Why An Emissions Target Is The Work Of Satan…
Now when someone posted a comment about Scott Morrison saying that anxiety was the work of Satan, I misread it and thought that he’d said Santa, which given all those anxious moments I’d spent on Christmas Eve trying to assemble something on Santa’s behalf when all I really wanted to do was sample some Christmas cheer and go to bed, the idea had a certain appeal to me.
At this point, I am wondering how many people are arguing that Santa doesn’t exist and whether they are greater in number than those who argue that Satan doesn’t exist. Both Satan and Santa can cause a lot of disagreement and it’s hard to argue that this does cause more anxiety than Santana.
Whatever, I’m actually writing about the 43% emissions target and how it’s going to cause an enormous amount of anxiety and there will be people who believe that Labor is Satan, while there are others who’ll argue that The Greens are Santa, and then you’ll have various Liberals who’ll argue that none of them should exist at all.
That’s Labor, The Greens and emissions target. They have no problem with Satan having elected one of his chief disciples in the creation of anxiety as the leader… which one? Well, the fact that you need to ask that says something in itself.
Anyway, now that the Liberals have largely announced that they feel that the reason they lost the election was because they’d strayed from their core principles of having only one core principle and that is, if it’s profitable, it should be privatised and if it’s not then it shouldn’t exist, and if it does exist and is necessary then we should still privatise it and pay someone to run it even if that costs more than when the government used to be in charge…
I mean, remember when Qantas was an inefficient government-owned enterprise which charged too much for getting you and your bags on the one flight.
But back to the emissions target and the looming showdown between Labor and The Greens. I must say that I’m in two minds about this because I can certainly see both sides of the argument.
- The first argument: We’re better off doing something rather than nothing and 43% is better than nothing.
- The second argument: 43% is not enough because this is an emergency and we’ve already left it too late so we really need to start taking it seriously.
There is some appeal to the idea of legislating a target because the very fact that you’ve set a target gives industry some direction, as well as ensuring the government has to actually take some action on things like modernising the grid and ruining the weekend by getting us all to drive electric cars. And it’s true that if you set any target, then you don’t have to stop at that. If a government decides that it’s going to introduce measures to cut the road toll such as more speed cameras in dangerous areas, it doesn’t decide to switch them off because they’ve hit their target and we can afford to lose a few more this month.
On the other hand, 43% may not drive the sort of changes we should be making and it may not lead to any significant action. Various projections have suggested that we’ll hit that target with action already being taken, so we could easily do more.
Whatever happens over the next few weeks, I think it’s important to remember a number of points:
- However the media choose to emphasise the disagreements between Labor, The Greens and the so-called Teal MPs, it’s worth remembering that they’re all in some sort of agreement about taking action to save the planet because unlike Hollie Hughes and Matt Canavan, they’re all still on it.
- Setting a target is all well and good, but it’s the path to get that target and the action that one actually takes that matters. I could set a target to lose five kilos by 2023, but unless I have an action plan to go with it, nothing will change. And while my action plan of going to the nearby gym twice a week may seem like a good start, the fact that they won’t let me in because I’m not a member may mean that I don’t get anywhere near my goal.
- It’s wrong to compare Rupert Murdoch to Satan because there’s no evidence that he’s responsible for all the evil that exists in the world and in fact, even many religious people don’t even accept that Satan exists at all.
- Unemployment is now so low that even Josh Frydenberg was able to get a job.
- Numbers can be manipulated to make anything appear true. In particular, political polling is always suspect. However, most people want some sort of action on climate change. This has been clear from both the polling and the recent election where seats that normally be a walkover for Liberals went to independents because the electors got sick of voting for people who sounded stupider than Uncle Barry after too many glasses of port.
Finally, I’d just like everyone to remember the basic strategy that the Coalition will adopt over the next few weeks. If Labor and The Greens reach any sort of compromise, then it’ll be because they’re a coalition and if you vote for one it’s the same as voting for the other, but if they can’t agree, then Peter Dutton will move a motion of no confidence in the government because they can’t get their legislation through the Senate.
Ok, an Opposition leader would have to be pretty stupid to do that. So how long do you think it will be before he does?
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Michael Taylor
Return to home pageJust re-read my post from May 2018 which is linked because I talk about Santa and I found this:
To amass the wealth he has now after starting off as a cop means he is not entirely stupid… but give him about 5 minutes.
Most if not all the communications/comments/legislation/public support/handwringing/political, county, world, discussions are just hot air!
The worlds emissions of greenhouse gasses are rising just beautifully themselves, even since the Davos Talk/Commitment Fest – because after all the good intentions and bad actions, nothing is changing, ably assisted by all the countries who don’t give a rats arse about anything.
I recent article I read stated that all the Davos commitments have not been actioned, and there is only change upwards.
Any target kept to, is worth it, in the light of near complete inaction.
Only an extinction event affecting the whole world will clean us up, and sometime in the distant future, it can all start again – probably after the Mars colonies have imploded for all the same reasons as what continues to happen in human history, and maybe they will reflect on better principles/protocols should have been followed!
Stay comfortable!
That “Related” posts feature amazes me, Rossleigh. Within a millisecond of publishing a new article the feature has scrolled through our 10,000 other articles and found three that are related. 🤷🏻♂️
As an aside, when a related post is shown without an image I race to the computer and add an image to the post. Was amused the other day on one such post where our view counter – another recent addition – showed that a post of Carol’s from 2013 had 325 views that particular day.
Yes, Malcom, pissing into the wind we are, we can pretend we are connected, showing an interest, getting outraged, offer considered opinions, fill the silence, follow on blindly, sometimes, yet where is the outrage, the anger as we head full on into our mass suicide event. I imagine, one day, the panic button will be hit, a realisation that yes, this global warming, destroyed ecosystems, rape of the planet is really happening now, too late then, much too late. I have no faith this albanese and labor have the necessary fortitude, will and desire to address this issue, the only one that matters. For me, at least.
Santa, unremarkably, is an anagram of Satan.
Putting aside the centuries-old European precedents; Saint Nicholas, Father Christmas, Sinterklaas, Père Noël, Wodan, Odin and all the rest, along with the symbolism of the flying reindeer high on fly agaric mushrooms, and stomping on the urban myth of Coca-Cola’s role in the modern reinvention of Santa’s jolly role in pushing sugar-laden teeth-rotting phosphorus-laced soft drink products onto a gullible but willing market in the world’s most avaricious consumer society, we are left, none-the-less, with this remarkably successful cos-play phenomenon whose story gets an annual retelling to millions of small children; unwitting ears to the fable of Santa’s magical capacity to divine good and evil and to gift-give accordingly.
That these same innocents eventually come to realise they have been duped by adult story-tellers no doubt goes some way towards an eventual and appropriate cynicism regarding the stories people tell.
But coming back to Kris Kringle aka Santa’s anagrammic doppelganger, Satan, it would seem, at least to this writer, that there is some truth to the analogy. Only Satan, if one was to believe in such an entity, would encourage consumers to spend wildly beyond their means in order to satisfy the inherent social expectations of the festive occasion of the 25th December, a date now so completely and utterly compromised by capitalism’s commercial imperative to spend, spend, and then send some more that its original significance has been almost entirely lost…being, of course, a recognition of the birth date of the man known as Jesus, whose legacy teachings became one of the world’s major religions.
And only Satan, if I may go out on a long limb, would endorse millions of old (and not so old) men frocking up in ridiculous costumery and indulging in behaviour that elsewhere in any society would never be permitted, for example, the annual conga lines of unwitting children willing to sit in the laps of these strangers, intimately cuddled while whispering their childish dreams into the ears of these unknowns; amongst whom, almost certainly, there exists a certain percentage whose motives are far less savoury than being a best-practice Santa role-model for the innocents.
Just as the Big Bad Wolf successfully fooled Little Red Riding Hood, so does Satan, Santa, and his hypnotised audience. There’s an air of absurdity about the whole thing anyway, as the planet moves inexorably into its anthropocenic challenge; fires, floods, famines and the rest of the (un)natural disasters that are and will occur now and into the future. Or maybe I’ve got the wrong end of the stick; and it really should be party-time; yay, we’ll all gonna die, let’s rock!
A bit like our addiction to fossil fuels,where it appears we’re stuck on the back of the beast and we’ll ride it to the bitter end, it seems we’re also stuck with this Santa (and Satan) mirage which, like all good mirages, is difficult to shake away. Even in China, after the assumption of leadership by Deng Xiaoping and the consequent opening up of the economy into what is now a hugely commercialised affair, notwithstanding the essentially non-western and non-Christian nature of the society, thousands of Santas make their annual appearances at department stores across the nation, and hundreds of thousands of willing Chinese children climb into Chinese Santas laps and whisper their wishes for their Christmas goodies. O my, oh dear, what a potage of a corrupted mess it’s become!
Leave Carlos out of this!!!
The 43% reduction is supposed to be a floor. We have to make a start and, while 43% is not enough in the long run, it is a viable, achievable beginning. Once we get moving it will become increasingly easier to make further reductions. But only if they don’t keep opening new mines.
leefe, did you know that Black Magic Woman was originally recorded by Fleetwood Mac?
Michael, yes, but IMHO Santana’s version is far superior.
It certainly is more famous, but I still don’t mind Mac’s version. Actually, the whole album is great: The Pious Bird Of Good Omen. Many people are surprised to learn that Fleetwood Mac were originally a blues band in the late 1960s/early 70s.
I’m old and stodgy enough to think that Fleetwood Mac’s blues phase was their pinnacle.
Totally agree.
Santana also did covers of Johnny B. Goode, Shake Rattle and Roll, Exodus (Bob Marley) and The Healer (John Lee Hooker).
After leaving John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, guitarist and vocalist Peter Green and drummer Mick Fleetwood formed Fleetwood Mac in July 1967 with slide guitarist Jeremy Spencer and bassist Bob Brunning and predominated the UK Blues scene.
Who says Murdoch isn’t one of the incarnations of Satan. Go wash thy mouth out now.
Greens are threatening, with the help of the Independents, to block supply in the federal Senate to the next budget, if Labor doesn’t lift its carbon emissions reduction targets and ban any new coal, oil or gas projects.
The Greens have the best policies.
A god, oops left out nothing, read, rossleigh, but I wonder if you realise just how close labor was to a good majority.
The AEC has released the distribution of preferences, very interesting, in one seat labor voters were conned into deserting labor and the seat was decided by AJP, PHON and UAP preferences
In another nearly 30% of green preferences went to labor.
A wonderful look at the nasta side of elections.
Don’t forget at the last election Coal-NP got 35.7% of the primary vote compared to Labor’s 32.6%, so the “mandate” is not a mandate.
Labor came to power on the back of Greens and most of the Independents’ preferences, given their preferable stance on Climate Change compared to Coal-NP’s.
As much as 80% of the electorates’ voters put Action on Climate Change as their biggest concern in Morgan Polling.
That’s the real mandate.
AB, and Danny Kirwan.