Australian journalist Richard Flanagan writes that Tasmania is on fire:
As I write this, fire is 500 metres from the largest King Billy pine forest in the world on Mt Bobs, an ancient forest that dates back to the last Ice Age and has trees over 1,000 years old. Fire has broached the boundaries of Mt Field national park with its glorious alpine vegetation, unlike anything on the planet. Fire laps at the edges of Federation Peak, Australia’s grandest mountain, and around the base of Mt Anne with its exquisite rainforest and alpine gardens. Fire laps at the border of the Walls of Jerusalem national park with its labyrinthine landscapes of tarns and iconic stands of ancient pencil pine and its beautiful alpine landscape, ecosystems described by their most eminent scholar, the ecologist Prof Jamie Kirkpatrick, as “like the vision of a Japanese garden made more complex, and developed in paradise, in amongst this gothic scenery”
But Australian politician Scott Morrison is a classic example of what Barbara Tuchman called "woodenheadness."
Two years ago the then treasurer Scott Morrison picked up a large lump of coal. Perhaps he thought it was a great joke for Australia at the expense of a few weird outliers like the Greens and the global scientific community. Or perhaps Morrison wasn’t really thinking anything. Perhaps the greatest error of journalists is thinking people at the centre are more than they seem. The problem with people like Morrison, the true terror, is that they may be so much less.
The problem, Flanagan writes, is not that the barbarians are at the gate. The problem is that they're in the palaces of power.
Images: The Guardian
10 comments:
.. Villains, Cretins.. Stupifying Greed, Frauds, Grifters, Scumbags, Liars
Its like Shakespeare has come to life.. but even far more barbarous & murderous
Trump and the refugee children, Putin banking trillions likely, the Saudi killers
Specialists in Atrocity, Grim Deceivers, Bringers of the Darkness, true Mad Men
Slayers of Environment.. A staggering loss to see Tasmania afire
and those natural treasures lost and all related flora & fauna too !
Australia would move even more coal if only it could
and Andrew Scheer proclaimed Alberta's 'ethical oil'
presumably dilbit.. 'the finest oil on planet earth'
Only a diseased mind could attain such ignorance
The problem, Owen, is that we are cursed with too many Neros content to fiddle while the world burns.
The disease has gone viral, sal. And it threatens the planet.
And like Nero, Lorne, their wealth gives them the illusion that they have the right to be careless -- while everyone else can go to blazes.
That does have a familiar ring to it, Owen. I'm encouraging the rest of my family to purchase household air purifiers in anticipation of this year's wildfire season. Whereas once I reveled in the clean air that poured in off the Pacific now I have to spend weeks indoors with mechanically filtered air. I think of that when the topic turns to coal ports, LNG plants and bitumen pipelines to "tidewater."
What we're witnessing unfold is the inherent clash of economy and environment. Trudeau pretends that he can deliver both but that's a lie. Look at the mandate letters he issued to each of his cabinet ministers in 2015. Each of those letters imposed on those ministers an equal obligation to promote and expand the economy as well as whatever that particular ministry covered. We even had Dame Cathy McKenna bleat out that she was as much an economic minister as an environment minister. Pathetic.
We're watching a train wreck, Mound. Two trains are racing toward each other. The result will be catastrophic.
I think now with less than nine months to go until the election we all need to be discussing strategy. We have to be talking about strategic voting, voting with integrity and to once and for send a message that everyone has to accept. We all know how it went the last time and the choices we had. I for one am sick of holding my nose to vote for fear of wasting my vote in this failed first past the post bull shit. If we can't have real choice then what do we do. None of the above would be a nice addition to the ballot although that might be truly unrealistic. Just saying.
MJW
Most of the time, zoombats, real change comes from the bottom and works its way to the top. The challenge is to get those at the top to listen to and act on the will of the folks closest to the emergency. There are lots of them. But they need to speak loudly.
Flanagan had it right.
Those at the top don't think it will impact them. All of this is much like the AIDs crisis. They thought the disease would not effect them, only gays. Then hemophiliacs got it, then people who had had blood transfusions got it and then they passed it. The every body got shit scared and there were changes. Not until something the ruling class with its billionaire friends start to loose things, will things change.
In the case of climate change, e.a.f., when the real situation finally dawns on the billionaires, it will be too late.
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