia something of a laughing stock. “When you talk to some Europeans, they look at Australians like they’re from a different planet,” Mr Merzian said. “They cannot comprehend how a country can literally be on fire and admit the fire emergency is unprecedented, its experts knowing that climate change exacerbates and supercharges fires, and at the same time and in the same breath lobby for special consideration to do as little as possible on climate action.

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https://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/climate-change/australia-seen-as-being-totally-disconnected-from-reality-on-world-stage-climate-expert-says/news-story/1bd2bbbdd47385d9c9ffc613caadf92d

[Mike 03]

1. "It beggars belief"

Good article.

The issue of climate change has become extremely polarised and politicised in Australia, but that’s not the norm globally, Mr Merzian said.

“Yes, there are places, like Australia and the United States, where the climate discussion is highly ideological and people are divided and this is seen as an issue for one side of politics,” Mr Merzian said.

“But those places are in the minority. The majority of countries – not just Europe, but a number of developing countries – are committed to tackling the causes and impacts of climate change.”

There's a photograph of two women "sunbathing" under a blanket of smoke near Sydney.

[IndyOp]

2. They have piles of wet black ash on their beaches from fires 100 km away -

ash travels, lands on the beach and in water, surf deposits piles of wet black ash.

Al Gore used to say that the climate crisis would be like "taking a walk through the book of Revelations". Well, here we go kids:

The first Angel stepped up and poured his bowl out on earth: Loathsome, stinking sores erupted on all who had taken the mark of the Beast and worshiped its image.

The second Angel poured his bowl on the sea: The sea coagulated into blood, and everything in it died.

Fire blazed from the sun and scorched men and women. Burned and blistered... Mad with pain, men and women bit and chewed their tongues

The sixth Angel poured his bowl on the great Euphrates River: It dried up to nothing. The dry riverbed became a fine roadbed for the kings from the East. From the mouths of the Dragon, the Beast, and the False Prophet I saw three foul demons crawl out—they looked like frogs.

From the Throne in the Temple came a shout, “Done!” followed by lightning flashes and shouts, thunder crashes and a colossal earthquake—a huge and devastating earthquake, never an earthquake like it since time began. The Great City split three ways, the cities of the nations toppled to ruin… Every island fled and not a mountain was to be found. Hailstones weighing a ton plummeted, crushing and smashing men and women as they cursed God for the hail, the epic disaster of hail.