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Thanks useful information: 207
I went to the rally in Melbourne yesterday - fabulous turnout, the biggest in Australia on the day I believe. I don't think I've been to one that big since the Vietnam war!!
Great to see the masses getting together to show our politicians what they collectively think!
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"If you want to be a better photographer, stand in front of more interesting stuff.” — Jim Richardson
Good shot Bob, it provides an insightful view on the numbers and density of the people fighting for their future.
I just hope the stuck-in-the-old-mindset dinosaurs are capable of listening to the concerns of those whose futures are to be dramatically, and irrevocably impacted, by the current careless practices of our wasteful ways.
Cheers
Dennis
Dennis
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Coincidentally, i have just been watching something on the telly that was a bit of an eye opener. You may have heard of the Koch brothers in America?
Apparently when George Bush was president (the first George Bush), he was advocating action on global climate change policies. At that point the government could see the impact that civilisation was having on our planet, and Bush was suggesting that it was time to do something about it. However, the Koch brothers have multi billion dollar investments and businesses which would be adversely impacted by climate protection policies, so they devised a strategy to discredit the whole climate change agenda, replacing it with policies that were more in tune with their commercial interests. There was no science involved - it was strictly a matter of promoting policies which would continue to make them more money. In order to achieve this, they spent $120,000,000 on funding some 92 anti-climate change organisations to introduce the sorts of propaganda that people have been sucked into today. It's just another example of where vested interests have manipulated the political agenda for monetary gain. Knowing what underpins these groups is valuable to know.
Isn't that what elections are for?Originally Posted by bobt
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Elections measure the collective view of a party's overall performance at a particular point in time. A rally demonstrates the strength of community feeling on a specific issue. There is a huge difference.
I hope they all walked to the rally, and none of them charged their phones overnight, or took any plastic water bottles.
Ross.
Ross. Nikon D810, Nikon D300s, Nikkor 18-200, , Nikon 105mm Micro lens. Nikon 200-500mm lens
Haha. It's one of those discussions where you kind of wait and see if anyone's with you, lol. It's not worth creating tension on a photography forum over it, but I agree with you entirely. Everyone's worried about Morrisson's inaction, but what of their own?
Like you say, I hope everyone there has parted ways with their car, don't use public transport and live on the land eating what the land provides.
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I agree. I have occasionally met people who are both climate change deniers and supporters of Donald Trump. Experience demonstrates the futility of engaging or trying to educate. As the the saying goes "you can't have a battle of wits with an unarmed man". Enough said.
If only it was so simple as this. At least they are trying to influence change and I'd gamble there wasn't to many plastic water bottles because we've all moved on from them.
The oldest member of our plastic water bottle collection is date stamped "18 Nov 04". It came with bottled water in it. Most of ours are reused cordial bottles. They're far stronger, and get used in the cars, and reused ...
Shame that some of our 680,000 unemployed can't be employed hand sorting the recyclable waste our councils and other infrastructure have supposedly been recycling ...
This is widely circulating since the 'strike' and I must wonder how many of the school kids would have turned up if the 'strike' had been in the school holidays. These kids use more power per child than 10 of us ever used growing up.
To all the school kids going on "strike" for Climate Change.
You are the first generation who have required air-conditioning in every classroom.
You want TV in every room and your classes are all computerised.
You spend all day and night on electronic devices.
Your buses are air conditioned, you have Netflix, YouTube and Instagram.
More than ever, you don't walk or ride bikes to school but arrive in caravans of private cars that choke suburban roads and worsen rush hour traffic.
You are the biggest consumers of manufactured goods ever and update perfectly good expensive luxury items to stay trendy.
Your entertainment comes from electric devices.
Furthermore, the people driving your protests are the same people who insist on artificially inflating the population growth through immigration, which increases the need for energy, manufacturing and transport.
The more people we have, the more forest and bushland we clear and more of the environment is destroyed.
How about this...
Tell your teachers to switch off the air-con.
Walk or ride to school.
Switch off your devices and read a book.
Make a sandwich instead of buying manufactured fast food.
No, none of this will happen because you are selfish, badly educated, virtue signalling little have it alls, inspired by the adults around you who crave a feeling of having a "noble cause" while they indulge themselves in Western luxury and unprecedented quality of life that no other generation has ever had.”
Lets flick the off switch on all the coal fired power stations for a week & see how everyone copes.
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Singling out children as the culprits achieves little - after all, who created the environment they find themselves in ?
Neither does it achieve a lot to compare today's standard of living with yesterday's - that's simply a reflection of societal evolution. Using this type of analysis one could equally say that our parent's generation used far fewer resources than we, their children, use today. So none of those examples are relevant to the question of climate change. What is relevant is what we do about it as a community - a global community.
We are collectively living on a planet that is showing the effects of historical abuse, and this is the only planet our children have known. Those children can see what the future holds unless changes are made, and they can see the Government's reluctance to make those changes. They cannot vote, and they have no power, so what else can they do but exactly what they are doing - creating an awareness of the issues.
The demonstration on Friday wasn't just children - it was adults from all walks of life as well. They all could have been doing something else, but they chose to make a positive statement rather than maintaining the status quo. If you're concerned that they wasted a day, are you equally concerned that we will shortly be having a day off simply to worship a football match? Which of those stoppages is the most worthwhile?
Protecting our planet and the future is indeed a "noble cause", and one we should all be promoting.
Another one doing the rounds -
Checking out at the store, the young cashier suggested to the much older lady that she should bring her own grocery bags, because plastic bags are not good for the environment,.
The woman apologized to the young girl and explained, "We didn't have this 'green thing' back in my earlier days."
The young clerk responded, "That's our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations."
The older lady said that she was right our generation didn't have the "green thing" in its day. The older lady went on to explain: Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled.
But we didn't have the "green thing" back in our day. Grocery stores bagged our groceries in brown paper bags that we reused for numerous things. Most memorable besides household garbage bags was the use of brown paper bags as book covers for our school books. This was to ensure that public property (the books provided for our use by the school) was not defaced by our scribblings. Then we were able to personalize our books on the brown paper bags.
But, too bad we didn't do the "green thing" back then. We walked up stairs because we didn't have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks. But she was right. We didn't have the "green thing" in our day.
Back then we washed the baby's diapers because we didn't have the throw away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy-gobbling machine burning up 220 volts. Wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days.
Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing. But that young lady is right; we didn't have the "green thing" back in our day.
Back then we had one TV, or radio, in the house -- not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana.
In the kitchen we blended and stirred by hand because we didn't have electric machines to do everything for us.
When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap.
Back then, we didn't fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power.
We exercised by working so we didn't need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity. But she's right; we didn't have the "green thing" back then.
We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blade in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull. But we didn't have the "green thing" back then.
Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service in the family's $45,000 SUV or van, which cost what a whole house did before the "green thing."
We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn't need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 23,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest burger joint.
But isn't it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn't have the "green thing" back then?
Anyone ever been with a large group of Gen Z's and the power goes out? Not a pleasant experience.
The generation that has so much, yet appreciates so little, takes so much for granted and has never made a sacrifice.
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None of these stories are relevant to where we are in the here and now. The "blame game" doesn't restore our planet, and neither does inter generational feuding. Each generation lives within its own experience and for each generation that experience is different. As children, we made our own mistakes and as adults we hopefully grow and learn from those mistakes. Teenagers today are not so far removed from the teens of yesterday. Some of the rules have changed - some for better, some for worse. No generation holds the moral high ground and none of us are perfect.
What we do have in common is an increasing awareness of the impact we collectively have upon our world, and we do have limited time in which to reverse or slow the damage done to it. Does it achieve anything to blame each other for where we are? Does reminiscing over the past or remonstrating with each other resolve anything? Society is nothing more than a collection of humans who as they age should learn from their mistakes, just as adults are supposed to learn from their childhood mistakes. That means changing the things that are harmful and replacing them with things that are less so. It means finding and using renewable, non polluting energy sources. It means learning to live in harmony, and it means recognising what we have done poorly and devising better ways to live.
It's not rocket science ..... it's just common sense.
Exactly, BD.
What's really frightening is human population growth. When I was around 10 y.o., the population was around 2 Bn. 62 years on, and it's around 7.6 Bn ...
Check out this web site: https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/
Births outnumber deaths today by around 2.4:1 - bloody scary ...
WE are the problem, self included - Just far too many humans.
Basically seminal points!
CC, Image editing OK.
Compared to the world, Australia's population is a blip on the radar, above are just the 10 largest populated cities, not countries.
Rank City Country Population 1 Shanghai China 24,153,000 2 Beijing China 18,590,000 3 Karachi Pakistan 18,000,000 4 Istanbul Turkey 14,657,000 5 Dhaka Bangladesh 14,543,000 6 Tokyo Japan 13,617,000 7 Moscow Russia 13,197,596 8 Manila Philippines 12,877,000 9 Tianjin China 12,784,000 10 Mumbai India 12,400,000
Our green house gas emissions are incomparably small to the main producers of the world.
China in the next 10 years are supposedly going to build between 300 to 500 new coal power plants, does Australia stop selling coal overseas? Are we all willing for Australia's standard of living ranking in the world to fall (We are second in the world, just behind Norway who holds first place).
Also lets not forget that a single large volcanic eruption can make any carbon emission's reduced in a decade null and void in 24 hours.
Have a look at this world map to see how insignificant Australia's coal plants are to world green house emissions -
https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-w...l-power-plants
Electric cars? Have a good read up on just how not so green these really are for the environment, same as end of life for solar panels.
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That....is the problem John.
Last edited by Bear Dale; 22-09-2019 at 1:01pm.
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does Australia stop selling coal overseas? Are we all willing for Australia's standard of living ranking in the world to fall (We are second in the world, just behind Norway who holds first place).
Also lets not forget that a single large volcanic eruption can make any carbon emission's reduced in a decade null and void in 24 hours.
Have a look at this world map to see how insignificant Australia's coal plants are to world green house emissions -
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A somewhat distorted world view actually. Out of 184 countries, Australia's greenhouse gases are number 2 on the list of highest producers of greenhouse gases per capita. Instead of looking at our overall contribution, you should be looking at what we produce per head of population, and that figure is nothing to be proud of at all! Most of the world's people produce far fewer greenhouse emissions per head of population.
pollution.jpg
Would I accept a lowering of our collective living standards if it meant a less polluted planet? What you are effectively saying is that "I'm OK, so bugger the rest of the world!" I don't exactly subscribe to that philosophy.
As for the argument that a natural disaster might come along and ruin everything, I must admit that I haven't heard of a sillier argument in my years of discussing climate change! One might as well say that we shouldn't try and stay healthy because we might get run over by a truck!
Unless, of course, the blame is directed at the Australian government, obviously. That’s entirely logical.
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