Thursday, July 17, 2014

Time to Boycott Australian Goods and Services?



I am a bit meh about the government scrapping the carbon tax. The fact that it seemed inevitable has negated much of my potential anger. If anything, I just feel vindicated. It is what I expected would happen from about 2011, when I realised the Labor government had no hope of winning the next election. 


I also expected the majority of Australians to be in favour of getting rid of the carbon tax. They claim to want the government to do something about climate change, but not if it costs them. Australians as a whole are becoming more selfish and ignorant. Just look at our attitudes towards refugees and the pathetic employment rate for people with disabilities in this country compared to the rest of the developed world. It’s all me, me, me in Australia, and it is getting worse. 

Selfish and Ignorant Murdoch.



Our rising selfishness and ignorance can partly be blamed on our media, especially anything owned by Rupert Murdoch. Rupert Murdoch is one of the most selfish and ignorant media barons in history. As this article in the Guardian shows, he does not understand or is deliberately lying about climate change. If his only source of information on climate change is his own media outlets, than one could understand his ignorance. But I think it is more likely that he is a supremely selfish man who couldn't care less what state the world is left in after he dies. 

Too Late to Act.



When he finally dies it might be too late to act on climate change. What Australians don’t seem to understand is if they think they can’t afford to do anything about climate change now, they are unlikely to be able to afford to do anything about climate change when it really starts to affect us as much of the budget will then be spent on fighting the effects of climate change.


I was thinking that if I lived in another country I would be very unimpressed with Australia’s decision to scrap its carbon tax and do bugger all to limit its carbon emissions. I would be especially unhappy if I lived in a country that is doing something about climate change, like England, Germany, Denmark, South Korea, New Zealand, even the US.


Dumb Aussies. 


If I lived in New Zealand I would be feeling pretty superior to those dumb selfish Aussies right now. If I was an environmentalist in England I might start boycotting all Australian products. After all, Australia is the highest per capita emitter of greenhouse gases in the world. And that does not take into account all the coal we export and all the gas we will soon be exporting. Our contribution to world global warming is only going to increase.


Boycott Aussie Aluminium.


But I have been thinking, why don’t I boycott Australian products anyway, particularly those products that use a lot of electricity in their production. I could start by boycotting any Australian products that have a lot of aluminium in them or their packaging. So no more cans of soft drink, and I could buy imported aluminium foil. Aluminium produced in Victoria using dirty brown coal electricity is probably the highest greenhouse gas producing aluminium in the world, even beating that produced in China.


Dairy farmers use a lot of electricity, so I could just buy imported Danish or German cheese and perhaps give up my occasional glass of milk. Our textile manufacturers obviously use a lot of electricity, so I could boycott any clothing, shoes, towels and sheets made in Australia. I could boycott any manufactured food product that has an imported substitute. Probably work out cheaper too. Luckily I grow a lot of my own fruit and veggies. I must start looking into solar panels too. We already have solar hot water. And I would have to buy ebooks instead of printed books from Australian authors from now on.


The one upside of scrapping the carbon tax and Australia doing bugger all about climate change is that it keeps the global warming plausible in two near future stories and a novel I have been writing. 

Bugger off Deniers



Oh, and anyone who denies that global warming is occurring and caused by humans, is either ignorant or selfish, probably both. So don’t bother commenting because your ignorant and selfish denial will be deleted. Whenever I check the so-called facts presented by deniers invariably turn out to be deceptions or just lies. Science has proven that global warming is happening, and the major factor in this warming is human made greenhouse gasses. What they have not concluded is how bad the effects of global warming will be. But with each passing year, the warnings from scientists are getting more dire.  

5 comments:

graywave said...

Good onya, Graham. I hadn't thoiught about boycotting goods from my own country but it's not a bad idea.

It could be a bit problematic as we export mostly raw materials or only very lightly processed products (for example, aluminium is refined here into ingots and shipped overseas (where others then turn it into aluminium foil). It would take some research to find out where all those high-carbon Aussie products end up and which manufactured goods don't start off as Aussie metals, coal, gas, etc..

Graham Clements said...

So it might be hard to tell where the raw materials for an aluminium product came from. I just had a look at a box of aluminuim foil and it gave no indication where it was made. This requires more research. Must find out where our aluminium ingots go to.

Graham Clements said...

It seems, from my initial reading, that China relies mostly on its own smelted aluminium, and smelting is were most of the electricity is used in production of aluminium, so I might be safe just buying aluminium products made in China. I discovered that 79% of Australia's smelted aluminium is exported.

graywave said...

This particular boycott is a hard road to plough! I wonder how much Chinese aluminium is smelted using coal bought from Australia!

Graham Clements said...

Major Export Markets For Australian Coal (2008–2009)
Japan 39.8% Korea 16.3%
Taiwan 9.9% China 9.5% India 9.4%
Europe 7.9%

So if I wanted to boycott Australian coal, I would be safer to just buy stuff from Africa, Bagladesh, South America, North America, Denmark, France (nuclear powered), and much of Asia (except China, India and Korea).

But probably the best way to both punish Australia for its rising greenhouse gases and abolishing the carbon tax, is to also reward countries that are doing something about climate change, by buying from countries that are reducing their greenhouse gasses, or have very low per capitia emmissions. Of those I will try not to buy from countries that use a lot of Australian coal or aluminium ingots. This may take a while to work out and will be a continual work in progress. But it is time to boycott Australia's greenhouse gas intensive products.