Earlier this month in Thanjavur, India, 33-year-old man D. Anand Babu was beaten to death by four men after he objected to them drawing too much water from an overhead tank he operated. It was a small part of an increasing trend of violence over water access in the drought-gripped nation.
Last week, India suffered through a 50-degree heatwave. People were advised not to go outdoors after 11am. Animals dropped dead in the streets. Toilets couldn’t be flushed.
Also last week, the Queensland state government gave the Adani Carmichael mine project the go ahead — much to the pleasure of lobbyists; the lobbied; and Indian billionaire Gautam Adani, head of the Adani Group.
That the Great Barrier Reef is dead is now a certainty. That the mine will be one of the greatest environmental disasters in a great age of environmental disasters, a given. That its approval was an inevitable result of modern Australia’s propensity to churn out horrors both existential and banal on a near weekly basis, a sure bet.
Adani is death.
It’s a dramatic statement only if you actively deny the climate catastrophe that is currently unfolding, and willfully flagellate yourself with mutterings of jobs, “clean coal” and promises of Valhalla. What Adani and similar projects signal is the decision of an elite few to tacitly sign off on the end of the world.
Death is hard to grok, annihilation more so.
It is too big a concept for our politicians, both state and federal. I admit, it would be hard to be a Queensland MP and look at the half a billion dollars the mining industry poured into fossil fuel lobby groups, and the $8 billion spent by the government on projects that benefit the coal industry, then stack that wealth next to death, and wonder why it suddenly seems infinitesimal.
We are at a point, as Australians, where we must stop asking our politicians to have imaginations. Time and time again, they have proven incapable of it. Imagination, of course, being the doorway to empathy; a doorway our politicians must keep resolutely locked to maintain their version of sanity.
Adani’s supporters are the predictable few: the coal-loving politicians, the Murdoch hacks, and the private industry jackals out for their next suck of marrow.
It has become the flashpoint for this dire moment in the climate catastrophe narrative, a story of such black and white villainy that it is difficult for anyone opposing the project to maintain faith and hope for the future while taking in the consequence of the mine’s approval.
Adani’s supporters are banking on defeat turning to defeatism. It seems unlikely that people opposed to the mine (myself included) will be anything but galvanized by last week’s decision. Of course, there was a ripple of dread through the ranks. Understandably.
It is a dread I have become too familiar with as a young Australian whose fate is in the hands of a callously indifferent few. A dread that asks: “Why?” But never receives an honest answer.
To make a billionaire on the other side of the world that much richer, I suppose. To create a pittance of jobs in an ecologically disastrous industry that provides wealth for said billionaire, his cronies and few else. To dig a pit where there wasn’t a pit in the pristine Galilee Basin, to point at the pit and say, “Hey, at least we’re doing something!”
That, I think, is the new nihilism.
During the mining boom in WA there was a collective myth upheld by both the government and the populace that as long as we were mining, we were creating. I don’t have to drive far to see half empty suburban estates, shoddy infrastructure projects, and shameful homelessness to know what that “something” amounted to.
The Carmichael mine isn’t inevitable. Adani must machete through more red tape, while the reality of coal’s woeful economics may ultimately sway the Queensland government. But last week’s decision heralds a stupidity as disastrous as it is ultimately cruel. It is another notch on the belt of politicians who will buggerise reality for a dime if it means not having to question the moral turpitude lurking within the void of their “beliefs”.
Last week we were told to take one more step into our collective graves, with the promise of some hard candy some time down the line.
Officials say that Maharashtra’s drought is now worse than the famine that affected 25 million people across the state in 1972. It is estimated that 90% of the population south of Mumbai have fled in the wake of the water crisis. Eight million farmers in Karnataka and Maharashtra are struggling to survive. In Marathwada, 4700 farmers have committed suicide in the last five years, including close to 1000 last year.
D. Anand Babu was beaten to death in an argument concerning water.
Adani promises up to 1800 jobs.
Well articulated. The marketing boffin who coined the term ‘clean coal’ was a genius. It effectively sold an impossible product to the gullible.
Meantime the ABC reports that a $2 Billion coal fired power station is proposed for Collinsville in Nth Queensland (naturally, where else). It’s to be run by the Indigenous community & can be operating in 10 years’ time. It beggars belief.
This needs investigation. Three dodgy people is not a ‘community’ run power station at all. It looks and smells a front set up by the coal industry. They are seeing 2 billion dollars to build this dinosaur. They are not seeking money to help end disadvantage in their communities. This is about the corruptible and the corrupt. We need to find out which they are.
Whilst I empathise with you anger at the arrant stupidity of allowing the Carmichael coal mine development to proceed, you are wrong about one point, which I concede is bewildering. The Carmichael mine will not make anyone rich. You do not have to be an economic or accounting genius to work out that the capital investment will never be recovered. It really is a matter of simply pissing money up against the wall in the pursuit of a phyrric victory over Australian society’s best interests. It is the absolute zenith of corporate stupidity and environmental vandalism.
And the pushers will still say “A pyrrhic ideological victory is still a victory”.
It’s not about making anyone ‘rich’, BA.
It’s about preventing the Adani conglomerate from being declared insolvent/bankrupt.
The entire Adani Balance Sheet ‘health’ depends on the Carmichael mine being able to be valued on the Balance Sheet as an asset destined to produce a commercial return. Without it listed as a viable asset, the Balance Sheet turns bright red.
There’s also how and where the Balance Sheet is structured – certain mine related assets are ‘owned’ in Mauritius. That’s for ‘tax purposes’, but if the mine ain’t viable, those related assets are also a bust.
There is also the rapidly developing bigger picture to consider – and, the country’s clearly been sold a pup.
About 6 weeks odd ago, Modi was ‘turning Trump’. This was popularly – in the West – perceived as Modi turning away from Eurasian integration (the multipolar model of Xi and Putin), because of the eternal India-China ‘friction’.
Then, Donnie came to the rescue, stripped India of ‘developing nation’ status, meaning finance and trade concessions, and shortly after whacked India with tariffs.
What largely went unnoticed, was prior to the imposition of tariffs, Modi rang Putin, and asked him to set up a 3-way meet ‘on the sidelines’ of the upcoming G20 meeting in Japan.
Putin is the conduit between India and China, and the 3 way meet involves India, China and Russia.
As one Indian analyst noted, yesterday;
“Without doubt, the little-noticed vignette out of the SCO summit is that the leaderships of Russia, India and China have agreed to have a trilateral meeting within the RIC format, too, alongside their summits on the bilateral track. And, the venue will be the Osaka — on the sidelines of the G20 summit (which will be attended by President Trump and where a galaxy of western leaders is expected.)
If international diplomacy indulges in symbolism, this must be one of the most poignant ones in world politics in the recent times. The RIC has always been a red rag for the US — ever since the great Soviet strategic thinker and Kremlin statesman Yevgeny Maksimovich Primakov first proposed the tantalising idea in 1999. The profound symbolism cannot be lost on Trump that India is consorting with the two “revisionist powers” on the planet (Russia and China) which, according to the US, are each working its way toward making a power grab on the world stage.”
The Adani mine in the Carmichael is a pup, and we’ve bought it, lock, stock and a coupla smokers.
When I say ‘mine’, I mean to say ‘soon to be a stranded asset’.
No clothes? They’ve been sold the vision of sunning themsleves on a tropical alps, surrounded by people telling them they have beautiful clothes on. In the dogeatdog world they want of course, everyone around them will be looking to do to them what they did to the rest of us.
I am really afraid the whole Lets Destroy the Gallillee Basin etc is about stealing the water
Now that the idiots have approved ADANI – please DONT use any taxpayer funds to build the infrastructure for it. Let it fail or succeed on its own merits – if any.
I won’t hold my breath for any significant benefits for the locals and I expect there will be a major accounting in the next election when this affair harvest’s it’s bitter fruit.
Adani should no longer be the focus; the focus needs to be the impunity that protects that mentality. As the ruling clique will never act to save anyone but itself, we need to drive a campaign of rejection of the mainstream and the Rightist politicians.
Stop treating Laberal politicians as friendly acquaintances deserving of polite and courteous discussion, or being Q&A guests. Tell both Labor and Liberal politicians that until they can serve our interests we won’t attend their functions, we will make sure they are not invited to any function run by any organisation in which we participate, and they can get their donations from the property developers and fossil-fuel industry because they’re getting nothing from us.
We should emphasise to media organisations and their journalists too, that they should stop treating politics as an entertainment, and that they should develop the backbone to demand answers. Murdock media in particular is very biased, so we should say so. Observe how the mainstream media industry’s approach to the terror laws is not to demand the repeal of such evil things, but to demand exemption for journalists – only for themselves – from the nastinesses.
Instead of these human-wave frontal attacks against prepared defences, encircle and infiltrate by highlighting a range of issues and offering an integrated solution.
Adani’s mine, for instance, has been promoted as a saviour of North Queensland. Not receiving any such focus are the destruction of tourism jobs on the Barrier Reef, of Hunter Valley coal jobs, and of the 100 or so Townsville workers sacked to fund its Adani airstrip. Nor the potential not just of renewables, but of other types of new industries in the regions. Nor let us fail to highlight the difficulty and cost of getting insurance in Northern Queensland, undoubtedly worse after the recent floods. Newstart is also still an issue, despite Labor’s utter disinterest.
If anything, I thought Patrick Marlborough quite restrained, given that he will be here as the planet burns and civilisation collapses. I’ll be gone, as will most of the jaded cynics who write comments on Crikey, and the jaded journalists who think that politics is nothing more than an amusing non-contact sport.
This is THE issue, for all people in all countries, but particularly for this wealthy but foolish, ignorant and selfish one.
I am grateful for the efforts of young people who are willing to speak truth to us oldies – and quite surprised that they can be bothered.