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COALING BEATS WARMING

Before last year’s election:

The CFMEU’s new anti-government ad features a coal miner calling for John Howard to sign the Kyoto protocol, and demanding a government that will “take climate change seriously”.

And now:

The Rudd Government and unions are preparing to reap the huge financial rewards of strong demand for Australia’s high-priced coal exports, despite the problems posed for Labor’s avowed green credentials. Amid an expected increase in accompanying carbon emissions from coal that Labor says it wants to limit, unions say Australian resource companies could open a further 10 mines and employ thousands more workers to take advantage of the boom in coal exports to China ...

The Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union is ready to welcome a bigger local mining workforce as members.

Bring on the global anti-coal protesters! A confrontation between them and CFMEU goons could be more fun than 2006’s meat and chains party.

Posted by Tim B. on 04/08/2008 at 08:40 PM
  1. Hehe ... cop that, Mr & Mrs Phatty ...

    Phatty’s input to the 2020 Wankfest: Young Kev, I’ve got this little problem with all of these coalmines in my backyard in the Hunter Valley (wiki: the world’s largest coal export port).

    Phatt chance!

    Posted by egg_ on 2008 04 08 at 08:54 PM • permalink

  2. Yeah, remember the CFMEU adverts for Kevvie 07.

    It’ll be interesting to see how they’re going to be all carbon neutral and keep working.

    Posted by kae on 2008 04 08 at 08:59 PM • permalink

  3. psst, Tim, the second link anti-government ad is broken I think.

    Posted by kae on 2008 04 08 at 09:01 PM • permalink

  4. Yeah, ain’t free trade a bitch?

    Over here in the US, Hillary, beholden to unions, is denouncing a Bush sponsored free trade pact between the US and Colombia because...um...it’ll hurt our domestic coffee growers and emerald miners?

    Meanwhile, we’re supposed to lift the Cuban trade embargo because Fidel is old and the plucky Cubans are literate and surprisingly healthy, given the evil Amerikkkan sanctions, so…

    Makes one’s head hurt.

    Posted by JDBagain on 2008 04 08 at 09:01 PM • permalink

  5. #2
    Perhaps automation of their jobs will liberate their consciences?

    Posted by egg_ on 2008 04 08 at 09:04 PM • permalink

  6. If the government really believed that carbon emissions were imperilling the world, then they wouldn’t sell coal to anybody, and nuke power stations would currently be well on the drawing board - thus...I don’t believe the government believes.

    Posted by Margos Maid on 2008 04 08 at 09:14 PM • permalink

  7. Get with the program, you people.  Fossil fuels lose their planet-killing capability once the right party is in power.

    Posted by RebeccaH on 2008 04 08 at 09:18 PM • permalink

  8. Don Aitken

    Posted by Pickles on 2008 04 08 at 09:21 PM • permalink

  9. I’m absolutely fascinated to watch how your new “fluently Mandarin” PM will handle all the internal contradictions of his followers (the environment - or “chums with China”?) while managing their diverse political expectations (Free Tibet - or “chums with China”?).

    Posted by JJM Ballantyne on 2008 04 08 at 09:22 PM • permalink

  10. #9
    Apparently Chinese students will be asking him questions.

    I hope there’s someone there who’s not suffering from Stockholm syndrome to report what he’s asked and what he replies with.

    Posted by kae on 2008 04 08 at 09:25 PM • permalink

  11. Not only are those evil miners raping the bowels of Gaia - if my drives to the wine areas of the Hunter are any indication, they are splurging their ill-gotten gains on Porsches, Monaros and other beasts that spew CO2 with wild abandon.

    Try telling a coal miner that he has to trade in his V8 for a prius.

    ha ha ha.

    Posted by mr creosote on 2008 04 08 at 09:38 PM • permalink

  12. #10
    Leply: Yellow cake and brown coal make Greens see red, but put us in the black ...

    Posted by egg_ on 2008 04 08 at 10:06 PM • permalink

  13. Where’s Arthur “Two Wongs don’t make a white” Caldwell when you need him.

    Posted by Pickles on 2008 04 08 at 10:11 PM • permalink

  14. #13 I don’t think we have to fear the pitty-patter of little Wongs, form what i have been told.

    Posted by entropy on 2008 04 08 at 10:27 PM • permalink

  15. You’re missing the point!

    The coal is being exported.

    Posted by rinardman on 2008 04 08 at 10:50 PM • permalink

  16. The CFMEU’s new anti-government ad features a coal miner calling for John Howard to sign the Kyoto protocol, and demanding a government that will “take climate change seriously”.

    Presumably he’d take it in good humour when higher coal prices relative to demand cause him and several dozen of his mates to become laid-off.

    Posted by hayesy on 2008 04 08 at 10:57 PM • permalink

  17. Seeing the CFMEU touches all the bases, perhaps they should be rebranded as
    the Anthropogenic Global Warming Enablers Union.

    Posted by lotocoti on 2008 04 08 at 10:59 PM • permalink

  18. OT. Massive picture and banner spread on the Age’s website hailing Marieke Hardy’s ‘win’ in a blog competition. Surely such cross promotion if done by a rival newspaper would create much scorn from Fairfaxistas.

    Posted by Nic on 2008 04 08 at 11:08 PM • permalink

  19. RUDD LIED, GAIA DIED.

    Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2008 04 08 at 11:42 PM • permalink

  20. Dear Sensible folk,
    I’m actually typing this in the office off the turbine hall of Yallourn Power Station I can see unit 1 about twenty metres away through the window, what a footprint, they sprinkle coal dust on their lunch down here.
    What I wanted to note was the coy way the expression “climate change” is replacing “global warming”, obliging highly respected journalists to spout frogshit like “Climate change is now happening even faster than the experts predicted” (Tim Colebatch, The Age). What on Earth does that mean? Didn’t some “expert” ten years ago predict that it was going to get warmer? “Faster change” means acceleration? And which aspect of the climate exactly is changing faster? “The capacity of the climate to provide evidentiary basis for our half-arsed and politically motivated pronouncements” perhaps.
    Then this morning, Kylie on Ellen De Generes’s show reporting that she was actually misdiagnosed and only found she had cancer after a second opinion. She then goes on to say sternly “Just because someone is wearing a white coat and has lots of expensive equipment doesn’t mean they are right” and the morning show hosts nod sagely.
    Except in the case of the climate of course! Of which we have much better opportunity to study up close than a clinician has to examines Kylie’s breasts!
    The idiocy is vast.

    Posted by ooh honey honey on 2008 04 08 at 11:48 PM • permalink

  21. #20 - OHH, where did you pick up the expression “frogshit”?

    I picked it up from a mate a few years back - I’m interested in how an expression like that spreads through society.

    Posted by mr creosote on 2008 04 08 at 11:52 PM • permalink

  22. Would it help if we painted the coal green before loading it for export?

    Maybe it would get an even highe price if it was labelled organic?

    Then again, by definition, coal is organic, so using it must be a good thing.  Right?

    Posted by mr creosote on 2008 04 08 at 11:57 PM • permalink

  23. ALP policy changes quicker than the climate.
    Depends on which Button is pressed.

    Posted by stackja1945 on 2008 04 09 at 12:37 AM • permalink

  24. My Dad I think, from many years ago. He sometimes prefaced it with “hopping” for extra value.
    Neologistic propagation is an interest of mine too. Blogs work great these days in that regard.

    Posted by ooh honey honey on 2008 04 09 at 12:37 AM • permalink

  25. more or less round the topic
    The Lifestyle channel has been advertising a new garden show (like we don’t have enough of them) and the host has been announcing he will be showing us how to make a “climate friendly garden” WTF???

    Posted by Blokehitchedwith2 on 2008 04 09 at 03:52 AM • permalink

  26. I wonder if the woodducks that think that Nuclear is an intractable problem because of the necessity of ensuring radioactive waste must be securely stored for many years (ref. Ziggy Switkowski’s letter to The Age the other day comparing the amount of waste vs. the amount of carbon dioxide that would need to be sequestered) have ever heard of the Lake Nyos disaster:-

    On August 21,1986, a cloud of carbon dioxide gas was released from Lake Nyos. Because carbon dioxide is more dense than air it hugged the ground and flowed down valleys. The cloud traveled as far as 15 miles (25 km) from the lake. It was moving fast enough to flatten vegetation, including a few trees. 1,700 deaths were caused by suffocation. 845 people were hospitalized.
    Link here.  That stuff can kill, and silently too!  At least when Chernobyl went off, people knew it was happening, and only about 50 people were killed.

    Posted by SezaGeoff on 2008 04 09 at 05:25 AM • permalink

  27. Climate change, stolen generations, asylum seekers, you name it, they were surrogates for Howard hatred, that’s all.

    Posted by chrisgo on 2008 04 09 at 05:34 AM • permalink

  28. #26 Seza. Try sticking your head in a wine tank during fermentation. The trade equivalent of sending a first week apprentice off to find a left handed spanner.

    Posted by mehaul on 2008 04 09 at 06:07 AM • permalink

  29. #22 I think you’re on to something there - Premium Australian Coal, Organic.

    Posted by SouthernCrusader on 2008 04 09 at 07:29 AM • permalink

  30. #28 mehaul - If I stuck my head in a wine tank, it would be with a straw in my mouth.  Yum!

    Posted by SezaGeoff on 2008 04 09 at 08:55 AM • permalink

  31. Question: Is the ozone layer dead or has everyone stopped giving a rat’s arse about it now that disaster du Jour of AGW is on the scene?

    Posted by CB on 2008 04 09 at 04:01 PM • permalink

  32. #31 ozone layer comes and goes.

    Posted by stackja1945 on 2008 04 09 at 07:33 PM • permalink

  33. Took 2 clicks to find out what ‘CFMEU’ stood for. It wasn’t as good as what I first thought, “Coal F’n Miners’, eh, Union”.

    Posted by bgates on 2008 04 09 at 07:58 PM • permalink

  34. Re #25:

    The Lifestyle channel has been advertising a new garden show (like we don’t have enough of them) and the host has been announcing he will be showing us how to make a “climate friendly garden” WTF???

    He’s planting a green garden.  ;-P

    Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2008 04 09 at 08:43 PM • permalink

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