Yep, sure am vegan. I'm not making a both sides are the same argument, sorry if I mistakenly said so.
While I despise attempts to unfairly shift blame on the consumer, I generally do as much as I'm able to not support things that are either harmful to the environment or unethical. I am vegan because I believe in animal rights before anything else though.
I've said what I've said, I stand by it and don't really intend to keep arguing, but I'll add that focussing on energy production is misleading and a distraction from the fact that there are far larger sources of emissions that we are responsible for. As I understand it the targets they've set are the way the industry was going regardless, I could pull the data and analyse it but I honestly can't be bothered putting that much work in, the report here has some nice charts to give you an idea of how those gains where locked in prior to the 2022 election. If you've got data to backup that Labor is directly responsible for a significant portion of this I'd love to see it, because it's very hard to find any analysis for that.
The economy argument is often thrown out by Labor, but it's an exceptional flimsy one on two fronts. For one the wellbeing of people and the environment are significantly more important (fight me, the economy is a form of violence), but also resource extraction doesn't really contribute that much to tax income anyway, it's pretty much only good for the wealthy elites. They take in enormous profits, contribute next to nothing to the greater good all while writing off the immense harm as an externality. It's a wealth transfer project, in short.
If Labor wants to show that they actually care, they'd nationalise all those extraction projects and put in a plan to halt all exports while securing the livelihoods of those in the industry.
Edit: Oh and it doesn't change the fact that it's objectively good to protest against the ALP, complacency and apathy won't save us.
Yes. I am.
The system is preferential, but the outcome of many an election is indistinguishable from a two party system. The system is not good enough, just because it's able to work sometimes isn't enough, especially when it "working" still results in an awful lot of unnaceptable shit happening.
I also never said anything to the contrary anyway? Voting hasn't gotten shit done, that's an observable fact. I've watched my future evaporate because we've left all of this up to a system that refuses to do the things it should. Even when things are done, all it takes is for the next election to undo it.
My definition of meaningful action might be different to yours, I mean radical long term change that involves upending the entire landscape and actually supporting the workers and victims of the fossil fuel industry.
Oh I'm aware, I said as much in another comment. Sorry, I've mislead you on what I meant.
My problem with voting is that the entire system of government in this country does not do anything to meaningfully address the problems of entire swathes of the population, and voting does very very little to address that.
It appears to work, if you're sufficiently privileged to not be among those persecuted, oppressed, raped and murdered by those in power. There are individual issues that are sufficiently mainstream so as to be addressible in this way, and climate change is one of them, but even still we needed to have made major change a long time ago; the past 20 years has already proven it wasn't able to tackle climate change adequately.
I also never said we weren't using a preferential system. Idk if you follow any of the media analysis but the fact that all anyone cares about is the two party preferred vote should tell you enough about how much of a monopoly they have on power. Yes a minority government would be great, as I said earlier that's what everyone in climate activism is working for now. The point is that not doing the activism and relying exclusively on voting is insufficient.
If LNP wins we will continue to burn coal as our primary source of energy for another 30 years.
This is what the ALP is actively trying to do, if you haven't been following along... They've approved new coal and gas extraction projects for 2050 and beyond. You know, when we're supposed to be at net 0???
When they announced a bunch of these last year we immediately called a bunch of snap protests at Labor mp offices around Melbourne and the only one who came to talk to us was Ged Kearny (everyone else either literally ran away or just rolled the shutters down), and all she did was offer excuses for why we actually have to keep digging up fossil fuels and burning them for decades to come.
And Tanya Plibersek goes on the news and has the audacity to lie and say they've approved no new projects, almost immediately after she approved a new project and expansions to another.
They're not doing anything to prevent this, they're not taking climate change seriously and they are sucking up to the industry at the expense of everyone else.
I do vote?
Doesn't change the fact that voting generally does fuck all in terms of meaningful change, especially as we watch both of these major parties destroy the ability for smaller parties and independents to challenge them.
And so we are essentially left with a choice between being killed, and being killed but they smile while they do it. You change the options you can vote for by protesting, this is an exceptionally important part of modern democracy and it cannot be ignored.
Edit: The word "essentially" here is important. I know minority governments exist, and I would like to see one. It doesn't change the fact that two major parties absolutely dominate the system and wield the vast majority of power.
I guess you didn't read anything I wrote, because as I said, ALP is not doing anything near enough. So yes, we have to protest them and we should. Tell me where I ever said we should vote the LNP in? Protesting ALP is not the same thing as endorsing the LNP and pretending that is, is embarrassing. It's similarly embarrassing that you're acting like this is the one and only election we'll ever have and that if the LNP win they'll just hold power for eternity.
The narrative you are pushing right now is harmful and does not get anything done, it's a delay strategy that gives an objectively terrible party licence to continue being absolutely dog shit.
I'll say this again, if the ALP ignores what is literally being screamed in their fucking faces and loses the election, then that is on them and no one else. They've been in power for three years and have done fuck all with that time to make any meaningful change.
Threatening their power during an election is basically the only chance we've got that they'll listen, I don't know you and I've no clue what you've done for this fight, but I've watched so many friends sacrifice themselves and be absolutely crushed by the oppression of this government for very minor actions. Their only response to activism outside of the election cycle is to crush it and silence the people most affected.
Nothing else is working and I'm sick and tired of this bullshit getting people killed, destroying entire nations and ruining the chance for anyone to have a bright future.
You can be that asshole while the world dies saying "well isn't it great the ALP did this instead of the LNP" because that's all you're saying right now.
It's completely moronic to give anyone a free fucking pass to fuck everyone just because they use lube.
Even if this is true, if people are voting based on climate in the first place then this isn't going to make them go "well, might as well vote for the LNP" more likely they'll go independent or Greens as we saw in the last election.
Also we have preferential voting, focusing on the big two parties is immensely myopic and a stupid argument that everyone used to silence legitimate criticism of the Democrats before the last US election. (The Democrats lost because they had a shit platform and didn't care, not because people criticised them)
The main goal of basically every climate activist group right now is to force whoever forms government to do so as a minority. This is both good for climate, and liberal democracy as a whole by helping move beyond a two party system. (Not that I have any love for liberal democracy in any form, but it's still a positive change)
Just because one party is bad doesn't mean we should settle for the slightly better one who are still actively burning our future, that's an absurd argument on the face of it.
We need to call out everyone for the shit they do because the fact is these guys are not good enough, they are not infinitly better than the LNP, they're marginally better and their entire climate change plan mostly relies on doing nothing and letting industry progress the way it's already been going.
Rising Tide is not lying about anything and misleading voters, the fact of the matter is Labor is doing all this shit and an election is the best possible chance to force them to be better. If they lose the election then that's on them for not shaping up and doing better, as people are literally shouting at them to do.
Fuck the ALP and the LNP I won't settle for ecocide in any form. If the ALP doesn't change then it doesn't fucking matter because the end state is going to be the same regardless. We are not at a point where we can sit on our fucking hands and wait for slow change to save us, people are actively dying and we're blazing past tipping points like there's no tomorrow.
They do, genius.
Why shouldn't they protest the currently sitting government when they're the ones actively fucking us?
Our representation has been incredible, there is the option to appeal but we haven't discussed that yet. We had one successful appeal for a slightly different charge yesterday, so I suspect we'll give it a go.
In my case the charges were entirely reasonable, my statement about them being inconsistent and political applies to those who are facing S214A which carries a maximum penalty of $22,000 and 2 years prison.
It's always funny to watch people try to fix capitalism by doing more capitalism...