(Above: Brisbane in the 1893 flood. Gerard Henderson seems to think you need to read a book to get a grasp of the scale of the flooding. Will someone show him how to google image?)
Meanwhile, on a planet, far far away, another calm, measured contribution to world peace as United States citizens tremble at the cost of keeping their SUV's, pick ups and Hummers on the road:
HANNITY: There’s two things I said. I say why isn’t Iraq paying us back with oil, and paying every American family and their soldiers that lost loved ones or have injured soldiers — and why didn’t they pay for their own liberation? For the Kuwait oil minister — how short his memory is. You know, we have every right to go in there and frankly take all their oil and make them pay for the liberation, as these sheiks, etcetera etcetera, you know were living in hotels in London and New York, as Trump pointed out, and now they’re gouging us and saying ‘oh of course we can withstand [these prices].(here).
Gee, thanks Fox News, thanks Rupert Murdoch, and above all thanks Sean Hannity, and let's hope Fox shareholder, the second largest, Prince Alwaleed is forgiving, because the depth and the breadth of the hubris is just ... remarkable.
Hannity make the likes of Gerard Henderson stalking the battlements of Elsinore castle seem relatively sane.
What art thou that usurp'st this time of night,
Together with that fair and warlike form
In which the majesty of buried Australia
Did sometimes march? by heaven I charge thee, speak!
Together with that fair and warlike form
In which the majesty of buried Australia
Did sometimes march? by heaven I charge thee, speak!
And unlike the ghost, Gerard Henderson is always ready to oblige, and today he speaks in Eco doomsayers: blind to history, unreliable tipsters.
And speaking of being blind to current events, and an unreliable guide and tipster, towards the end of his piece Henderson thunders:
It's much the same with the American academic Paul Ehrlich. The thesis of his 1968 book The Population Bomb was that "the battle to feed all of humanity is over". Ehrlich predicted that "in the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions will starve to death". He even prophesied that Australia would close its borders in 1974 to prevent a fever pandemic.
None of this happened.
None of this happened.
Um actually, according to any number of estimates some thirty six million people a year currently die directly or indirectly as a result of nutritional deficiencies. For children the estimate is that around six million die a year before their fifth birthday directly as a result of hunger. Put those figures figures into some kind of perspective by noting that in each recent decade some 360 million have died of hunger related issues, though the figures might rise or fall according to the latest famine in Africa, or the latest bout of hunger generated by rising food prices ... (here).
According to the FAO a few years ago more than 852 million, about 13% of the world's population doesn't have enough food each day to sustain a healthy life. While much of world hunger takes place in Africa, some of it is also due to the madness of countries like North Korea. (here).
And let's not get started on the global pandemics, the hits and the misses and the AIDS and the bird flu and ...
So we could get pedantic about Erlich's actual doom saying predictions, but pedantry that ignores what's afflicted and continues to afflict a large chunk of the earth's population is equally bemusing ...
I guess from the blinkered battlements of the Sydney Institute, preferably wearing rose-tinted glasses, all's well with the world, with plenty of trendy cafes standing by in its trendy inner city location to prepare a hearty meal for lunchtime (waiter, I feel like an inner suburban chardonnay today), but is there a case for myopia when it comes to what's really going on in the world?
I know it's important for peace of mind to shut out the noises emanating from Bono, and Band-Aid, and feed the world (let's not get into his glasses either), but even a reclusive dyspeptic grump might notice that the hideous strains of the song have something to do with world famine. ( I guess if you're starving a bout of dyspepsia might not seem so bad).
Now the share of hungry people has dropped in the developing world, and the world currently produces enough food to feed the hungry, but doesn't manage the distribution too well, but what's the odds things will get better if current projections that the planet's heading towards nine billion people by 2050 continue on track?
Come on down tipster Henderson?
Well I guess instead of answering, if you're snug and safe within the castle, you just leave the battlements and head down into the dungeons to torture a few greenies.
Because that's the main purpose of Henderson's smug, disingenuous piece, as he smotes Bob Brown mightily for daring to suggest an extra tax on coal might come in handy for restoring Queensland.
Henderson's thesis is that history shows Queensland has always had floods and always will have floods, in much the same way that Australia has always had bushfires and always will have bushfires.
Yes a capacity for stating the bleeding obvious is an important skill for a commentariat member scribbling for the Herald.
When Brisbane flooded in 1893 and 1974, at levels higher than last week, no one blamed global warming in general or the chief executives of coal companies in particular.
And in reality the Brisbane flooding this time round, measured simply by height, isn't too bad, as a tidy BOM history of the known floods in the Brisbane and Bremer river basin shows (here).
But the level of deaths and the level of destruction, compounded by development within flood plain areas, was much higher than in 1974 or 1893, especially if the Queensland-wide flooding is used as a measure.
And that's where Henderson refuses to head, with a smack on the wrist to Ellen Sandell as a 'true-believing environmentalist' and Al Gore as an 'eco-catastrophist':
The problem with so many environmentalists turns on their capacity to exaggerate, which is exacerbated by a lack of historical awareness.
Uh huh. I guess the folks in Queensland will be pleased to know that the floods aren't some kind of eco catastrophe with a little sideways damage to their environment.
Well we all know that Gerard Henderson is the one true guardian of historical awareness with a Liberal bias (though strangely we've been spared for at least a month a meditation on how Ming the Merciless was the font of all wisdom), but could it be said, without exaggeration or catastrophist thinking, that a teeny weeny bit of what's currently going down might be attributable to global warming?
Might global warming actually be happening and might it have just the teeny weeniest of implications?
Well if you're a denialist like Henderson, you simply scoff and point out that history shows shit happens, and shit is likely to happen again ...
Which is all well and good, unless there's a corollary ... that shit might now be happening with greater regularity and intensity because of climate change.
And finally that was what Brown was saying - that the science suggests that there will be more severe and frequent floods, droughts and bushfires in the coming decades, and that coal should help pay.
Of course tax on mineral resources of any kind is likely to have Henderson's knees trembling, and perhaps even keeling to the floor in a tremulous Victorian swoon. His distress at the plight of such squillionaires as Andrew 'Twiggy' Forrest and Gina Rineheart was most touching, and so Australia will continue to dig it up and ship it out, and never mind the way public subsidy encourages the sector to make out like bandits ...
And now it seems the same can be said for the coal industry, with the right wing commentariat trumpeting how the miners are heading off to Africa ... and what's the bet that the sector will help the starving in that country?
Naturally Henderson isn't above resorting to the old love it or leave it ploy beloved of the most befuddled right winger:
Uh huh. Perhaps to a Pacific island, to watch the water lap at the reefs ...
The problem is that most countries, over the ages, have experienced weather disasters. It's called nature.
Yes, but is there such a thing as climate change? Is it happening? Has anybody noticed? Is it called science? Is there such a thing as scientific awareness, designed to match Henderson's impeccable historical awareness?
And there it seems is the only solution to those who want a break, a moment's silence, from our prattling Polonius.
Mention climate change and all you get is a shrug of the shoulders and a snide 'eco catastrophist', or 'true-believing environmentalist' remark, and bugger all else, apart from a suggestion that one should read up on a little history.
How about reading up on a little science?
Fat chance, because Henderson is leery of the science and his constituency and always hedges his bets. Not as courageous or down right mad as an Andrew Bolt or a Tim Blair, more a fellow traveller, an attendant lord ready with a snide put down or three ...
He never tackles the science head on, can't even manage the errors of Paul Sheehan gained by consulting oracles and sorting through the tea leaves ...
Oh heck, second thoughts, forget it, let's just join with the US in an attack on Kuwait. They owe us.
After all, good old Hawkie, what a digger, what a bloke, sent along three warships in support, and considering the fuel bill, and labour costs, and interest, they owe us big time, the idle ungrateful buggers ...
And that'll sort out peak oil in no time at all.
Just another day in the la la land of the right and true and just, known otherwise as loon pond.
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