Ten Hiroshima atomic bombs, every second of the year, of fossil fuel heat in the oceans has once again lambasted Australia. Historic climate floods deluged parts of Queensland and New South Wales.
These god-awful once in 100 years’ floods made the 2011 and 2020 climate floods seem tame. They, too, were deadly.
Earlier this week, 40,000 people were evacuated and at least two are dead. The town of Windsor, about an hour northwest of Sydney, the largest city in the nation, was smashed by the Hawkesbury River, which rose an astonishing 42.6 feet (13m), not in days, but in hours. Unprecedented.
Allow me to remind you that for each degree Celsius (1.8F) increase, the atmosphere holds an additional seven percent more moisture. In 2020, Australia experienced a 1.44C (2.59F) increase in average yearly temperature. Hence, when it now rains it pours.
From March 18-23, a giant saturated low pressure parked itself over Queensland and much of New South Wales. It unloaded a staggering volume of water. In a single day, north of Brisbane, the capital of Queensland, the heavens unleashed a torrent of 20 inches (508mm) of rainfall.
South of Brisbane into New South Wales, 40 inches (1016mm) tumbled from the clouds onto the land. In that region, the accumulated precipitation during the month of March exceeded the average rainfall for one year.
What we need is a disobedient uprising. So, join the Youth Strike 4 Climate and become a climate agitator and protestor.
This extreme climate flooding event occurred about 14 months after the worst Aussie climate fires (~31 million acres) in recorded history, which inflicted $110 billion in destruction.
Alas, the toll is far more than just economics. Those firestorms were an ecological holocaust. They incinerated or wounded three billion of our kith and kin, the animals – an estimate three times higher than previously reported.
These March climate floods drowned hundreds of cattle and horses and untold numbers of marsupials, reptiles, amphibians and insects.
The man-made climate catastrophe is fueling the man-driven Sixth Mass Extinction and life within Australia is in dire jeopardy. In order for this continent to remain habitable, burning fossil fuels must grind to a halt, yesterday.
Instead, climate-denying Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s Liberal Party freely subsidizes fossil fuels by at least $29 billion per annum. Including handing $4.4 billion to the Indian billionaire, Gautam Adani, to dig up more coal, pollute the largest and deepest aquifer in the world, the Great Artesian Basin, and fricassee what remains of the Great Barrier Reef (the largest collection of planetary reefs).
Morrison is a puppet of the fossil fuel oligarchs (and their corporations) and a global symbol for inaction in the face of mounting fossil fuel-stoked climate crises, e.g., climate fires, climate floods, climate victims.
Since 2016, avaricious bankers, including those of Westpac, ANZ, Commonwealth and 57 others, have financed the expansion of fossil fuels by $3.8 trillion. Scandalous!
Clearly, Morrison takes his dictation from these planet-killers not the Australian electorate. Morrison’s partner in crime is Aussie-born media tycoon, Rupert Murdoch. While the animals, forests and reefs perish; Murdoch’s polished anti-science disinformation spin machine serves hourly spoonfuls of “she’ll be right mate, no worries”. Diabolical.
In the meantime, other Aussie entrepreneurs are moving full steam ahead with the largest and most exciting zero-combustion play to date.
Image credit: RechargeNews
A $20 billion Sun Cable project, Australia to Singapore ‘Power Link’, includes a 10-gigawatt (GW) capacity array spread over 37,000 acres (~15,000ha) near Tennant Creek, Northern Territory.The battery storage capacity is stunning, 22-GW hours! The transmission lines will run to Darwin, the capital city, lighting up the Northern Territory’s grid. The bulk of the electricity, however, is intended for export along a high-voltage, direct current (DC) submarine cable that snakes its way through the Indonesian archipelago to Singapore. This Power Link will feed 20 percent of the island city-state’s daily electricity needs. That undersea DC cable from Oz to Singapore spans some 2,300 miles (~3,700km).
It has attracted millions of investment dollars from at least three Australian billionaires: Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forrest and Mike and Annie Cannon-Brookes.
“It’s a huge project, on a world scale. This is not big on an Australian scale, this is big on a world scale!” Mike Cannon-Brookes said.
It is a lighthouse project for Australia and all countries. Game on. There’s not any reason from this moment forth for banks, or any other public or private lending institutions, to loan one new penny to global heating fossil fuel projects. With the stroke of a pen, the Australian federal government could create a solar export tax, making coal mining redundant, tout suite.
Image credit: Justin McManus
What we need is a disobedient uprising. So, join the Youth Strike 4 Climate and become a climate agitator and protestor. Together we are an unstoppable force for goodness and defenders of the Gen Zs (under 26s) birthrights: unpolluted air and freshwater, living old-growth (native) rainforests, vibrant coral reefs and all life therein.
#LoveIsTheSolution
#LoveNature
#EndFossilFuelSubsidiesNOW
#ZeroCombustionEconomy2030
#NaturalClimateSolutions
#ConsumeLess
#GoVegan
#WalkMore
#Smile
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Dr Reese Halter is an award-winning broadcaster, distinguished conservation biologist and author.
Dr Reese Halter’s latest book is now available!
GenZ Emergency
Tweet @RelentlessReese
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