In this video George Monbiot, Britain’s leading green commentator, meets with Jeroen van de Veer who is the chief executive of oil giant Shell. Monbiot asks the oil giant about ethics, greenwash advertising, renewable energy investments and gas-flaring in Nigeria.
The major threat to Australia and the World is from man-made global warming that according to top UK climate scientist Professor James Lovelock FRS will kill all but 500 million humans this century. However underlying this impending catastrophe is a fundamental cultural pathology in the Western Murdochracies of IGNORING and of partisan, “might is right” LYING by commission and omission. [1]
Thus top UK climate scientists Professor Kevin Anderson and Dr Alice Bows of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, University of Manchester, recently estimated that to save the Planet from catastrophe a DECREASE in greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution of 8% per year is required. [2]
However Mainstream media and politician LYING has meant that Australia (the world’s biggest coal exporter, the OECD’s worst annual per capita greenhouse gas (GHG) polluter and a world leader in per capita GHG pollution) intends to continue to INCREASE Domestic and Exported GHG pollution by about 2% per year. [3]
In his second and third interview George Monbiot meets Fatih Birol, the International Energy Authority’s chief economist, and Shaun Spiers, head of the “anti environmental” organisation the Campaign to Protect Rural England.
Britain’s leading green commentator tackles the International Energy Authority’s chief economist, who reveals for the first time a startling and worrying prediction for the date of peak oil.
Watch the second interview on the Guardian!
In the third of his groundbreaking encounters with the figures whose decisions shape our environment, George Monbiot gives the head of the countryside watchdog, the Campaign to Protect Rural England, an unforgettable grilling, asking why it opposes windfarms – but not opencast coal mines
Watch the third interview on the Guardian!
Be also sure to check out the very first interview with Yvo de Boer, the current Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Australians (and indeed most people in the Western Murdochracies) live in an Orwellian world in which “war is peace, slavery is freedom, ignorance is strength and 2 plus 2 does not equal 4”. [1]
Thus Australia is the world’s biggest coal exporter and a world leading per capita greenhouse gas polluter (the Developed World’s worst) but linear projections from official US Energy Information Administration data indicate that the Australian Government’s “carbon pollution REDUCTION policy” actually means that Australia’s disproportionately huge, annual Domestic plus Exported greenhouse gas pollution (in Mt CO2-e = million tonnes of CO2-e) will INCREASE from 885 Mt CO2-e (2000) to 1245 Mt (2020; an increase of 41%) to 1586 Mt (2050; an increase of 79%). [2]
Similarly, the Australian Government accepts the Israeli “Gaza rockets” excuse for the ongoing Gaza Massacre (over 300 Occupied Palestinians dead and 1,000 wounded, so far), ignoring official Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs data that 23 Israelis have been killed by Gaza rockets and mortars in the last 8.25 years. [3]
This latter statistic corresponds to an “annual homicide rate” of 0.4 per million (Israelis from Gaza rockets and mortars) as compared to 15 per million (Israelis murdered by Israelis), 164 per million (Palestinians killed violently by Israelis), 902 per million (Palestinian non-violent deaths through Israeli-imposed deprivation), 56 per million (Americans), 200 per million (African-Americans), 300 per million (Americans by Guns) and 473 per million (people of Detroit, Michigan, USA). [4]
This week Al Gore, Barack Obama and Joe Biden met privately to discuss “energy and climate change and how policies in this area can stimulate the economy and create jobs”.
Although it seems Obama did not offer Gore to be his “energy czar” he did say that “the time for delay and denial is over”. And that “we all believe what the scientists have been telling us for years now”.
Watch the video on YouTube.
Today Al Gore, Barack Obama and Joe Biden will meet privately to discuss “energy and climate change and how policies in this area can stimulate the economy and create jobs”.
Obama has earlier said that Gore is one of his advisors on climate change and there are rumours floating around that Obama want Gore to be his “energy czar”.
“Obama is reportedly considering creating an energy czar. Gore would be the logical pick. As czar he would be able to help oversee the Transportation department, the Interior department, and the Environmental Protection Agency. He would have a powerful voice over everything from mileage standards to conservation requirements. Even as the Bush administration continues to try to gut regulations such as restrictions on mining and drilling in Utah’s most pristine national parks, it must be awfully tempting for Gore to have the chance to put rhetoric into action.”
According to the Amazon Defense Coalition the petrochemical company Chevron has hired Douglas Southgate, a so called “scientist” and an “environmental economist”, who is affiliated with the Heartland Institute, a climate change denying think tank.
“Based in Chicago, Heartland promotes the idea that there is a “debate” about global warming despite the overwhelming scientific consensus that human activity is responsible for it. The Institute also creates research that downplays the dangers of secondhand smoke.”
“Contributions to the Heartland Institute have flowed from the likes of Exxon, Phillip Morris, and the ultraconservative Scaife Foundation. The Institute stopped disclosing its funders in 2006 after it came under attack for producing tailor-made research in support of its industry supporters.”
Al Gore talked about the failing auto industry in USA, “clean coal” and the environmental work being done in China in a recent interview with Newsweek’s Fareed Zakaria.
In the interview Gore said that he thinks that the whole auto industry needs to be “transformed”, and that the auto makers in USA “should make a transition as quickly as possible toward plug-in hybrid electric vehicles.”
ZAKARIA: Would you bail out the carmakers?
GORE: Whatever assistance might be forthcoming should be focused on speeding the changes that are absolutely essential to ensure that our companies are competitive in the global marketplace. When I was vice president, I initiated a program called the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles. The federal government invested over a billion dollars in partnership with the Big Three to focus on the accelerated development of advanced high-efficiency vehicles. But as soon as they felt they were off the hook at the end of 2000, they pulled the plug and walked away.
In his first interview since the election Barack Obama talked with 60 Minutes about the economy, energy and about the failing auto industry in USA.
In the interview Obama said that “the challenges that we’re confronting are enormous” and many, and that he sometimes asks himself “where do I start?” Obama also said that the American people are looking for “action” instead of “a lot of speeches”.
I would just like to add that the whole world is looking for action, not just the American people. Watch the interview below:
In an article in the New York Times, titled “The Climate for Change,” Al Gore lays out his climate and energy plan, which he says is needed “to begin an emergency rescue of human civilization from the imminent and rapidly growing threat posed by the climate crisis.”
In the article Gore points out that IPCC has after years of detailed study and four unanimous reports now said that the evidence for man-made climate change is “unequivocal.” Climate change deniers need to “wake up” and that “our children and grandchildren need you to hear and recognize the truth of our situation, before it is too late.”
Gore says his five-part energy and climate plan, where USA commits to produce 100% of the electricity from carbon-free sources within 10 years, will help solve the climate and the economic crisis while creating “millions of new jobs that cannot be outsourced”.
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