Oh dear, it has been a very long time since I have added to my blog. I apologise and have no excuse other than focussing all of my writing energies into my upcoming Melbourne International Comedy Festival show “Happy”.
But since my last entry the world has certainly taken some interesting turns many of which deserve comment. So in a vain effort to catch up on world events since November here are my thoughts on a few things:
Global Warming:
You’d think this was a brand new idea the way politicians everywhere are scrambling to make up for lost time and squeeze their way onto the overcrowded bandwagon. The sad thing is that now we have to watch, once again, as a genuine cause is hijacked by corporate and political interests.
None of the politicians really care about the environment. It’s just one more thing to keep us scared and in line. Let’s make everyone feel that it’s their fault that the world is changing. There’s no mention of pollution restrictions on heavy industry or reducing petrol consumption. Instead we are converting to nuclear power and banning light bulbs. Stay tuned for a carbon tax on our own respiration. That’s right, they may just have found a way to tax the air that we breathe.
There is still a lot of arguing going on over this issue, but the problem isn’t global warming and climate change. Whether (weather) humans cause global warming or not is irrelevant. The issue is pollution. The Earth’s climate is always going to change due to forces much larger than us puny humans, but that doesn’t justify the huge amounts of toxins we pump into the air and the water every day. We should be cleaning up our act and reducing our reliance on fossil fuels so that we will have clean water and clean air to breathe and to stop the political bullshit games that are being fought over oil.
The Water Crisis:
There’s water shortages everywhere. Once again the powers that be are trying to scare us. Why? Because there is a push by large corporations (like Bechctel) in countries around the world to privatise the water supply. It’s the perfect industry. Everyone needs water. The last ten years have seen the water supplies around Australia decrease in quality while the bottled water industry flourishes. Coincidence? We have proven that we will pay more for water than petrol so of course someone wants to get a hold of that market.
If water is so scarce where does all the water that is in the millions of plastic bottles on our supermarket shelves come from? Natural springs? I’m afraid not. Have a look at the labels and you’ll see that most of it is ‘purified water’. That’s tap water to you and I. And let’s not mention all the soft drinks available. Where do they get their water from? And even if the water is coming from natural springs why is that able to be sold by private companies. If you have gold or iron ore in the ground under your house you don’t own it, the government does (unfortunate but true) so why is water so different? It’s a resource and if there is such a shortage shouldn’t the government be able to take control of these seemingly endless supplies?
I’ll let you decide.
There is so much more that I need to get off my chest, from Mr Howard’s continued arrogance and hypocrisy to the revival of the terrorist threat, but I shall save my vitriol for a later time. For now I will return to my festival show which ironically is all about finding happiness amongst all this chaos.
Don’t forget to pop in to my new look website and please visit again soon as I promise I will write more often.
1 comment:
Here in tropical sunny Melbourne we are down to 20% of our water supplies. Visy, the paper manufacturer headed by Mr Richard Pratt uses 15% of Melbournes total water usgae every year, two thirds of which is apparently just wasted. Our State Government has asked industry to reduce their water usage by 1% every year and residential users to ease up our water usage by half.
That ought to be ok with every one though because richard Pratt is both a patron of the arts (ie tax right offs) and a president of a football club.
City Link/transurban use 1 million giga litres a day of fresh drinking water to stabalise the city link tunnel which goes under the Yarra River which is a river full of water, admittedly undrinkable but water never the less. So there are two things you can take away from that information, 1, run a footy club and you can pretty much do what you want and 2, don't drive through a leaky tunnel that requires daily stabilising.
As for the enviroment Gavin you are a little cynical. Our Prime Minister knows whats best, he has stated for instance that the industrial and mining industries are the best people to look out for our enviroment as such industries want and desire long term profits, surely none of them are interested in short term gains, the concept of making a quick buck ( or milllions of bucks ) would not occur to any of them.
Besides, their is a clean energy solution. A few weeks buck Kevin Rudd got in trouble for meeting with Brian Bourke. A cynic might say that it was a bit of a beat up to cover up the information that Johnny set up a commision of inquiry to look at the sustainability of a nuclear energy industry just days after Ron (melbourne events) Walker rang johhny at home to let him know he and a couple of his millionaire mates were setting up a clean energy company called Australian Nuclear Energy.
People like Ron Walker are visionaries, if he reckopns nuclear energy is clean then it must be (forget chernobyl) because Ron Walker helped get the olympics and runs the Grand Prix corporation.
The good thing about this alleged global worming is that when i am older i won't have to retire to queensland for the heat and tropical sun, chances are i will have beach front tropical views right on my current doorstep which is currently 15 kilometers from the beach but it's edging closer.
As costello & co say, we are Australia we are tiny and hardly contribute to the world's global warming.
Statistically that's true, Australia might be the worlds highest contributers per capita but we only contribute 1.5 percent of the worlds emissions, although we are not 1.5%of the world, motre like .0015. What we do though is dig up and sell our lovely brown coal to china & india and tell those countries that they have to tackle thier emission's, mind you we do sell brown coal for $50 per ton.
Seriously, on the bright side there are many credible scientists who claim that the world has only got about 20 years of petrol left, so that problem will sort itself out.
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