One Finite Planet

Sustainability alone is only buying time.

Obama and Xi Jinping announcement: a huge step for climate action? Or a backward step?

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Obama is currently a ‘lame duck’ president with a hostile senate, and approval rating that suggests a likely hood the next US president may well be a republican.

In Australia when the less conservative party took a position to take steps to address climate change, it became a call to arms for conseratives opposed to any action on climate change.  The conservatives moved from favouring an emssions trading scheme, to effectively opposing any real action.  Then the conservative won power and there was an unwinding of steps to address climate change.

Similarly in the US, Obama taking steps on climate change will almost certainly galvanise those in the republican party who are most doubful about human actiivy driving climate change.   In could become a key platform of the republicans to abandon the very plans announced by Obama.

Of course, the key stategy from Obama to avoid this is to allow the counter position that unwinding Obama’s targets could leave the republicans with a policy that suggests China is more sophisticated that the US.

The initiative by Obama in his current position IS dangerous because of the risk of a backlash, but with China on board it also could possibly work.  Which was will things go? Only time will tell.

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January 16, 2023 January 16, 2023

I recently read another comment containing the ‘I don’t want google getting more of my data to sell’ and it reminded me of the question, ‘why is your data valuable?’, and the common myth that Facebook and Google etc want your data so they can sell it.

They don’t want to sell your data, but the reality, is more sinister: they want the power to change your thinking.

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COP27: Climate change action sabotage?

November 16, 2022 March 30, 2023

Reports from COP27 seems indicate the key initiative this year to make wealthy nations cover the cost of the damages poor nations will incur as a result of emissions that have main originated from those wealthy nations.

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Did Al Gore nail it: Is climate change merely inconvenient, or is it an existential threat?

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The current crisis in Ukraine not only drives up energy prices globally, but it also creates a dilemma for gas producing nations.

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Fragile Democracy: Was Scott ‘Scomo’ Morrison autocrat of Australia?

August 17, 2022 August 17, 2022

Democracy collapses when a leader, who is able to bypass the checks and balances, uses their position to retain power.

Steps by recent leaders Scott Morrison and Australia and Donald Trump in the USA, raise questions as to whether current reliance on conventions and constitutions reliably protects democracy.

China, Russia and even North Korea are all technically democracies, and all proof of how technically being a democracy does not necessarily deliver real democracy.

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Ukraine: Putin and China, method or madness?

June 16, 2022 July 5, 2022

What if Russia and China both intended that the invasion of Ukraine would trigger global inflation and food shortages, and a potentially new financial crisis?

That Putin sees himself in the image of Peter the Great and restoring the Russian empire is no secret, and is generally portrayed as evidence that Putin has completely lost the plot. But what if there is a bigger plan involving both Russia and China that starts with triggering a global financial crisis? A dangerous game by two desperate leaders needing to bring others with them as their own economies collapse.

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