Adam Morton Climate and environment editor @adamlmorton Fri 1 Jul 2022 17.10 AEST

• Western Australian authorities have recommended a 50-year extension of the country’s biggest polluting fossil fuel development, sparking condemnation from climate campaigners who warned it could add more than 4bn tonnes of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.

The WA Environment Protection Authority (EPA) advised the state government it should give the greenlight to oil and gas giant Woodside Energy to run its North West Shelf gas development in the Pilbara until 2070.

It recommended the approval be conditional on Woodside reducing the total net greenhouse gas emissions released from the gas processing facility by two-thirds – from 385m tonnes to 128m tonnes – on the way to reaching net zero carbon pollution by 2050. The company could meet those targets by cutting emissions or buying carbon credits to offset its pollution.

Opponents said the condition covered only a fraction of the total pollution expected from the expansion as the vast bulk would be “scope three” emissions released after the gas was exported and burned overseas.

Woodside has estimated the development’s scope three emissions would be about 80m tonnes a year. Climate campaigners said it suggested it could be responsible for more than 4bn tonnes of additional carbon dioxide over 50 years – more than eight times Australia’s annual emissions.

The head of clean transitions at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, Jess Panegyres, said the North West Shelf expansion would undermine Australia’s emissions reduction efforts and add to a worsening climate crisis if allowed to go ahead.

She said the EPA recommendation could lead to Woodside tapping a long-promised new gas field, Browse, off the WA coast, and showed “how fossil fuel companies can exploit our weak environmental laws in their own self-interest”.

“Both the UN and International Energy Agency have been very clear that there can be no new gas developments to limit global warming to 1.5C, but Woodside continues to aggressively expand its operations, even with the global gas market set to shrink as the world switches to cleaner, safer renewables,” Panegyres said. “This dangerous company does not have Australia’s economic or environmental best interests at heart.”

Woodside said the release of the EPA recommendations marked an important step in the North West Shelf expansion. Its executive vice-president, Fiona Hick, said the company would carefully consider the conditions proposed by the EPA.

“At a time of heightened concern around energy security, the North West Shelf project has an important role to play in delivering natural gas to local and international customers, providing energy that can support their decarbonisation commitments,” she said.

Woodside recently dramatically expanded its fossil fuel footprint by merging its petroleum assets with those of the global miner BHP, a step that made it one of the world’s Top 10 oil and gas companies. It is proposing several new developments in Western Australia, including a $16bn development of the untapped Scarborough gas field.

It has been criticised for failing to explain how it would meet what it has described as its aspiration to reach net zero emissions by 2050. At an annual general meeting in May, 48.97% of shareholders voted against the company’s climate report.

Federal government emissions data shows the North West Shelf development emitted more than 6.7m tonnes of carbon dioxide in the 2020-21 calendar year, more than any other Australian industrial facility.

Part II, Distorted Belief, Enlightenment Philosophy, Combustion Society.

Any society that as commonly with affluent post 1789 “enlightenment” nations, and now with the frenzy of algorithm- or #ArtificialIntelligence-“captured marketing victims that is vastly cashed-up neoliberal screw the-/ profit from-the-poor Friedmanism at its zenith, seeks to virtually replace the business of government (best summed up in contemporary progressive City of London terms as #ESG I might say – that is making both industry and public services work not only for upper middle income people but for everyone) with statements, announcements and outrageously costly feasibility or scoping studies about government. Debate, speeches, ceremonies, celebrations and memorable television events, ludicrously “balanced” by ponderous polite consideration of say the femicide epidemics all over the world where every “stakeholder” including the hateful corrupt and complicit is assured of an equal say. How else do countries entertain presidents who urge police to shoot down people they don’t like (being competitive young males) except by corrupt and compromised newsmedia. How, and some of us have been deeply distressed, lost and voiceless in a purported liberal democracy (not presumably a two-party racist sexist neofascist electoral autocracy as #India) about both issues has our country ignored the non-Burmese people of horrific Myanmar and “not-a-#journalist!” Assange for another decade?? And how for the love of decency and natural justice have we kept selling #coal into South Asia and profiting from exploitative and now obviously lethally dangerous neocolonial #carpetbagger business dealings there? So in this context – as an enormously well-read person trying to contribute to his people – I offer some notes that help explain how we became a country that doesn’t do any work but considers it noble and fine to endlessly pointlessly and gallingly talk about it.

In turn, I’m sure the sociology of ACUP, ECUP & HCUP (Blundell 1997) will help you find answers as to how we must get young Australians out of their obviously bullied and suborned state and looking towards healthy productive economic lives. To hell with the technical Billy the Goose political pantomime.

Now the @Guardian report from Perth, Western Australia that finally and mercifully if one takes a sanguine view as we all must at this moment of global #weather cataclysm due ONLY to man-made carbon & other heating gases discharged to our atmosphere by the combustion🔥💥of #FossilFuels, lays bare the frankly deranged view in Australia amongst rich old white people and their younger political class acolytes/ Kool Aid guzzlers/ bewildered rhetoricians calling themselves journalists whose dualist mentality holds that the debate or “the show’s” the thing (or thing-k..

– This clearly psychotic vision of real-world material content as mere scenic props for the macabre performances of a “chattering class” with its objectified manipulable capitalised Environment as one siloed field or compartment of study & decision, while all others including human health, longevity, ecology, tourism, mountain climbing &c were distinct and separate matters..

– Distinct neoclassical specialisms whose entire raison d’être (purpose for being, Fr) is detailed legalistic examination, multi-million dollar research grants from the barking-mad global oligarchs & their tax cheating foundations, prestigious awards and glittering prizes and lofty elevation to salaried riches, public honours and many rides on big✈️ s. **

– What a piece of work was Man.

John Blundell, 5/7/2022

• Western Australia’s EPA urges 50-year extension of country’s most polluting gas project https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/jul/01/western-australias-epa-urges-50-year-extension-of-countrys-most-polluting-gas-project?CMP=share_btn_tw (republished above)

**Artificial Compartmentalisation under Patriarchal Fiscal Elites along with #ECUP & #HCUP were identified by myself publishing as Community Economist – later CE Publications Worldwide (until 2003) – 1996. The other two: Excessive Codification under Patriarchy, Human Commodification under patriarchic fiscal/ monetary elites – Marxist neoclassical people please note the process is to turn the low-income person into an object for trade, a situation of depersonalisation and #coercion and NOT of #commodotisation, #dehumanisation or brutal #slavery (these states are obviously present with genocidal governments and organised crime cartels – our job is to relate to and represent the broad mass of humans, to empower and enable not facilitate or patronise.)