But you (general you, not actual you) don't believe in climate change so what would you be claiming asylum from?

There's a tradition in Australian history where a serious fire event gets naming rights. Ash Wednesday, Black Saturday as examples. All as synonymous with disaster for the local areas as Cyclone Tracy or Yasi.

I'm not exaggerating when I suggest we might need to start naming months after colours on the red end of the spectrum. There have been fires running it feels like for five or six weeks, over 1000 homes destroyed, a quarter of the koala population gone, a dozen emergency alerts for some states daily and now we have fire generated thunderstorms producing tornado conditions with fatal consequences.

And it could well continue beyond February.

Shits fucked.

Vela wrote:

Yeah but you want a good cricket team, surely?

That's what South Africa and India are for.

Here's a good bit countering Taylor's article in The Australian.
You can take parts of it and make shrill cries at quiet Australians, if they havent burnt yet.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/dec/31/fact-checking-angus-taylor-does-australia-have-a-climate-change-record-to-be-proud-of

Hugh Rimington a Laura Tingle doing great work excoriating dickheads today.

Oh plus the cricket being the national priority for the PM AND Angus fucking Taylor the cunt and well I can't wait to hear Chris Kenny's take on this what do you think Face

My 1000+/plus wasn't very clear yah. It's moving faster than the sources I had then, crikeh.

Mm probably. Dutton for PM? There's always a bigger cunt. Seeing a nation turn on a PM like this, don't recall it playing out quite like this before. Fuck him though.

I've not seen him in an age. Been a good age.

Also this warms my heart, the gleeful woman at the start made my day
https://twitter.com/KetanJ0/status/1212691045881917440?s=19

Right you are missus

Apply that kind of thinking to other areas of your life: heating your house (gas heating is 30+% of the UK's total emissions!) a bit less, driving a bit less, shopping more locally and seasonally, reducing single use plastics etc etc. Do you really think that we cannot personally have impacts on climate change, that this behaviour is not scalable, that it cannot be encouraged to be mass adopted (paying for plastic bags has reduced their use by 90+%), that business and government won't respond to consumer choices on a mass scale?

It's not about putting pressure on parents or children. It's not about blaming us for climate change, personally or collectively. It's about trying to make a difference, however small - a bit like voting, even when you live in an area where you can't seem to make any inroads.

Bless your cotton socks.

(sustainable cotton, presumably.)

Israeli radio? Weird.

What's the deal with the PM not fully supporting the fire stuff anyway? Is it because it's currently attached to climate change and so acknowledging the fires would also means acknowledging climate change? All seems weird to me.

Yes to all of the above.

Funkstain wrote:

It's certainly not about absolving governments and corporations of the blame - they take all of it! But we can help change things surely

By an absolutely insignificant amount. But whatever makes you feel better, crack on, it's not like you're doing any harm, and you're not pointing the finger at others. Good stuff.

Hmm. It doesn’t seem to be comparing like with like - sales of bags for life vs use of free single use plastic bags. I would like to see that, but understand that at this stage it’s quibbling over not a lot or very much not a lot.

I still feel strongly, that without absolving govs and corps from any responsibility, we can make scalable changes in our lives which could drive change at all levels. Capitalism responds strongly and quickly to market demand, and governments (at least in democracies) respond to major voter shifts. To deny that is to implicitly deny any and all agency for the individual or groups of individuals, which is basically climate nihilism: there’s nothing we can do so why do anything. It’s a personal thing of course, but I cannot and will not believe that.

Again, good. I'm certainly not trying to discourage people, just giving my point of view, because I've been asked twice now by you, and I've also had SG pointing the finger at parents over the whole fucking thing, which is just plain ridiculous. But how do you balance believing that we're in control of this situation but also blameless if it goes tits up?

I believe that while every individual can always do a little bit more, they can never do enough. The problem is just far too big, and you're up against this sort of shit: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-50953719

And I don't think we should start down the groups of individuals road either, as that's just muddying the waters. We're talking about personal responsibility within the current systems, aren't we? Once you get into groups you're moving away from that and into the social side of things. Even then, if we're going into our social responsibility, what are we going to do? Get enough people together to renounce the current systems, create society 2.0 and grow it from there? Take over the world with our new, environmentally friendly ways from our little utopian enclave?