Are multinational fossil fuel corporations leading Australian governments & regulators by the nose?

 

By the time Word War II drew to a close 77 years ago the world geopolitical map saw Australia identified not just as an existing state within the United Kingdom's wider economic zone, but as a prospective permanent political and economic client state of other Big Powers. Its natural resources to be harvested by fossil fuel corporations & extractive industries, exploited by foreign investors and its population a reliable supplier of future cannon fodder in support of their individual and sometimes joint global ambitions.

For her part, Australia would present as obligingly grateful for being treated as a commodity 'owned' by the wealthy top percentile of the northern hemisphere and the largest transnationals.

Nothing much appears to have changed since then…..

The Saturday Paper, 7 January 2023:

A United States congressional committee investigating fossil fuel disinformation has published internal documents on a major Australian fossil fuel project – described by energy multinational Chevron as “an Australian icon” – in what has become the investigation’s final publication before Republicans took control of congress on Tuesday.

The second and final memo, released by the US house oversight and reform committee, includes information from internal documents subpoenaed by the committee about Chevron’s plans to extract gas from its Gorgon project on Barrow Island, off the coast of Western Australia, beyond 2056. The committee included Gorgon as an example of how the industry is “doubling down on long-term fossil fuel investments” while publicly claiming that gas is “merely a ‘bridge fuel’ ” to cleaner energy in spite of scientists’ “significant concerns about continued reliance on natural gas in a warming climate”.

The committee released memos in September and December last year, alongside thousands of pages of internal documents subpoenaed from BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell and the American Petroleum Institute. A sixth subpoena issued to the American Chamber of Commerce did not result in any documents being provided.

The two memos include references to the Australian activities of three of the four big oil companies it investigated – BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil – however, the December 2022 memo includes a particularly detailed focus on the Gorgon project, a joint venture led by Chevron, with partners including Shell and ExxonMobil.

According to the committee, the documents reveal that Chevron “is prepared to swoop in and expand its own fossil fuel business … even if other companies ultimately agree to reduce oil and gas production …”

In total, more than 200 of the 589 pages of Chevron documents published by the committee in December relate to Chevron’s operations in Australia, although many are covered almost completely by black boxes. The documents include a heavily redacted 179-page binder provided to Chevron board members visiting Australia and the Gorgon project in 2016, including details ranging from cultural advice on how to order a flat white to information on Chevron’s long-term ambitions for what it is describing as the “largest single-resource development in Australia’s history”.

According to the committee, internal documents shared with the board by then chief executive John S. Watson “emphasize” Chevron’s “long-term intentions for [Gorgon], despite climate concerns” and “the profits Chevron predicts it will reap”…...

Of the unredacted pages related to Chevron’s Gorgon trip, some are less pertinent than others. A cultural information section explains how light mocking should be considered “friendly banter” and not “an insult”. A rare unredacted section of the agenda shows the executives, directors and spouses were scheduled to receive a two-hour overview of Australian politics from Peter van Onselen, who is introduced as contributing editor at The Australian.

The December 2022 memo was not the first time the Gorgon project attracted the committee’s attention. Its September 2022 memo noted a carbon capture and storage facility at Gorgon that had “repeatedly failed to meet its storage target by about 50%” as an example of problems with that technology.

Another Australian example included in the December memo relates to BP’s strategies towards working with regulators here. A 2016 email from a BP executive to John Mingé, chairman and president of BP America, compares the company’s mindset in engaging with regulators in countries including Australia, the US and Germany.

The email describes how BP had gained an “advantaged position” with the regulator of its Australian oil refinery by engaging “proactively”. According to the internal memo, BP documents provided to the committee “show BP executives acknowledging that the company’s actions are often obstructionist towards the development of climate policy”.

Overall, the internal documents, along with further scientific sources cited by the memo, reveal that many of the public claims made by fossil fuel companies have been intentionally misleading.

As the committee’s then chair, Carolyn Maloney, said at a hearing in February: the investigation revealed that ExxonMobil scientists knew about the dangers of fossil fuels in 1978, and in the decades since, the fossil fuel industry has “waged a multimillion-dollar disinformation campaign” to prevent climate action, “all to protect its bottom line”…..

On December 25, journalist Amy Westervelt reported that, contrary to previous plans stated by the committee during its term, the December 9 memo may be the last document it publishes.

That same week, the new chair of the Democratic minority in the house oversight committee, Jamie Raskin, shared that he had been diagnosed with lymphoma.

The committee’s work being abruptly curtailed after only 18 months contrasts with the long-term time scales of the companies it is investigating, such as Chevron’s plans to secure profits beyond 2050. The Saturday Paper put a request for comment to Chevron but did not hear back before going to press.

Although the committee’s investigation is on hold, the US is significantly in front of Australia in its attempts to hold fossil fuel companies accountable.

Last month, Puerto Rico became the latest US jurisdiction to file climate accountability lawsuits against fossil fuel companies, joining dockets filed by seven US states and at least 35 municipal governments.

Puerto Rico – an unincorporated territory of the US in the Caribbean, where storms made worse by climate change have caused major recent disasters – is the first to use the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act in its climate fraud case against Shell and other companies.

According to Wiles, it could be a “big loss” for these cases if the million pages held by the committee “never see the light of day”.

“The documents that have been released so far definitely provide new evidence on the side of the plaintiffs against the defendants.”

In Australia there are currently at least two court cases related to so-called greenwashing making their way through courts, including one case lodged by the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility.

In 2022, two Australian regulators, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, announced plans to investigate greenwashing using existing laws.

Considering the memo’s revelation that BP has internally described its more proactive approach of working with regulators in Australia, it is unclear to what extent regulators alone can address the industry’s influence…..

BACKGROUND

North Coast Voices:

Friday, 6 January 2023

Global oil and gas industries make a combined US$4 billion in profit a day (or US$1 trillion annually) & have done so for the past 50 years. That obscene wealth is thought to be how these industries induce politicians & governments to only pay lip service

Monday, 2 January 2023

Who is undermining Australia’s climate change mitigation goals? Listing lobbyists contracted to act on behalf of fossil fuel industries

Sadly the first violent death of a woman in 2023 recorded by the Counting Dead Women project occurred in Ballina, Northern NSW

 

Counting Dead Women

@DeadWomenAus

A research project of Destroy The Joint

NSW Police, Latest News:

Man arrested after body of woman located - Ballina

Wednesday, 04 January 2023 11:39:36 AM

A man has been arrested after the body of a woman was located in the state’s north overnight.

About 12.30am (Wednesday 4 January 2022), a man attended Ballina Police Station and reported a welfare concern for a woman known to him.

Officers from Richmond Police District attended Holden Lane, near Cherry Street, Ballina, and located the body of a woman.

She is yet to be formally identified but is believed to be aged 64.

The man – aged 66 – was arrested at the police station, where he remains in custody.

Local detectives, with assistance from the State Crime Command’s Homicide Squad, have commenced an investigation into the woman’s death under Strike Force Blaikie.

Anyone with information about this incident is urged to contact Crime Stoppers: 1800 333 000 or https://nsw.crimestoppers.com.au. Information is treated in strict confidence. The public is reminded not to report information via NSW Police social media pages.

ABC News, 5 January 2022:

A man accused of murdering his partner in northern New South Wales was already on bail for assault, a court has heard.

Robert Karl Huber, 66, did not apply for bail when he appeared in Tweed Heads Local Court this morning charged with murder and breaching an apprehended domestic violence order.

It is alleged Mr Huber killed his partner, Lindy Lucena, 64, on Tuesday evening before attending the Ballina Police Station at about 12.30am to speak to police.

He then allegedly led officers to a laneway next to the Salvation Army where her body was found.

Today, the court heard Mr Huber had been granted bail just days before the alleged murder after being charged with several violent offences, including common assault and assault occasioning actual bodily harm.

Richmond Police District Commander Superintendent Scott Tanner yesterday said police were treating her death as a case of domestic violence.

"It's a matter where these people were in a relationship, and that's how we will be alleging," he said…..

STATE OF PLAY: By 2022 the Earth was an est. 1.14°C hotter than its pre-industrial era average. Australian had warmed on average by 1.47 ± 0.24 °C since national records began in 1910. WHO warns that global heating of even 1.5°C is not considered safe & every additional tenth of a degree of warming will take a serious toll on people’s lives and health.

 

World Health Organisation, Climate change and health, excerpts, 30 October 2021:

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has concluded that to avert catastrophic health impacts and prevent millions of climate change-related deaths, the world must limit temperature rise to 1.5°C. Past emissions have already made a certain level of global temperature rise and other changes to the climate inevitable. Global heating of even 1.5°C is not considered safe, however; every additional tenth of a degree of warming will take a serious toll on people’s lives and health......

Climate-sensitive health risks

Climate change is already impacting health in a myriad of ways, including by leading to death and illness from increasingly frequent extreme weather events, such as heatwaves, storms and floods, the disruption of food systems, increases in zoonoses and food-, water- and vector-borne diseases, and mental health issues. Furthermore, climate change is undermining many of the social determinants for good health, such as livelihoods, equality and access to health care and social support structures. These climate-sensitive health risks are disproportionately felt by the most vulnerable and disadvantaged, including women, children, ethnic minorities, poor communities, migrants or displaced persons, older populations, and those with underlying health conditions.

Figure: An overview of climate-sensitive health risks, their exposure pathways and vulnerability factors. Climate change impacts health both directly and indirectly, and is strongly mediated by environmental, social and public health determinants.

Although it is unequivocal that climate change affects human health, it remains challenging to accurately estimate the scale and impact of many climate-sensitive health risks. However, scientific advances progressively allow us to attribute an increase in morbidity and mortality to human-induced warming, and more accurately determine the risks and scale of these health threats.

In the short- to medium-term, the health impacts of climate change will be determined mainly by the vulnerability of populations, their resilience to the current rate of climate change and the extent and pace of adaptation. In the longer-term, the effects will increasingly depend on the extent to which transformational action is taken now to reduce emissions and avoid the breaching of dangerous temperature thresholds and potential irreversible tipping points.

Nature, Climate change is making hundreds of diseases much worse, excerpt, 12 August 2022:

Climate change has exacerbated more than 200 infectious diseases and dozens of non-transmissible conditions, such as poisonous-snake bites, according to an analysis. Climate hazards bring people and disease-causing organisms closer together, leading to a rise in cases. Global warming can also make some conditions more severe and affect how well people fight off infections.

Most studies on the associations between climate change and disease have focused on specific pathogens, transmission methods or the effects of one type of extreme weather. Camilo Mora, a data scientist at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, and his colleagues scoured the literature for evidence of how ten climate-change-induced hazards — including surging temperatures, sea level rise and droughts — have affected all documented infectious diseases (see ‘Climate hazards exacerbate diseases’). These include infections spread or triggered by bacteria, viruses, animals, fungi and plants (see ‘Mode of transmission’). The study was published in Nature Climate Change on 8 August.

The study quantifies the many ways in which climate change affects human diseases, says Mora. “We are going to be under the constant umbrella of this serious threat for the rest of our lives,” he adds.

Literature review

Mora and his colleagues examined more than 77,000 research papers, reports and books for records of infectious diseases influenced by climatic hazards that had been made worse by greenhouse-gas emissions. More than 90% of the relevant papers had been published after 2000. Ultimately, the team found 830 publications containing 3,213 case examples.

The researchers discovered that climate change has aggravated 218, or 58%, of the 375 infectious diseases listed in the Global Infectious Diseases and Epidemiology Network (GIDEON), and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System. The total rises to 277 when including non-transmissible conditions, such as asthma and poisonous-snake or insect bites. The team also identified nine diseases that are diminished by climate change. [my yellow highlighting]

Research paper "Over half of known human pathogenic diseases can be aggravated by climate change" (Mora, C. et al, August 2022) can be accessed at:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-022-01426-1

On the subject of COVID-19…..

World Health Organisation, Zoonoses, excerpt, 29July 2020:

A zoonosis is an infectious disease that has jumped from a non-human animal to humans. Zoonotic pathogens may be bacterial, viral or parasitic, or may involve unconventional agents and can spread to humans through direct contact or through food, water or the environment. They represent a major public health problem around the world due to our close relationship with animals in agriculture, as companions and in the natural environment. Zoonoses can also cause disruptions in the production and trade of animal products for food and other uses.

Zoonoses comprise a large percentage of all newly identified infectious diseases as well as many existing ones. Some diseases, such as HIV, begin as a zoonosis but later mutate into human-only strains. Other zoonoses can cause recurring disease outbreaks, such as Ebola virus disease and salmonellosis. Still others, such as the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19, have the potential to cause global pandemics. [my yellow highlighting]

North Coast Voices readers may have noticed that "zoonoses" are mentioned in "Climate-sensitive health risks" and that zoonoses, as one of the nine categories listed  as such health risks in the graphic insert, are considered to be strongly mediated by environmental, social and public health determinants.

It may be that a potential exists for the SARS-CoV-2 virus to alter its nature in unexpected ways as the climate continues to change. If Australia's response to the virus remains almost entirely politically driven as it has been since the second half of 2021 and does not return swiftly to a predominately science based policy and public health implementation, then any increase in virulence will likely markedly weaken the nation's social and economic bonds. Alternatively, if a new highly infectious zoonosis with significant morbidity emerges and, because our governments and their health agencies have not leant the lessons of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the nation will not be anymore prepared than it was in January 2020.

Quote of the Week

 

‘Numerous investigative reports have revealed that the former President, through the complex arrangements of his personal and business finances, has engaged in aggressive tax strategies and decades-long tax avoidance schemes, including taking a questionable $916 million deduction, using a grantor trust to control assets, manipulating tax code provisions pertaining to real estate taxes, and extensively using pass-through entities. Media reports have also revealed that he benefited from massive conservation easements, and that certain of his golf courses failed to properly account for wages paid to employees, raising questions about compliance with payroll and Social Security tax laws. As President, he took pride in “brilliantly” maneuvering the tax laws to his personal benefit. Even as he was championing the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, the former President referred to the tax code as “riddled with loopholes” for “special interests—including myself.” ’

[US Congress, House Committee on Ways and Means, 20 December 2022, “REPORT ON THE INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE'S MANDATORY AUDIT PROGRAM UNDER THE PRIOR ADMINISTRATION (2017-2020)”, a review of taxation law and an the examination of former president Donald J. Trump’s federal income tax returns requested on 16 June 2021 & received between 30 November 2022 and 11 December 2022]

Tweet of the Week

 

From the 'Shared Sky' exhibition, 'Jupiter and Ten Moons' by Indigenous Australian artist Barbara Merritt #WomensArt pic.twitter.com/cbW6yGYBcm

— #WOMENSART (@womensart1) December 29, 2022

 

Global oil and gas industries make a combined US$4 billion in profit a day (or US$1 trillion annually) & have done so for the past 50 years. That obscene wealth is thought to be how these industries induce politicians & governments to only pay lip service to the urgency of a world-wide climate emergency which is now lived experience

 

“It’s a huge amount of money,” he said. “You can buy every politician, every system with all this money, and I think this happened. It protects [producers] from political interference that may limit their activities.....The rents captured by exploiting the natural resources are unearned. It’s real, pure profit. They captured 1% of all the wealth in the world without doing anything for it.”

[Prof Aviel Verbruggen, one of the lead authors of a 2012 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) special report & current Emeritus Professor Energy and Environmental Economics, University of Antwerp, Belgium, quoted in The Guardian, 21 July 2022]

Crikey, 8 December 2022, reprinted in Crikey Holiday Read, 5 January 2023:

‘Short of dictatorships, we are world leaders’: Australia’s record on criminalising environmental protest

MAEVE MCGREGOR

'The jailing of peaceful protesters is chilling for anyone who cares about our democracy — we need to restore and protect the right to protest before it’s too late.'

“After the High Court’s decision on the Franklin River on 1 July 1983,” said Bob Brown to Crikey, referring to the famous Tasmanian dam case during which he was arrested, “I stated we had entered a new era of environmentalism and that it would never be so hard as it was in the Franklin campaign.”

“I was totally wrong.”

Nearly 40 years on since the historic victory — in which the Commonwealth government succeeded in stopping the large hydroelectric Franklin Dam being built in Tasmania — the founder and former leader of the Greens was once again arrested, but this time under newly introduced laws that carry $13,000 fines or two years’ imprisonment for protests on a forestry site. The same laws also impose $45,000 fines on organisations, such as the Bob Brown Foundation, which lend support to such protests.

Far from heralding a new dawn for environmental justice, Brown said, the Franklin campaign had proved something of an aberration.

“We now have a situation across Australia where environmentalists are jailed and environmental exploiters are protected and subsidised,” he said of his arrest a few weeks ago.

“Instead of increasing environmental protection, we have laws that do the reverse — laws which foster the self-made environmental tragedy of this planet.”…..

Criminalising climate activism

The larger and more pressing dilemma, Brown said, — and one which belongs to the current age — is the growing tendency of government to criminalise peaceful protest, while climate breakdown and mass extinction envelop the world, forever sealing its fate.

In August, Victoria’s opposition united with the Andrews government to pass laws comparable to Tasmania’s, running roughshod over a chorus of concerns voiced by civil liberties groups, unions and environmentalists.

Three years earlier, in 2019, the Queensland government rushed through sweeping limits on the right to protest, underpinned by unsubstantiated claims of “extremist” conduct by environmentalists. The resulting legislation expanded police search powers and criminalised “dangerous locking devices” — such as superglue or anything activists might use to secure themselves to pavement or buildings — as a means to silence dissent.

And in New South Wales, concerns about traffic disruption were similarly seized upon following climate protests in Sydney and Port Botany earlier this year to hurry the introduction of two-year jail terms and $22,000 fines for “illegal protests”.

The laws, which criminalise “illegal protests” on rail lines, bridges, tunnels and — most contentiously — public roads, were passed within two days with the unqualified support of the Labor opposition mere weeks after the government flagged a crackdown on environmentalists.

Though seemingly aimed at “anarchist protesters”, as NSW Attorney-General Mark Speakman put it, the breadth of the provisions suggests otherwise.

“Because the provisions are so loosely drafted, so imprecise, the laws can apply to almost any situation of people being on a road,” said Coco’s lawyer, Mark Davis.

“The Roads Minister Natalie Ward didn’t know herself if ‘public road’ meant ‘major road’ or any and every road. It’s a disgrace. It gives police an unlimited, utterly arbitrary discretion to arrest anyone on a road protesting about anything, not just climate.

“Short of some prominent dictatorships, we are world leaders with this kind of legislation. And the courts, or at least one court, has shown us the gun is loaded and they’re willing to fire it.”

Disruption and democracy

Against the backdrop of this legislation, now the subject of constitutional challenge, environmental demonstrators across Australia have regularly been denied bail or otherwise forced to contend with disproportionate bail conditions, while those residing in New South Wales have had espionage activities undertaken against them by a new police unit, Strike Force Guard.

In a statement to Crikey on Wednesday, New South Wales Deputy Premier and Minister for Police Paul Toole defended the laws.

“Illegal protests that disrupt everyday life, whether it’s transport networks, freight chains, production lines or commuters trying to get to work or school, will not be tolerated,” he said.

It was a sentiment shared by Premier Dominic Perrottet, who days earlier labelled Coco’s 15-month prison sentence “pleasing to see”, adding “if protesters want to put our way of life at risk, then they should have the book thrown at them”.

In answer, the famous physicist and climate scientist Bill Hare said, via Twitter, that the inconvenience occasioned by “protest is not comparable to [the] catastrophic risk to [the] environment and serious damage to our way of life caused by fossil fuel emissions”.

Hare — the lead author for the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, for which the IPCC was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize — added that Perrottet’s statement was one of the “most regressive, anti-democratic statements” he could recall in Australia “for a long time”. [my yellow highlighting]

It’s a view which throws the shifting definition of what is deemed lawful dissent into sharp relief, Ray Yoshida of the Australian Democracy Network told Crikey.

“It’s doublespeak for the NSW government to say they support protests as long as they don’t break the law, and then pass new laws that shrink the space for people to act,” he said.

“The jailing of peaceful protesters is chilling for anyone who cares about our democracy — we need to restore and protect the right to protest before it’s too late.”

Had such laws existed at the time of many of Australia’s historic environmental wins — from the Franklin River to the Kakadu and Jabiluka blockades — many, perhaps all, would have met with failure.

“There’s no doubt these laws would certainly have had an adverse impact on bringing to the public’s attention the Franklin Dam issue and, for that matter, a range of issues that have been brought to prominence in the public’s mind because of protests,” Greg Barns SC of the Australian Lawyers Alliance said.

He added people too often overlooked the hundreds of arrests which occurred during the Franklin River campaign, but under ordinary trespass laws that impose lesser penalties.

“The reason [the new laws] are unnecessary is because there are already ample laws on the statute books, such as laws relating to trespass, criminal damage, that deal with these types of situations if people break the law,” he said.

“What [Coco’s] sentence shows is that these new laws are draconian. Her sentence is a draconian penalty allowed for by a draconian law.”

Why now?

Given ours is the age of looming, if not inevitable, climate disaster, all of this poses the inevitable question: why the crackdown on environmentalists?

In Brown’s view, it’s no accident of history the techniques used by campaigners in the past are being targeted by government. It’s a phenomenon, he said, which conversely owes its existence to “state capture” by the fossil fuel and logging industries.

“The extractive industries, who want to convert nature into profits, can no longer win the argument with the public on the environment, so they have to ‘take out’ the environmentalists,” he said.

“These laws are meant to kill environmental activism and frighten people into silence.”

In this connection, there’s little denying climate anxiety, and concomitant calls for climate action pose a risk to such corporations.

A recent analysis of World Bank data undertaken by Belgian energy and environmental economist Aviel Verbruggen, a former lead author of an IPCC report, found the oil and gas industry had delivered more than $4 billion in profit every day for the past 50 years.

Following the report’s release, Verbruggen said: “You can buy every politician, every system with all this money, and I think this happened here. It protects [polluters] from political interference that may limit their activities.”

While Brown doesn’t believe any Australian politicians have been bribed or “bought”, so to speak, he said the lobbying power of the industry was obvious, both on a domestic and global level.

“By and large, [our politicians] are just suborned by this lobbying tour de force, which is not being matched by the non-governmental sector, which is the guardian of the environment,” he said.

“The striking similarity between Australian [anti-protest] legislation and the UK’s legislation is a clue which indicates we’ve got a global corporate governance.”

To buttress this view, Brown pointed to the $700 billion in taxpayer subsidies received by oil and gas companies globally in 2021.

Viewed in this context, he said, the anti-protest laws were self-evidently designed to shatter the unity underpinning the rise of collective, society-wide pressure to move on climate action.

Environmental Justice Australia ecosystems lawyer Natalie Hogan agreed the laws were a “politically motivated crackdown on legitimate political expression”, and ones that illustrated the efficacy of environmental campaigns.

“These protests provide very important community oversight,” she said in reference to the illegal logging in Victorian forests exposed by environmental demonstrators and citizen science groups in recent years.

“It seems very inconsistent to [tell Victorians] native logging will end by 2030, and then introduce laws that disproportionately criminalise or penalise people engaged in legitimate protests or citizen science in forests.”

Others, however, believe the anti-protest laws represent yet another skirmish on the law-and-order politics theme.

“Banging the law-and-order drum has been fashionable for over 20 years,” Greg Barns said. “I think that’s the issue at play here — it just so happens to be climate change in this instance.”

“The irony is that it will probably have the impact of emboldening protesters to take more extreme action because they see the laws as unjust.”

The future of protests

Not everyone has cast doubt on the deterrent effect of the laws, though. Coco’s lawyer Davis said the laws — which he defined as a “knee-jerk response to tabloid media” — would achieve their desired result.

“Of course it will work — who would be insane enough to organise any sort of free protest? You can go to jail for a long time. It’s nuts,” he said.

Either way, Davis added, it’s clear such laws were placing the limits of Australia’s reputation as a liberal democracy under extraordinary pressure.

“You cannot be a fully functional democracy if you cannot voice dissent to the government power,” he said. “It’s simply impossible.”

“To be on a road, to use a road, is intrinsic to the right to protest and the fact that’s now seen as somehow radical tells you about the cultural shift we’re witnessing.”

Brown, for his part, believes it would be foolish to bet on a decline in environmental protest, notwithstanding the laws, given the climate predicament confronting the globe.....

“But ultimately responsibility for [change will] fall to voters..... 

“These laws will only continue to get worse if people don’t vote for the environment.”

After all, he said, dealing with global warming and the extinction crisis is, and always has been, about the balance of power.

BACKGROUND

North Coast Voices, Monday, 2 January 2023,

Who is undermining Australia’s climate change mitigation goals? Listing lobbyists contracted to act on behalf of fossil fuel industries.

Outages still plaguing social media platform, Twitter Inc. is not paying its California landlords, Elon has a garage sale & announces he is opening the platform up to political advertising in the lead-up to the US presidential election

Twitter, 4 January 2023

Elon Musk's 'faster', smarter, more informative, Twitter social media platform has been displaying the agility of dial-up Internet access in late 1990s rural and regional Australia.

Commencing at around 5am on Wednesday 4 January 2023 the numbers began to build for problems when accessing Twitter via website or app, notifications nowhere to be seen and, problems uploading to the site or having a tweet accepted. The degree of buffering was impressive, as was the alerts that something was wrong and try again.

Twitter's underwhelming performance appeared to be affecting users in Australia and New Zealand.

A Downdetector graph showing the beginnings of the user-reported problem from 2.03pm on Tuesday 3 January up to 1.48pm on Wednesday 4 January 2023 in Australia. 

More people appear to have been reporting problems in New Zealand.

Meanwhile on the morning of 4 January The Guardian newspaper revealed that Twitter Inc. is being sued for over $136,260 in unpaid rent on its California Street branch in San Francisco after Elon Musk's takeover. The landlord of 650 California Street has filed a lawsuit seeking back rent, as well as payment of attorney’s fees and other expenses.

The Guardian went on to say:

The company’s headquarters are located at another San Francisco address, 1355 Market Street, where Twitter has also reportedly fallen behind on rent, according to the New York Times. 

In addition to not paying rent and laying off workers, Musk’s Twitter is also auctioning off high-end office furniture, kitchen equipment and other relics from the past, when Twitter had over 7,500 full-time workers around the world and free lunch and other office perks were common. Some three-quarters of Twitter’s employee base is estimated to have left the company, either because they were laid off, fired or quit. 

Among the items Twitter is auctioning off are a pizza oven, a 40-quart commercial kitchen floor mixer (retails for around $18,000; bidding starts at $25), and high-end designer furniture such as Eames chairs from Herman Miller and Knoll Diamond chairs that retail in the thousands. 

Even a Twitter bird statue (bidding starts at $25) and a neon Twitter bird light display (bidding starts at $50) are up for grabs in this fire sale-style auction reminiscent of the dotcom bust of the early 2000s when failed tech startups were selling off their decadent office wares.

In yet another reversal of Twitter Inc's established policies, Musk announced he will allow political advertising on the ailing platform commencing sometime in 2023. 

It is no coincidence that 2023 will see the contest between candidates seeking party endorsement heat up ahead of the November 2024 US presidential election.

Wall Street Journal, 4 January 2023:

Twitter Inc. plans to expand the political advertisements it allows on the social-media platform after banning most of them in 2019, in the latest policy change by new owner Elon Musk.

The company also said Tuesday that it is relaxing its policy for cause-based ads in the U.S., which are ads that call for people to take action, educate and raise awareness in connection with the following categories: civic engagement, economic growth, environmental stewardship or social-equity causes.

In the coming weeks, the company said it would "align our advertising policy with that of TV and other media outlets," according to tweets from the Twitter Safety account. It didn't specify what that means and said it would "share more details as this work progresses." Twitter didn't respond to a request for comment.

Twitter largely banned political ads in November 2019, taking the opposite approach of social-media competitor Facebook at the time. Jack Dorsey, who was then chief executive of Twitter, said of the decision: "We believe political message reach should be earned, not bought."

The policy came with some exceptions that allowed for ads in support of certain politics-related topics such as voter registration. At the time, political advertising represented only a small portion of Twitter's overall advertising revenue.

Advertising in general has been a heated topic since Mr. Musk completed his $44 billion takeover of the company in October. Like many social-media companies, most of Twitter's revenue comes from advertising -- in 2021, roughly 89% of the $5.1 billion that the business brought in was from ads.

Some companies paused ad spending on the platform after the takeover amid uncertainty over how Mr. Musk planned to run the company…..

But as of Dec. 18, about 70% of Twitter's top 100 ad spenders from before the takeover weren't spending on the platform, according to an analysis of data from research firm Pathmatics…..

Meanwhile, Musk's obsession with morphing Twitter into something other than a global social media platform sees this rumour about his engagement with Tesla Inc. surface.....

The New York Observer, 3 January 2023:

Elon Musk has reportedly named a deputy at Tesla amid shareholder pressure for him to resign as the electric carmaker’s CEO after its stock price tumbled 70 percent in 2022 and deliveries missed expectations. Zhu Xiaotong, who goes by Tom Zhu, is head of Tesla China and was promoted to oversee the company’s U.S. factories and sales operations in all of North America and Europe, Reuters reported today (Jan. 3).

Shareholders didn’t appear to think much of the news, as Tesla shares had fallen 13 percent by mid-afternoon.

An internal organizational chart reviewed by Reuters shows Zhu has retained his title as Tesla’s vice president for Greater China. But the new responsibilities in North America and Europe effectively make him the highest-level executive at Tesla after CEO Musk.

The promotion was confirmed by two anonymous sources who Reuters said had seen the new organizational chart. Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment….

Tesla’s China chief is rumored to be Musk’s successor

Zhu, who graduated from university in 2004 and holds a New Zealand passport, according to Chinese tech news site 36kr, joined Tesla in 2014 from an infrastructure background. He was credited for growing production capacity significantly at Tesla’s Shanghai Gigafactory, which opened in 2019 and is now Tesla’s most productive plant in the world….

The New York Observer, 3 January 2023:

Elon Musk has reportedly named a deputy at Tesla amid shareholder pressure for him to resign as the electric carmaker’s CEO after its stock price tumbled 70 percent in 2022 and deliveries missed expectations. Zhu Xiaotong, who goes by Tom Zhu, is head of Tesla China and was promoted to oversee the company’s U.S. factories and sales operations in all of North America and Europe, Reuters reported today (Jan. 3).

Shareholders didn’t appear to think much of the news, as Tesla shares had fallen 13 percent by mid-afternoon.

An internal organizational chart reviewed by Reuters shows Zhu has retained his title as Tesla’s vice president for Greater China. But the new responsibilities in North America and Europe effectively make him the highest-level executive at Tesla after CEO Musk.

The promotion was confirmed by two anonymous sources who Reuters said had seen the new organizational chart. Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment….

Tesla’s China chief is rumored to be Musk’s successor

Zhu, who graduated from university in 2004 and holds a New Zealand passport, according to Chinese tech news site 36kr, joined Tesla in 2014 from an infrastructure background. He was credited for growing production capacity significantly at Tesla’s Shanghai Gigafactory, which opened in 2019 and is now Tesla’s most productive plant in the world….