This article is a few months old, which is why it is so encouraging that since it was released, the Australian people have risen up, and thrown out the government of Scott Morrison.
Why should he draw so much ire? He worked incredibly hard, while in office to both blame states for not doing the right thing, while at the same time making it as hard as possible. He made comments attacking many of the necessary changes that were going on.
Following on from my last post, we are trying to deal with the problems which have been pushing the website offline – it is in hand, but for now the website is still fragile. When all is sorted, we will go back to trying to move forwards with fulfilling the aims of this website. For now, as much as possible I am able to post some entries.
For a long time, governments in the west have injected bonds into the market in order to get it going in times when it is struggling. Between the Covid epidemic and various other issues there are far more countries that are trying to do this.
There is a constant tug of war, between developed countries which are encouraging developing countries to continue to protect their wildernesses, and the developing countries wish to be able to develop – to lift their citizens out of poverty.
Granted, the majority of deforestation does not benefit the people on the ground, but it does not stop politicians in these countries arguing that those in the west cannot stop development by demanding conservation of ecosystems.
However, the amount of land that has been deforested in Brazil, is far in excess of what is needed for cattle pasture and experts have calculated that Brazil (the worlds number one Soy producer, and biggest beef exporter) could increase the amount of land used to grow Soy by a third without cutting one extra tree down.
We can only hope that with the election of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the unregulated deforestation will stop. There is a great deal of space in Brazil for intensifying agriculture, which would allow a significant increase in productivity and goods coming from the agriculture lands, without cutting down any more rainforest.
Of course, this is partly a matter of survival. While some people on the ground in Brazil may wish to cut down more rainforest in order to have more cropland, the more forest is cut down, the less rain the remaining forest produces.
Time will tell how good Lula is, but the world has had a reprieve!
WE MUST KEEP OUR EYE ON THIS SITUATION, BUT FOR NOW WE CAN RELAX
Lula, the new president of Brazil – it would be hard to be worse than Bolsonaro
So what has Brazil turned its back on?
Jair Bolsonaro time in office was characterized by attacks on:
Democratic institutions (from human rights institutions to deforestation watch, many more)
The Media
The Left (given Bolsonaro was far right, this means virtually every opponent politician)
The Amazon rainforest
So what did Lula run on?
Social Justice
Environmental protection
Defending democracy
Reunifying the country
Will there be a peaceful handover of power? No one knows. Jair Bolsonaro, like Donald Trump before him has stated many times over the last few months, that he cannot loose a fair election. As an outsider, it is hard to see how he would ever win a fair election but there we are.
He has the support of much of the army (a former soldier himself) and there is much concern that he could throw the country into chaos, and would have a far greater chance of actually overthrowing the government than Trump did in the USA.
He only won with a margin of 2%, and as of yet Bolsonaro is still yet to comment on the results. If Lula is allowed to retake the presidency, then it will mark the end of an incredible comeback,
Lula was president from 2003-2010. After this, he spent time in prison for corruption convictions – later annulled.
Pro – Bolsonaro Truckers have blocked highways across Brazil in protest, but nothing worse has yet occurred.
The worlds rainforests are concentrated in a small number of countries. As a result, there are a handful of countries where, they have the potential on their own to make climate change far worse.
What is going to happen in Brazil? Will the world get a reprieve or will Bolsonaro (right) get a second term – likely guaranteeing much of the rainforest collapse
These countries include many of those in the Congo basin in Africa, and the countries of south east Asia.
Perhaps the biggest, is Brazil: and unfortunately we have had to watch as the current president Jair Bolsonaro has done everything as badly as possible. Could it have been worse for the world? Perhaps, but it would have been hard.
What is frustrating, is that he is terrible for Brazil. He has the bizarre support of the evangelical Christians, and he has made sure that the middle class has benefitted from his time in office, never-the-less, he has destroyed much of the institutional blocks to serious damage in his first term, so may be able to do more damage in his second.
What is his worst record? 688,000 deaths from Covid, having declared what should he do and having minimized it as the little flu. This is the second most deaths in the world after the USA (largely as a result of Donald Trump minimizing the issue -see a pattern?) despite being 5th in the number of cases. The illness hit indigenous people hardest (possibly intentionally? Certainly it helps Bolsonaros many aims). For the world, though, Bolsonaro will be remembered as someone who vastly increased the destruction of the Amazon rainforest, and there is a great deal of fear that the rainforest is getting close to collapse as a result of his behaviour. Not only will this cause huge problems around the world, by releasing billions of tonnes of carbon, but it will also change rain patterns, leading to crop failures in Brazil as well as countries around.
Currently Lulu has a 4%-8% lead in the polls, however, unfortunately 4 years ago the polls underestimated Bolsonaro support so this may mean little. In a similar way to Trump, there is a certain proportion of the population who are embarrassed by their support for the leader, so are unlikely to be honest in polls.
In a debate Bolsonaro spent his time just attacking his opponent and does not seem to have any ideas for the future of the country.
In the first round, Jair Bolsonaro got 43.2% while Lula got 48.4% so he is comfortably ahead, but what happens now is still on a knife edge.
Graham made this statement as he informed MPs that he had awarded more than 100 licences for north sea drilling – and claimed that this was a green policy. He also claimed that this fossil fuel extraction will help the UK reach net zero by 2050.
why do we keep appointing fools who do not believe in climate change, to help us do something about it
Australia is likely to loose a great deal if climate change continues in a big way. This is because Australia already has a large part of the country unbearably hot. If the temperature increases another 2-5 degrees these areas might well become impossible to survive within.
This is why it is so strange that Australia is so backwards in this respect.
Currently, Australia gets a great deal of money by selling coal abroad. This is because Australia is incredibly rich in coal. As a result they are keen to be able to put off zero carbon as long as possible as they will loose this income.
Professor Lesley Huges is a climate specialist, that has just been appointed to the Australia climate change authority and she has quite rightly stated that 2050 net zero is not good enough. Encouragingly, though she has also said that the new government was showing a willingness to listen to science. The Climate change minister has appointed 3 new members after it was suggested that the authority was to heavily weighted in the direction of business and fossil fuels (if there are too many representatives from this part of the market, then concerns about global warming are likely to get less voice, as fossil fuel companies know they only have a finite length of time to make money from resources that are likely to be banned in the future).
Recent positions taken by Jacob Reece-Mogg include ‘Squeezing “every last cubic inch of gas”‘ from the north sea, restarting fracking, rejecting windfarms (and instead preferring fossil fuels) has all been pushed forwards of his position. He has a history of accusing people of climate alarmism. Two other mps refused the role of the climate change minister (though eventually Graham Stuart agreed to take it on).
Jacob reece-mogg, sometimes named as the member of parliament for the 19th century, is no longer a back bencher. As such his insane views on climate change must be ridiculed, until he moves on, or starts behaving in the countries interests.
Conservative members who are concerned about climate change (so called Green Tories – my argument would be, that if any Tory is not concerned about climate change and global warming, should not be considered for a role in the cabinet. We cannot continue to tolerate climate change denialism in the UK government).
The Pyrennes in the south west of France, and the corresponding area across the border, are a wonderful area of wilderness. There are currently about 64 bears living in this area. So where are we on the road to recovery?
Were the the entire Pyrennes mountains wild, it is thought that these mountains could support 600 bears. However, this area is not an area that is set aside for wilderness – there is a whole population of humans living in these mountains (almost 700,000 people live here).
It is thought that the bear population of the Pyrennes could potentially get to 250 in its current form.
So, Jair Bolsonaro and Luiz Lula de Silva have both made it through to the final round for the presidency.
However, the fact that this new deforestation data board was set up 3 months ago, in the run up to an election. This at a time when Jair Bolsonaro is being hit for his terrible record on deforestation during his first term. In other words, people are claiming that this is purely a political organisation to help him pull the wool over the countries eyes.
