With the next round of United Nations climate talks scheduled for November, eyes will be trained on how the United States chooses to engage — or not — now that President Donald Trump is withdrawing the country from the landmark Paris Climate Agreement. Yesterday, Secretary of State and former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson indicated that this process will not happen through the State Department’s Special Envoy for Climate Change, because, well, he’s scrapping the position.

In a letter to Senate Foreign Relations chair Bob Corker (R-TN), Tillerson wrote, “I believe that the Department will be able to better execute its mission by integrating certain envoys and special representative offices within the regional and functional bureaus, and eliminating those that have accomplished or outlived their original purpose.”

As Climate Home reported:

“The position of climate envoy was established by Barack Obama in 2009 and was filled by Todd Stern until 2016. The envoy for Obama’s last year in office was Jonathan Pershing, who left the political appointment when the government changed in January this year.

The special envoy was the US’ diplomatic figurehead, a position Stern used to become one of the major forces behind the eventual shape of the Paris deal, right down to the 11th hour wrangling over a troublesome ‘typo’ in the text.”

The move came as part of a larger streamlining and reorganizing of the State Department, which for months has been scaling back its focus on climate issues.

Shortly after Trump’s inauguration, the State Department’s web page for the Office of Global Change, which operates under the climate envoy, switched up its description, replacing most of the original text with more passive language.

read more:

https://www.desmogblog.com/2017/08/30/tillerson-scraps-us-climate-envoy-...

The CONservative of Australia will give lip service to the problem of global warming — saying one thing and doing another... This is high bullshit from Kanbra... 

Next week, the high court will hear a challenge to the same-sex marriage postal plebiscite, and determine whether that proposal lives or dies. If it dies, and constitutional law experts such as George Williams suspect it will, marriage equality will fly back in the direction of the parliament like a small, dangerous torpedo.

The dual citizenship imbroglio, meanwhile, thunders on, cluttering up the landscape and potentially imperilling the government’s lower house majority.

In the midst of all this uncertainty, the government is quietly piecing together the elements of its energy policy.

On Friday, the government will receive one critical input. The Australian Energy Market Operator has been asked to take a close look at Australia’s requirements for baseload power at a time when ageing coal-fired generators are starting to leave the system.

The government needs this technical information because it will influence a range of decisions it will attempt to make in the next little while.

I want to do readers a favour now and strip out all the rancid internals, ignore, for a moment, the fact that Tony Abbott (amplified by his media boosters and backers) intends to pursue Malcolm Turnbull doggedly with his “coal is good for humanity” campaign as the prime minister attempts to settle the government’s response to the Finkel review.

I suspect we’ll hear enough about the intrigues shortly. For now, let’s just focus on the substance, minus all the migraine-inducing Game of Thrones madness.

Right now the government is looking at a national electricity grid where renewables are coming on rapidly, gas power is very expensive and ageing coal assets are heading for retirement.

read more: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/sep/01/malcolm-turnbull-often-talks-about-wicked-problems-right-now-hes-waist-deep-in-them

Apart from a success in regard to Peter Wright's Spycatcher, Mal's life as a Barrister is somewhat sketchy and short as the Gadfly reminds us — getting a huge flea in his ear from Justice David Hunt... Mal's oratory skills are more simplistic rumbles than smart tramples. He may have been thinking he was cleverer and that problems would evaporate by not attacking Turdy-the-dog who is doing anything to gnaw at Trumble's bones. The MMMMS ((Murdoch's mediocre mass media de Scheiße) news is doing everything to promote Little Shit, while the rest of the MMMM (mediocre mass media de mierda) is doing everything to point out that Trumble is "a nice guy" up to his neck in it by being pissweak and trying to please everybody and please no-one. And like Kleine Scheiße (little shit) Abbott, he has lied, lied and will lie — but with a difference as he tries not to. Malmuddle Trumble is eating his own constipated excrement — I mean his own policies that are nether here nor there, while banging the atmosphere with a couple of infirm fists, as if he was trying to be firm and soft at the same time. It does not work. By 2022, when AGL pulls out of "coal fired power stations", all the infrastructure of the new generation of electricity should be in place and at the rate global warming is running presently, COAL POWER SHOULD NOT HAVE A PLACE IN THE MIX — not here, nor in the USA, nor in India (with Adani and his mates). 

This leaves very little room to make proper hard decisions and South Australia has shown the way. Who cares about the price of kilowatts when the cheaper they are by burning SUBSIDISED coal, the more we destroy the planet and "her" future. With renewables, the price of kilowatts WILL become cheaper in the long run ANYWAY. The coal solution is only a way for polluting coal producers to make a buck at our expense. 

Trumble, it's time to bite the bullet, be firm and tell all your mates to go and play in the middle of the highway... Renewables are the future.

WA Liberal Party members have passed a WAxit motion for a committee to examine if the state could become financially independent.

• Man behind motion says WA is getting dudded by Canberra
• The motion called for the state council to "examine the option of WA becoming a financially independent state"
• WA Liberal leader Mike Nahan voted against the motion

The motion was put forward at the party's state conference by Rick Palmer from the brand division who argued WA was getting dudded by Canberra.

"It wasn't a brainstorm one morning, this came out of the fact that a group of us had been talking to people expressing an anger at the way the federation's treating Western Australia," he said.

"It doesn't just go to the GST. We send a significant amount of revenue in the form of income tax ... capital gains tax, superannuation contributions' tax all goes to Canberra.

"Our premiers and our treasurers go over there like Oliver Twist and come back with an empty begging bowl.

"It's not reasonable and something has to change."

read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-09-03/wa-liberal-party-to-form-wa-exit-c...

Growth is at best sluggish, certainly compared to the rest of the world, which has generally recovered from the depredations of the global financial crisis rather more robustly than has Australia. Admittedly the rest of the world fell faster and further — it did not have Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan to cushion the impact. But the current figures make it plain that Australia is lagging, and continues to lag.

And as for jobs, the Government is relying on spin to produce alternate facts rather than the harsh reality households (and of course hard-working families) have to suffer. It is true that some jobs have been created but most of them are part time jobs; the percentage of workers with full-time work (and remember, that can mean only one day a month) is down from 2013.

Hours worked have, inevitably, decreased to an historic low. Long term and youth unemployment have soared. On any objective assessment, the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd regime was considerably more successful than the Abbott-Turnbull replacement.

Turnbull and his spin doctors continue to blame Labor, or the rest of the world, or just about anyone and anything for their own failings; if forced to admit that things aren’t actually rosy, they fall back on the rejoinder that even if there are problems, things would be worse under Labor and its (shudder) “socialists”.

The problem is that history shows otherwise. But history, as Henry Ford pointed out, is bunk. We may revere the lies on statues of Captain Cook, so why not the lies on the economy? Next week: Shorten reincarnates as Darth Vader.

read more:

https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/mungo-maccall...

By maintaining the archaic Liddell power plant Malcolm Turnbull is only appeasing the fuel lobby and the right wing of the COALition — everyone else, even AGL is against it, writes Giles Parkinson.

THE KINDEST thing to say about Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s absurd proposal to extend the life of the country’s oldest coal generator is that he is playing politics.

Certainly, there is no other reason to ask that AGL Energy to stick a band-aid on what will be a 50-year-old and increasingly decrepit coal generator on the basis that it will lead to increased security and lower prices.

read more:

https://independentaustralia.net/environment/environment-display/turnbul...

read from top...

Apparently, Turbullshot was at it last night in Parliament, arguing that he was not dealing in "ideology" but in keeping the price of energy as low as possible... Let me remind the turd Malcolm — I call him turd, because he has reached the depth of Turdy Abbott intellectual buggery that one could quote a certain Sydney Smith about a certain Macaulay who could not start a sentence by claiming "every (schoolboy, person, one — choose) knows": "He not only overflowed with learning, but stood in the slop." 

Malcolm, the super-richest of all Prime Ministers of this getting-unfair nation under his command and that of his turdy predecessor, has the gall to deride the rich geezer who is running AGL for being rich. That is the rich kettle calling the pot black. 

There is no ideology in going clean energy. Clean coal is a deceitful oxymoron. Renewables are the only way of the future and the future is now. The targets set by the Paris agreement which Trump has shat upon, are an unsatisfactory minimum anyway. Global warming is not a game of chicken. It demands leadership and a clear vision. 

Get your fucking head out of your arse, Malcolm.

See toon at top.