Thursday 1 September 2011
Calculating the emotional and mental health cost of global climate change
Excerpts from The Climate Institute’s August 2011 twenty-eight page report A Climate of Suffering: The Real Costs of Living with Inaction on Climate Change:
Scientists warn that a failure to reverse rising carbon pollution levels will see Australia’s inherently moody climate become even more volatile. With inaction or delay on pollution comes a sharp rise in the frequency, intensity and extent of heatwaves, bushfires and drought, as well as more torrential downpours, and tropical storms with increasing ferocity.2
The damage caused by a changing climate is not just physical. Recent experience shows extreme weather events also pose a serious risk to public health, including mental health and community wellbeing, with serious flow-on consequences for the economy and wider society.3 ……….
· Following a severe weather event, a significant part of the community—as many as one in five4—will suffer the debilitating effects of extreme stress, emotional injury and despair. Unabated, a more hostile climate will spell a substantial rise in the incidence of post-traumatic stress, anxiety and depression — all at great personal suffering and, consequently, social and economic cost.
· The emotional and psychological toll of disasters can linger for months, even years, affecting whole families, the capacity for people to work and the wellbeing of the community. Higher rates of drug and alcohol misuse, violence, family dissolution, and suicide are more likely to follow more extreme weather events. Evidence is beginning to emerge that drought and heat waves lead to higher rates of self-harm and suicide, as much as 8 per cent5 higher.
· Mental illness is already the second largest contributor to the disease burden in Australia. In any given year, one in five Australians suffers from a mental disorder of some kind, potentially making millions of people more vulnerable to mental ill-health in an increasingly hostile climate.6
· The treatment and management of mental health problems already costs taxpayers over $5 billion per year,7 while the cost in lost productivity is estimated at another $2.7 billion8—costs set to rise in a changing climate. Mental health problems also tend to coalesce with economic and social ones, meaning that the overall toll is likely to be larger still.
· Employment and cost-of-living impacts usually precede a mental health toll: in the recent drought, for example, 2004 figures indicate that around one in four rural workers had lost their job—about 100,000 agricultural workers, contractors and those employed in allied businesses.9 By 2007, prolonged dry conditions had eroded Australians’ quality of life, in dollar terms, to the tune of approximately $5.4 billion.10 At the same time, the cost of the average grocery bill for all Australian households rose 12 per cent;11 stark evidence of the affect on the cost of living by extreme weather events and a foretaste of worse to come without action on climate change.
· Rural, regional, remote and peri-urban communities are particularly exposed in a deteriorating climate. Climate change compounds the chronic difficulties and inequities that already face many communities—Indigenous as well as non-Indigenous. Already, many parts of the country find it hard to recruit dedicated health care and social service professionals. Climate change will almost certainly increase the demand for social support and mental health services and, at the same time, make it harder to sustain them in affected areas.
· Climate change will render already stressful resource-use conflicts—like those in the Murray-Darling Basin—even more volatile and damaging to the health and wellbeing of individuals and communities.
· In the long term, there is a heightened risk of stress and tension amongst both newcomers and their host communities as people are forced to move permanently and en masse in response to a rapidly shifting climate. The loss of a sense of place—particularly for Indigenous peoples—may magnify and complicate the mental and emotional pressures.
· Children, in particular, are vulnerable to pre-disaster anxiety and post-trauma illness. Adults’ failure to act on climate change may, like the indecision that perpetuated the Cold War, lead to long-lived insecurity and anxiety in young people.
· Even for those not directly affected by an extreme weather event, news of loved ones lost or property damaged, together with the sheer the enormity of disasters like the Queensland floods—often magnified by media coverage—can be distressing and debilitating.
Andy's back with his flight feathers clipped
Labels:
journalists,
News Limited,
other Rat Bags
Wednesday 31 August 2011
Australian High Court: Federal Government has "no power" to remove asylum seekers to Malaysia [excerpts & link to full transcript]
On 25 July 2011 the Gillard Government announced an agreement with Malaysia to transfer asylum seekers arriving by boat in Australia waters to Malaysian territory, after the agreement was legally in effect. This decision was challenged by application to the High Court of Australia.
Here are excerpts from Plaintiff M70/2011 v Minister for Immigration and Citizenship; Plaintiff M106 of 2011 v Minister for Immigration and Citizenship [2011] HCA 32 (31 August 2011).
FRENCH CJ, GUMMOW, HAYNE, HEYDON, CRENNAN, KIEFEL AND BELL JJ presiding.
FRENCH CJ.:
Conclusion
68. The ministerial declaration of 25 July 2011 was affected by jurisdictional error. It was not a declaration authorised by s 198A of the Migration Act. The plaintiffs cannot therefore be taken to Malaysia pursuant to the power conferred by s 198A(1). Nor is it open to any officer of the Commonwealth to remove the plaintiffs to Malaysia pursuant to s 198(2) of the Migration Act without first assessing their claims to be persons to whom Australia owes protection obligations.
69. In relation to M106, I agree for the reasons explained in the joint judgment[72] that he cannot be removed from Australia without the prior consent in writing of the Minister under the IGOC Act. I agree with the orders proposed in the joint judgment.
GUMMOW, HAYNE, CRENNAN AND BELL JJ.:
Conclusion and orders
148. For the reasons that have been given, the Minister's declaration that Malaysia is a specified country for the purposes of s 198A of the Act was made without power. There should be a declaration to that effect. The Minister may not lawfully take either plaintiff from Australia to Malaysia and the Minister should be restrained accordingly. In addition, in the case of the second plaintiff, the Minister should be further restrained from taking the second plaintiff from Australia without there being a consent in writing of the Minister given under s 6A(1) of the IGOC Act. The defendants should pay the plaintiffs' costs of the proceedings to date before Hayne J and the Full Court.
KIEFEL J.:
Conclusion and orders
258. There was no power to make the declaration of 25 July 2011. Because the declaration is invalid, there is no power to remove the plaintiffs to Malaysia. Any attempt to do so would be unlawful. In the case of Plaintiff M106, his removal from Australia to any country is also unlawful absent the consent of the Minister in his capacity as guardian of Plaintiff M106.
259. I agree with the orders proposed in the joint judgment.
HEYDON J.:
Conclusion
199. It is not necessary to deal with an alternative argument advanced by the defendants which relied on s 198 of the Act.
200. Each Amended Application should be dismissed with costs.
Full judgment transcript here.
Illness became muse for Poet Lorikeet (sourced from smh, 30/8/11)
Labels:
playwright,
poet,
Rod Gibson,
storyteller
Robert Briseno and Kelly McFadden take on ConAgra Foods Inc over deceptive GMO food labelling
According to the Food Court blog:
two separate class-action suits (McFadden et al v. ConAgra Foods Inc., in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, no. 11-3186; Briseno et al v. ConAgra Foods Inc., in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, no. 11-5379) seek millions of dollars in refunds on behalf of recent purchasers the Wesson oil line — including canola oil, vegetable oil, corn oil and a blend — as well as a court order prohibiting Con-Agra from making its all-natural claim on Wesson oils.
An application to merge Briseno et al with McFadden et al appears to have been lodged on 16 August 2011.
Robert Briseno et al versus ConAgra Foods Inc [2011]
Labels:
consumer choice,
food,
genetic manipulation,
GMO,
law,
safety
Ooopps! Google bombs again
Is Google Inc. getting so big that it can't keep an eye on its management staff or has You can make money without doing evil been tossed out the backdoor onto obsolete corporate philosophy pile?
Reuters 24th August 2011 - Google Inc has agreed to pay $500 million to settle a criminal probe into ads it accepted for online Canadian pharmacies selling drugs in the United States, the U.S. Justice Department said on Wednesday.
The advertisements led to illegal imports of prescription drugs into the country, the Justice Department said.The forfeiture is one of the largest ever in the United States, according to the department. It represents Google's revenue from Canadian pharmacy advertisements to U.S. customers through Google's AdWords program and Canadian pharmacies' revenue from U.S. sales.
Google had previously set aside that amount for a possible settlement over its advertising practices, according to a regulatory filing in May.
Google, the world's No. 1 Internet search engine, had $29 billion in gross revenue in 2010.
Labels:
Google Inc,
Internet
Tuesday 30 August 2011
The sweet sound of silence as Bolt gunned down
I don't think it is too long a bow to draw between Andrew Bolt eschewing political comment today.....
News Ltd issuing a statement and apologizing across a number of its banner heads.....
Clive Mathieson, editor of The Australian, said in a statement: ”We’re investigating the Prime Minister’s claim of inaccuracies in the story. As the correction points out, we regret that the PM was not given any chance to respond to the allegations. Glenn Milne remains a contributor to The Australian.”
Clive Mathieson, editor of The Australian, said in a statement: ”We’re investigating the Prime Minister’s claim of inaccuracies in the story. As the correction points out, we regret that the PM was not given any chance to respond to the allegations. Glenn Milne remains a contributor to The Australian.”
and this yesterday.........
The Australian - 16 hours ago
THE real import of the alleged brothel creeping scandal surrounding Craig Thomson has been missed. And it is this: key factions and unions within the Labor ...
Milne appears to have drawn on a Bolt blog for some of his 'ínformation'.
North Coast Voices Petering Time predicted a rocky road for Bolt in a 25 August post and it seems he was correct.
2011 may well be the year in which this so-called journalist is finally stripped of his Teflon ® coating.
UPDATE:
The disappointment is profound - Bolt promises to be back tomorrow ;-)
UPDATE
Afrer discussions, I now feel free to speak my mind. So I shall. In tomorrow’s column. I apologise for the mysteriousness, but I did not want to act in anger or before matters had been resolved. I had to be fair to my employer and to my readers, and I apologise if you think I’ve had the balance wrong over the past 24 hours.
Thank you to everyone who has rung, emailed or commented on this post, here and on radio.
Labels:
ethics,
journalists,
News Limited,
right wing politics
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