We have been betrayed by the global elite
31 May 2023
TUMBY BAY - Australia, like many other developed nations, claims it has no responsibility for CO² emissions from the coal, iron ore and gas it exports.
If Australia accepted that responsibility it would blow its emission reduction targets sky high and fail every test of being a responsible and ethical nation.
So here’s the question. Should Australia be held accountable for the pollution caused by its mineral exports to places like China and India?
Well, I have the answer. Too right it should!
To understand why you have to take into account globalisation, the free market, neo-liberalism and greed.
There’s a lot of money to be made from removing human life from the planet.
‘Pollute for Profit' should be the slogan of these exploiters.
Globalisation refers to the removal of barriers to cross-border trade, so creating a global marketplace.
Its effect has been the generation of interdependent economic, cultural and especially commercial systems around the globe.
For neo-liberals and free marketeers, it opened up vast new opportunities to make money.
One such opportunity involved the export of manufacturing to countries with cheap labour, lax or non-existent labour laws.
This allowed manufacturers in countries like Australia to wind down their own manufacturing, sack higher cost domestic workers and import products for a tiny fraction of the costs previously incurred.
In some of these cheap labour countries, working conditions resemble something close to slavery.
In these hell holes where people work for a pittance, companies are free to belch prodigious amounts of pollutants into the atmosphere by burning the coal and gas supplied by Australia.
The products thereby manufactured, often with Australian raw materials like iron ore, are loaded on polluting cargo ships and giant aircraft and sent back to Australia for sale.
But are the neo-liberals and free marketeers happy with the extortionate profits they make by destroying their own domestic manufacturing and the jobs that went with them?
Of course not.
The next part of their plan was to sell the products as cheaply as possible so as to undercut competitors and drive them out of business. Cheap products also created the throw-away society.
Great retail barns like Kmart and BigW in Australia (every country has its own) were selling clothing and other items so cheaply that people were wearing them once and throwing them away.
This retail addiction fitted in perfectly with the neo-liberal idea of unfettered economic expansion and chewing up the world’s natural resources.
Papua New Guinea is also part of this great global scam as it exports polluting fossil fuels and minerals to the world. But in this case, the multinationals carry off the profits and the only Papua New Guineans who get rich are …. well, you know who they are.
This was just what the men who wrote the Bible wanted.
Genesis directs humans to “be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.”
In other words, stuff up the world and bugger the consequences as long as you make a buck out of it.
So now we have manufacturing hell holes, wholesale pollution, super profits for the exploiters, dirt poor people in countries with rich resources, politicians who can talk but not walk, and a world that looks like it’s heading to hell in a handcart
Makes you really wonder whether the world is doomed, doesn’t it?
So how do we convince people to stop digging up fossil fuels, making useless stuff, discharging the pollution into air, land and water, and day by day destroying the prospects of humans being able to lead a decent life on our planet?
That question is probably the key to our future.
The optimists among us might point to the use of renewables as part of the solution, but initiatives, such as cars powered by batteries have to be manufactured and use up precious resources.
We really require an urgent, realistic and principled reassessment of the way we live.
The world has great institutions and forums which could do this. But they can never agree. Everyone wants the other bloke to do it.
Naomi Klein points out in ‘This Changes Everything’: “In the 1960s and 1970s we enjoyed a healthy and moderate lifestyle and we need to return to this to keep emissions under control.”
Will the neo-liberals and free marketeers and the politicians and free loaders come to their senses and embrace notions of sustainability and social equity
And we have far less than that to sort out this mess.
In 2019 the United Nations warned the world it had only 11 years left to prevent irreversible damage from climate change.
That’s down to seven years now.
We've been betrayed .
As appears also across the Pacific, all in one line... "Never wish success to fascism, ultra-conservatism and neoliberalism."
https://www.postcourier.com.pg/argentines-milei-greeted-globally-by-mix-of-hostility-and-support/
Expect waves.
Posted by: Lindsay F Bond | 23 November 2023 at 08:31 AM