Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Archives for December 7, 2010

Can’t Do as Government Says: MDB Chief Quits

By

“MURRAY Darling Basin Authority Chairman Mike Taylor has announced his sudden intention to step down from the chairman’s role at the end of January. 

“It is understood Mr Taylor had a difference of opinion with the Federal Government over interpretation of the Water Act and its ability to properly consider the social and economic impacts of proposed water cuts, in the Authority’s final plan.

“A statement issued by the MDBA today said Mr Taylor had written to Federal Water Minister Tony Burke regarding the Basin Plan and the chairman’s role.

“Mr Taylor said balancing the requirements of the Water Act 2007 against the potential social and economic impact on communities would be a “significant challenge”.

“The Guide was developed with full regard to the requirements of the Water Act, and in close consultation with the Australian Government Solicitor,” he said.

“However, the authority has sought, and obtained, further confirmation that it cannot compromise the minimum level of water required to restore the system’s environment on social or economic grounds.

“Under the Water Act the further steps the Authority is able to take over the next 12 months in developing the Proposed Basin Plan, and the Basin Plan itself, will necessarily mirror and refine what has been done by the Authority to date…

http://sl.farmonline.com.au/news/nationalrural/agribusiness-and-general/political/mike-taylor-quits-mdba/2018418.aspx?storypage=0

from Mike Taylor quits MDBA, BY COLIN BETTLES
07 Dec, 2010 08:56 AM

Not too far from the Playboy Casino in Cancun…

By

Members of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are meeting with a lot of other people to save us from climate change…

“The Process works like this. A multitude of long, inspissate, obfuscatory, obnubilating, obscurantist draft agreements are circulated, always a day or two late for delegates to find out what they have actually agreed to. The daily timetables for the various ‘working’ sessions of the conference are never available until breakfast-time on the day, allowing no scope for planning the day. By these means, most delegates are kept permanently and completely in the dark.

“Here is a typical paragraph from one of these leaden documents:

‘The SBSTA welcomed the report (FCCC/SBSTA/2010/INF.10) on the second workshop of the work programme on revising the “Guidelines for the preparation of national communications by Parties included in Annex I to the Convention Part I: UNFCCC reporting guidelines on annual inventories” (hereinafter referred to as the UNFCCC Annex I reporting guidelines), held in Bonn, Germany, from 3 to 4 November 2010, which was organized by the secretariat as requested by the SBSTA at its thirtieth session.’

“Try to read several hundred pages of this stuff. It simply isn’t possible. And that, of course, is the idea. This is the Mushroom-Growers’ Management Method writ large: keep them in the dark and feed them plenty of sh*t.

“What these ramblings conceal is the remarkably rapid rate at which dozens – no, hundreds – of new bureaucracies are being created as The Process grinds on. As anyone at the Playboy Casino [in Cancun] will tell you, ‘somebody gotta pay for all those lights.’ And that somebody is you, gentle taxpayer. No one has yet managed to discover just how much these hundreds of new supranational climate-change bureaucracies are costing us. That is an international state secret – until Wikileaks gets hold of the figures, of course…

Read more here: http://sppiblog.org/news/from-nopenhagen-to-yes-we-cancun