I missed the great debate, but something tells me I didn’t miss much.
The televised debate between two men who would be prime minister for
the next 3 years is a farce anyway, as is much of the so-called election
campaign and the wider democratic system. Its a saturation of the
mass media with promises and accusations with no real depth. The
shallowness of the whole deal is pretty disturbing.
You have politicians (who everyone knows lie to suit their own ends)
promises to do this or fix that but lurking below the surface are
some serious questions which everyone, except for the greens perhaps,
are really avoiding. We have heard that one party is in the thrall of
the trade union movement to the point of being unsuitable to govern,
because they would wreck the economy. Its a non too subtle
rearrangement of the truth, the economy is a thing that is often
trumpeted as benefiting everyone (but only when it is growing or
healthy) but in reality it is merely just another name for business
and commerce, that is the private creation of wealth. A growing
economy means that the rich get richer quicker and as a by-product
some of that wealth trickles down to the bottom feeders. So what is
really meant when one political party (who are clearly more aligned
to business and commercial interests) says that the other party will
wreck the economy is that the other mob mightn’t be quite as friendly
to the big end of town and as a consequence the big end of town might
move some of their activity and money somewhere else.
So a debate about the “economy” is crap because it avoids a debate
about the distribution of wealth which as an issue has far greater
ramifications for most people.
But the thing that really disturbs me is something that The Age in
part, picked up on today. Climate Change and its friend
Peak Oil are the most pressing issues of our time. They mightn’t seem
that way to bill smith as he trundles along to work because there are
pressing issues which seem closer to home, but the fact remains that
without cheap oil and in a world environment that is rapidly
transforming itself from the relatively benign and stable state we
have enjoyed for the last several thousand years into something we
can only guess about, all of the relatively trivial issues that we
currently obsess about will take a huge back seat as we start to
worry about more fundamental issues, like staying alive. Ask the 1
million Californians recently evacuated in the face of devastating
wild fires.
So at a time when we should be talking about some pretty big picture
issues and when one of our more cherished social traditions provides
for the illusion of some choice over who governs you could be excused
for wondering why we seem to be debating anything but. There is a
possible explanation, it could be that general public debate about
the big picture requires that the public is informed and able to
participate. Dominating media agendas with fear and lies prevents the
idea of something more serious gaining political traction and of
course all of the mass media is very one way in terms of
communications. We could be talking about building better societies
or facing up to the future challenges of energy and climate change
but instead we get wall to wall crap about spending money, running an
economy and unionism.
Peter Garrett made his living out of music. His band Midnight Oil,
often wrote material containing some rather extreme anti-
establishment sentiments. Songs such as US Forces, Redneck Wonderland
and Blue Sky Mine help to define the public image of the group and
they were equally outspoken in there non musical arena. It made the
band rich. Peter Garrett is now a millionaire and a member of the
federal parliament. He still shaves his head but that seems to be the
only resemblance with the old Garrett.
Now the only thing I can imagine that Pete has going for him is that
most voters expect politicians to lie. So when Pete says he will not
revoke the licence for the monster on the Tamar, secretly those of us
who abhor the development are thinking that Pete can’t possibly live
with himself if he does get into government and doesn’t do something
about stopping the tree munching monster. So we know he has to play
politics and toe the party line to avoid giving little johnny a wedge
to whack into the labor party, but we don’t believe he will actually
do what he says.
Sad isn’t it?
Meanwhile Bob Brown has no such qualms. Nor does it seem does Tim
Flannery who broke the news that CO2 is a
www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/10/09/2054191.htm" onclick="javascript:urchinTracker('/outbound/br_/_www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/10/09/2054191.htm');">far bigger
problem than we thought. Which leads you to wonder why Pete
didn’t actually stand up for some higher principle and point out the
bleeding obvious, that is, the future of this planet is very
dependent on doing something big and fast about greenhouse gases and
building a poisonous tree destroying mill for the sake of a bit of
lucre isn’t going to help us one bit in the future. Not building
mills and actually doing something radical about the problem might be
politically very difficult but sitting on your arse and selling your
soul to people like Gunns is only making it more difficult to do
anything constructive about the threats that climate change brings.
Can anyone these day imagine spending 13 years pushing yourself
around the world, half of it by yourself? What an amazing feat. Ok,
people climb mountains and sail around the world single handed but
this man’s story is one of enduring persistence. Others may emulate
the feat perhaps, but what an adventure. What people can do if they
want.
Amazing!
Link
Not unexpectedly, the federal government has given the go-ahead for a
pulp mill in Tasmania, whilst imposing additional environmental
conditions on the project. The so-called opposition has jumped on
board as well which leaves the Greens as the only political party
prepared to stand up and fight on this issue.
Now it could be that the mill will be a good thing, there might be a
net improvement in the local job market, the effluent might not be as
poisonous and polluting as is expected and everything will be cosy
down on the Tamar. The mantra of jobs and the economy is similar in
authority to the position of the bible a thousand years ago. Who can
argue against something which will be good for the economy?
There are two rather serious problems here. One is, as the Greens
often remark, there is no economy without an environment, and
secondly, speculation about future economic good fortunes is just
that. Speculation. The reality is that a big local timber company (ie
a company that makes money out of chopping down trees) wants to make
more money. They are not proposing this mill because they want a
shiny badge that says “best environmental practice”. The fringe
benefits might appeal to some locals who can see a quick buck in
constructing the monstrosity or in raising another generation of
rednecks who only see trees as standing between them and a pot of
gold, but for the rest of the people in the area the mill will
adversely affect the quality of their environment.
When the mill is built it will have a huge appetite for trees. Trees.
The things that grow in the ground and without which the world will
be completely fucked. Like Mars. With its precious diet it will
generate greenhouse gasses, pollution and poisonous dioxin. Workers
will work and the owners will get richer. All of this in a world
spiralling into a global hothouse. You could be excused for thinking
it was the actions of a lunatic.
Which brings me back to my original thought. How is democracy served
(democracy is government BY the people) when political parties fail
to give a voice to the people? The greens might be a voice, but in
our enlightened system of two party choice it is a voice in the
wilderness which can be safely ignored by closing the door. And so we
are governed, not by the people, but by vested interests, like Gunns.
Its a monday and cynicism being what it is, I am pondering a full page ad
in some glossy news magazine by the Shell company.
Shell or more accurately, Royal Dutch
Shell is according to a quote from Fortune “In 2007… the
third-largest corporation in the world, behind Wal-Mart and ExxonMobil.”
So they can throw money around to make things like this.
The messages are interesting at a time of so-called “peak oil”. The
mesaage to the kids - no oil, no trucks, no soft drink - for example, is a
wonderful understatement of the size of the problem, almost to the point
of trivial. Some might argue that the loss of soft drink to the world
would be a community service, but the loss of some other widely
transported goods such as basic food stuffs is another issue entirely.
Still their key message, that technology is giving us breathing space as
we develop alternatives is reassuring, especially given Shell’s investment
in alternatives such as wind and solar. It is easy to imagine a fleet of
large trucks with solar collectors adorning their roof lines and wind
turbines trailing behind connected to high efficiency electric motors
delivering crispy cremes to a store near you.
Are they lying,simply to continue to protect their huge investment and
profits in the oil industry? Do they or anyone else have a secret stashed
away that will enable the world to simply flick a switch and ‘viola’
business as usual? An optimist would believe so, a cynic might just think
they are squeezing everything they can out of this market and they will no
doubt do the same with any new ideas that come along.
Or just maybe, the world is so hooked on oil that there is no magic
bullet. The oil will run out, there will be wars for resources and the
modern age will be yet another golden era that failed the test of
longevity.