-------------
Let laugh them out of power!
a
-----------------

April Fools Day - why aren't nukes at the top of the
Posted by: "FoE Sydney - Nuclear Campaign" foesyd4@...
johnhallam2001
Tue Jan 30, 2007 7:35 pm (PST)
The below is from Felicity Hill, who is well - known to all of us.

Particularly in Sydney, there is a desperste need to re-invigorate
the anti- nuclear and anti-nuclear-weapons movement.

We had hundreds of thousands of people in the streets about it in the
1980s, when it was an 'end-of-the-world' issue.(for Palm Sunday
rallies).

For goodness sake, especially since the moving of the hands of the
'doomsday clock' not so long ago, let us put nuclear weapons and
nukes generally right at the top of the activist agenda

Dear Colleagues,

As you may have noticed, in 2007 Palm Sunday falls on April Fools Day.

Shortly before the Christmas break it dawned on many of us in Melbourne
who have been involved in the peace movement over the years that this
was a significant congruence of dates as Australia heads into an
election year with a Government intent on establishing a nuclear
industry in Australia.

So we called a meeting, brainstormed a lot of ideas, and now have 35
organisations signed up. Following the April Fools Day theme, we decided
to plan an up-beat, theatrical and comedy based approach to the serious
issue of peace. We will protest war, the fool on the hill and the
nuclear fool cycle!

We are organising a public meeting with Dr. Helen Caldicott and others
on Thursday 1 March, and a parade and festival on 1 April, ending at the
biggest outdoor entertainment venue in Melbourne, the Sidney Myer Music
Bowl. We are involving comedians in all our events, and also asking
people to dress up and ride their bikes to protest the nuclear fool
cycle and foolish wars.

We came to consensus on the following demands which you can read more
about on our website www.NuclearFoolsDay.org :

Stop nuclear power in Australia: Renewables not reactors!
Stop uranium mining: Leave it in the ground!
Stop nuclear weapons and wars: Reject the US nuclear umbrella!
Stop nuclear waste: No waste dump in Australia!

The enthusiasm for holding an up-beat, theatrical and comedy based
approach to protest has attracted quite a bit of interest.

- 35 organisations have signed up

- Country towns and other capital cities are organising events,

- Michael Leunig, one of Australia's most popular cartoonists, has
agreed to create some poster artwork to help send a peaceful and
family-friendly message for the parade and festival,

- Some popular bands with diverse styles have signed up to entertain in
between comedy acts and speakers

- the International Comedy Festival, which starts two days after Palm
Sunday in Melbourne has cleared their artists to appear at Palm Sunday
events, and some will view this as a good dry run / dress rehearsal /
advertising for their shows during the festival

- a broad call has gone out to celebrities to send a video message
supporting a peaceful and nuclear free future

This email is sent out to NGOs outside of Australia in case you would
also like to organise a Palm Sunday event to protest war, your fool on
the hill and the nuclear fool cycle too! We would happily advertise your
event, however big or small, on our website.

Best wishes

Palm Sunday Alliance for a Peaceful and Nuclear-Free Future in Australia

1. Medical Association for Prevention of War
2. Australian Conservation Foundation
3. Friends of the Earth
4. Environment Centre of the Northern Territory
5. Peace Organisation of Australia
6. Women's International League for Peace and Freedom
7. Greenpeace
8. Australian Student Environment Network
9. Nuclear Disarmament Party
10. Global Climate Change Action
11. Action in Solidarity with Asia and the Pacific
12. Socialist Alliance
13. Catholics in Coalition for Justice and Peace (CCJP)
14. Alice Action
15. Arid Lands Environment Centre
16. Stop the War Coalition
17. Nuclear Free Australia
18. Australian Peace Committee (South Australia)
19. Sustainable Living Foundation
20. Pax Christi, International Christian Peace Movement Victoria,
21. One World Network
22. World Dreams Peace Bridge
23. Beyond Zero Emissons, Zero Emission Network
24. University of Melbourne Environment Collective
25. Peace Convergence
26. The Australian Democrats
27. Justice and International Mission Unit, Uniting Church in Victoria
and Tasmania'
28. Moreland Peace Group
29. Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, Melbourne
30. Women's Web - Women's Stories, Women's Actions
31. Japanese for Peace
32. The Wilderness Society
33. PeaceMouth
34. Global Sisterhood Network
35. No Waste Alliance

Nuclear Free Australia Internal Email Discussion Group
----- Original Message -----
From: nukefreeaus-internal@yahoogroups.com
To: nukefreeaus-internal@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, January 31, 2007 6:51 PM
Subject: [nukefreeaus-internal] Digest Number 1183


Nuclear Free Australia Internal Email Discussion Group
Messages In This Digest (1 Message)
   1. Fw: Coastal sites flagged for nuke reactors From: Hillel Freedman
View All Topics | Create New Topic Message
   1. Fw: Coastal sites flagged for nuke reactors
   Posted by: "Hillel Freedman" hillelfreedman@...   hillel_freedman
   Tue Jan 30, 2007 4:03 am (PST)

   Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only
   light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate;
   only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate,
   violence multiplies violence, and toughness
   multiplies toughness, in a descending spiral
   of destruction. The chain reaction of evil must
   be broken, or we shall be plunged into the
   dark abyss of annihilation.
   - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
   ----- Original Message -----
   From: Hillel Freedman
   To: Nuclear Free Australia
   Cc: nfanews@...
   Sent: Tuesday, January 30, 2007 11:02 PM
   Subject: Coastal sites flagged for nuke reactors

   http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=105091
   Coastal sites flagged for nuke reactors
   Tuesday Jan 30 22:35 AEDT
   Nuclear reactors are likely to be spaced out along the Australian coast from
Townsville in Queensland to Port Augusta in South Australia under a
nuclear-powered future, a new study says.

   Queensland would have six reactors and the coast around Sydney from Port
Stephens to Jervis Bay would have four power plants, left-wing think-tank the
Australia Institute says.

   Victoria would have four more and South Australia three, including one at Port
Adelaide, it suggests.

   In all, the study names 17 likely sites for reactors, based on criteria such
as proximity to seawater for cooling and access to the national electricity
grid.

   The institute also surveyed 1,200 Australians on their attitude towards having
a reactor in their local area and found that 66 per cent were opposed.

   A quarter of those surveyed, 25 per cent, were supportive and nine per cent
undecided.

   Fifty-five per cent were strongly opposed and just 10 per cent strongly in
favour.

   The study follows a determined push by the federal government towards the
nuclear generation of electricity.

   A government commissioned inquiry headed by Dr Ziggy Switkowski last year
reported reactors would have to be positioned within tens of kilometres of the
east coast national power grid.

   It found that nuclear generation was attractive in the battle against
greenhouse gas emissions and could be viable if there were to be a price on
carbon.

   That inquiry posed the scenario of 25 reactors producing a third of
Australia's electricity needs by the year 2050.

   The institute's director Dr Clive Hamilton said overseas experience showed
that the siting of power plants is one of the most politically contentious
aspects of the nuclear debate.

   "The prime minister has called for a thorough and full-blooded debate about
nuclear energy," Dr Hamilton said.

   "We cannot have this debate without considering siting issues."

   Report author Andrew Macintosh said the fact that nuclear energy attracted
moderate levels of support at a general level but fierce opposition from local
communities when concrete proposals were put forward suggested the presence of
the not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) phenomenon.

   "That is, even if people do not oppose nuclear power plants at a general
level, they often object to proposals to construct them in their local areas,"
he said.

   The report raised the possibility that governments might compensate
communities in a bid to placate local opposition to nuclear facilities.

   Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane declined to comment on the report, saying the
nuclear debate was too young to be talking about placement of reactors.

   "It's too early to start speculating," a spokeswoman for Mr Macfarlane told
AAP.

   "He just wants to talk about it and start investigating it. Deciding on sites
is something that's going to happen way down the track."

   Labor's resources and energy spokesman Chris Evans said people in the
communities identified by the report should expect a nuclear power plant in
their area if Prime Minister John Howard's nuclear plans are successful.

   Labor is opposed to a nuclear industry in Australia.

   "Instead of talking up nuclear power John Howard should be encouraging an
immediate increase in the use of renewable energy and the introduction of clean
coal technologies," Senator Evans said.

   "With Australia's existing energy resources, there is no reason for us to go
down the nuclear path."

   Labor's environment spokesman Peter Garrett said the report was further
evidence Australia should not go nuclear.

   "Australia needs to go on a low carbon diet, not a nuclear binge, and these
figures show John Howard is increasingly out of step with Australians who are
desperate for real action on climate change," he said.

   Greens senator Kerry Nettle said the report unsurprisingly showed that
populations close to the suggested sites did not want nuclear power plants.

   "Instead of talking about 25 possible nuclear power plants, the prime minister
should be looking for another 25 sites for major wind power stations and another
25 solar power stations," she said.

   ©AAP 2007
   Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only
   light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate;
   only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate,
   violence multiplies violence, and toughness
   multiplies toughness, in a descending spiral
   of destruction. The chain reaction of evil must
   be broken, or we shall be plunged into the
   dark abyss of annihilation.
   - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

   [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]


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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

http://www.greenleft.org.au/2007/696/36163


   Change the system - not the climate!

Norm Dixon
26 January 2007

Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth has helped dramatise the enormity
of the global environmental crisis. The scale of the threat posed by
industrially induced global warming, and the short time in which to take
meaningful action to prevent catastrophic consequences, makes the
question of how to combat global warming arguably the most urgent one
facing humanity...

...Gore focuses on individual actions, makes few serious demands on big
business and endorses the largely voluntary market-based measures, such
as emissions trading, that are contained in Kyoto. He, like most
mainstream environmental groups and the major Green parties, place the
onus of solving global warming onto individuals, while relying on the
capitalist market, nudged along by so-called “green” taxes and
legislative regulations.

Such views reflect a well-meaning but utopian belief that if enough of
us decide to drastically reduce our demand on the world’s resources, big
business and governments will respond to “market signals” and adapt to a
slow-growth or no-growth economy.

It is a good thing to organise our lives to live more ecologically. But
that alone will not be enough to halt the crisis. It certainly cannot be
the main strategy as it will let the real culprits off the hook and
divert precious activist energy away from challenging the underlying
systemic dynamic driving ecological degradation.

What is required is the rapid, far-reaching reorganisation of industry,
energy, transport and mass consumption patterns, and the massive
transfer of clean technology to the Third World. This is simply not
possible under capitalism.

As Marxist ecologist John Bellamy Foster explained in Monthly Review in
1995 (
<http://clogic.eserver.org/3-1&2/foster.html>http://clogic.eserver.org/3-1&2/fos\
ter.html),
behind most appeals for individual “ecological morality”, “there lies
the presumption that we live in a society where the morality of the
individual is the key to the morality of society. If people as
individuals could simply change their moral stance with respect to
nature and alter their behaviour in areas such as propagation,
consumption, and the conduct of business, all would be well. What is all
too often overlooked in such calls for moral transformation is the
central institutional fact of our [capitalist] society: what might be
called the global ‘treadmill of production’.”

Continues: http://www.greenleft.org.au/2007/696/36163

**************************************

See also this article from Canada:

CONFRONTING THE CLIMATE CHANGE CRISIS
by Ian Angus

Any reasonable person must eventually ask why capitalists and
			 their governments seek to avoid effective action on climate change.
			 Everyone, including capitalists and politicians, will be affected.
			 Nicholas Stern estimates that the world economy will shrink by 20%
			 if we don’t act. So why don’t the people in power do something?

The answer is that the problem is rooted in the very nature of
capitalist society, which is made up of thousands of corporations, all
competing for investment and for profits. There is no "social interest"
in capitalism — only thousands of separate interests that compete with
each other.

If a company decides to invest heavily in cutting emissions, its profits
will go down. Investors will move their capital into more profitable
investments. Eventually the green company will go out of business.

The fundamental law of capitalism is "Grow or Die." Anarchic, unplanned
growth isn’t an accident, or an externality, or a market failure. It is
the nature of the beast.

Continues: http://www.socialistvoice.ca/Soc-Voice/Soc-Voice-110.htm

Which Direction for Sustainability?
Posted by: "Tristan" tristane@...   vaughann73
Mon Jan 29, 2007 9:52 pm (PST)
Melbourne Conversations & Future Leaders invite you to join us on 15
February

Which Direction for Sustainability?
Economists and Environmentalists Talking

Speakers

Ms Cheryl Batagol
Chairman, Melbourne Water

Dr Noel Purcell
Group General Manager, Stakeholder Communications, Westpac Banking
Corporation

Dr Richard Denniss
Economist

Professor David Yencken AO
Professor Emeritus, The University of Melbourne

Venue: BMW Edge, Federation Square, Cnr Flinders & Swanston Sts
Date: Thursday 15 February 2007
Time: 6.00 ­ 7.30pm (doors open 5.45pm)
RSVP: rsvp@... <mailto:rsvp@...>
There is no cost to attend this event

Cheryl Batagol
Cheryl Batagol is Chair of Melbourne Water and Deputy Chair of
Sustainability Victoria. She has 30 years' experience in the waste
management industry with previous positions including Chairperson of
EcoRecycle Victoria, director of City West Water and involvement
with EPA Victoria and the Co-operative Research Centre for Pollution
Control and Waste Management.

Noel Purcell
Noel Purcell is Group General Manager, Stakeholder Communications
for Westpac Banking Corporation. Previously he was a senior
executive in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, The
Office of National Assessments, and The Australian Bureau of
Statistics. He is on the Global Governing Board, and Chairman of the
Deployment Committee of the Caux Round Table.

Richard Denniss
Richard Denniss is Strategic Adviser to Senator Bob Brown. He was
previously Deputy Director of The Australia Institute, Chief of
Staff to Senator Natasha Stott Despoja and Economics lecturer at the
University of Newcastle.
He writes regularly for newspapers and magazines, has published
extensively in academic journals and was the co-author Affluenza.

David Yencken
David Yencken is Patron of the Australian Conservation Foundation
and founder of the Australian Collaboration. His previous positions
include Head of Environmental Planning, The University of Melbourne,
Chairman, Australian Heritage Commission. His recent books are
Resetting the Compass: Australia¹s Journey towards Sustainability
and Into the Future: The Neglect of the Long Term in Australian
Politics.

I thought that, given the title of this message alone, it should be
forwarded to the group.

I know that lots of campaigns are underway that involve people turning
off their lights/appliances/etc... sorry if this one has already
appeared here.

Cheers,

--
Julien Gronbach
Clean Energy Campaigner
Greenpeace Australia Pacific

Level 4, 39 Liverpool St
Sydney NSW 2000

Ph: 02 9263 0348
Mob: 0419 179 529

Want some good news? Sign up for Switched On - the Greenpeace Energy
team's monthly email update on clean energy solutions:
http://www.greenpeace.org.au/climate/index.html



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

http://www.aboriginaltentembassy.net

Dear friends :-)

... back in Bundy, safe and sound.

Considering we left on a wing and a prayer (and NO funds), we feel a great
sense of accomplishment.

My kids (Scott 13, and Natalie, 18) had a wonderful time.

As did our dogs - Lady (a highly active and skittish female six month old
rottie/border collie cross) and Chief (a 2 year old blue/border collie
cross).
It was very "comfy" in our little 20 year old toyota hatchback.

Somehow, we made it to Canberra, with only slight doses of heat stroke and
physical exhaustion. Nat's little fuel tank (and our hungry tummies) held
out on loans from my mother, thank you Mum!

When exhaustion overtook me, Natalie's proud little L Plates carried us
safely.... her driving skills have improved a great deal... as has my blood
pressure - now that we are home.

We have been honoured in being able to meet some wonderful souls along the
way, sharing our message and hearing theirs.

The journey has really FORTIFIED the bonding of unity and love that my
family rested upon. Looking back now, the journey was a symbolic and
necessary step of "gathering kindling" to add to our growing fire of
passionate devotion towards seeing an end to the nuclear industry.

Unknowingly we left without our jack... and the spare tire in the boot was
not the right size for the car.... So a flat tire became a major disaster.
What looked like an insurmountable hiccup to our mission was easily defeated
by caring and highly tallented strangers who stepped up and helped us. See
http://www.simonlondon.com - Simon and Matty were both happy to sign the
petition, and are brilliant muso's.

As always seems to happen to me... something very important was left behind
by mistake... Our beautiful banner!
:-(
Hand painted with loving care over quite a few days and with personal
contributions from my neighbours and friends here in Bullyard...
it was put safely to one side whilst loading up the car...
to be placed in a safe place where it would have a small chance of remaining
clean for the journey....
...and was left behind.

Much of our time in Sydney was spent looking for a cheap fabric store (and
paints) to make a new banner.
St Vinnie's at Maroubra Junction finally saved the day with a remnant bit of
cloth.
After catching up with as many relatives and friends as we could in Sydney
with the little time we had left... we hit the road with an hour to spare.
We painted a hasty banner on the bitumen of a carpark somewhere in the City
of Canberra and joined the starting point of the rally just in time to film
some wonderful and inspirational speakers and some tallented muzos.

It was a REALLY HOT day. The walk to the Tent Embassy via the old parliament
house was colourfully bright and bubbly ... despite the heat. There was an
obvious lack of media attention :-(

The Police presence was "abundant, friendly and polite". I think they
enjoyed themselves as much as we did to be honest!
I didn't have any letters handy on the actual march, but i am sure most of
them would have signed!

Looking back at the video footage... I would say that there would have been
approximately 1000 individuals who marched in peace and solidarity, perhaps
more?

Skin colour, nationality and age was irrelevant.... we marched together for
the same reasons in solidarity and unity. We chanted together in loud,
strong voices:
"going on a peace walk...
going on a peace walk...
going on a peace walk...
ALL THE WAY TO THE TENT EMBASSY!!!!"

I grabbed a quick hug from Benny Zable on the way.... ;-)
He looked stunning (as usual)!

Aboriginal Elders with the sacred fire led the march to its conclusion at
the Tent Embassy.
The sacred fire was lit.
We added green leaves... and the sacred smoke engulfed us all.
We listened to the wisdom of the elders.

We were blessed to have been there.

One of the activists alerted us to the fact that Hurley was going to be
charged with manslaughter for the murder of Mulrunji in the Palm Island
watchhouse...

Our united spirits were lifted high together with such wonderful news!

JUSTICE FOR MULRUNJI!!!!!!!!!!

I left many hundreds of letters for sustainable energy supplies behind for
activists to sign. I also left a few hundred fliers on nuclear issues from
various organisations.

Later we listened to stories and speaches from the Elders. I was so greatly
moved that my tears flowed very freely, I was not alone. My tears continue
to flow...
It will take some time for me to "come back to the earth"...

Love to all...
Anne, Natalie and Scott
http://globalclimatechangeaction.org


- Original Message -----
From: Simon Wood
To: anti-racismcrosscampus@yahoogroups.com ; broadleft@yahoogroups.com ;
global-justice-alliance@yahoogroups.com ;
globaljusticesydney@... ; globalsol@yahoogroups.com ;
leftalliance@yahoogroups.com ; loveandrage@yahoogroups.com ;
m1_sydney_thechristianleftmovement@yahoogroups.com ;
national-liberation@yahoogroups.com ; redfern-waterloo@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Saturday, January 20, 2007 6:18 PM
Subject: [Redfern-W] January 26th is Aboriginal Sovereignty Day


Bolivia's president is Indigenous and from a peasant family. Venezuela's
president (Hugo Chavez) is part African (a descendant of slaves) and part
Indigenous - and from a poor family. South Africa's last few presidents have
been Black African. And so on....

And what does Australia have? All white prime-ministers and
governor-generals.

It's time for an Indigenous head of state in Australia!

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Tent Embassy <oursacredfire@...>
Date: 19-Jan-2007 18:36
Subject: January 26th is Aboriginal Sovereignty Day
To: myskull@...

This is a call out for support for a gathering and march at the
Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra on Friday January 26th, Invasion
Day. Some of the many demands and issues to be addressed at the
gathering are:

- No more deaths in custody.
- No to uranium mining and waste dumps, led by veteran activist Speedy
McGuinness.
- Grassroots control over the protest site which the government is
pushing to develop into an entirely different space.
- Sovereignty now.
- End the policies of genocide.

Please come on the 26th, support on the day would be welcome. March
starts from Civic centre in the morning. Always was, always will be
Aboriginal land!

http://www.aboriginaltentembassy.net
http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2007/01/135830.php

Contact Irene, 0425 393 455

"Rise like lions after slumber,
in unvanquishable number.
Shake your chains to earth like dew,
which in sleep had fallen on you.
Ye are many, they are few."
- Shelley

hiya Brooke :-)

I agree wholeheartedly!

great idea!

I hope others agree and such a campaign is a roaring success.
What a great way for our elected representatives to get to know about the
issues their people have on a day to day basis. Can you just imagine!
Sitting beside John on the way to work, having a friendly chat on the
nuclear issue...

I will post your message to the front page of our website.
http://globalclimatechangeaction.org

In solidarity...
Anne

----- Original Message -----
From: Brooke Oehm-Smith
To: CAB_Team ; Climate Change Action ;
Climate_Action_Brisbane@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Sunday, January 21, 2007 11:35 AM
Subject: [ClimateChangeAction] Ministers ordered to take the bus


Gidday all,

I read an article and put it on our blog (http://=20
climateactionbrisbane.blogspot.com/2007/01/ministers-ordered-to-take-=20
bus.html) about ministers under a successful labor govt in Scotland=20
would need to take public transport whereever possible. There was a=20
comment in this article and I emphasised it, that if our polies were=20
to rely on public transport then it will improve.

I'd like this to be a campaign for us to all our governments (city,=20
local, state, federal).

Cheers,

Brooke

Brooke Smith <brooke@...>

environment peopleVia Enviro-people@yahoo

Compliments of the Howard Government ...


new detention centre on christmas island From: Monique Wicks
Posted by: "Monique Wicks" mwicks@...   mon_wicks
Sun Jan 28, 2007 4:54 pm (PST)

There's a new flyer on the Refugee Action Collective website
(www.rac-vic.org
<http://www.rac-vic.org> ) - it realtes to the massive new detention centre
being
built by the Federal Government on Christmas Island - 1000kms
away from the prying eyes of lawyers, journalists and refugee
supporters.

We also now have leaked plans that show just how
scary this place will be. While there is some mystery
surrounding about if this is meant for terror suspects, we can be
reasonably certain that West Papuan asylum seekers will be among
their intended guests. Refugee groups have begun campaigning
to halt construction.

From: Bro
Sent: Wednesday, January 24, 2007 3:22 PM
Subject: Today's Crikey and yesterday's ABC Online


Richard Farmer writes:



NSW Liberal leader Peter Debnam has given a clear indication that his party's
flirtation with nuclear energy has come to an end.

Last year the Prime Minister was full of reformist zeal as he harnessed a band
of experts to prepare a report on the potential of a uranium based energy future
for Australia.

The timing of the release of the expert's report predicting that nuclear power
stations could indeed be practical in a decade or so was the first sign that the
Prime Ministerial enthusiasm was waning.

News is buried on Christmas Eve and Mr Debnam's comments yesterday suggest why:
the pollsters have told the Liberals that the public do not want a bar of
anything nuclear anywhere near their own back yard.

Mr Debnam will be relieved that his firm opposition to nuclear power yesterday
received little coverage anywhere but on ABC radio, which had reported that
those pesky Young Liberals would be following the original Howard line at their
federal conference and calling for reactors to replace coal burners as a way of
combating global warming.

"I'm looking at new energy sources, not old," he said. "Nuclear technology is 50
years old - we want to move forward."

The original Howard proposal to put nuclear power on the political agenda was
little more than an attempt to expose the Labor Party as hypocrites who now
agreed with increasing uranium exports so other countries could contribute to
limiting greenhouse gas emissions while not being prepared to do the same thing
at home.

But Australians, it seems, are quite prepared to tolerate a little bit of
hypocrisy and there are few politicians more able to handle a view like that
than Honest John.



       Print  Email

Last Update: Tuesday, January 23, 2007. 4:50pm (AEDT)
Debnam disagrees with Young Liberals' policies
New South Wales Opposition Leader Peter Debnam has distanced himself from
proposals developed by the state branch of the Young Liberals for nuclear energy
and raising the pension age.

The Young Liberals will hold their national convention this weekend.

The conference is described as a opportunity to develop the Liberal Party's
election year policies.

One proposal on climate change from the NSW branch says it supports the
introduction of nuclear power as a clean alternative energy source.

Mr Debnam says he has ruled out the use of nuclear power in the state.

"I'm looking at new energy sources, not old," he said.

"Nuclear technology is 50 years old - we want to move forward."

The Young Liberals also want to increase the age of eligibility for the pension
to 70.

Mr Debnam say he welcomes policy debate but is not a supporter of that idea
either.


Dr Bro Sheffield-Brotherton B.Sc.(Hons), Ph.D, Dip.Ed, MEIANZ
Chairman, Sustainable Solutions Pty Ltd
Scientific Advisor, National Toxics Network
Honorary Life Member, Australian Conservation Foundation
Member, Environment Institute of Australia and New Zealand
47 Prentice Street
Elsternwick 3185
AUSTRALIA
Ph: +613 9528 1957, Mob: +614 1230 3 718
Fax: +613 9528 5100
Email: bro@...

"The ultimate measure of people is not where they stand in moments of comfort
and convenience, but where they stand at times of challenge and controversy." -
Dr Martin Luther King Jr

"The danger is when you get old like us you may become soonical." - Dagmar
Schroeder




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

International experts say Switkowski report a pre-determined conclusion

The Wilderness Society Inc
Media Release
15 January 2007

An international panel of experts has written to the Prime Minister's
nuclear taskforce to condemn the Switkowski Report for failing to address
major shortcomings and respond public feedback.

Commenting on the final version of the Uranium Mining, Processing and
Nuclear Energy Review the panel of experts from the United Kingdom, USA and
France stated that the Review gave insufficient weight to comments from a
range of sources and instead reached a pre-determined conclusion.

Nuclear spokesperson for the Wilderness Society Imogen Zethoven said, "The
international panel have rightly pointed out that Mr. Switkowski's taskforce
ignored almost all of the feedback it received on the report."

"This includes a review commissioned by Australia's Chief Scientist
identifying the completely unrealistic proposal that an Australian nuclear
power station could be operating within ten years."

"As the international panel have stated, this is a crucial point given the
need for rapid action to address climate change."

"Any changes made to the report seem to only reinforce the original, flawed
recommendations," said Zethoven.

The failure of the Switkowski report to incorporate important comments from
a range of credible sources led the international panel to state:

"The Switkowski report thus has not only missed the opportunity to shed some
light from different angles on the nuclear issue but also omitted to add a
dose of up-to-date reality to its analysis: while the report is advocating
the investment into nuclear reactors in Australia, eight nuclear units less
were operating in the world at the end of 2006 than a year before."

The International Panel includes the following experts:

   a.. Antony Froggatt, international energy and nuclear policy consultant,
United Kingdom (Chair of panel).
   b.. Stephen Thomas, Professor of Energy Policy, Public Services
International Research Unit, Business School, University of Greenwich, UK.
   c.. Mycle Schneider, International consultant on energy and nuclear
policy, France
   d.. Peter Bradford, former Nuclear Regulatory Commission member, USA.


For more information, please contact:

Imogen Zethoven
Nuclear Campaigner
Email Imogen Zethoven
Workphone: 02 9282 9553
Fax: 02 9282 9557

----- Original Message -----
From: "Greenpeace" <webmaster@...>
To: <winter___@...>
Sent: Thursday, January 25, 2007 7:47 AM
Subject: The State of Global Warming


Dear Anne,

President Bush has let the issue of global warming simmer on the back burner
of his presidency for 6 years. The scientific community and the rest of the
world has heard the oven timer go off, but last night, President Bush
continued to ignore the alarm as he served up a plateful of tepid solutions
to a worldwide audience.

While the chef may finally have acknowledged the brewing problem, he failed
to rescue the planet from the oven. His so-called solutions of "clean" coal
and nuclear energy are a recipe for disaster.

Well, we're serving up a fresh new alternative to global warming with real
solutions that don't rely on nuclear energy or coal. Our plan would cut
global CO2 emissions in the U.S. by almost 75% within the next 43 years. In
fact, renewable energy and greater energy efficiency can deliver half of the
world's energy needs by 2050.

The President has failed to lead this country, or the world, on the issue of
global warming. It's up to Congress to pull us out of the global warming
fire, and time is running out.

Take Action >> http://members.greenpeace.org/action/start/135/

It's time to start an energy revolution, NOW. We've come up with effective
solutions, but we need YOUR help to get them implemented.

Sincerely,

John Coequyt
Energy Campaigner

p.s. If you want to learn more about our blueprint for solving global
warming, join me and Nuclear Campaigner Jim Riccio for a live chat tomorrow
afternoon at 12:30 pm EST and PST.
http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/getinvolved/chat

~~~~~
3 Ways to Help

1: Help Greenpeace Take a Stand. Become a Member Today.
https://secureusa.greenpeace.org/securedonate/index.php?from=012407

2: Take Action.  Visit our Action Center and take action today.
http://usactions.greenpeace.org/

3: Tell a Friend.  Forward this message to a friend. Help spread the word.
http://hq.demaction.org/dia/organizations/greenpeace/tellafriend.jsp?tell_a_frie\
nd_KEY=1282
~~~~~
Greenpeace
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Suite 300
Washington, D.C. 20001
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You received this mailing because you are subscribed to our mailing list. If
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/*Your email ID. <diaEmailID='271633817' thread=5249/>--*/

http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=134472007

thank you...
:-)
visit the website for updates soon.
http://globalclimatechangeaction.org
have only had time for a short comment to date...
i have a alot of mail to download and catch up on and my machine is slow and
old.
(like me).

a


----- Original Message -----
From: Anna Bridle & John Owens
To: anne@...
Sent: Sunday, January 21, 2007 7:28 PM
Subject: Re:Join Us!


Good luck and good on you
Anna Bridle
Gold Coast

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

----- Original Message -----
From: <tamarisk@...>
To: <anne@...>; <clemens@...>
Sent: Monday, January 22, 2007 11:20 AM
Subject: [feedback...] couldn't find my comment, (sent 19/1/07) so repeating
it here


Christina Macpherson sent a message using the contact form at
http://globalclimatechangeaction.org/contact.

Failure to address environmental issues, especially WATER

The Review has been convincingly contradicted by previous commentators –
on grounds such as weapons proliferation, financial costs, health and
security aspects.

When it comes to the environment the Switkowski report reads as if no
environmental issues were really examined at all.

On WATER,Switkowski lamely concludes that “Water use can be
significant�, and proposes desalination plants as a solution for cooling
of nuclear reactors.

What is ignored in this report in regard to water?
1. nuclear reactors require nearly twice the amount of cooling water than
any other power sources
2. nuclear reactors release huge amounts of hot water into waterways and
coastal areas  (for this reason European nuclear plants had to be closed
down during 2006’s hot summer)
3. radioactive wastes seep into groundwater (America’s Yucca Mountain ,
planned as a radioactive waste repository is now not likely to go ahead
because of this.

In summary – isn’t it ludicrous that Australia should even consider
nuclear technology – whether it be for reactors, or for LEASING uranium
– when we know this is going to damage our precious waterways, coastal
areas, and permanently pollute groundwater?

----- Original Message -----
From: <rho_ter@...>
To: <anne@...>; <clemens@...>
Sent: Monday, January 22, 2007 11:17 AM
Subject: [feedback...] nuclear - no way


Rhonda Poholke sent a message using the contact form at
http://globalclimatechangeaction.org/contact.

I don't know much about the working of politics etc but I'm smart enough to
know that without proper knowledge and safe methods of disposing of nuclear
waste it (nuclear power) should not be produced in Australia and nuclear
producing product from Australian soil certainly should not be offered to
foreign powers who could use it at a later date for things other than
peacefull needs. Once a nuclear accident happens it will be too late - the
dangers are too awsome to even contemplate - can't our governments of the
world see this? Please Mr. Howard invest in natural power sources - our
country is worth looking after.  I STRONGLY APPOSE NUCLEAR POWER.

The crux of it lies in the final paragraph:

Timing also played a role in the executives’ thinking. As Mr. Darbee
said, “We have the opportunity to construct something more pragmatic
and realistic while President Bush is in office.” A future political
climate, after 2008, he said, might produce “solutions less sensitive
to the needs of business.”


On 22/01/2007, at 9:00, glparramatta wrote:


New plan in fight against global warming: raise emissions

Posted by Gar Lipow <http://gristmill.grist.org/user/Gar%20Lipow>
at 1:46 PM on 20 Jan 2007

Under the headline "A Coalition for Firm Limit on Emissions," The New
York Times writes about a new coalition of major corporations and
"moderate" environmental groups
<http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/19/business/19carbon.html?
ex=1326862800&en=1bcf6036dc8d2f81&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss>.

As usual for the NYT, the lead is buried deep in the story:

The group's principles include recommending a range of emissions
levels -- from 100 to 105 percent of current levels within five
years, then down to 90 to 100 percent of current levels in 10 years,
and 70 to 90 percent of current levels in 15 years.

In other words raise emissions now, in hopes we'll cut them slightly in
ten years, and slightly more in another ten.

I predict that with major environmental groups such as the NRDC on
board, there is going to be a push to define this as the acceptable
outer limit of debate, with only the higher numbers emphasized.

This is an asking price. Somewhere between this and what James Inhofe
favors will be seen as the target for sensible people.

And Charlie Brown lets Lucy hold the football for him one more time.
<http://www.snoopy.com/comics/peanuts/greatpumpkin/clips3.html>




--
Brooke Smith <novorivus@...>
You will always get the greatest recognition for the job you least like.
PGP: http://keyserver.veridis.com:11371/export?id=4427400912143993659




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

New plan in fight against global warming: raise emissions


       Posted by Gar Lipow <http://gristmill.grist.org/user/Gar%20Lipow>
       at 1:46 PM on 20 Jan 2007

Under the headline "A Coalition for Firm Limit on Emissions," The New
York Times writes about a new coalition of major corporations and
"moderate" environmental groups
<http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/19/business/19carbon.html?ex=1326862800&en=1bcf6\
036dc8d2f81&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss>.

As usual for the NYT, the lead is buried deep in the story:

     The group's principles include recommending a range of emissions
     levels -- from 100 to 105 percent of current levels within five
     years, then down to 90 to 100 percent of current levels in 10 years,
     and 70 to 90 percent of current levels in 15 years.

In other words raise emissions now, in hopes we'll cut them slightly in
ten years, and slightly more in another ten.

I predict that with major environmental groups such as the NRDC on
board, there is going to be a push to define this as the acceptable
outer limit of debate, with only the higher numbers emphasized.

This is an asking price. Somewhere between this and what James Inhofe
favors will be seen as the target for sensible people.

And Charlie Brown lets Lucy hold the football for him one more time.
<http://www.snoopy.com/comics/peanuts/greatpumpkin/clips3.html>

Gidday all,

I read an article and put it on our blog (http://
climateactionbrisbane.blogspot.com/2007/01/ministers-ordered-to-take-
bus.html) about ministers under a successful labor govt in Scotland
would need to take public transport whereever possible.  There was a
comment in this article and I emphasised it, that if our polies were
to rely on public transport then it will improve.

I'd like this to be a campaign for us to all our governments (city,
local, state, federal).

Cheers,

Brooke
--
Brooke Smith <brooke@...>
You will always get the greatest recognition for the job you least like.
PGP: http://keyserver.veridis.com:11371/export?id=4427400912143993659





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

http://environment.newscientist.com/article/mg19325874.000?DCMP=NLC-nletter&nsre\
f=mg19325874.000

Hi Hugh and Climate Change Action,

I've been putting up the relevant articles I read on our blog so that
a) we have a permanent record of it, b) so that others can see what
we find and c) so that the article (if linked to) raises up higher in
the google (and other search engine) results.  It'd be great if you
could all do it.

http://climateactionbrisbane.blogspot.com/

There is a http://climatechangeaction.blogspot.com/ blog but it
doesn't look like the one connected to this list (is very interesting
though).

Cheers,

Brooke

On 18/01/2007, at 12:37, hugh spencer wrote:

> From Energyresources

This very chilling article spells out the realpolitik associated with
energy baccess and control.

The crazy thing is that a modicum of conservation would help counter
these
trends - but the urge for political power can be pretty intense - and
putative rulers will grab any mechanism to exert power that they can.

This is why mere protests aren't going to acheive ANYTHING - we must
ensure
that the Federal Governments DO NOT follow the USA's approach to giving
total control over energy matters to the Federal Government. Just as
a reminder
Lucas Heights Reactor, as piddling as it was, crawled with ASIO and ASIS
(and Commonwealth Police) - imagine that x 10 or 20!!  In fact the whole
security game is part of the attraction of Nuclear for politicians :
CONTROL!

We are being warned

read on

Hugh Spencer





http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?emx=x&pid=157744


Tomgram: Klare, Is Big Brother in Your Energy Future?

For the last two weeks, Tomdispatch has been
concentrating on the way Pentagon strategists have
taken possession of our future and are writing their
own dystopian science fiction scenarios about the
world we are soon to enter -- and the weapons systems
that are meant to go with it. Five years ago, Michael
Klare, a military and energy expert, wrote a prophetic
book, Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global
Conflict. Its title caught the embattled nature of our
emerging resource future moment better than any
Pentagon fantasy. His most recent book, Blood and Oil:
The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing
Dependence on Imported Petroleum, was no less on the
mark. Now, for Tomdispatch, he continues to peer ahead
in the second of a two-part series on our militarized
energy future.

While the Bush administration and its neocon
supporters have long been offering up a vision of a
vast imperial enemy-in-the-making that they call
"Islamo-fascism," Klare, in part 1, discovered quite
another, more realistic and chilling set of
possibilities that he dubbed "Energo-fascism" -- or
the militarization of the global struggle over
ever-diminishing supplies of energy. There, he focused
on the Pentagon's changing role in global energy
politics. Now, he moves on to energy blackmail in a
great-power world and the Big-Brother-style dangers of
making nuclear power a major future alternative source
of energy. Tom

Petro-Power and the Nuclear Renaissance
Two Faces of an Emerging Energo-fascism (Part 2)

By Michael T. Klare
Not "Islamo-fascism" but "Energo-fascism" -- the
heavily militarized global struggle over diminishing
supplies of energy -- will dominate world affairs (and
darken the lives of ordinary citizens) in the decades
to come. This is so because top government officials
globally are increasingly unwilling to rely on market
forces to satisfy national energy needs and are
instead assuming direct responsibility for the
procurement, delivery, and allocation of energy
supplies.

The leaders of the major powers are ever more prepared
to use force when deemed necessary to overcome any
resistance to their energy priorities. In the case of
the United States, this has required the conversion of
our armed forces into a global oil-protection service;
two other significant expressions of emerging
Energo-fascism are: the arrival of Russia as an
"energy superpower" and the repressive implications of
plans to rely on nuclear power.

Energy Haves and Have-nots

With global demand for energy constantly rising and
supplies contracting (or at least failing to keep
pace), the world is being ever more sharply divided
into two classes of nations: the energy haves and
have-nots. The haves are the nations with sufficient
domestic reserves (some combination of oil, gas, coal,
hydro-power, uranium, and alternative sources of
energy) to satisfy their own requirements and be able
to export to other countries; the have-nots lack such
reserves and must make up the deficit with expensive
imports or suffer the consequences.

> From 1950 to 2000, when energy was plentiful and
cheap, the distinction did not seem so obvious as long
as the have-nots possessed other forms of power:
immense wealth (like Japan); nuclear weapons (like
Britain and France); or powerful friends (like the
NATO and Warsaw Pact countries). Needless to say, for
poor countries possessing none of these assets, being
a have-not state was a burden even then, contributing
mightily to the debt crisis that still afflicts many
of them. Today, these other measures of power have
come to seem less important and the distinction
between energy haves and have-nots correspondingly
more significant -- even for wealthy and powerful
countries like the United States and Japan.

Surprisingly, there are very few energy haves in the
world today. Most notable among these privileged few
are Australia, Canada, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kuwait,
Nigeria, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Iran,
Iraq (if it were ever free of conflict), and a few
others. These countries are in an envious position
because they do not have to pay stratospheric prices
for imported oil and natural gas and their ruling
elites can demand all sorts of benefits -- political,
economic, diplomatic, and military -- from the foreign
leaders who come calling to procure copious quantities
of their energy products.

Indeed, they can engage in the delicious game of
playing one foreign leader against another, as
Kazakhstan's President, Nursultan Nazarbayev -- a
regular guest in Washington and Beijing -- has become
so adept at doing.

Pushed even further, this pursuit of favors can lead
to a quest for political domination -- with the sale
of vital oil and natural gas supplies made contingent
on the recipient's acquiescing to certain political
demands set forth by the seller. No country has
embraced this strategy with greater vigor or
enthusiasm than Vladimir Putin's Russia.

The Rising Energy Superpower

At the end of the Cold War, it appeared as if Russia
was a forlorn, wasted ex-superpower, impoverished in
spirit, treasure, and influence. For years, it was
treated with disdain by American officials. Its
leaders were forced to swallow humiliating agreements
like the expansion of NATO to Moscow's former
satellites in Eastern Europe and the abrogation of the
Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. To many in Washington,
it must have seemed as if Russia was little more than
a relic of history, a has-been never again slated to
play a significant role in world affairs.

Today, Moscow, not Washington, seems to be enjoying
the last laugh. With control over Eurasia's largest
reserves of natural gas and coal as well as enormous
supplies of petroleum and uranium, Russia is the new
top dog -- an energy superpower rather than a military
one, but a superpower nonetheless.

First, a look at the big picture. Russia is the
absolute king of natural gas producers. According to
BP (the former British Petroleum), it alone possesses
1.7 quadrillion cubic feet of proven gas reserves, or
27% of the total world supply.

This is even more significant than it might appear
because Europe and the former USSR rely on natural gas
for a larger share of their total energy -- 34% --
than any other region of the world. (In North America,
where oil is the dominant fuel, natural gas accounts
for only 25% of the total.)

Because Russia is by far the leading supplier of
Eurasia's gas, it enjoys a position of supply
dominance unmatched by any energy provider -- except
Saudi Arabia in the petroleum field. Even in that
realm, Russia is the planet's second leading producer,
falling just 1.4 million barrels short of Saudi
Arabia's 11.0 million barrels per day at the start of
2006. Russia also possesses the world's second largest
reserves of coal (after the United States) and is a
major consumer of nuclear energy, with 31 operational
reactors.

Soon after assuming power as president in 1999,
Vladimir Putin set out to convert this superabundance
of energy -- the economic equivalent of a nuclear
arsenal -- into the sort of political clout that would
restore Russia's great-power status. By controlling
the flow of energy to other parts of Eurasia from
Russia and former Soviet republics like Kazakhstan and
Turkmenistan (whose energy is exported through Russian
pipelines), he reasoned, he could exercise the sort of
political influence enjoyed by Soviet officials during
the heyday of the Cold War.

To accomplish this, however, he would have to reverse
the wide-ranging privatization of the oil and gas
industry that occurred in the early 1990s after the
breakup of the USSR and bring vital elements of
Russia's privately-owned energy industry back under
state control. Since there was no legitimate way to do
this under Russia's post-Communist legal system, Putin
and his associates turned to illegitimate and
authoritarian methods to de-privatize these valuable
assets. Here, we see another emerging face of
Energo-fascism.

Remarkably, Putin himself had long before spelled out
the rationale for concentrating control over Russia's
energy resources in the state's hands. In a 1999
summary of his Ph.D. dissertation on "Mineral Raw
Materials in the Strategy for Development of the
Russian Economy," he asserted that the Russian state
must oversee the utilization of the country's mineral
raw materials -- including oil fields in private hands
-- for the good of the Russian people. "The state has
the right to regulate the process of the acquisition
and the use of natural resources, and particularly
mineral resources, independent of on whose property
they are located," he wrote. "In this regard, the
state acts in the interests of society as a whole."

No better justification for Energo-fascism can be
imagined. The most famous expression of this outlook
has been the so-called Khodorkovsky Affair. In 2003,
Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the CEO of Yukos, then Russia's
top oil producer, was arrested on fraud and
tax-evasion charges. He had run afoul of Putin by
pursuing all sorts of energy deals independent of the
state, including possible joint ventures with Exxon
Mobil, and by supporting anti-Putin political forces
inside Russia -- either of which would have alone been
sufficient to earn him the Kremlin's wrath.

However, it is now apparent that Putin's ultimate goal
in engineering the arrest was to seize control of
Yuganskneftegaz, Yukos' prime asset, accounting for
about 11% of Russia's oil output. With Khodorkovsky
and his top associates in prison awaiting trial, the
government auctioned Yuganskneftegaz to a secretive
shell company, which then resold it to state-owned
Rosneft at a below-market price. In one fell swoop,
Putin had managed to dismember Yukos and turn Rosneft
into the country's leading oil producer.

The Russian president has also sought to extend state
control over the distribution and export of oil and
gas by blocking any effort by private firms to build
pipelines that would compete with those owned and
operated by Gazprom, the state-owned natural gas
monopoly, and Transneft, the state oil-pipeline
monopoly. The United States and other consuming
nations have long pushed for the construction of
privatized oil and gas pipelines in Russia to increase
the outflow of energy to Europe and other foreign
markets as well as to dilute the power of Gazprom and
Transneft. The Kremlin has, however, systematically
foreclosed all such efforts.

If the concentration of ownership of energy assets in
the state's hands through legally dubious means is one
dimension of emerging Energo-fascism in Russia, a
second is the utilization of this power to intimidate
have-not states on Russia's periphery. The most
notable expression of this to date was the cutoff of
natural gas supplies to Ukraine on January 1, 2006.
Ostensibly, Gazprom stopped the flow in a dispute over
the pricing of Russian gas, but most observers believe
that the action was also intended as a rebuke to
Ukraine's Western-leaning president, Victor A.
Yushchenko.

Remember, this was in the dead of winter, and natural
gas is the main source of heat in Ukraine, as in much
of Eastern Europe and the former USSR. Gazprom resumed
the flow after a last-minute pricing compromise and
following vociferous complaints from Western European
customers who were suffering their own losses (as the
Ukrainians diverted Europe-bound gas for their own
use). This was the moment when it became clear to all
that Moscow was fully prepared to open and close the
energy spigot as a tool of foreign policy.

Since then, Moscow has employed this tactic on several
occasions to intimidate other neighboring states in
what it terms its "near abroad" (as the U.S. used to
speak of Latin America as its "backyard"). On July 29,
2006, claiming a leak, Transneft halted oil shipments
to the Mazeikiu refinery in Lithuania after its owners
announced its sale to a Polish firm, not a Russian
one.

Observers of the move speculate that Russians
officials intended to force a Russian takeover of the
refinery.
In November, Gazprom threatened to more than double
the price of natural gas to its former Georgian SSR
from $110 to $230 per 1,000 cubic meters. The
alternative offered was a cessation of deliveries.
Again, political pressure was believed to be at least
part of the motive as Georgia's pro-Western government
has defied Moscow on a wide range of issues. In
December, Gazprom pulled the same sort of trick on
Belarus, demanding a major readjustment of prices from
a close (and impoverished) ally that had recently been
showing mild signs of independence.

This, then, is another face of Energo-fascism in
Russia: the use of its energy as an instrument of
political influence and coercion over weak have-not
states on its borders. "It is not that energy is the
new atomic weapon," Cliff Kupchan of the Eurasia Group
consultancy told the Financial Times, "but Russia
knows that petro-power, aggressively and cleverly
applied, can yield diplomatic influence."

Big Brother and the Nuclear Renaissance

The last face of Energo-fascism to be discussed here
is the inevitable rise in state surveillance and
repression attendant on an expected increase in
nuclear power. As oil and natural gas become scarcer,
government and industry leaders will undoubtedly push
for a greater reliance on nuclear power to provide
additional energy. This is a program likely to gain
greater momentum from rising concerns over global
warming -- largely a result of carbon-dioxide
emissions created during the combustion of oil, gas,
and coal.

President Bush has repeatedly spoken of his desire to
foster greater reliance on nuclear power and the
administration-backed Energy Policy Act of 2005
already provides a variety of incentives for
electrical utilities to build new reactors in the
United States. Other countries including France,
China, Japan, Russia, and India also plan to up their
reliance on nuclear power, greatly adding to the
global spread of nuclear reactors.

Many problems stand in the way of this so-called
renaissance, not least the mammoth costs involved and
the fact that no safe system has yet been devised for
the long-term storage of nuclear wastes. Furthermore,
despite many improvements in the safety of nuclear
power plants, worries persist about the risk of
nuclear accidents such as those that occurred at Three
Mile Island in 1979 and Chernobyl in 1986.

But this is not the place to weigh these issues. Let
me instead focus on two especially worrisome aspects
of the future growth of the nuclear power industry:
the possible federalization of nuclear reactor
placement in the U.S. and the repressive implications
globally of the greater availability of nuclear
materials open to diversion to terrorists, criminals,
and "rogue" states.
Currently, America's municipalities, counties, and
states still exercise considerable control over the
issuance of permits for the construction of new
nuclear power plants, giving citizens in these
jurisdictions considerable opportunity to resist the
placement of a reactor "in their backyard."

For decades, this has been one of the leading
obstacles to the construction of new reactors in the
U.S., along with the costly and time-consuming legal
process involved in winning over state legislatures,
county boards, and environmental agencies. If this
practice prevails, we are never likely to see a true
"renaissance" of nuclear power here, even if a few new
reactors are built in poor rural areas where citizen
resistance is minimal.

The only way to increase reliance on nuclear power,
therefore, is to federalize the permit process by
shunting local agencies aside and giving federal
bureaucrats the unfettered power to issue permits for
the construction of new reactors.

Unlikely, you say? Well consider this: The Energy
Policy Act of 2005 established a significant precedent
for the federalization of such authority by depriving
state and local officials of their power to approve
the placement of natural gas "regasification" plants.

These are mammoth facilities used to reconvert
liquified natural gas, transported by ship from
foreign suppliers, into a gas that can then be
delivered by pipeline to customers in the United
States. Several localities on the East and West coasts
had fought the construction of such plants in their
harbors for fear that they might explode (not an
entirely far-fetched concern) or become targets for
terrorists, but they have now lost their legal power
to do so. So much for local democracy.

Here's my worry: That some future administration will
push through an amendment to the Energy Policy Act
giving the federal government the same sort of
placement authority for nuclear reactors that it now
has for regasification plants. The feds then announce
plans to build dozens or even hundreds of new reactors
in or near places like Boston, New York, Chicago, San
Francisco, Los Angeles, Denver, and so on, claiming an
urgent need for additional energy. People protest en
masse. Local officials, sympathetic to the protestors,
refuse to arrest them in droves. But now we're
speaking of defiance of federal, not state or
municipal, ordinances.

Ergo, the National Guard or the regular Army is called
up to quell the protests and protect the reactor sites
-- Energo-fascism in action.
Finally, there's another danger in the spread of
nuclear power: that it will require a systematic
increase in state surveillance of everyone even
remotely connected with commercial nuclear energy.

After all, every uranium enrichment facility, nuclear
reactor, and waste storage site -- and any of the
linkages between them -- is a potential source of
fissionable materials for terrorists, black-market
traffickers, or rogue states like Iran and North
Korea. This means, of course, that all of the
personnel employed in these facilities, and all their
contractors and sub-contractors (and all their
families and contacts) will have to be constantly
vetted for possible illicit ties and kept under
strict, full-time surveillance.

   The more reactors there are, the more facilities and
contractors who will have to be subjected to this sort
of oversight -- and the more the security staff itself
will have to be subjected to ever higher levels of
surveillance by state security agencies. It's a
formula for Big Brother on a very large scale.
And then there's the special problem of "breeder
reactors." These plants produce ("breed") more
fissionable material than they consume, often in the
form of plutonium, which can, in turn, be burned in
power reactors to generate electricity but can also be
used as the fuel for atomic weapons.

Although such reactors are currently banned in the
United States, other countries, including Japan, are
building them so as to diminish their reliance on
fossil fuels and natural uranium, itself a finite
resource. As the demand for nuclear energy grows, more
countries (even, possibly, the USA) are bound to build
breeder reactors. But this will vastly increase the
global supply of bomb-grade plutonium, requiring an
even greater increase in state supervision of the
nuclear power industry in all its aspects.

The State's Iron Grip

All the phenomena discussed in this two-part series --
the transformation of the U.S. military into a global
oil-protection service, the growth of the energy
equivalent of a major-power arms race, the emergence
of Russia as an energy superpower, and the need for
increased surveillance over the nuclear power industry
-- are expressions of a single, overarching trend: the
tendency of states to extend their control over every
aspect of energy production, procurement,
transportation, and allocation.

   This, in turn, is a response to the depletion of
world energy supplies and a shift in the locus of
energy production from the global north to the global
south -- developments that have been under way for
some time, but are bound to gain greater momentum in
the years ahead.

Many concerned citizens and organizations -- the
Apollo Alliance, the Rocky Mountain Institute, and the
Worldwatch Institute, to name but a few -- are trying
to develop sane, democratic responses to the problems
brought about by energy depletion, instability in
energy-producing areas, and global warming.

   Most government leaders, however, appear intent on
addressing these problems through increased state
controls and a greater reliance on the use of military
force. Unless this tendency is resisted,
Energo-fascism could be our future.

Michael T. Klare is a professor of peace and world
security studies at Hampshire College and the author
of Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of
America's Growing Dependence on Imported Petroleum
(Owl Books).






--
Brooke Smith <novorivus@...>
You will always get the greatest recognition for the job you least like.
PGP: http://keyserver.veridis.com:11371/export?id=4427400912143993659




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

From Energyresources

This very chilling article spells out the realpolitik associated with
energy baccess and control.

The crazy thing is that a modicum of conservation would help counter these
trends - but the urge for political power can be pretty intense - and
putative rulers will grab any mechanism to exert power that they can.

This is why mere protests aren't going to acheive ANYTHING - we must ensure
that the Federal Governments DO NOT follow the USA's approach to giving
total control over energy matters to the Federal Government. Just as a reminder
Lucas Heights Reactor, as piddling as it was, crawled with ASIO and ASIS
(and Commonwealth Police) - imagine that x 10 or 20!!  In fact the whole
security game is part of the attraction of Nuclear for politicians : CONTROL!

We are being warned

read on

Hugh Spencer





http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?emx=x&pid=157744


Tomgram: Klare, Is Big Brother in Your Energy Future?

For the last two weeks, Tomdispatch has been
concentrating on the way Pentagon strategists have
taken possession of our future and are writing their
own dystopian science fiction scenarios about the
world we are soon to enter -- and the weapons systems
that are meant to go with it. Five years ago, Michael
Klare, a military and energy expert, wrote a prophetic
book, Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global
Conflict. Its title caught the embattled nature of our
emerging resource future moment better than any
Pentagon fantasy. His most recent book, Blood and Oil:
The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing
Dependence on Imported Petroleum, was no less on the
mark. Now, for Tomdispatch, he continues to peer ahead
in the second of a two-part series on our militarized
energy future.

While the Bush administration and its neocon
supporters have long been offering up a vision of a
vast imperial enemy-in-the-making that they call
"Islamo-fascism," Klare, in part 1, discovered quite
another, more realistic and chilling set of
possibilities that he dubbed "Energo-fascism" -- or
the militarization of the global struggle over
ever-diminishing supplies of energy. There, he focused
on the Pentagon's changing role in global energy
politics. Now, he moves on to energy blackmail in a
great-power world and the Big-Brother-style dangers of
making nuclear power a major future alternative source
of energy. Tom

Petro-Power and the Nuclear Renaissance
Two Faces of an Emerging Energo-fascism (Part 2)

By Michael T. Klare
Not "Islamo-fascism" but "Energo-fascism" -- the
heavily militarized global struggle over diminishing
supplies of energy -- will dominate world affairs (and
darken the lives of ordinary citizens) in the decades
to come. This is so because top government officials
globally are increasingly unwilling to rely on market
forces to satisfy national energy needs and are
instead assuming direct responsibility for the
procurement, delivery, and allocation of energy
supplies.

The leaders of the major powers are ever more prepared
to use force when deemed necessary to overcome any
resistance to their energy priorities. In the case of
the United States, this has required the conversion of
our armed forces into a global oil-protection service;
two other significant expressions of emerging
Energo-fascism are: the arrival of Russia as an
"energy superpower" and the repressive implications of
plans to rely on nuclear power.

Energy Haves and Have-nots

With global demand for energy constantly rising and
supplies contracting (or at least failing to keep
pace), the world is being ever more sharply divided
into two classes of nations: the energy haves and
have-nots. The haves are the nations with sufficient
domestic reserves (some combination of oil, gas, coal,
hydro-power, uranium, and alternative sources of
energy) to satisfy their own requirements and be able
to export to other countries; the have-nots lack such
reserves and must make up the deficit with expensive
imports or suffer the consequences.

From 1950 to 2000, when energy was plentiful and
cheap, the distinction did not seem so obvious as long
as the have-nots possessed other forms of power:
immense wealth (like Japan); nuclear weapons (like
Britain and France); or powerful friends (like the
NATO and Warsaw Pact countries). Needless to say, for
poor countries possessing none of these assets, being
a have-not state was a burden even then, contributing
mightily to the debt crisis that still afflicts many
of them. Today, these other measures of power have
come to seem less important and the distinction
between energy haves and have-nots correspondingly
more significant -- even for wealthy and powerful
countries like the United States and Japan.

Surprisingly, there are very few energy haves in the
world today. Most notable among these privileged few
are Australia, Canada, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kuwait,
Nigeria, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Iran,
Iraq (if it were ever free of conflict), and a few
others. These countries are in an envious position
because they do not have to pay stratospheric prices
for imported oil and natural gas and their ruling
elites can demand all sorts of benefits -- political,
economic, diplomatic, and military -- from the foreign
leaders who come calling to procure copious quantities
of their energy products.

Indeed, they can engage in the delicious game of
playing one foreign leader against another, as
Kazakhstan's President, Nursultan Nazarbayev -- a
regular guest in Washington and Beijing -- has become
so adept at doing.

Pushed even further, this pursuit of favors can lead
to a quest for political domination -- with the sale
of vital oil and natural gas supplies made contingent
on the recipient's acquiescing to certain political
demands set forth by the seller. No country has
embraced this strategy with greater vigor or
enthusiasm than Vladimir Putin's Russia.

The Rising Energy Superpower

At the end of the Cold War, it appeared as if Russia
was a forlorn, wasted ex-superpower, impoverished in
spirit, treasure, and influence. For years, it was
treated with disdain by American officials. Its
leaders were forced to swallow humiliating agreements
like the expansion of NATO to Moscow's former
satellites in Eastern Europe and the abrogation of the
Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. To many in Washington,
it must have seemed as if Russia was little more than
a relic of history, a has-been never again slated to
play a significant role in world affairs.

Today, Moscow, not Washington, seems to be enjoying
the last laugh. With control over Eurasia's largest
reserves of natural gas and coal as well as enormous
supplies of petroleum and uranium, Russia is the new
top dog -- an energy superpower rather than a military
one, but a superpower nonetheless.

First, a look at the big picture. Russia is the
absolute king of natural gas producers. According to
BP (the former British Petroleum), it alone possesses
1.7 quadrillion cubic feet of proven gas reserves, or
27% of the total world supply.

This is even more significant than it might appear
because Europe and the former USSR rely on natural gas
for a larger share of their total energy -- 34% --
than any other region of the world. (In North America,
where oil is the dominant fuel, natural gas accounts
for only 25% of the total.)

Because Russia is by far the leading supplier of
Eurasia's gas, it enjoys a position of supply
dominance unmatched by any energy provider -- except
Saudi Arabia in the petroleum field. Even in that
realm, Russia is the planet's second leading producer,
falling just 1.4 million barrels short of Saudi
Arabia's 11.0 million barrels per day at the start of
2006. Russia also possesses the world's second largest
reserves of coal (after the United States) and is a
major consumer of nuclear energy, with 31 operational
reactors.

Soon after assuming power as president in 1999,
Vladimir Putin set out to convert this superabundance
of energy -- the economic equivalent of a nuclear
arsenal -- into the sort of political clout that would
restore Russia's great-power status. By controlling
the flow of energy to other parts of Eurasia from
Russia and former Soviet republics like Kazakhstan and
Turkmenistan (whose energy is exported through Russian
pipelines), he reasoned, he could exercise the sort of
political influence enjoyed by Soviet officials during
the heyday of the Cold War.

To accomplish this, however, he would have to reverse
the wide-ranging privatization of the oil and gas
industry that occurred in the early 1990s after the
breakup of the USSR and bring vital elements of
Russia's privately-owned energy industry back under
state control. Since there was no legitimate way to do
this under Russia's post-Communist legal system, Putin
and his associates turned to illegitimate and
authoritarian methods to de-privatize these valuable
assets. Here, we see another emerging face of
Energo-fascism.

Remarkably, Putin himself had long before spelled out
the rationale for concentrating control over Russia's
energy resources in the state's hands. In a 1999
summary of his Ph.D. dissertation on "Mineral Raw
Materials in the Strategy for Development of the
Russian Economy," he asserted that the Russian state
must oversee the utilization of the country's mineral
raw materials -- including oil fields in private hands
-- for the good of the Russian people. "The state has
the right to regulate the process of the acquisition
and the use of natural resources, and particularly
mineral resources, independent of on whose property
they are located," he wrote. "In this regard, the
state acts in the interests of society as a whole."

No better justification for Energo-fascism can be
imagined. The most famous expression of this outlook
has been the so-called Khodorkovsky Affair. In 2003,
Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the CEO of Yukos, then Russia's
top oil producer, was arrested on fraud and
tax-evasion charges. He had run afoul of Putin by
pursuing all sorts of energy deals independent of the
state, including possible joint ventures with Exxon
Mobil, and by supporting anti-Putin political forces
inside Russia -- either of which would have alone been
sufficient to earn him the Kremlin's wrath.

However, it is now apparent that Putin's ultimate goal
in engineering the arrest was to seize control of
Yuganskneftegaz, Yukos' prime asset, accounting for
about 11% of Russia's oil output. With Khodorkovsky
and his top associates in prison awaiting trial, the
government auctioned Yuganskneftegaz to a secretive
shell company, which then resold it to state-owned
Rosneft at a below-market price. In one fell swoop,
Putin had managed to dismember Yukos and turn Rosneft
into the country's leading oil producer.

The Russian president has also sought to extend state
control over the distribution and export of oil and
gas by blocking any effort by private firms to build
pipelines that would compete with those owned and
operated by Gazprom, the state-owned natural gas
monopoly, and Transneft, the state oil-pipeline
monopoly. The United States and other consuming
nations have long pushed for the construction of
privatized oil and gas pipelines in Russia to increase
the outflow of energy to Europe and other foreign
markets as well as to dilute the power of Gazprom and
Transneft. The Kremlin has, however, systematically
foreclosed all such efforts.

If the concentration of ownership of energy assets in
the state's hands through legally dubious means is one
dimension of emerging Energo-fascism in Russia, a
second is the utilization of this power to intimidate
have-not states on Russia's periphery. The most
notable expression of this to date was the cutoff of
natural gas supplies to Ukraine on January 1, 2006.
Ostensibly, Gazprom stopped the flow in a dispute over
the pricing of Russian gas, but most observers believe
that the action was also intended as a rebuke to
Ukraine's Western-leaning president, Victor A.
Yushchenko.

Remember, this was in the dead of winter, and natural
gas is the main source of heat in Ukraine, as in much
of Eastern Europe and the former USSR. Gazprom resumed
the flow after a last-minute pricing compromise and
following vociferous complaints from Western European
customers who were suffering their own losses (as the
Ukrainians diverted Europe-bound gas for their own
use). This was the moment when it became clear to all
that Moscow was fully prepared to open and close the
energy spigot as a tool of foreign policy.

Since then, Moscow has employed this tactic on several
occasions to intimidate other neighboring states in
what it terms its "near abroad" (as the U.S. used to
speak of Latin America as its "backyard"). On July 29,
2006, claiming a leak, Transneft halted oil shipments
to the Mazeikiu refinery in Lithuania after its owners
announced its sale to a Polish firm, not a Russian
one.

Observers of the move speculate that Russians
officials intended to force a Russian takeover of the
refinery.
In November, Gazprom threatened to more than double
the price of natural gas to its former Georgian SSR
from $110 to $230 per 1,000 cubic meters. The
alternative offered was a cessation of deliveries.
Again, political pressure was believed to be at least
part of the motive as Georgia's pro-Western government
has defied Moscow on a wide range of issues. In
December, Gazprom pulled the same sort of trick on
Belarus, demanding a major readjustment of prices from
a close (and impoverished) ally that had recently been
showing mild signs of independence.

This, then, is another face of Energo-fascism in
Russia: the use of its energy as an instrument of
political influence and coercion over weak have-not
states on its borders. "It is not that energy is the
new atomic weapon," Cliff Kupchan of the Eurasia Group
consultancy told the Financial Times, "but Russia
knows that petro-power, aggressively and cleverly
applied, can yield diplomatic influence."

Big Brother and the Nuclear Renaissance

The last face of Energo-fascism to be discussed here
is the inevitable rise in state surveillance and
repression attendant on an expected increase in
nuclear power. As oil and natural gas become scarcer,
government and industry leaders will undoubtedly push
for a greater reliance on nuclear power to provide
additional energy. This is a program likely to gain
greater momentum from rising concerns over global
warming -- largely a result of carbon-dioxide
emissions created during the combustion of oil, gas,
and coal.

President Bush has repeatedly spoken of his desire to
foster greater reliance on nuclear power and the
administration-backed Energy Policy Act of 2005
already provides a variety of incentives for
electrical utilities to build new reactors in the
United States. Other countries including France,
China, Japan, Russia, and India also plan to up their
reliance on nuclear power, greatly adding to the
global spread of nuclear reactors.

Many problems stand in the way of this so-called
renaissance, not least the mammoth costs involved and
the fact that no safe system has yet been devised for
the long-term storage of nuclear wastes. Furthermore,
despite many improvements in the safety of nuclear
power plants, worries persist about the risk of
nuclear accidents such as those that occurred at Three
Mile Island in 1979 and Chernobyl in 1986.

But this is not the place to weigh these issues. Let
me instead focus on two especially worrisome aspects
of the future growth of the nuclear power industry:
the possible federalization of nuclear reactor
placement in the U.S. and the repressive implications
globally of the greater availability of nuclear
materials open to diversion to terrorists, criminals,
and "rogue" states.
Currently, America's municipalities, counties, and
states still exercise considerable control over the
issuance of permits for the construction of new
nuclear power plants, giving citizens in these
jurisdictions considerable opportunity to resist the
placement of a reactor "in their backyard."

For decades, this has been one of the leading
obstacles to the construction of new reactors in the
U.S., along with the costly and time-consuming legal
process involved in winning over state legislatures,
county boards, and environmental agencies. If this
practice prevails, we are never likely to see a true
"renaissance" of nuclear power here, even if a few new
reactors are built in poor rural areas where citizen
resistance is minimal.

The only way to increase reliance on nuclear power,
therefore, is to federalize the permit process by
shunting local agencies aside and giving federal
bureaucrats the unfettered power to issue permits for
the construction of new reactors.

Unlikely, you say? Well consider this: The Energy
Policy Act of 2005 established a significant precedent
for the federalization of such authority by depriving
state and local officials of their power to approve
the placement of natural gas "regasification" plants.

These are mammoth facilities used to reconvert
liquified natural gas, transported by ship from
foreign suppliers, into a gas that can then be
delivered by pipeline to customers in the United
States. Several localities on the East and West coasts
had fought the construction of such plants in their
harbors for fear that they might explode (not an
entirely far-fetched concern) or become targets for
terrorists, but they have now lost their legal power
to do so. So much for local democracy.

Here's my worry: That some future administration will
push through an amendment to the Energy Policy Act
giving the federal government the same sort of
placement authority for nuclear reactors that it now
has for regasification plants. The feds then announce
plans to build dozens or even hundreds of new reactors
in or near places like Boston, New York, Chicago, San
Francisco, Los Angeles, Denver, and so on, claiming an
urgent need for additional energy. People protest en
masse. Local officials, sympathetic to the protestors,
refuse to arrest them in droves. But now we're
speaking of defiance of federal, not state or
municipal, ordinances.

Ergo, the National Guard or the regular Army is called
up to quell the protests and protect the reactor sites
-- Energo-fascism in action.
Finally, there's another danger in the spread of
nuclear power: that it will require a systematic
increase in state surveillance of everyone even
remotely connected with commercial nuclear energy.

After all, every uranium enrichment facility, nuclear
reactor, and waste storage site -- and any of the
linkages between them -- is a potential source of
fissionable materials for terrorists, black-market
traffickers, or rogue states like Iran and North
Korea. This means, of course, that all of the
personnel employed in these facilities, and all their
contractors and sub-contractors (and all their
families and contacts) will have to be constantly
vetted for possible illicit ties and kept under
strict, full-time surveillance.

  The more reactors there are, the more facilities and
contractors who will have to be subjected to this sort
of oversight -- and the more the security staff itself
will have to be subjected to ever higher levels of
surveillance by state security agencies. It's a
formula for Big Brother on a very large scale.
And then there's the special problem of "breeder
reactors." These plants produce ("breed") more
fissionable material than they consume, often in the
form of plutonium, which can, in turn, be burned in
power reactors to generate electricity but can also be
used as the fuel for atomic weapons.

Although such reactors are currently banned in the
United States, other countries, including Japan, are
building them so as to diminish their reliance on
fossil fuels and natural uranium, itself a finite
resource. As the demand for nuclear energy grows, more
countries (even, possibly, the USA) are bound to build
breeder reactors. But this will vastly increase the
global supply of bomb-grade plutonium, requiring an
even greater increase in state supervision of the
nuclear power industry in all its aspects.

The State's Iron Grip

All the phenomena discussed in this two-part series --
the transformation of the U.S. military into a global
oil-protection service, the growth of the energy
equivalent of a major-power arms race, the emergence
of Russia as an energy superpower, and the need for
increased surveillance over the nuclear power industry
-- are expressions of a single, overarching trend: the
tendency of states to extend their control over every
aspect of energy production, procurement,
transportation, and allocation.

  This, in turn, is a response to the depletion of
world energy supplies and a shift in the locus of
energy production from the global north to the global
south -- developments that have been under way for
some time, but are bound to gain greater momentum in
the years ahead.

Many concerned citizens and organizations -- the
Apollo Alliance, the Rocky Mountain Institute, and the
Worldwatch Institute, to name but a few -- are trying
to develop sane, democratic responses to the problems
brought about by energy depletion, instability in
energy-producing areas, and global warming.

  Most government leaders, however, appear intent on
addressing these problems through increased state
controls and a greater reliance on the use of military
force. Unless this tendency is resisted,
Energo-fascism could be our future.

Michael T. Klare is a professor of peace and world
security studies at Hampshire College and the author
of Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of
America's Growing Dependence on Imported Petroleum
(Owl Books).

----- Original Message -----
From: "Greenpeace" <webmaster@...>
To: <winter___@...>
Sent: Thursday, January 18, 2007 2:30 AM
Subject: YOU Can Make Big Oil Pay


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Despite the comments posted below - it is essential that everyone sees 'An
Inconvenient Truth' - yes I too think Al Gore soft-pedals things -at least
in the 'What You Can Do' department... and he makes no mention of
population control..but he makes a clear and persuasive analysis of what we
are facing.

He also clearly emphasises the fact that these changes will NOT be gradual,
but will occur in unpredictable leaps and jumps - the climate system is
"non-linear". Hurricane Katerina there, Cyclone Monica (a category SIX!!)
here.

What motivates me is the realisation, that as things get tough, the tough
get moving - but that will be very tough for the environment - as the
'tough' have vastly more destructive energy at their disposal to 'get their
way' - think Nukes, bulldozers, AK47's etc... and the fabric of our planet
will be rent by our thrashings to grab the last advantages over others.

I do not and cannot believe in a God (or at least a 'personally concerned'
one)- the evidence is everywhere against such a belief. I do see the
potential ultimate stupidity of man - but I also believe (in the true sense
of 'believe' - that is holding a view against all evidence to the contrary)
that we can, if sufficiently mobilised, at least ameliorate what is coming
down the 'pike. If we don't try, then all that we hold dear - trees, sea,
sky and creatures, will be the loosers, along with us - surely that is the
ultimate moral imperative - to act now ???

AND actions are not really a minor trimming of our lifestyle sails - they
are a major setting out of new sails and charting a new route into what
will be most uncomfortable waters. For some of us over 50, it won't be so
hard - many of us have been there before - it will be a bit the way things
were as children - but very different - as there is now massive human
competition for resources.

Read the following and think about it.  Hard.

But despair won't help anyone or anything - shifting government thinking is
essential, as is concerted individual and community action - often in the
face of laws that serve to maintain the Status Quo.

We have to very quickly devise equitable ways of 'letting ourselves down
gently, but fast'

Hugh Spencer
14 jan




Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2007 09:29:22 +0000
Subject: [energyresources] The Law of Life and the Law of Death


http://civillibertarian.blogspot.com/2007/01/law-of-life-and-law-of-death.html

Thursday, January 11, 2007
The Law of Life and the Law of Death
by Juan Santos

1/11/07

1. The Great Emergency: Global Warming, Mass Death and Resource Wars in
the 21st Century


"We are the watchers. We are the witnesses. We see what has gone before.
We see what happens now, at this dangerous moment in human history. We
see what's going to happen, what will surely happen unless we come
together---we, the Peoples of all Nations---to restore peace, harmony
and balance to the Earth, our Mother."

--Chief Arvol Looking Horse, from White Buffalo Teachings


At the Sundance Film Festival Al Gore declared,

"We have a category five denial of this issue [global warming]. I believe
our political system is broken, however, I have optimism and hope. A
rebellion is gathering."

But rebellion isn't what Al Gore is fostering. Speaking at NYU against
what one commentator called a "stately backdrop of American flags",
Gore's comments were focused on "uplift" and calls to action slathered
in a "thick layer of patriotism"  and good old capitalist know-how. He
seemed oblivious to irony, saying of the US, "Our natural role is to be
the pace car in the race to stop global warming."

The feel good approach Gore pushes is dead wrong: Economic growth and
saving life on Earth are not compatible goals. Industrial civilization
isn't harming the Earth, it's killing the Earth. The system has long
since passed the limits of growth - it can't be sustained.

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, a four-year analysis of the world's
ecosystems sponsored by the Worldwatch Institute, showed that 15 out of
24 ecosystems essential to human life are "being pushed beyond their
sustainable limits," toward a state of collapse that may be "abrupt and
potentially irreversible." These ecosystems and the civilization that is
killing them are both approaching an endpoint.

People are calling Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth the most terrifying
movie you will ever see - but really, Goreís film is a soft sell, one
that underestimates the dangers we face and that veils not only the root
causes of global warming, but the drastic military responses the US is
planning in the event of an abrupt shift in the climate.

Call it Category 4 denial. Gore ignores the real problem. Global heating
isn't "caused" by CO2, itís caused by industrial production and those
that profit from it - capitalists in oil, gas, coal, electricity and
automobiles, among others. And the system isn't "broken", no matter what
Gore claims. The system is producing what it's supposed to produce;
power and profit and the corollaries of power and profit; denial and death.

For those addicted to power and profit, who are "winning" at the expense
of all life, global warming is business as usual.

Try telling an abusive alcoholic he's taken one drink too many, that
animals and plants, even other people, are not objects, that he's beaten
his wife one too many times, or that, as Brother Malcolm put it, the
chickens are coming home to roost. Unless he's hit bottom, he's not
listening. Even George Bush has publicly acknowledged the obvious: the
system is addicted to oil. But he's not listening.

The analogy to addiction is not facile and the denial of the crisis we
face is no accident; it is both conscious and deliberate. In this
system, denial of suffering is the key to success. The ability to
distance themselves from the meaning of their actions is what put those
who are on top on top in the first place.

Look at Exxon and its global warming disinformation campaign. They've
spent millions on propaganda to consciously deceive us about the reality
of global warming and the impending mass death it implies, much like the
Nazis told their victims they were heading for a shower, not a gas
chamber, like the cigarette capitalists told us smoking carries no harm.
But the genocide the Nazis perpetrated was not this extreme. This is
different. This is not ethnocide or genocide.

This is omnicide. Life on Earth is in the balance.

The stakes, the costs of this crime and its coverup, could not be
higher. World renowned paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey tells us,
"Whatever way you look at it, we're destroying the Earth at a rate
comparable with the impact of a giant asteroid slamming into the planet,
or even a shower of vast heavenly bodies".

Within 50 years a million species will be extinct. Within 100 years 50%
of all species now living - 5 million forms of living beauty - will be
gone forever. Within a mere 30 years, a quarter of all mammal species
may be gone.

Today, bears are no longer hibernating in the north of Spain. With the
melting of polar ice, the Polar Bear is on its way out. The Orangutan
has ten years left.

Fish are starving to death in the Great Barrier Reef - the unthinkable
equivalent of primates starving in the jungle. In the meantime, the
jungle, the Amazon Rainforest, which provides 20% of the world's oxygen,
will be a savannah, or perhaps a desert, by 2100.

Forty percent of the world's species will die with the Amazon.

The new Age of Extinctions is being driven by global heating, ozone
depletion, toxic chemicals, habitat destruction, and invasive or
infectious species. The cause isn't just CO2, it's our whole way of
life. The Earth is in its most profound crisis since the mass
extinctions of the Eocene period, 54 million years ago.

Before that, two hundred and fifty million years ago at the end of the
Permian era, 95% of all species perished due to runaway global warming,
warming that occurred due to the same kind of positive feedback loops
that we see emerging in todayís heating trends. Scientists call it The
Great Dying, a period in which life on Earth was all-but wiped out.

The Permian mass extinction was apparently caused by a series of
gigantic volcanic eruptions, triggering a runaway greenhouse effect.
Geologists have said the impact of this "post apocalyptic greenhouse"
was so severe that only one large land animal was left alive. 100
million years would pass before species diversity returned to its former
levels.

In light of such potentials, how many people are willing to wager that
the world scientific community is wrong and that George W. Bush - the
idiot savant of the Christian Fascists - is right when he claims the
verdict is still out on global warming? How many will be willing to
leave the fate of the Earth, of their children and their children's
children, in the hands of propagandists for ExxonMobile? The impact of
global heating - on humans alone - would be almost beyond imagining.

James Lovelock, who developed the Gaia Theory - the scientific theorem
that Earth acts as a single self-sustaining, self-balancing organic
system - tells us that by 2100 there will only be 500 million humans
left on Earth. The Earth, he says, will no longer be able to sustain
more than that. There are 6.5 billion of us now; by 2050 that number
will rocket to 8.9 billion, then drop precipitously. If Lovelock is
right, only one out of 18 people will be left alive at the centuryís
end. 95% will be dead. And Lovelock is only looking at global warming.
He isn't counting the threats posed by Peak Oil or nuclear resource wars
over oil, water and arable land that, if current trends continue, will
become all but inevitable.

The glaciers of the Himalayas are disappearing. Forty percent of the
people in the world draw their water from sources directly fed by the
regular summer melting cycles of Himalayan ice and snow. Their sources
of food will melt with the glaciers. With mass starvation in Asia, the
probabilities of war over water and arable land - and of mass death -
grow exponentially.

By the summer of 2040 all of the sea ice in the Arctic Ocean will be
gone. That means that theromohaline circulation in the North Sea - the
Gulf Stream, which carries vast amounts of heat from the equator to the
North Atlantic - will cease. Even as the planet heats, northern Europe
will freeze. In Britain, for example, the Gulf Stream provides 27,000
times more heat than all current power supplies can generate, warming
that nation by 5-8C. Warm winds from the Gulf Stream eventually reach
the Himalayas, where they play a role in stimulating and regulating the
East Asian monsoon system.

With the collapse of the Gulf Stream, temperatures in Europe could fall
by 20 or more degrees Fahrenheit, creating an ecological nightmare as
farmland turns to frozen tundra, with temperatures dropping to below
-20C. Europe is currently self sufficient in agriculture, feeding its
600 million inhabitants, an obvious impossibility under such devastating
new conditions.

Would Europe, with its vast armaments and its history of colonization,
genocide and global wars aimed at re-dividing world resources and
markets, slip quietly into a frozen death - or would it find war, even a
Third World War, preferable to collapse and relentless famine at home?

The question is far from academic. Ice sheet melting from the Greenland
ice cap into the Greenland Sea and the melting of floating ice during
the 1980s caused the Gulf Stream to diminish by 80%. A recent report
shows that the Gulf Stream came to a dead halt for ten days in 2004. The
melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet and the Arctic Sea's ice all but
guarantees the end of the Gulf Stream before mid century.

Which lands a frozen Europe might target in order to feed itself could
eventually pose an all-but insoluble problem for the sub-continentís
rulers. A recent study by the British government shows that if current
trends continue, a third of the planet will be desert by 2100. According
to their calculations, areas susceptible to moderate drought will double
to 50% of the Earthís surface. Areas susceptible to severe drought will
more than triple to 30% of the Earthís surface.

Exxon-Bush Inc. would have us believe these impacts and their causes are
debatable.

Republican Senator James Inhofe would have us believe that the world
scientific community is perpetrating an elaborate anti-capitalist hoax -
the biggest hoax in human history, with the highest stakes. Rush
Limbaugh says global warming is just another way to make civilized white
people and capitalists feel guilty, the moral equivalent of a commie
plot. The Right wants to cast doubt on climate science and the impending
realities of climate chaos, because by pretending that there is a
debate, they can defer action and continue to profit. For these men, the
world itself can end, but not profit.

The fossils of our time sit in Washington, apparently inured by the
pleasures of power and wealth to the realities before us. But,
appearances notwithstanding, the ruling elites understand that we are on
an irreversible path to global heating, caused largely by the burning of
fossil fuels for the sake of production and profit. The question is what
they plan to do about it.

As resources of petroleum peak and begin to expire, the Bush regime
offers no alternative other than resource wars - war, not to end the use
of the fuels that are destroying the Earth - but to get more of them,
the last of them. Their aim is not to save the world, but to ensure
their continued ability to dominate it by controlling the rapidly
dwindling sources of oil. This, after all, is what the war in Iraq is
about, and this is the meta-madness that guides the imperial
preparations to attack Iran.

The ruling elites know exactly where we are heading and exactly what
they are doing. Quietly, they call global warming a "national security
threat".

A 2004 Pentagon report, "An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its
Implications for United States National Security," cautions US strategic
planners that in a scenario of abrupt climate change "Nuclear conflict,
mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the
world". The report predicts that Third World countries will develop
their own nuclear threat to secure dwindling food, water and energy
supplies. By 2020, the report concludes, "catastrophic" shortages of
water, food and energy will plunge the planet toward war. The United
Nations identifies some 150 flash points where wars may be fought over
water, alone.

The Pentagon report suggests that there could be global economic
depression, destruction of technological infrastructure on a global
scale, nuclear war, mega-droughts, famine, mass migrations from Third
World countries, and widespread rioting around the world.
"Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life," the Pentagon
says. "warfare would define human life".

The report calls for the development of what it calls "no-regrets
strategies" by the U.S. Department of Defense.

Welcome to the apocalypse. This is the Great Emergency. The future of
all Life on Earth is in our hands, in the hands of this generation. We
have two choices: stop them, or prepare our children and grandchildren
to be among the 5% who might be so fortunate - or unfortunate - as to
survive.

Carbon trading: a corporate scam

Patrick Bond, Rehana Dada & Graham Erion
12 January 2007

With climate change posing as one of the gravest threats to capital
accumulation - not to mention humankind and our environment - in coming
decades, it is little wonder that economists such as Sir Nick Stern,
establishment politicians like Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown
and US Democrat Al Gore, and financiers at the World Bank and in the
City of London have begun warning the public and, in the process,
birthing a market for carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.

The idea is to sell the right to continue polluting in the North, in the
hope that more efficient energy systems can be incentivised through
"Clean Development Mechanism" (CDM) offset projects in the Third World.

This was the key theory motivating capitalist states’ support for the
Kyoto Protocol and, since February 2005, when the protocol was ratified
by Russia and formally came into effect, a great deal more money and
propaganda have been invested in the carbon market, including at a major
Nairobi climate conference last November.

Rather than forcing countries, or firms, to reduce their own greenhouse
gas emissions, Kyoto Protocol designers created - from thin air - a
carbon market and gave countries a minimal reduction target (5% from
1990 emissions levels, to be achieved by 2012). They can either meet
that target through their own reductions or by purchasing emissions
credits from countries or firms that reduce their own greenhouse gases
beyond their target level.

But as Larry Lohmann from the British NGO Cornerhouse and the Durban
Group for Climate Justice remarked: "The distribution of carbon
allowances [the prerequisite for trading] constitutes one of the
largest, if not the largest, projects for creation and regressive
distribution of property rights in human history."

Full:
http://www.greenleft.org.au/2007/694/36065

*****************


   The impact of carbon trading in the Third World

Kevin Smith
12 January 2007

The carbon offset industry was all about growth in 2006. The
high-profile, Britain-based CarbonNeutral Company reported an annual
turnover of £2.7 million, while the global market sold an estimated £60
million, and this figure was estimated to increase five times over in
three years.

  From the World Cup to Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corporation, to
British Petroleum’s offset petrol, individuals, organisations and
corporations were keen to prove their climate-friendly credentials by
going “carbon neutral”. The success of the schemes reflects the fact
that there is an increase in popular awareness as to the need to engage
with climate change, but are they offering a valid approach, or are they
detracting from the real action that needs to happen?

Some environmentalists had been dubious about both the ethics and the
efficacy of carbon offsets since the schemes were first introduced, but
dark clouds of doubt and controversy began to gather in force throughout
2006.

Full:
http://www.greenleft.org.au/2007/694/36066

Dear Friends:

I thought the following message I have just been sent should be shared with you
all - especially as Australia seems to be heading towards exporting
ever-increasing amounts of uranium with few real controls on how it is used.

Cheers,

John Hill

................................................................................\
.............................
----- Original Message -----
From: Priya Ranjan
To: aid-awareness@...
Sent: Wednesday, January 17, 2007 5:12 AM
Subject: [Aid-awareness] A primer on tailing pond accident in Jadugoda,Jharkhand








Petition: http://petitions.aidindia.org/jadugoda-tailing-pipe-leak/index.php

Jadugoda
Accident at Jadugoda

Demand Full Investigation and Remediation
On December 24, 2006, one of the pipes carrying radioactive wastes from the
uranium mill to a storage dam had burst, discharging highly toxic wastes into a
nearby creek.  When released into the environment in such a hazardous manner,
the radioactive wastes are deadly to the people living in the surrounding area
as well as their land and water.

The accident occurred in Dungridih – a small village near Jadugoda inhabited
largely by displaced families whose lands were acquired to construct two of the
three storage dams, also known as tailings ponds.  The tailings ponds store all
the radioactive wastes generated by the milling of uranium ore in Jadugoda. 
Based on the experience of similar accidents in other countries, however, the
negative effects on human and environmental health will impact communities
living downstream, perhaps even hundreds of kilometers away.  Therefore, it is
imperative that the Uranium Company of India Limited (UCIL) – the owner and
operator of the uranium mine, mill, pipes, and tailing ponds in Jadugoda –
immediately inform downstream communities of the disaster and prevent them from
using the creek water until it is certifiably safe.  Until the creek is safe to
use, UCIL should supply water to the impacted communities so that they can
continue their necessary activities such as bathing and washing clothes.  Also,
UCIL may need to provide compensation for families living downstream whose
livelihoods depend upon the stream, a tributary to the Subarnarekha River,
either for irrigation or fishing.

It is troubling that UCIL did not have its own alarm mechanism to alert the
company in cases of such a disaster.  Rather, the villagers that had arrived at
the scene of the accident soon after the pipe burst informed the company of the
toxic spill.  Even more reprehensible is the fact that the toxic sludge spewed
into creek for nine hours before the flow of the radioactive waste was shut off.
Consequently, a thick layer of radioactive sludge along the surface of the creek
killed scores of fish, frogs, and other riparian life.

According to reports in local Hindi newspapers, UCIL has begun repairing the
pipe and removing sludge from the creek.  This is an important step, but there
must be a comprehensive remediation plan for cleaning up the affected sites in
Jadugoda and elsewhere.  Based on the experience of remediation efforts in the
United States, Canada, and elsewhere, some of the major action items that must
be included in the plan are to:

   1.. thoroughly investigate the causes and impacts of the disaster, involving
UCIL, appropriate state agencies, and representatives of local community
organizations such as JOAR (Jharkhand Organization Against Radiation);
   2.. compensate the people harmed by the radioactive waste that has been
accidentally discharged into the environment;
   3.. decontaminate the soil and streams that have been affected by the bursting
of the pipe;
   4.. create and establish inspection mechanisms and procedures to routinely
monitor the quality and safety of UCIL’s equipment;
   5.. regularly measure and monitor the exposure of workers and area residents
to the radioactive and hazardous chemical contaminants that are generated by the
mining and milling of uranium;
   6.. create and establish emergency response programs in order to ensure the
safe, effective, and timely response to possible disasters; and
   7.. fully disclose to area residents UCIL’s progress in its clean-up of the
disaster as well as reports of its inspections and monitoring programs.















--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


_______________________________________________
Aid-awareness mailing list
Aid-awareness@...
http://lists.aidindia.org/mailman/listinfo/aid-awareness

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

http://www.dpiw.tas.gov.au/inter.nsf/WebPages/PMAS-6UF323?open

Despite the comments posted below - it is essential that everyone sees 'An
Inconvenient Truth' - yes I too think Al Gore soft-pedals things -at least
in the 'What You Can Do' department... and he makes no mention of
population control..but he makes a clear and persuasive analysis of what we
are facing.

He also clearly emphasises the fact that these changes will NOT be gradual,
but will occur in unpredictable leaps and jumps - the climate system is
"non-linear". Hurricane Katerina there, Cyclone Monica (a category SIX!!)
here.

What motivates me is the realisation, that as things get tough, the tough
get moving - but that will be very tough for the environment - as the
'tough' have vastly more destructive energy at their disposal to 'get their
way' - think Nukes, bulldozers, AK47's etc... and the fabric of our planet
will be rent by our thrashings to grab the last advantages over others.

I do not and cannot believe in a God (or at least a 'personally concerned'
one)- the evidence is everywhere against such a belief. I do see the
potential ultimate stupidity of man - but I also believe (in the true sense
of 'believe' - that is holding a view against all evidence to the contrary)
that we can, if sufficiently mobilised, at least ameliorate what is coming
down the 'pike. If we don't try, then all that we hold dear - trees, sea,
sky and creatures, will be the loosers, along with us - surely that is the
ultimate moral imperative - to act now ???

AND actions are not really a minor trimming of our lifestyle sails - they
are a major setting out of new sails and charting a new route into what
will be most uncomfortable waters. For some of us over 50, it won't be so
hard - many of us have been there before - it will be a bit the way things
were as children - but very different - as there is now massive human
competition for resources.

Read the following and think about it.  Hard.

But despair won't help anyone or anything - shifting government thinking is
essential, as is concerted individual and community action - often in the
face of laws that serve to maintain the Status Quo.

We have to very quickly devise equitable ways of 'letting ourselves down
gently, but fast'

Hugh Spencer
14 jan




Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2007 09:29:22 +0000
Subject: [energyresources] The Law of Life and the Law of Death


http://civillibertarian.blogspot.com/2007/01/law-of-life-and-law-of-death.html

Thursday, January 11, 2007
The Law of Life and the Law of Death
by Juan Santos

1/11/07

1. The Great Emergency: Global Warming, Mass Death and Resource Wars in
the 21st Century


"We are the watchers. We are the witnesses. We see what has gone before.
We see what happens now, at this dangerous moment in human history. We
see what's going to happen, what will surely happen unless we come
together---we, the Peoples of all Nations---to restore peace, harmony
and balance to the Earth, our Mother."

--Chief Arvol Looking Horse, from White Buffalo Teachings


At the Sundance Film Festival Al Gore declared,

"We have a category five denial of this issue [global warming]. I believe
our political system is broken, however, I have optimism and hope. A
rebellion is gathering."

But rebellion isn't what Al Gore is fostering. Speaking at NYU against
what one commentator called a "stately backdrop of American flags",
Gore's comments were focused on "uplift" and calls to action slathered
in a "thick layer of patriotism"  and good old capitalist know-how. He
seemed oblivious to irony, saying of the US, "Our natural role is to be
the pace car in the race to stop global warming."

The feel good approach Gore pushes is dead wrong: Economic growth and
saving life on Earth are not compatible goals. Industrial civilization
isn't harming the Earth, it's killing the Earth. The system has long
since passed the limits of growth - it can't be sustained.

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, a four-year analysis of the world's
ecosystems sponsored by the Worldwatch Institute, showed that 15 out of
24 ecosystems essential to human life are "being pushed beyond their
sustainable limits," toward a state of collapse that may be "abrupt and
potentially irreversible." These ecosystems and the civilization that is
killing them are both approaching an endpoint.

People are calling Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth the most terrifying
movie you will ever see - but really, Goreís film is a soft sell, one
that underestimates the dangers we face and that veils not only the root
causes of global warming, but the drastic military responses the US is
planning in the event of an abrupt shift in the climate.

Call it Category 4 denial. Gore ignores the real problem. Global heating
isn't "caused" by CO2, itís caused by industrial production and those
that profit from it - capitalists in oil, gas, coal, electricity and
automobiles, among others. And the system isn't "broken", no matter what
Gore claims. The system is producing what it's supposed to produce;
power and profit and the corollaries of power and profit; denial and death.

For those addicted to power and profit, who are "winning" at the expense
of all life, global warming is business as usual.

Try telling an abusive alcoholic he's taken one drink too many, that
animals and plants, even other people, are not objects, that he's beaten
his wife one too many times, or that, as Brother Malcolm put it, the
chickens are coming home to roost. Unless he's hit bottom, he's not
listening. Even George Bush has publicly acknowledged the obvious: the
system is addicted to oil. But he's not listening.

The analogy to addiction is not facile and the denial of the crisis we
face is no accident; it is both conscious and deliberate. In this
system, denial of suffering is the key to success. The ability to
distance themselves from the meaning of their actions is what put those
who are on top on top in the first place.

Look at Exxon and its global warming disinformation campaign. They've
spent millions on propaganda to consciously deceive us about the reality
of global warming and the impending mass death it implies, much like the
Nazis told their victims they were heading for a shower, not a gas
chamber, like the cigarette capitalists told us smoking carries no harm.
But the genocide the Nazis perpetrated was not this extreme. This is
different. This is not ethnocide or genocide.

This is omnicide. Life on Earth is in the balance.

The stakes, the costs of this crime and its coverup, could not be
higher. World renowned paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey tells us,
"Whatever way you look at it, we're destroying the Earth at a rate
comparable with the impact of a giant asteroid slamming into the planet,
or even a shower of vast heavenly bodies".

Within 50 years a million species will be extinct. Within 100 years 50%
of all species now living - 5 million forms of living beauty - will be
gone forever. Within a mere 30 years, a quarter of all mammal species
may be gone.

Today, bears are no longer hibernating in the north of Spain. With the
melting of polar ice, the Polar Bear is on its way out. The Orangutan
has ten years left.

Fish are starving to death in the Great Barrier Reef - the unthinkable
equivalent of primates starving in the jungle. In the meantime, the
jungle, the Amazon Rainforest, which provides 20% of the world's oxygen,
will be a savannah, or perhaps a desert, by 2100.

Forty percent of the world's species will die with the Amazon.

The new Age of Extinctions is being driven by global heating, ozone
depletion, toxic chemicals, habitat destruction, and invasive or
infectious species. The cause isn't just CO2, it's our whole way of
life. The Earth is in its most profound crisis since the mass
extinctions of the Eocene period, 54 million years ago.

Before that, two hundred and fifty million years ago at the end of the
Permian era, 95% of all species perished due to runaway global warming,
warming that occurred due to the same kind of positive feedback loops
that we see emerging in todayís heating trends. Scientists call it The
Great Dying, a period in which life on Earth was all-but wiped out.

The Permian mass extinction was apparently caused by a series of
gigantic volcanic eruptions, triggering a runaway greenhouse effect.
Geologists have said the impact of this "post apocalyptic greenhouse"
was so severe that only one large land animal was left alive. 100
million years would pass before species diversity returned to its former
levels.

In light of such potentials, how many people are willing to wager that
the world scientific community is wrong and that George W. Bush - the
idiot savant of the Christian Fascists - is right when he claims the
verdict is still out on global warming? How many will be willing to
leave the fate of the Earth, of their children and their children's
children, in the hands of propagandists for ExxonMobile? The impact of
global heating - on humans alone - would be almost beyond imagining.

James Lovelock, who developed the Gaia Theory - the scientific theorem
that Earth acts as a single self-sustaining, self-balancing organic
system - tells us that by 2100 there will only be 500 million humans
left on Earth. The Earth, he says, will no longer be able to sustain
more than that. There are 6.5 billion of us now; by 2050 that number
will rocket to 8.9 billion, then drop precipitously. If Lovelock is
right, only one out of 18 people will be left alive at the centuryís
end. 95% will be dead. And Lovelock is only looking at global warming.
He isn't counting the threats posed by Peak Oil or nuclear resource wars
over oil, water and arable land that, if current trends continue, will
become all but inevitable.

The glaciers of the Himalayas are disappearing. Forty percent of the
people in the world draw their water from sources directly fed by the
regular summer melting cycles of Himalayan ice and snow. Their sources
of food will melt with the glaciers. With mass starvation in Asia, the
probabilities of war over water and arable land - and of mass death -
grow exponentially.

By the summer of 2040 all of the sea ice in the Arctic Ocean will be
gone. That means that theromohaline circulation in the North Sea - the
Gulf Stream, which carries vast amounts of heat from the equator to the
North Atlantic - will cease. Even as the planet heats, northern Europe
will freeze. In Britain, for example, the Gulf Stream provides 27,000
times more heat than all current power supplies can generate, warming
that nation by 5-8C. Warm winds from the Gulf Stream eventually reach
the Himalayas, where they play a role in stimulating and regulating the
East Asian monsoon system.

With the collapse of the Gulf Stream, temperatures in Europe could fall
by 20 or more degrees Fahrenheit, creating an ecological nightmare as
farmland turns to frozen tundra, with temperatures dropping to below
-20C. Europe is currently self sufficient in agriculture, feeding its
600 million inhabitants, an obvious impossibility under such devastating
new conditions.

Would Europe, with its vast armaments and its history of colonization,
genocide and global wars aimed at re-dividing world resources and
markets, slip quietly into a frozen death - or would it find war, even a
Third World War, preferable to collapse and relentless famine at home?

The question is far from academic. Ice sheet melting from the Greenland
ice cap into the Greenland Sea and the melting of floating ice during
the 1980s caused the Gulf Stream to diminish by 80%. A recent report
shows that the Gulf Stream came to a dead halt for ten days in 2004. The
melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet and the Arctic Sea's ice all but
guarantees the end of the Gulf Stream before mid century.

Which lands a frozen Europe might target in order to feed itself could
eventually pose an all-but insoluble problem for the sub-continentís
rulers. A recent study by the British government shows that if current
trends continue, a third of the planet will be desert by 2100. According
to their calculations, areas susceptible to moderate drought will double
to 50% of the Earthís surface. Areas susceptible to severe drought will
more than triple to 30% of the Earthís surface.

Exxon-Bush Inc. would have us believe these impacts and their causes are
debatable.

Republican Senator James Inhofe would have us believe that the world
scientific community is perpetrating an elaborate anti-capitalist hoax -
the biggest hoax in human history, with the highest stakes. Rush
Limbaugh says global warming is just another way to make civilized white
people and capitalists feel guilty, the moral equivalent of a commie
plot. The Right wants to cast doubt on climate science and the impending
realities of climate chaos, because by pretending that there is a
debate, they can defer action and continue to profit. For these men, the
world itself can end, but not profit.

The fossils of our time sit in Washington, apparently inured by the
pleasures of power and wealth to the realities before us. But,
appearances notwithstanding, the ruling elites understand that we are on
an irreversible path to global heating, caused largely by the burning of
fossil fuels for the sake of production and profit. The question is what
they plan to do about it.

As resources of petroleum peak and begin to expire, the Bush regime
offers no alternative other than resource wars - war, not to end the use
of the fuels that are destroying the Earth - but to get more of them,
the last of them. Their aim is not to save the world, but to ensure
their continued ability to dominate it by controlling the rapidly
dwindling sources of oil. This, after all, is what the war in Iraq is
about, and this is the meta-madness that guides the imperial
preparations to attack Iran.

The ruling elites know exactly where we are heading and exactly what
they are doing. Quietly, they call global warming a "national security
threat".

A 2004 Pentagon report, "An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its
Implications for United States National Security," cautions US strategic
planners that in a scenario of abrupt climate change "Nuclear conflict,
mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the
world". The report predicts that Third World countries will develop
their own nuclear threat to secure dwindling food, water and energy
supplies. By 2020, the report concludes, "catastrophic" shortages of
water, food and energy will plunge the planet toward war. The United
Nations identifies some 150 flash points where wars may be fought over
water, alone.

The Pentagon report suggests that there could be global economic
depression, destruction of technological infrastructure on a global
scale, nuclear war, mega-droughts, famine, mass migrations from Third
World countries, and widespread rioting around the world.
"Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life," the Pentagon
says. "warfare would define human life".

The report calls for the development of what it calls "no-regrets
strategies" by the U.S. Department of Defense.

Welcome to the apocalypse. This is the Great Emergency. The future of
all Life on Earth is in our hands, in the hands of this generation. We
have two choices: stop them, or prepare our children and grandchildren
to be among the 5% who might be so fortunate - or unfortunate - as to
survive.

end


In science, beating a dead horse is not a bad thing. If it is truly
dead, it won't mind. And if it isn't, then it needs beating.
--Arthur Cronquist, Botanist (paraphrased)


____________________________________________________________________________
Dr. Hugh Spencer    Director of Research  |
Cape Tribulation Tropical Research Station |   Phone/Fax (61)07 4098 0063

Australian Tropical Research Foundation    | http://www.austrop.org.au/

"The Bat-House", Environment Centre.       |
PMB 5 Cape Tribulation via Mossman         |     Hugh@...

Queensland 4873 Australia                  |
___________________________________________|________________________________  m.

See
http://news.bbc.co.uk/nolavconsole/ukfs_news/hi/newsid_6250000/newsid_6257100/nb\
_rm_6257127.stm

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 12 January 2007

Human rights abuses, land conflicts, broken promises – the reality of
carbon ‘offset’ projects in Uganda

A new World Rainforest Movement report ‘A funny place to store carbon’
documents human rights abuses at Mount Elgon National Park in east
Uganda, where the Dutch FACE Foundation has been planting carbon
‘offset’ trees since 1994. The report exposes how villagers living along
the boundary of the park have been beaten and shot at, have been barred
from their land and have seen their livestock confiscated by armed park
rangers guarding the ‘carbon trees’ inside the National Park.

The ‘offset’ project sells carbon credits to Greenseat, a Dutch company
with clients including Amnesty International, the British Council and
the Body Shop.

In Britain, ‘offset’ company Climate Care buys carbon credits from the
FACE Foundation’s Kibale ‘offset’ project, in west Uganda. A report
today on BBC1’s Inside Out programme will expose how villagers around
Kibale National Park are paying a high price for living next to the FACE
Foundation carbon ‘offset’ project and how workers are paid well below
subsistence rates for tending the ‘carbon trees’.

“No-one is starving but it’s not enough anymore for luxuries such as
milk” commented a former local council member at Kibale in a meeting
with FERN’s climate campaigner Jutta Kill.

“In Uganda, villagers see their already meager subsistence livelihood
compromised even further by the FACE Foundation’s carbon ‘offset’
projects,” says Jutta Kill. “In Britain, Climate Care clients like The
Co-operative Bank offer cheap indulgences. For a bank with ethical
credentials, that’s a disgrace.”

On its website, the Co-operative Bank assures customers that their
“mortgages could not only save you money. They can help save the planet
too,” and a car insurance from the Co-operative Bank comes with the
conscience-salving message that ‘offsetting’ is “the easy way to make
your car greener without costing you a penny more”.

“FACE gets a license to continue polluting – we get to plant some
trees,” explained Alex Muhweezi, country director in Uganda for IUCN,
the World Conservation Union at a meeting with WRM’s Chris Lang in July
2006.

“’Offsets’ are bad for the climate because they delay a shift away from
our oil addiction,” explains Timothy Byakola of the Ugandan NGO Climate
and Development Initiatives, who co-wrote the WRM report. “They are also
bad for people when they exacerbate local land conflicts. Resolving the
crisis at Mount Elgon would be much easier without the extra
complication of a carbon contract.”

The villagers affected by the Mount Elgon ‘offset’ project are in no
doubt that the FACE Foundation is storing the carbon they sell to
climate conscious clients in Britain and the Netherlands on someone
else’s land, and they possess title documents showing they are entitled
to land now occupied by ‘carbon trees’. “We just want our land back”,
said one.

“To prevent a climate crisis we need effective strategies that will
transform the way we use and produce energy,” says FERN’s climate
campaigner Jutta Kill. "The feel-good ‘offset’ business undermines the
push towards a rapid switch to low-carbon economies. It nurtures the
illusion that carbon emissions for that holiday trip to Miami have no
impact on the climate as long as we buy our indulgences and pay someone
else somewhere else to deal with our excessive emissions.” “In cases
like Kibale and Mount Elgon, ‘offsets’ not only prolong our fossil fuel
addiction, they escalate local land conflicts. Far from benefiting the
poor, they make their struggle for access to land even harder.”

Notes

(1) The WRM report ‘A funny place to store carbon: UWA-FACE Foundation’s
tree planting project in Mount Elgon National Park, Uganda’ is available
at www.wrm.org.uy/countries/Uganda/book.html and www.sinkswatch.org

(2) FACE stands for Forest Absorbing Carbon-dioxide Emissions. The FACE
Foundation was set up in 1990 by the Dutch Electricity Generation Board.

(3) BBC1 Inside Out programme (London area) report 12 January 2007 at 19:30

For more information please contact:

Jutta Kill (jutta@...) Tel: +44 1608 651 864 & +44 7931 576538

Timothy Byakola (acs@...) Tel:+256 41 342685

Chris Lang (chrislang@...) Tel: +49 69 7079 2903

Kevin Smith (kevin@...) Tel: +44 207-700-7971

FERN / SinksWatch Initiative
Jutta Kill
1c Fosseway Business Centre
Stratford Road
Moreton-in-Marsh
GL56 9NQ
Britain

Tel: +44 1608 652 895
Mobile: +44 7931 576538

Web: www.fern.org
www.sinkswatch.org

Adelaide - FoE public meeting
Posted by: "Sophie Green" thesootyshow@...
Tue Jan 9, 2007 2:39 pm (PST)

TECHNOLOGY: the NEW, the NASTY, and the NEEDED

Friends of the Earth public meeting

7pm Thursday Jan 18th

Caos Cafe - 188 Hindley St (entry by gold coin donation)

> Dr Rye Senjen talks about nanotechnology

> Michaela Stubbs examines the Government's recent nuclear plans

> Dr Paul Downton, from Ecopolis Architects, looks at technology
for a greenhouse friendly world

See you there! Please forward this email through your networks.

Check out Friends of the Earth: http://www.foe.org.au

FoE Event mailing list
----- Original Message -----
From: foebrisbane-events@yahoogroups.com
To: foebrisbane-events@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Saturday, January 13, 2007 8:29 PM
Subject: [foebrisbane-events] Digest Number 68


FoE Event mailing list
Messages In This Digest (1 Message)
   1. Friends of the Earth Brisbane Events Bulletin From: Friends of the Earth
Brisbane
View All Topics | Create New Topic Message
   1. Friends of the Earth Brisbane Events Bulletin
   Posted by: "Friends of the Earth Brisbane" office@...  
foebrisbane
   Sat Jan 13, 2007 12:06 am (PST)
   Friends of the Earth Brisbane Events Bulletin
   January 2007

   Hello FoE Friends,

   Happy New Year! This is FoE Brisbane's events bulletin that details the
activities we are taking part in or endorse for the coming months. For more
information on the events listed here call the office on 3846 5793.

   This bulletin includes:

   Mark Diesendorf sustainable energy telephone conference- Jan 17
   Invasion Day Rally - Jan 26
   Politics in the pub: Climate change in the Pacific - Feb 15... and others to
come
   Climate Change Despair and Empowerment Roadshow - March 14
   Discounted People and Planet Diaries and Climate Justice Calendars
   Meetings: FoE Climate Justice, FoE Anti-nukes collective, QNFA
   National Anti-nuclear strategy meeting, Feb 3-4
   ACTION: Get Active on climate justice or anti-nuclear issues
   ACTION: Climate refugees cyberaction
   ACTION: Qld shoes for peace

   __

   A Sustainable Energy Future for Australia - a telephone conference
presentation with Mark Diesendorf
   WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 17th, 2007, 7PM-8:30PM
   Book now at rainforestinfo@...

   Join us for an inspiring Climate Study/Action Telephone Conference with Mark
   Diesendorf bringing perspectives on climate change to a wide audience across
Australia
   without requiring people to travel in a carbon intensive way.

   The human-induced greenhouse effect is arguably the most dangerous
environmental problem and the most difficult political issue to be faced by the
world in the 21st century.
   The good news is that Australia could halve its greenhouse gas emissions by
2040 at low cost. To implement these technologies, new policies must be
developed and implemented by all three levels of government. The main barriers
are neither technical nor economic, but rather are our social institutions and
the political power of the big greenhouse gas emitting industries: coal, oil,
aluminium, cement and motor vehicles.

   The author: Dr Mark Diesendorf teaches at the Institute of Environmental
Studies, University of New South Wales. He is also Director of a public interest
consultancy, Sustainability Centre Pty Ltd. He is co-author of the national
energy scenario study, "A Clean Energy Future for Australia", and sole author of
the forthcoming book, "Greenhouse Solutions with Sustainable Energy".

   Cost: This is a telephone call to the US. You can use your current telephone
service or you can save a few dollars by purchasing an international calling
card from any newsagency (or get a cheap long distance calling account through a
website like www.gotalk.com). With the right phonecard, the 90 minute session
should only cost you about 4 dollars.

   Bookings: Send an email to rainforestinfo@... to let us know you'd
like to participate and we'll send you the telephone number and pin as well as
the powerpoint presentation that Mark Diesendorf will speak to.

   Sponsored by the Rainforest Information Centre.
   http://www.rainforestinfo.org.au
   rainforestinfo@...

   _____

   Invasion Day Rally
   Friday January 26, 10am
   For many Australians, January 26 marks Australia Day, but for Aboriginal
people it marks and will always mark Invasion Day, the day when white people
came to this country and began the systematic course of genocide perpetrated on
the oldest living culture in the world today.

   Instead of seeing this day celebrated as a tribute to the white settlers, or
seeing people raising the flag and singing nationalist songs and praises, let's
recognise the day for what it is truly is - the day of Australia's invasion -
and take part a colourful non-violent protest.

   Meet at Parliament House, march to the Executive Building and then on to
Musgrave Park.
   Food donations welcomed.
   _____

   THURSDAY 15th February
   POLITICS IN THE PUB: CLIMATE CHANGE IN THE PACIFIC
   6:30 for 7pm start
   Brisbane Workers Community Centre
   2 Latrobe Tce, Paddington

   Pacific Island nations are extremely vulnerable to the effects of climate
change, with some nations likely to completely disappear as a result of rising
sea levels. Australia, as one of the greatest per capita greenhouse gas
emitters, is disproportionately responsible for climate change. This discussion
will look at what Australia's role is in addressing this issue and discuss the
Labor Party's proposed policies on climate change and the Pacific, including
recognising and accepting 'climate refugees' in Australia.

   SPEAKERS:
   Foga Clements - Brisbane Tuvualuan Community
   Emma Brindal - Friends of the Earth
   More speakers to be confirmed

   For more details call Emma on 3846 5793

   This forum is in a series of ideas and issues nights organised by Friends of
the Earth and The Fabian Society.
   FoE's nights will be on the third Thursday of the month and upcoming topics
include:

   Mines, dumps and reactors or a nuclear-free Australia?
   Clean Energy Forum
   Australia/Queensland as a US bombing range: Operation Talisman Sabre 2007 and
Shoalwater Bay
   Ecological and Social Justice
   Sustainability and Food
   ______

   CLIMATE CHANGE DESPAIR & EMPOWERMENT ROADSHOW
   Wednesday March 14
   6.30 for a 7pm start
   Ahimsa House, 26 Horan Street, West End
   Presented by the Rainforest Information Centre and hosted by Friends of the
Earth

   The roadshow aims to:

   * catalyse, invigorate and support grassroots climate study/action groups
across Australia

   * Address the hopeless despair that many people feel and provide tools to
transform despair into empowerment and effective action. This will be based on
the Despair & Empowerment work of Joanna Macy and the "Climate Change, Despair
and Empowerment" talk which John Seed gave in Massachusetts earlier this year
with Pullitzer Prize winning journalist Ross Gelbspan. (The 60-minute film made
from this event is available on DVD for $5 incl postage as is the DVD of the
extraordinary 60-minute .presentation on Climate Change that Ross Gelbspan made
to the World Affairs Council.)

   * unveil the false, "business as usual", solutions being touted by the major
political parties such as nuclear power, "clean" coal, carbon sequestration etc.

   * raise awareness and inspire political action towards the real solutions that
we, the people, must insist upon. (eg. end Australia's $6.5 billion a year in
subsidies to the fossil fuel industries, support energy efficiency, solar, wind,
geothermal etc.

   * provide resources for the many things that we can all do to turn the
situation around.

   * Support a network of Climate Study/Action Groups across Australia through 1)
the development of a website which includes all resources that are made
available at the roadshow plus more. 2) meeting facilitation support and
consulting on group process as needed.

   The format will be to offer 3 or 4 roadshow forums in a district or city on
consecutive weeknights followed by a 1-day Climate Change Despair & Empowerment
workshop nearby on the following Saturday or Sunday.

   The evening forums will include:

   * a video presentation that includes footage of Al Gore speaking about the
huge impact that Australia could make in the US if Australia signs Kyoto,
Pullitzer Prize winning journalist Ross Gelbspan, footage from climate change
victims and other footage.

   * Graphs and Information to expose the false solutions that are currently
being touted. This will be followed by looking at what the real solutions are
likely to be. Some examples of this are at "What You Can Do".

   * a discussion on the role of the denial of feelings of anguish and despair in
making us feel helpless, hopeless, paralysed, what can one person do anyway, its
too late etc etc. This addresses Gore's insight that many people move straight
from denial to hopeless despair about this issue without leaving any space in
between for effective action. (see
<file:///http://www.rainforestinfo.org.au/deep->www.rainforestinfo.org.au/deep-
eco/cabmourn.htm for a more general version of this argument).

   * Where no climate study/action group currently exists, the group will be
invited to form one there and then. If one already exists, representatives from
the group will be invited to give an update on their group's direction, meetings
etc. We will discuss the importance of direct democracy and grassroots and that
each of us now needs to awaken those around us to the urgency of understanding
and action. US Supreme Court Justice Brandeis, 1930: "The most important office
of government is citizen." The Bradley Method will be used to illustrate the
potential spread of the movement.

   * Host a short meeting of the group and discuss general meeting guidelines

   * Invite people to host "house parties", invite their friends to watch DVDs of
Inconvenient Truth, Ross Gelbspan and the Roadshow kit to build the network,
spread word of the climate study/action groups.

   * an invitation to the "Climate Change, Despair and Empowerment" 1- day
workshop at a nearby venue on the Sunday. Graduates of Joanna Macy's 30-day
training will be facilitating these as well as Ruth Rosenhek and John Seed.
We'll train others up for both this piece and for the presentations themselves.

   Interested in hosting the climate change despair & empowerment roadshow? If
you would like to organise a presentation in your area,
   Visit http://www.rainforestinfo.org.au/climate/roadshow.htm.

   Call Emma at FoE for more details: 3846 5793

   --------

   Discounted calendars and diaries

   'People & Planet 2007' diaries
   The amazing 'People & Planet 2007' diaries have been published by Global Trade
Watch in partnership with FoE Adelaide and a number of other grassroots
community organisations from around Australia. It is lavishly illustrated with
photographs from around the world. All profits support Friends of the Earth's
campaign work!
   NOW only $12!!

   2007 Friends of the Earth International Climate Justice Calendar
   The theme for the 2007 calendar is "climate justice", and it is illustrated
with powerful images from our photo competition and from Friends of the Earth
climate actions. The images and text highlight the environmental and social
impacts of climate change, those responsible, the local/global resistance to
climate change, and the challenge for better energy alternatives.
   NOW ONLY $15.00!!

   Profits from the calendar sales will go to Friends of the Earth climate
justice campaign, our international campaign work and FoE Brisbane.

   Click on the link below to see samples of the calendar.
   http://www.melbourne.foe.org.au/calendar/calendar.htm
   _____

   Feb 20 : FoE Brisbane Introduction evening
   6.30 to 8pm
   294 Montague Road West End

   Introduction sessions cover the history of FoE Brisbane, our principles and
how we work, connection with FoE Australia and FoE International, our current
work and ways that people can get involved. Information sessions are open to any
curious person and are ideal for people considering becoming involved in the
organisation. They are held on the third Tuesday of every month.

   Where: FoE Brisbane House, 294 Montague Road, West End.
   RSVP: to Derec or Emma on 3846 5793
   ____

   Meetings.

   FoE's Climate Justice Collective meetings are fortnightly on THURSDAYS at the
FoE House. The next meetings are January 26 and February 8 and 22. Collective
Meetings start at 6pm and finish around 7:30pm. Supper provided! Contact Emma on
3846 5793 or 0411 084 727 for more details.

   FoEBrisbane Anti-nuclear collective next meets at FoE House on Tuesday January
16, at 6pm. Contact Robin on 3846 5793 or 0411 118 737 for details

   Queensland Nuclear Free Alliance meeting:
   Date: Thursday Jan 18
   Time: 6pm
   place: Avid Reader Bookshop (out the back)
   on Boundary Street near the corner of Vulture Street West End
   info: Robin 0411 118 737

   National Anti-nuclear strategy meeting:
   Date: Feb 3-4
   Place: Katoomba, NSW
   info: all welcome to strategise on uranium, dumps, war games, nuclear
   power, etc.... carpooling may be available according to interest. call
   Robin 0411 118 737 or email:
<file:///http://au.f315.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=nuclearfreequeensland@yahoo\
.com.au&YY=93443&y5beta=yes&y5beta=yes&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&view=a&head=b>\
nuclearfreequeensland@...

   Get Active on anti-nuclear issues:
   We need help with regular anti-nuclear stalls, actions, compiling nuke E-news,
and general campaign work in the office... got some spare time - get active -
get involved.... give us a call on 0411 118 737 or (07) 3846 5793

   Want to get on our nuclear free qld action and news list? contact:
  
<file:///http://au.f315.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=nuclearfreequeensland@yahoo\
.com.au&YY=93443&y5beta=yes&y5beta=yes&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&view=a&head=b>\
nuclearfreequeensland@...

   Get active on climate justice: FoE's climate justice collective can always do
with help in research, writing, doing stalls, making banners etc. Call us on
3846 5793 if you'd like to help out!

   -------------

   Climate refugees cyberaction - why is our government still waiting?
   Email Amanda Vanstone to tell her Australia needs to accept climate refugees.
  
<file:///http://www.foe.org.au/nc/climatecyberaction.php>http://www.foe.org.au/n\
c/climatecyberaction.php

   In places like the tiny island nation of Tuvalu the effects of climate change
are most apparent. The annual spring tides on Tuvalu have been at record heights
in recent years. Crop gardens and drinking wells are being contaminated with
salt water. Some villagers are forced to relocate inland in search of a less
vulnerable place to live. Climate refugees need the help of countries like
Australia.

   In 2001, the Tuvaluan government requested that Australia support the
resettling of 50% of its population in recognition that the impacts of climate
change would force Tuvaluan people to abandon their homeland. The Australian
government refused on the grounds that climate change was not certain. This
response is inconsistent with national and international scientific recognition
of changing climatic conditions and their likely effects. Despite growing
evidence about human displacement due to global warming - most recently outlined
in the Stern Report, written for the UK government - the Australian government
refuses to acknowledge the serious situation we face. In October 2006, the
Immigration Minister Senator Amanda Vanstone says her Department has not made
any plans to deal with climate refugees, and that this is because "there's no
such thing as a climate [change] refugee"
(http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200610/s1776389.htm).

   With the highest greenhouse gas emissions per capita in the industrialised
world, Australians have a responsibility to those most affected by climate
change. We Australians need to dramatically reduce our emissions. We also need
to provide a humanitarian response to assist those affected by climate change:
through supporting adaptation and by making room for those who must move.

   The Stern Report highlights that proactive and early responses now will
greatly reduce human suffering and displacement in the future. Accordingly,

   * Australia needs to recognise environmental refugees as a separate category
of displaced person or migrant and increase our migrant or refugee quotas
accordingly;
   * Australia should also increase and modify its foreign aid to account for
changed conditions and growing displacement due to climate change.

   Send an email to Amanda Vanstone telling her that Australia needs to accept
climate refugees:
   http://www.foe.org.au/nc/climatecyberaction.php

   Qld shoes for peace!

   Taking the lead of the Code Pink women in the US and RAC who have done similar
things, we aim to collect 655 pairs of used shoes. Each pair of shoes will
symbolise 1000 deaths of Iraqi civilians. We though we should also include 3
pairs of combat boots in symbolise the approx 3000 Troops who have died there
too.

   The aim is to collect the shoes by February 2007 in order to launch the shoe
installation on March 22, 2007 - the 4th anniversary of the war on Iraq. The
shoes can then become a travelling exhibition that can be set up in any public
space. It will be accompanied by TS07 info and anti-recruitment info. It is
thought that this kind of display will be acceptable to many public authorities
and thus easy to find places to host the exhibition.

   If you'd like to donate your shoes please drop them in to the offices of
Friends of the Earth Brisbane, 294 Montague Rd, West End. If you have any ideas
where we can source large numbers of old shoes, let us know!
   Phone Kim on 0413 397 839
   ____

   Who is Friends of the Earth?

   Friends of the Earth Brisbane is a membership based organisation working
towards an environmentally sustainable and socially just future through
community action. FoE Brisbane is a member group of Friends of the Earth
Australia, which is in turn a member of the Friends of the Earth International
federation, with member groups in over60 countries.

   If you support the work of Friends of the Earth, please consider making a
tax-deductible donation; contact Friends of the Earth Brisbane.

   Friends of the Earth Brisbane campaign on a wide range of issues, as well as
developing positive local examples of sustainability. For more information about
campaigns and projects, getting involved, or supporting FoE, contact us on
office@... or 38465793.

   Please check out our website
<file:///file:///\\http:\www.brisbane.foe.org.au\>www.brisbane.foe.org.au.
   ---
   PRIVACY
   At the current time, we have your email address in our database at Friends of
Earth. We never intentionally send unsolicited emails and would like to give you
the opportunity to have us remove your email address from our records. If you do
not wish to receive any further correspondence from us by email, please reply to
this email with the word "REMOVE" in the subject line. We will ensure that your
email address is removed from our records and you will receive no further emails
from us. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact
Derec by email at office@... or call 3846 5793 during business
hours

   Regards
   Friends of the Earth Brisbane

   Friends of the Earth Brisbane
   PO Box 5702
   West End Qld 4101
   294 Montague Rd, West End
   Ph: 3846 5793 Fax: 3846 4791
   office@...
   www.brisbane.foe.org.au


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