Be a player for Gaia and hug that tree

Yes, we’re saved. Gold Coast Bulletin columnist Ross Eastgate, Facebook, yesterday:

Hallelujah, it’s working already! The ink isn’t even dry on the Paris accord and we’ve had two days of rain on the Gold Coast. And the nights have been cooler. Bless.

But we’ll need to be morally enlightened. The Daily Telegraph, Monday:

Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore … slugged … ratepayers a whopping $10,000 to fund a controversial left-wing revue that attacked Christmas as being bad for the environment. The show, called Climate Change Variety Hour, was performed in front of a tiny audience of just 70 people at Sydney University on Saturday night … One … council insider at the vent described it as having “the emotional uplift of a car crash or Mein Kampf” … Pamphlets handed out before the show claimed: “Make no mistake. Christmas and climate change are already intertwined.” Elsewhere on the pamphlet, also paid for by ratepayers, was the message: “Christmas is a key event on the capitalist calendar … Can modern Christmas traditions ever be sustainable?”

If the poor want protein they’ll need a taste for tofu. Fairfax Daily Life columnist Ruby Hamad, Telum Media alert, yesterday:

We need to choose between cheap meat and the planet.

We’ll also have to send the Greens leader off to the knackery. Geoff Russell, New Matilda, Sunday:

Anthropogenic methane, on its own, contributes about half of our net warming influence on the climate … Methane is a really big deal … in Australia with 29 million cattle and 72 million sheep, but it’s totally ignored by (the Greens’ policy document) Renew Australia. We could perhaps speculate that methane is ignored because Greens leader Richard Di Natale has a sideline in cattle. Di Natale’s cattle featured recently on ABC’s Kitchen Cabinet along with his ­off-grid house and his ex-pig salami. It’s disingenuous to make money from cattle while preaching concern for the climate, and a doctor making salami is almost as bad as a doctor growing tobacco. Keeping cattle shows that Di Natale’s understanding of climate science is superficial at best.

No science degree? A Che Guevara T-shirt may be as useful. University of Sydney’s Rebecca Pearse, The Conversation, Sunday:

Climate movements want to change society and transform energy systems more rapidly and fundamentally than the UN system allows for. They do this by bringing people together, online and in public spaces, to put pressure on governments and corporations to change. (They) want … to transform … humanity’s relationship with “nature”. Movements calling for “climate justice”, carry on traditions of the alter-globalisation movement, other forms of environmentalism, feminism, anti-colonial and socialist movements. Climate justice movements are diverse, but there is a fundamental principle informing activist practice: climate change is a consequence of unequal, colonial, economic and social power relations.

Indeed, the Australian Academy of Science is happy to train the tinies in agitprop. From its Science by Doing curriculum for schools, Activity 6.3, Sustainability:

At the end of this activity students will be able to … use an emotive, creative and/or scientific approach.

But will someone please tell the Queensland Premier to get with the program? Annastacia Palaszczuk, ABC radio, yesterday:

We will always be reliant on coal. Coal is a backbone of our economy.