Mount Connor (Atila) is a 700 million year old sand and rock mesa west of Uluru.
From the Kitchen Window
Climate Change
This article is a useful indicator of why the USA will not adopt Climate Change protocols in the near future. As usual, selectively quoted.
Tom Switzer, “Don’t expect too much down Mexico way”, The Australian, 1 January 2010, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/dont-expect-too-much-down-mexico-way/story-e6frg6zo-1225815087091
There are many reasons for the changing climate in Washington. Here are four of them:
First, both Congress and the White House remain pre-occupied with other policy priorities from overhauling the healthcare and immigration systems and increasing 30,000 troops to Afghanistan to implementing new Wall Street regulations and tackling double-digit unemployment and skyrocketing debt and deficit.
Second, polls and surveys Pew, Gallup, Zogby, Rasmussen show Americans are quickly losing faith in the science of man-made climate change. A Harris Poll found that those who believe that carbon dioxide leads to global warming have dropped from 71 per cent two years ago to only 51 per cent today. And this poll was conducted before Climategate erupted.
It may be the case that the thousands of leaked emails and documents from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit do not disprove the science of man-made global warming. But it is also true that the uproar over allegations that some IPCC scientists manipulated data, hid inconvenient evidence and tried to silence dissenting views has led to calls for government inquiries and congressional hearings into the scandal. After all, US tax dollars fund many climate scientists.
Third, world leaders are recognising that reaching a global consensus on climate change is even more difficult than reaching a global consensus on multilateral trade. China and India insist they won’t be part of what they see as an economic suicide pact. In Canada, a Kyoto signatory that has increased its emissions much faster than the US, the ETS bill is stalled in legislative limbo. In Australia, the conservative opposition parties just defeated Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. In the EU, cap and trade has not only been the victim of fraudulent traders; emissions from the 27 member states have increased by nearly 2 per cent since the ETS was implemented in 2005.
Fourth, this year is an American election year. A huge new energy tax that threatens to cut wages and jobs unnerves politicians facing a mid-term vote. And not just Senate Republicans either. “Blue Dog” Democrats from the South as well as “Brown Dog” Democrats from the Midwest and Great Plains, whose states are dependent on coal and manufacturing, are uneasy about the administration’s energy policies.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says the US will help raise $US100 billion ($111bn) a year to defray the cost of climate-change mitigation in the developing world. But although the idea that rich nations should pay for poor nations to adapt to non-carbon technology may be accepted wisdom at Harvard University and The New York Times, it is hardly a vote winner in middle America during a recession. Imagine a Democrat senator from a Rust Belt state telling his coal mining constituents that they should pay higher taxes to help China become more energy efficient and more economically competitive.
Review
Geraldine Brooks (2005), March, Harper Collins
This is a story of cruelty that I found difficult to finish. Brooks writes of floggings, murder, shocking medical procedures, post traumatic stress syndrome, pillage, slavery, incest and the US peoples’ treatment of African Americans during a year in the Civil War that swamps her ‘Little Women’ backdrop. Four of the six reviews below range from negative to somewhat supportive of the story of the missing Father from Little Women (which I have not read) and barely touch on the shock of Brooks’ narrative. I was left thinking that the hidden agenda in some of these reviews was that this Australian doesn’t know enough about the USA to write such a novel.
- Christian Science Monitor review by Ron Charles
- Washington Post review by Karen Joy Fowler
- St. Petersburg Times review by Mindi Dickstein
- January Magazine review by Sue Bursztynski (an exception – March is an entertaining tale with some interesting original characters as well as some reinterpreted Alcott characters, but there are a few gruesome scenes — my emphasis).
- New York Times review by Thomas Mallon.
- http://www.reviewsofbooks.com/march/ to read the above reciews.
- Peter Pierce, The Age, 2 April 2005, http://www.theage.com.au/news/Reviews/March/2005/04/01/1112302217831.html. This is a distinguished book, a masterly reworking of what fiction and history have afforded Brooks’ vibrant and questing imagination.
It is a ‘distinguished book’ which, due to the superb writing, was disturbing. Well worth the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2006.
Today’s Podcast
This is an excellent warning about stereotyping our fellows.
“Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie at the Sydney Writers Festival”, TheBookShow, 24 December 2009, http://www.abc.net.au/rn/bookshow/stories/2009/2588360.htm