Archives: Letters to the Editor

At its base, the anti-climate change idiocy of Trump and those who share his scientific philistinism is inherently illogical, uninformed and plainly stupid. To say, as he often does, that the work of tens of thousands of highly qualified climate scientists is simply not believable carries some far greater implications, either about his purchase by the oil, coal and gas corporations or his utter incapacity for logical thought.

The scientific method is now understood and supported by the vast bulk of humanity. That scientific method is common across literally all areas of human knowledge, with the notable exception of economics and political science, which bear no relationship to that scientific method. All the sophisticated understandings of how the world and the universe work come from the application of that method to specific areas of human endeavour.

The logical consequence is that the vast range of technologies upon which modern life depends are products of the application of that scientific method. If you reject climate science, you are in effect saying you don’t believe in science and therefore don’t accept any of the products of that science. That leaves these dills in a bit of a pickle!

This is the phrase that sprang to mind on reading Michael Keating’s article on migration in Australia. While not really accusing him of lying, I would suggest he is cherry-picking data to support his case, which is basically to maintain high levels of population growth in Australia.

According to the latest figures from ABS, population growth was 1.6% in the year to March this year, an increase of 423,400 people, of which net overseas migration was 315,900 or about three quarters. Yes, 1.6% is a lot better than the Third World rates of 2.5% we saw in 2023, but is it now “normal” as Keating claims? Not really, even when you look at the rate rather than actual numbers.

In recent decades, the rate was between 1.2% and 1.5%. The total numbers were much greater, however, because they were on a bigger base. Compare 1985 and 2015, for instance. Both had growth rates of 1.4%, but in 1985 the increase was 224,000 (population 15.658 million) while in 2015 the increase was 326,100 (population 23.9 million). Now we’re increasing by 423,400 annually.

The Liberals were justified in expressing their concerns before the election. They lost despite them; not because of them.

It is far too early to even begin to contemplate “what next” for Gaza, which is now the theme of much well-intentioned commentary. There is barely a ceasefire, with Israel killing dozens of Palestinians over the past few days, and looking for every “Hamas did it” pretext to kill more.

People are still starving to death, with the arrival of only limited food supplies. There are no functional hospitals. There are no foreign press to witness the carnage. And it is utterly unclear what the Trump plan now envisages.

Now more than ever we should be applying all possible pressure on our government to sanction Israel and bring its leaders to justice; and to get international aid agencies and the UN full, unfettered access to bring emergency food and aid into Gaza.

Are we still entertaining the delusion that the suffering of the Palestinian people is over? Are we still believing that a ceasefire is intact when, as I write, Israel has just dropped scores of bombs on the Gaza Strip in violation of the barely two-week-old agreement? Are we still deluded that Trump and Netanyahu’s plan to create a new Miami in Gaza has changed into an altruistic endeavour?

It is sheer denial to now write about reconstruction and rebuilding when Palestine is still being bombarded, innocent Palestinians are being torn apart by tank and drone fire and mothers are still burying their children, while world leaders hand over their responsibility for this genocide over to the enabler and the war criminal.

I think Michael McKinley’s idea has merit.

This doesn’t mean the politicians will buy into it… how after all, could anyone question their decision-making capability? They are the government after all.

The article reflects the lack of independent strategic thinking at government level, which the government, on first reflex at least, will be likely to deny or ignore, but which, in my view is the case.

Michael’s idea may not be the final version of what is required, or of what may possibly evolve… but it is a step in the right direction.

John Frew’s recent fine polemic reiterates much of the frustration described by the late Sir Ken Robinson.

What gets measured gets manipulated and learning has degenerated into indoctrination.

Even our red brick universities have degenerated into ideological battlegrounds and inculcated graduands are just another brick in the wall.

As proven by today’s headlines, anyone who thought that Israel could be trusted to abide by a lasting peace is as delusional as the president who thinks he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize for organising it.

Israel won’t stop until they alone own the land that “God” gave them, including Jerusalem.

It seems our governments lack the moral courage to do what the sciences, both physical and economic, demand to stave off Julian Cribb’s spine-chilling list of imminent climate tipping points.

So, we, the people, must force the issue.

If we can activate some social tipping points, people pressure might still help us rapidly spread the technologies, behaviours, social norms and structural reorganisation we need to delay the physical tipping points.

If enough people start to demand, among other things, the removal of fossil fuel subsidies and divest from assets linked to fossil fuels, we may still move the mountains we need to to buy a little time.

Don’t just write to your MP. Social tipping needs visibility. Go and stand outside their office with a sign demanding better. Take friends.

Join Market Forces, a campaign to pester companies with the power to improve or destroy our lives.

We have agency. It’s time to use it.

According to the Global Tipping Points Report 2025: “Already warm-water coral reefs are crossing their thermal tipping point and experiencing unprecedented dieback…” This is sickening news, not just because so much beauty and biodiversity is being lost, but also the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people who depend on coral reefs.

The world is likely to hit 2°C warming between 2034 and 2052. According to New Scientist (28 May), the world could experience a year above 2°C of warming as early as 2029. The chances are slim, but it’s only four years away.

What happens at 2°C? It would be the start of irreversible loss of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets leading eventually to a 12-20 metre sea-level rise. It would lead to further deoxygenation of the oceans, threatening all creatures that depend on oxygen to survive. The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation would reduce in strength by at least 34% to 45% with severe implications for Western Europe. Arctic summer sea ice will be lost.

The Amazon would be moving to a state where it could not support rainforesta, with far-reaching effects on atmospheric moisture circulation patterns.

We cannot go to 2°C. It’s simply too dangerous.

To add to the argument of Paul Heywood-Smith, the prophet Jonah was sent to preach repentance to the people of the city of Nineveh (Mosul). The people did repent, a response cited by Jesus as exemplary. Nineveh was a long, long way beyond even the Euphrates River, which the blasphemous political readings of Judaism might fancifully assert is part of a God-given Israel.

(And by the way, how does God caring so much for the non Jewish people of Nineveh square with the political “chosen people” interpretation of Jewish fundamentalists? Or with the numerous prophetic references in the Old Testament to people of all races and nations flocking to Jerusalem?)

Julian Cribb has, in recent articles, summarised with authority the dangers we now face with our oceans , with our forests , and with our water. His summary of imminent tipping points encapsulates the urgency of our predicament.

David Spratt has highlighted the shortcomings of the National Climate Risk Assessment. Cribb details the risks of misinformation.

Our future looks grim, but policymakers — disproportionately influenced by vested interests — seem reluctant to explain this clearly to the electorate. Popular scepticism continues to hamper effective environmental protection.
Despair reflects the sense of an individual’s incapacity to generate change in a world where those in authority refuse to accept the scientific reality that we all face; despair becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Action is the most effective response to despair. No one person can fix our climate and environmental problems alone, but many people working in concert can carry real impact. Write to a politician or a newspaper; speak on talkback; rally in the streets. Speak up, demand urgent, substantial change. Policymakers must embrace the existential reality we all face, and confront this popular scepticism. We must unite to overcome these threats to our precarious world.

Appreciation to Wayne McMillan who, in praising Greta Thunberg, calls for Australians to “write to their politicians and wake them up from their moral and ethical slumber of inaction”.

We may live in a democratic country but most of our politicians are captured by gambling, fossil fuel and other lobbying groups.

We can’t sit back and allow these industries to pursue profit at all cost. Speak up Australia.

Mark Macdonald is perfectly correct that antibiotic resistance (ABR) is a major threat to the human future.

Unfortunately, even with the generous allocation of word space in Pearls & Irritations, it is not possible to enumerate every case of purblind, human stupidity. Some have to be taken as read!

That said, ABR is sure to kill an awful lot of people come the mid-century, especially if we continue to use antibiotics just to create heavier chooks and fatter pigs, while carefully nurturing the zoonotic pestilences of the future.

Indeed, we could regard ABR as a byproduct of the industrial food industry, which doesn’t care who (or what) it kills, so long as it is profitable to do so.

Some Australian ministers are now saying the Palestine war is over, nothing to see there. So we can still ship weapons parts to Israel even though the IDF is supporting settlers attacking Palestinian farms in northeast Palestine. We can ignore the slow Hiroshima carried out by the US and Israel over two years.

I see too that the RAAF had a surveillance plane in the Ukraine, which our government seemingly believes to be closer than Palestine, at a time when the government was asked to provide aerial assistance to Australians and others in the Sumud aid flotilla.

Oh, and a nod for integrity to US Admiral Alvin Holsey, who has resigned in circumstances where his Southern Command is being asked to carry out extrajudicial murders in the Caribbean.

Peter Slezak demands sincere attention and a fair, just and strong response from our flaccid government leaders, Albanese and Wong.

It has taken — what? — little more than 48 hours from the “signing” of the “Trump Peace Plan” (TPP) for the Netanyahu Government and the IDF to resume killing Palestinians with the same gratuitously offensive excuses that have been such a predominant feature of their entire genocidal campaign.

We wait for Albanese and Wong to change from calling on Hamas to abide by the terms of the TPP and apply the same pressure on the Zionists’ genocidal thuggery.

Also, we wait for these two to denounce the Israeli restriction on the passage of aid to the Gaza Strip as detailed in the agreement.

Anything less than demanding decency for the Palestinians is morally corrupt behaviour by our government. We know that will happen with the LNP, but for Labor to walk the same path is unconscionably foul.

Albanese, your problem is obvious (google it): Stop the BS and damn well do the decent thing.

We are indebted to investigative writers like John Queripel, Anthony Klan and Michael West Media, to name a few, who provide forensic exposes of elite-funded Advance.

As in the US, the funders of Advance are far from household names but are nevertheless deeply invested in policy areas, especially climate action. They, and members of the Coalition, claim they are fighting a “woke elite”. They attempt — sometimes successfully — to divide and distract by igniting spot fires around which bathroom to use or what books children should or shouldn’t read.

Donor Gina Rinehart claimed earlier this year that students are being taught “propaganda rather than facts and woke causes instead of understanding, rationale and logic” and that “primary industries were being ignored in schools”.

The connections between Advance donors and the fossil fuel industry are inescapable but not revealed in the mainstream media. The Murdoch press crusades against Labor with a fire-hose of mis- and disinformation: from turbines killing wales, killing birds and causing cancer to blaming high energy prices on renewables to advocating nuclear power in order to reach some mythical emissions target.

The industrial-strength campaign from right-wing elites will continue. Can Labor, with the help of left-leaning media, get ahead of them?

I note Ramzy Baroud’s article. I hope our faith in the ability of the Palestinian people to govern wisely is not dimmed by more reports of extrajudicial killings in Gaza, channelling Donald Trump in the Caribbean.

Take the backdown on super after the approval of NW Shelf gas drilling out to 2070, throw in tightening of FOI for good measure, and community Independents have been handed a gift to mobilise for 2028. The only, but major, problem they’ll have is disabusing “aspirants” that they will ever have $3 million, let alone $10 million in super.

It will also be an uphill battle getting them to realise that, without tax reform, they will forever be “stuck with” crumbling public health, education, transport and privatised child and aged care where costs go up as quality goes down. Some hopes need to be dashed!

Yet, I don’t call Labor timid. They are clever, cunning and working “just hard enough” to be re-elected in 2028. Here’s hoping people will wake up in time. (The cynic in me says they won’t. Please prove me wrong! People, join your local “Voices of …” groups, please!)

And just BTW …. does anyone else think that Paul Keating is fast turning into Labor’s John Howard? There really is a time to let go and walk away. Both of these men have passed it.

It is a truism of so-called Australian politics that accurate information for the public constrains political skullduggery. It is interesting to see that Labor, who have campaigned over the decades on ensuring an informed public, tend to change their tune when in government.

My own experience is revelatory.

In a recent role running a state charity, a consultant employed by the Department of Health engaged with that Department in an underhanded and possibly illegal conspiracy to take over that charitable body and used public funds to further that design.

FOI was crucial in enabling that body to protect itself from these devious intentions and ensuring that the public became aware of the misuse of public funds under the guidance of a senior public official. These matters were then referred to the Australian National Audit Office and to the National Anti-Corruption Commission. The findings of the auditor-general against the department were damning and the yet-to-be-published report of the anti-corruption body is likely to produce a similar conclusion.

None of this would have been possible without a strong FOI Act. It is necessary to strengthen the Act as a considerable amount of highly relevant information was withheld.

I hope that Amelie has an enriching experience at the UN and strongly support the intent of her work to eliminate extremism and fanaticism of every kind on social media.

The most serious kind is that promoted by various regimes around the world, not the least of which are Israel and the US. The algorithms that allow this state-sponsored extremism are far and away the most dangerous.

That is because the wealth and influence of these state sponsors vastly outweighs that of the many invaded and occupied communities and cultures around the world marginalised by the Western-created algorithms that Amelie rightly sees as responsible.

This is a careful and comprehensive analysis of why those invaded and bastardised by the West in the apocryphal name of spreading democracy remain unconvinced by the fraud!

Further to Evan Jones’ sensible defence of the political economy versus neoclassical economics, he quotes neoclassicist Warren Hogan Jr implying “the positive role of the scientific method” for the latter.

I spent four decades as an actual scientist (studying the Earth) and more time digging into the horrors of mainstream economics. Hogan’s claim is laughable. Neoclassical economics is built on flagrantly unrealistic assumptions, such as that we can all predict accurate probabilities of all future possibilities, that we are selfish competitors and there are no social interactions (in fact, humans are highly social), and that there are no economies of scale (or “increasing returns to scale”).

Economies of scale actually pervade the economy and they are highly destabilising. Change any of these or other assumptions and the alleged “optimal general equilibrium” is lost. The justification for free markets, in fact the whole neoliberal ideology, is lost. Real economies are far-from-equilibrium complex systems whose behaviour is radically different from the gentle neoclassical equilibrium.

Neoclassical economics is not just inaccurate, it is grossly misleading. It has confused mathematics with science. It is pseudo-science. Neoliberalism has been an economic failure and a social disaster, and that was foreseeable from the beginning.

May I compliment you for your superior analysis of 7 October 2023? I have not read of movements of Hamas in Israeli territory before.

Hamas killed Israeli soldiers while overwhelming military bases, and some were also killed when kibbutzim and Nova Rave were attacked. Yet, if the more than 3000 Hamas insurgents could overwhelm the IDF bases so comprehensively, so quickly, and if murder was their intention, surely many more Israeli deaths could have resulted.

Similarly, the unknown thousands (?) of Palestinians also did not murder. They were all very inefficient killers. Likely, Hamas came to capture Israelis to exchange for their 10,000 countrymen held in Israeli prisons.

The IDF killed most of the Palestinians during the Hannibal Directive retaliation, beginning from midday; only cars which successfully brought 251 hostages back to Gaza survived.

About 1600 burnt-out Palestinian cars are now at Tecoma. All destroyed Israeli cars were buried, their numbers unknown. Since both IDF fighters and Israeli survivors/witnesses have described gunships/drones attacking moving cars, it is likely the majority of 1195 Israeli deaths were hostages in burnt-out cars which did not make it back to Gaza, plus occupants of destroyed Israeli cars.

An international commission of inquiry? I cannot see it.

Ziyad Motala deserves congratulation on his article, as a key piece of American commentary right now is from Donald Trump: “The war is over.”

But, sad to say, then we have Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz just now in a tweet: “Israel’s great challenge after the phase of returning the hostages will be the destruction of all of Hamas’s terror tunnels in Gaza, directly by the IDF and through the international mechanism to be established under the leadership and supervision of the United States.

“This is the primary significance of implementing the agreed-upon principle of demilitarising Gaza and neutralising Hamas of its weapons. I have instructed the IDF to prepare for carrying out the mission.”

So who will prevail, Trump or Katz? Let’s hope it is Donald Trump.

Jeff McMullen eloquently presents the case that Donald Trump runs a violent country and is strongly inclined to violence himself. Thus, it is abhorrent that he should even be considered for the Nobel Peace Prize, whatever his involvement in the Israeli/Hamas peace deal.

By all means, give credit where credit is due — and some is probably warranted in this case — but a Nobel Peace Prize recipient should be a person of peace, not a warmonger. The fact that Trump renamed the Department of Defence as the Department of War says it all.

McMullen spells it out. Trump’s own words: “It’s a war from within… we’re under invasion from within,” could indeed shatter the peace by inciting violence. Trump boasting that he did not forgive his enemies is the very antithesis of Christian philosophy which is based on peace. And to not tone down the gun laws, when some 125 Americans are killed with guns each day, is to condone the violence that guns unleash.

Trump has also failed to rein in his lackeys, some of whom have said terrible things, the worst being Steve Bannon who suggested the nation’s leading infectious diseases expert Anthony Fauci’s head should be on a pike.

The Julian Cribb article made for an interesting read.

I think there is one more factor he has left out. This is the potential loss of antibiotics in the future. This will mean a natural increase in the death rate unless alternatives are found. Everyday common diseases and surgery will become increasingly dangerous.

If the world can get over the population peak later this century without major collapse, then there is still hope.

The sheer racial infantilism of the Anglo-Saxon elites and their security service underlings put me in mind of Golding’s Lord of the Flies. “Maybe there is a beast… Maybe it’s only us!”, seems to summarise the childish brutishness of our so-called security services. They seem to spend their entire lives projecting their own vacuous and depraved predispositions onto racially less worthy “opponents”, that they have confected in their fevered imaginings.

Their lives seem to reflect the barbarity of the playground as they look all around them and see themselves reflected back to them in all their childish fantasising.

Rationality and fact are utterly absent from their infantile hallucinations. They are a far greater threat to our civilisation that the enemies they devise to frighten us.

A very well put together and thought out article. The problem for the Yanks is that they have, over the last 30 years at least, lost the arts of subtlety and nuance entirely from their diplomacy.

Asia, by contrast because of its need to appease the Western beast, has developed these arts to a fine degree. South Korea is an excellent example as are Singapore, Malaysia and China.

When it comes to deforestation, it’s hard to decide which is the worse consequence: climate change or biodiversity loss. As Julian Cribb notes, “the Earth’s depleted forests are becoming a major contributor to Hothouse Earth”. Deforestation is driving climate change.

Yet forests are the habitat for countless species. All too often, to lose the forest is to lose the species that depend on it. According to the Australian Conservation Foundation, deforestation is a key threat to 60% of Australia’s listed threatened species. At least 1100 native vertebrate animals are “forest-dependent”. Species threatened by deforestation include the koala, swift parrot, greater glider and regent honeyeater.

A species may go extinct before the habitat has a chance to recover. In the case of the greater glider, for instance, it needs nesting hollows that take at least 38 years to develop in new trees.

Yet, deforestation continues apace in Australia, with Queensland and NSW being the worst offenders. The ACF says that between 2016 and 2021, in Queensland alone, 673,250 hectares of koala habitat were destroyed. In NSW, the koala is expected to go extinct by 2050, though thankfully the recently announced Great Koala National Park may mean a stay of execution.

Misha Schubert’s essay should resonate with anyone who cares about equity and justice. As she so eloquently reminds us, “care” is predominantly provided by women. Its value is inadequately recognised: to a huge degree it is hidden and unpaid; when it is paid, the pay and conditions are poor.

This is an important reason — but far from the only reason — for the alarming rate of poverty among older women.

Changes to the nation’s superannuation system will not, however, achieve more than minor improvements. Our much-lauded super system is in effect a revers Robin Hood scheme: it further entrenches in retirement the disparities in income and wealth of people’s working years.

We should retire our unfair super system and introduce a universal basic income for all. Think about it: a dignified “living wage” for everyone, including all those who currently miss out: informal carers; sick, disabled, unemployed, old. A radical change, for a radically better society.