If this nightmare scenario isn't enough to push people into taking action, what will?
Hearing the drivel spewing from our PM and other politicians; It's always the same pandering responses with no real strategic change. It's beyond frustrating. We will have to be destroyed (are being?) before anyone admits there is are real problems requiring real actions. I have noticed that at a more local level of government, the messaging has changed and is more serious now.
Here are some thought bubbles;
* more aggressive back-burning and fuel load management: managed at a federal level by law.
* stop all new coal, keep replacing with ?whatever?, including a reappraisal of nuclear.
* start retreating populations back towards cities: reverse the sprawl into protected urban bubbles.
* start requiring building to have ventilation and filtering systems that can handle smoke better, and are more efficient at sealing air: I've heard many people complain about smokey insides: happens to me too !
* stricter criminal penalties for any arson related crimes.
* restrictions on tourism to risky areas during the fire season.
Either that or we finally DO become a giant desert from coast to coast: should be safe enough then!
We just had a political cycle where the Labor party lost on (among many reasons) a more climate-change focused agenda in the federal election, so we won't know for another three years if there is any any voter backlash. Additionally, parliament is not in session and the major parties are currently focused on crisis response (instead of attacking each other), so the political football has yet to truly begin.
Aside from the considerable pain and hardship for these local communities and the potential increase in politicization of environmental issues, the tourism sector is being obviously effected as you simply can't drive to many parts of New South Wales right now, tourists are being asked to leave many areas, and Sydney has been smog filled for the last month.
Not smog, just plain smoke.
Labour will say your taxes will increase, liberals will promise more tax cuts and everyone will vote for Liberal again.
Unfortunately, I don't believe voting one way or another will make much difference. One party might be slightly better than another, but ultimately none will dare to implement sufficient measures. Climate problem will have to be solved outside of party politics. We need something akin to civil rights movement. On the global scale.
Then you are simply giving up on the whole thing? Because there is no other way to make much difference. If the current party platforms aren't sufficient, then those who care must first work to change those too. Become party members, work to select delegates that will then change it, etc. Same as any other democracy, regardless of details (in the US "party" (coalition) platforms and choices are determined by primaries before the country decides which one will assume government).
>Climate problem will have to be solved outside of party politics. We need something akin to civil rights movement. On the global scale.
It can't emphasized enough how completely, utterly wrong this is. Solving collective action problems requires coordinated use of power, which by definition is politics. Regardless of how the politics gets changed, it still will ultimately depend on politics. It's not some dirty word or concept, it's a descriptive/truism, when you work to get groups of humans to do something you're doing politics. It is our great good fortune, built on a mountain of blood a treasure, that so many of us live in democracies where it is so easy relative to history to work for radical political change through parties and government structures.
You mention the civil rights movement, but that ONLY WORKED THROUGH POLITICS. There seems to have been a huge forgetting in modern times that protest movements and the like are only means to a political end, not constructive in and of themselves. The civil rights movement had organized leadership that used the protests to mobilize voters, to gain public interest and recognition, etc., all with the ultimate aim of changing politicians/parties and actually getting actual for real legislation passed. They worked to the extent they translated into votes and in turn into actual power.
Conversely, consider all sorts of modern disorganized protests, no matter the size. It's perfectly possible to spend enormous amounts of time, effort, and resources and accomplish absolutely nothing whatsoever. It's a very dangerous and corrosive form of virtue signaling, and can actively harm progress because it burns people's limited capital to no useful end. And that in turn helps further breed disengagement, because people feel "they did something" "yet nothing happened". But "doing something" doesn't mean it's actually useful.
I was trying to say more or less the same, but maybe a bit too terse. [edit: with the qualification that I believe that protests and civil disobedience are essential means in "changing politicians/parties"]
What I was trying to say is that passive voting for the currently available options is not enough. People need to get off their couches and get actively involved in a climate movement and shift the overton window.
> Conversely, consider all sorts of modern disorganized protests, no matter the size.
Which ones do you have in mind specifically?
It's almost easier to ask the inverse, what modern "crowd movement" has had lasting effects at all? I'm thinking of big ones like Occupy, or Remain, or the Women's Marches, or Extinction Rebellion for really recent. What actual, tangible change did they directly effect? What concrete legislation? The US civil rights movement actually ultimately resulted in the enormous Civil Rights Act of 1964. Various movements created a full umbrella group, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, to coordinate lobbying efforts and help translate public will into Congressional action. And it was needed, because passage was fought vigorously all the way to the end, with heavy filibustering, rule maneuvering, etc. It passed not through some grand awakening but through sustained, multi-faceted application of power, including skillful use of grubby politics by supporters. And of course even it's passing was still only part of a process, there was resistance to implementation, lawsuits, and on and on. Yet none of that diminished the accomplishment or the lasting effect it's had on society.
I'm definitely worried there is an increasing movement towards flashy, feel-good and "exciting" efforts without the necessary accompanying political party effort needed to actually do the work of translating popular will into concrete power. And as there isn't an unlimited budget of political capital or popular attention there really is something of a zero-sum aspect to all this, if people are spending their time and resources on ineffective measures that's quite harmful. We need full carbon cost internalization for example, which will not just dramatically aid in finding the most efficient ways to go carbon neutral but also be helpful in the critical next step of going carbon negative. Protests are likely a necessary component of getting carbon cost internalization laws passed, but we do in fact need those laws passed so while necessary they're not sufficient.
We also need someone other than Greta as the face of it. While she does a great job, she's often dismissed due to her age and the US president has even publicly called her retarded in the literal sense.
People in the streets is probably what you need.
I didn't catch that one - is there a source? All I am Googling up is Trump telling her to chill, watch a movie, and a reference to anger management.
A global movement should be able to muster a better spokesperson than a child. No matter how earnest and scared a child may be, it is still a mistake to make major policy decisions on their say-so.
Yours is a standard attack line, because it allows you to pretend that it's only her saying this, and ignore all the thousands of others who've been saying similar things, from the IPCC to the Green Parties of the world.
A line of attack being standard doesn't make it bad. Putting forward a child to speak to world leaders and get worked up on behalf of other children isn't going to do the movement any favours. Greta is a puppet chosen because someone cynically thinks that putting a child on stage is going to tug on people's heartstrings. They might be right, but she doesn't have anything going for her that should command respect.
That does not make the flaws are irrelevant. She is being suggested as a leader but she is in no position to actually provide leadership.
Al Gore also had a long list of problems, but he was much more respectable than Greta.
I suspect if the elections were to happen now, things might be different. Lots of people have directly or indirectly (thanks to heavy smog) suffered from the wildfires, moreso than previous summers.
Labor were also saying that taxes will increase, I think that is the major factor for their loss.
Every country needs to do its fair share, and Australia is not: http://theconversation.com/australia-hit-its-kyoto-target-bu...
Oh, and our elected Prime Minister brought a lump of coal into parliament, which says as much.
All that matters is countries having fair targets, and meeting those targets.
Countries are free to meet their emissions reductions targets how they like, including buying cheap coal from Australia, planes from US, and cars from Germany.
Australia's coal industry provides few jobs, is heavily government subsidized (either explicitly or through direct infrastructure funding), pays little to no tax, and creates environmental harm that the majority of the electorate disagree with.
[Sorry HN: I know I should be supporting this with annotations but am time pressed today.]
Regional Queenslanders don't want to end up like the old coal mining towns of the UK, which still have not recovered from the mine closures in 1980s. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/aug/26/blighted-coa...
I'm not saying coal is morally defensible, but this is democracy in action.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_coal_prod...
481.3 million tonnes of coal / 24.6 million people
You're basically saying we should tackle Australia's 481 before China's 3523 or India's 716 or US' 702. Maybe we should tackle China first, as it is producing 45% of the world's coal, compared to 6% of Australia.
Now if you were to say that Australia is the 5th biggest producer of coal in the world, that'd be a more convincing argument.
I'm also surprised by Indonesia (6th). And the fact that Germany and Poland contribute 60% of the EU's (4th) coal production.
Who is 'we', and how do you suggest 'we' tackle China first?
Each country has to take care of its own emissions — we can’t wait for China to act first.
Germany is a literal "black spot" in that the coal industry still has political muscle there, despite Germany's otherwise relatively strong (but still very much minority) green movement.
We've missed our reduction goals, but reducton did happen (about 20% over the last 15 years, and the decrease has even been monotonic since 2013).
I keep having to correct this on hackernews specifically. I have to wonder, is there some sort of concerted effort to lie about this?
Yeah, there is a strong pro-nuclear group on HN who believe it has unfairly been targeted.
I guess I should not throw stones since both countries I live in are worse than this. Specifically they dig out more and more coal every year without stopping.
On the other hand, Germany had already experienced the Chernobyl cloud.
That's not quite true. You're not including Australia's extraction economy in that equation, only their local emissions. A similar miscalculation happens when people pretend Norway is a low CO2 output & impact nation by ignoring its extreme fossil fuel extraction per capita.
The obvious answer is to stop feeding China's emissions engine, which is dramatically larger than anybody else when it comes to CO2 emissions (and they're building a very large number of new coal plants). Unfortunately that probably wouldn't help much for very long, as China is de facto occupying Africa for resource extraction purposes.