First, one of my favorite tunes, “Waltzing Matilda,” has nothing to do with dancing.
Second, somebody out there thinks Congress might actually put a climate bill on Obama’s desk this year.
First things first. So I’m singing to my daughter, reworking the lyrics to the “the unofficial national anthem of Australia,” to distract her from her quest to watch videos on my PC, and she cleverly asks to see a “Waltzing Matilda video.” And this is what I find on YouTube:
Turns out the song is about an Australian hobo, who gives the name Matilda to his swag—his “bed roll that bundled his belongings.” Turns out “waltzing Matilda” is slang for traveling with all one’s belongings on one’s back.
Given where Australia is headed—“Australia faces collapse as climate change kicks in”—and for how long (if we don’t act soon and strongly to stop it)—Climate change “largely irreversible for 1,000 years,” with permanent Dust Bowls around the globe—I’m now thinking that Waltzing Matilda will eventually be the official national anthem of Australia. But I digress.
So who is this mystery person who thinks we are on the fast track for climate action?
None other than my friend Jeremy Symons, who called to dispute this post: “Sen. Boxer makes clear U.S. won’t pass a climate bill this year.”
Jeremy is senior vice president for conservation and education at the National Wildlife Federation. Interestingly, until I was researching this post, I thought Jeremy was still executive director of NWF’s Global Warming Program. So congratulations for the well-deserved promotion.
[Note to NWF: You should try to make it easier—or even possible—to find staff bios.]
Jeremy is so confident that there will be a big cap-and-trade bill signed by Obama this year, he bet me dinner anywhere in Washington, D.C. on it—and even agreed to let me blog about it.
Now he is very experienced in the ways of Washington—see a bio here [PDF]—and wise, too, as evidenced by the fact that NWF did not join NRDC and EDF in endorsing the weak, coal-friendly, rip-offset-heavy USCAP climate plan.
But I’m afraid this bet is more of a lock than my “90 percent ice free Arctic” by 2020 bet (see here), though not quite as good as my “hydrogen fuel cell vehicles won’t hit 1 percent of new car and light truck sales by 2015” bet (see here).
I guess I have a gambling problem: People keep wanting to make 50-50 wagers with me that are probably more like 90-10 bets. At the risk of feeding my addiction, are there any other takers out there for this climate-bill-in-2009 bet?
This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
John McCain’s troubles are the world’s troubles
Global boiling declares war on Thanksgiving
Comments
View as Threaded
Craig Allen Posted 1:40 pm
04 Feb 2009
> The swagman (hobo) gets busted for stealing a sheep.
> In preference to being taken in for his crime he commits suicide by drowning himself in a billabong (deep river pool).
The way our inland rivers are going, these days the swagman might have trouble finding a billabong deep enough to drown himself in.
Permalink
amazingdrx Posted 1:58 pm
04 Feb 2009
What say you to this challenge pico? Is there a progressive green movement in Australia that could act in time?
Here's a question for progressive green australians: Will you take hold of the opportunity to go green with solar, wave, and wind power over a renewable smart grid and restore water supplies with conservation, waste water recycling, and renewably powered desalination?
Will you become manufacturing leaders in these technologies? Or will you wait and watch and deny and delay until it's too late? Nature has given you the lead on this whole conversion from the old GHG- intensive energy economy to the new renewable smart grid economy.
What will you do? If you go green tech, capital will be attracted to your efforts. If you remain with the status quo, capital will flee for safety.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
Permalink
Craig Allen Posted 10:43 pm
04 Feb 2009
State governments are even more pathetic. Growth in spite of all costs is the mantra and there is a lot of money being spent on infrastructure to pipe around dwindling water resources, build desalination plants and such.
Australia has given up any pretence at playing a leadership role in addressing emissions. As a nation we seem intent accepting the role of climate victim while making as much money as we can exporting rocks, coal and gas.
Much of the populace desperately hopes the situation will change, and there is agitation from activists, but at the moment we seem to have hit a wall. As a nation we are just too economically conservative and consumption driven to hold our leaders to account over this.
In the mean time we wilt in the heat. Tonight's news here in Victoria was dominated by stories about how vegetable and fruit crops have been devastated by last week's heat wave and by fears of what will happen when Saturdays predicted extreme high temperatures and gales fan expected fire outbreaks.
Permalink
amazingdrx Posted 11:12 pm
04 Feb 2009
(Obama at National Prayer Breakfast now speaking live on teevee.)
One would think that solar panels powering air conditing would ring some sort of bell..at least? Especially in regions where the utility transformers melt in summer from grid overload due to air conditioning and heat waves.
Peak solar energy and heat waves do ocurr simultaneously, but no bulb lights up in the political mind?
The grim reality is that once the election is over and our side wins, nothing sunstantial will change anyway, things will only get worse slower than they do when the opposition is in charge. In a way, this is more depressing than the flagrant wing nut depravity of a kidnapping, torturing, murdering regime like duuuhbya presided over.
Oh well, any talk of renewable desalination there? Solar powered desalination seems obvious too. The US southwest is in the same shape as Australia as far as drought, desertification and fire storms. No talk of solar powered desalination or air conditioning there.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
Permalink
Craig Allen Posted 12:11 am
05 Feb 2009
The response to the heatwave by Melbourne politicians was telling. They all clamoured to claim "full responsibility" for the rail network and electricity grid caving in, while defiantly pointing out that it was all due to an unprecedented weather event that no one could possibly have predicted. This was in spite of the fact that we had a similarly severe event about the same time last year, everyone talks about climate change non stop and it keeps getting hotter every bloody year.
No talk whatsover that I have noticed about how solar electricity could have averted Melbourne and Adelaide having to go through suburb by suburb periodic blackouts due to air conditioning demands. A friend of mine in Mebourne has 8 panels on his roof. He was immune to the blackouts, but learned that during those periods his excess power generations was dumped to earth because the grid can't use it during a blackout!
The Rudd government's big renewable energy policy is to offer every home owner earning under $100,000 per year an $8,000 rebate for solar panels. What this means is that people are installing the minimum number of panels that they can get for the money. It's a dumb policy. Offering (say) a 50% rebate to everyone regardless would have enticed people to put their own money into it, would have encouraged rich people who could afford big systems to participate, and would have encouraged businesses to get involved. Who care how much the investor earns. Everyone's electrons are equally useful. We should be giving every individual and every business incentives to get in on the act.
There has been lots of talk in the media lately about how all the solar campanies are avoiding, or exiting Australia because our policies discourage investment.
They're talking about making our new Victorian desal plant renewable powered (mostly wind I think), but it will jack up water prices, lock us into buying the water from a private company, and is being done instead of the cheaper alternative, which is to recycle Melbourne's storm-water.
Permalink
randino Posted 2:47 am
05 Feb 2009
In the mean time, the Republicans and what I call the Triple D crowd (deny, delay, dither)are almost euphoric they are so confident that they are going to kill climate legislation and that they are about to win (like winning a nuclear war?) the issue. They are either blatantly delusional, or they know something that we don't know. Namely that our strategy sucks, is headed nowhere, and that they can just grind things to a halt as they always have.
I always believe in trying everything that even stands a remote chance of working. However, I think we have to start thinking about scrapping all our illusions, retiring our pet strategies, and do some real hard thinking on how to proceed in the immediate future. My guts tell me that our current dog, just won't hunt.
Randy Cunningham
Cleveland. OH
Randy Cunningham
Permalink