Got twelve minutes?

You have?

Then watch this!!!

Dare you !!!

Greensmile's Roman holiday...

Greensmile was at the Vatican last Saturday. To brighten my day, he emailed me a jpeg of Diogenes, as depicted in Raphael's School of Athens.

Thanks, Greensmile, I'm chuffed and honoured.

Hey Phil...

You dig Van Halen?

If so, then you might dig this 10 year old girl's rendition of the "Eruption" guitar solo. Dangerous-looking axe too..

As far as guitar solo's go, Santana's Black Magic Woman does it of me every time...

Readers' Question: What is your vote for the best YouTube cover of the Black Magic Woman guitar solo?

kevin, kevin, kevin...

You're just not getting it, are you, Kevin?

Climate change, Kevin...

CO2 emissions, Kevin...

Resources depletion, Kevin...

Sustainability, Kevin...

There's an elephant in the room, Kevin...

It's called The Population Explosion, Kevin... It, more than anything else, is fuelling all of the above, Kevin...

And you're chuffed that the existing baby bonus has been successful in raising the birthrate here in Oz... So chuffed, in fact, that you're raising it to $5000 in July !!!

You're a blathering idiot, Kevin...

If you really must increase the population, increase immigration, Kevin...

Don't pay people to fuck, Kevin. They've done way too much of that already over the last two hundred years, Kevin. That's why we're in this mess, Kevin...

Join the dots, Kevin...

is it too late?

Is it too late for humanity to save itself from the ravages of climate change and the ecological damage caused by a consumerised, exploding population held hostage by the economies of the "developed" and "developing" world?

I fear that it is.

For several reasons:

a. Climate change experts, almost on a weekly basis, point out that fresh evidence suggests that their previous estimates were way too conservative and that the rate of change is much bigger than previously thought. Does the word exponential mean anything? Does it apply here? I think it does. Even the graphs [1] [2] in Al Gore's book depict exponential rates of change. Spend a moment or two contemplating the true impact if it's indeed gone exponential...

b. I posit that the real measures necessary to save the planet's climate and ecology would, absolutely, crash the global economy. Which politician in which democracy is willing to commit political suicide by advocating anything which is catastrophically bad for the economy? See? Right here is democracy's biggest flaw: The people won't let the politicians do the right thing. They don't want the politicians do the right thing. They don't want the hardship which would ensue if they did the right thing. But all of this a moot point because we will never agree on what "the right thing" is anyway... If ever the world needed an enlightened dictator, it's right friggin now... Of course, we'd kill her, right?

c. Combine (a) and (b) and what do you get? You get an ever-reducing window of opportunity during which only token and grossly inadequate changes will be implemented, and after the window has slammed shut, the rhetoric will shift to "ah well, it's all too late now anyway, so why risk the economy" and it'll be business as usual while the ecological shit hits the fan in ever-bigger lumps.

And then what? A brief era of fatalism will precede The Catastrophe.

So then, here are some interesting words for you to ponder upon, etymologically, dear reader:

Develop (developing, developer)

Evolve (evolution)

Progress

I wonder what the few shell-shocked survivors of The Catastrophe will make of our take on those words... I wonder what new meanings they will assign to those words...

All this too big for your itty bitty brain, huh? That's why we're phuqued (so to speak)...

Of course, I won't now throw you a curve ball and ask you to ponder upon how Utilitarian Ethics would apply to the current crisis...

Here endeth the rant, me little luvvlies... nyack nyack nyack

penny, penny, penny...

Penny Wong. She's Australia's new Minister For Climate Change And Water.

She's trying hard. Very hard.

Observed her in an interview with Tony Jones on ABC1 tonight.

What a load of crap.

She thinks that coal (clean coal*) is an essential part of the near future with regard to reducing CO2 emissions. With respect, Penny, you are a blathering idiot. You are obviously a prisoner of the coal lobby (quelle surprise, ma cherie...) *Oxymoron Alert.

So many twonks, so few bullets... **

Obviously, Penny has not heard of natural gas. Australia has oodles of natural gas. We even stole shitloads of it from the East Timorese as a way of thanking them for letting us "liberate" them....

Natural gas powered power stations emit about half as much CO2 as the cleanest coal-fired power stations. But does she talk about transitioning to natural gas?

No.

That would be in the "too hard" basket.

Never mind the fact that it offers a way to swiftly cut our electricity-related CO2 emissions by 50%.

As I said, another prisoner of the coal lobby... Tragic...

So many twonks, so few bullets... **

** Only joking, ASIO. I'm actually an advocate of nonviolence.