The earth is warming faster than anticipated

The earth is warming faster than anticipated,

 Here’s what you need to know:

Worsening food shortages. More wildfires. Flooded coastlines.

These are among the dire predictions for the next 25 years in a report by the U.N.’s scientific panel on climate change.

Australia’s many reefs are particularly at risk.

Avoiding the most serious damage would require transforming the world economy within just a few years, said the authors, who acknowledged the rescue was politically unlikely.

On the same day, the Nobel in economics went to to a pair of Americans for their work highlighting the importance of government policy in fostering sustainable economic growth. 

One, William D. Nordhaus, was an early advocate for a carbon tax.

The other, Paul M. Romer, studies technological innovation.

Next decade critical': Perils mount at 1.5 degrees of warming, says IPCC

The amount of coal and other fossil fuels the world can burn without unleashing dangerous climate change that will undermine the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people and all but wipe out the Great Barrier Reef is "very small", according to a major climate report.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's special report on a 1.5-degree hotter planet, released on Monday, said limiting warming to that amount remains possible, but only with "rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society".

The coming years will be critical for keeping global warming to 1.5 degrees - but even then the impacts could be severe for Australia and many other nations.

The coming years will be critical for keeping global warming to 1.5 degrees - but even then the impacts could be severe for Australia and many other nations.

For Australia, the report - based on some 6000 research references and compiled by dozens of scientists - found it likely the continent was already experiencing warmer days and fewer cool nights. Eastern coastal regions were among areas experiencing reduced rainfall and run-off.

The report's projections, though, are what the authors hope policymakers will address. It was prompted by the 2015 Paris climate conference when almost 200 nations including Australia signed up to keep warming to between 1.5-2 degrees compared with pre-industrial times.

'The Great Barrier Reef, already hammered by unprecedented coral bleaching in a world that has warmed about 1 degree, faces annihilation if warming continues apace.

Globally, coral reefs would decline by a further 70 to 90 per cent under global warming of 1.5 degrees and "virtually all" would be lost with 2 degrees.

NYT – The Angry White Male Caucus

Paul Klugman

There have been many studies of the forces driving Trump support, and in particular the rage that is so pervasive a feature of the MAGA movement. What Thursday’s hearing drove home, however, was that white male rage isn’t restricted to blue-collar guys in diners. It’s also present among people who’ve done very well in life’s lottery, whom you would normally consider very much part of the elite.

In other words, hatred can go along with high income, and all too often does.

At this point there’s overwhelming evidence against the “economic anxiety” hypothesis — the notion that people voted for Donald Trump because they had been hurt by globalization. In fact, people who were doing well financially were just as likely to support Trump as people who were doing badly.

What distinguished Trump voters was, instead, racial resentment. Furthermore, this resentment was and is driven not by actual economic losses at the hands of minority groups, but by fear of losing status in a changing country, one in which the privilege of being a white man isn’t what it used to be.

And here’s the thing: It’s perfectly possible for a man to lead a comfortable, indeed enviable life by any objective standard, yet be consumed with bitterness driven by status anxiety.

You might think that this is impossible, that having a good job and a comfortable life would inoculate someone against envy and hatred. That is, you might think that if you knew nothing of human nature and the world.

I’ve spent my whole adult life in rarefied academic circles, where everyone has a good income and excellent working conditions. Yet I know many people in that world who are seething with resentment because they aren’t at Harvard or Yale, or who actually are at Harvard or Yale but are seething all the same because they haven’t received a Nobel Prize.

And this sort of high-end resentment, the anger of highly privileged people who nonetheless feel that they aren’t privileged enough or that their privileges might be eroded by social change, suffuses the modern conservative movement.

NSWTF – Forum hears of problems with gaol education privatisation

October 02, 2018

A public forum on prison education has examined the effects of privatisation on the provision of education in NSW gaols and to evaluate the quality of that education.

The Community Justice Coalition has campaigned for many years for improvements in education opportunities for prisoners and organised the forum, held on 26 September.

Forum coordinators, former federal attorney general and NSW Supreme Court Justice John Dowd and former Chief Justice of the Family Court of Australia Elizabeth Evatt, and the audience, heard from speakers who agreed about the important role education plays in reducing recidivism.

NSW Minister for Corrections David Elliott was unable to attend, but was represented by Assistant Commissioner, Offender Management and Programs Dr Anne-Marie Martin, who spoke to the forum about the prison education reforms implemented in 2017.

A keynote speaker, Federation Post Schools Deputy Secretary Maxine Sharkey outlined the many problems the Department of Corrective Services had introducing the privatisation model.

These included delays to the tender process after 138 teaching and education positions were deleted in December 2016. The private company did not begin delivery of Language Literacy and Numeracy classes until August 2017.

Other speakers included NSW Labor MP and shadow minister for corrections Guy Zangari, Engagement Leader at the University of Southern Queensland Stephen Seymour, Mr Shoebridge, who is the Greens justice spokesperson, and Dr Jedidiah Evans from the Australian Catholic University.

A number of speakers highlighted that the private training does not employ any tertiary-qualified teachers and only uses trainers with a Certificate IV in Training and Assessment, the minimum qualification required to deliver VET courses.

Before the privatisation, art and music teachers provided education that was not only therapeutic but also provided a gateway to general education.

The privatisation reforms deleted those art and music teaching positions and the focus now is Language Literacy and Numeracy programs. Mr Zangari and Mr Shoebridge both criticised this narrow Language Literacy and Numeracy focus as not broad enough to engage all prisoners.

Federation will continue to campaign to reinstate highly qualified teachers, education officers and senior education officers. The union is critical of the privatisation model of education in NSW prisons and profit-oriented considerations that drive private decision-making.

The forum was held at NSW Parliament House, sponsored by Greens MLC David Shoebridge.

ACTU – CEO Pay ratio reporting to identify hotspots of wage inequality

2 October 2018

The ACTU welcomes the announcement today by Shadow Assistant Treasurer Andrew Leigh that a Shorten ALP government will legislate to ensure that the ratio of CEO pay to that of the median employee in the company they lead would be reported by all listed firms with more than 250 employees.

Corporate profits continue to climb, but working people aren’t getting the pay rises they need to stay ahead of the rising cost of living.

When CEO pay is at its highest in 17 years, and is routinely hundreds of times more than the median worker gets, while pay is going backwards in real terms for Australian workers even as profits increase, workers need the tools to secure better wages and conditions.

Quotes attributable to ACTU Secretary Sally McManus:

• “CEO pay is the highest it has been in 17 years, meanwhile pay for working people is going backwards. We need systemic change to put power back in the hands of working people.
• “While we welcome efforts to improve transparency, we need to ensure that working people can use the information that transparency brings to organise and bargain for better wages and conditions.
• “We need to remove the restrictions on bargaining so that working people can bargain across sectors or industries to win the pay rises that working people need and that will reduce inequality.
• “We need to change the rules so that workers have the tools and power they need to win pay rises.”