Aboriginal Australia

Advertising: Expect to see less hedonism emphasised by the advertising industries. Except advertising revenues to drop, and consequent changes in all sorts of news and content media.

BBB

Bushfires (Australia): Anti-affluenza economist Clive Hamilton writes in crikey.com (9-2-2009): Climate scientists have been predicting more frequent and severe bushfires due to climate change for some years. A 2007 report for the Climate Institute by the Bushfire CRC concluded that we (Australia) could expect a two to four-fold increase in the number of extreme fire danger days by 2050 under a high global warming scenario, the path we are now on. It identified northern Victoria, the site of the most deadly fires over the weekend, as one of the areas most prone to catastrophic fires. The bushfires and the extreme heatwave, whose death toll when tallied will probably be in the hundreds and exceed that of the fires, are global warming made manifest in the daily lives of ordinary people. Over the last ten days we have seen the future. The question is: will we face up to it or pretend they are one-off events?

Some 2009-release books on the subject include: Ian Mannix, Great Australian Bushfire Stories. ABC Books, 2009, 224pp. Amanda Ripley: The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - And Why. Random House, 2009, 266pp. Wade E. Martin, Carol Raish and Brian Kent, (Eds.), Wildfire Risk: Human Perceptions and Management Implications. Resources for the Future Press, 2009, 310pp. John Handmer and Katherine Haynes, (Eds.), Community Bushfire Safety. CSIRO Publishing, 2009, 205pp. Kathryn Gow and Douglas Paton, (Eds.), The Phoenix of Natural Disasters: Community Resilience. Nova Science Publishing, 2009, 725pp.

CCC

Coral: The Great Barrier Reef (eastern Australia) is under dire threat. Coral around the world (eg, The Maldives), a good indicator of environmental/oceanic health, is under threat everywhere.

DDD

Disease: In any variety of countries, expect more and stranger sets of health problems to arise, especially where natural disasters compound existing risks of disease(s) outbreak(s) in any particular region.

EEE

Economics: Expect great changes in terminology. Ideas of "growth" need to be revised. It may become a matter of pride when governments and their economic advisers can report the maintenance of a steady-state economy. Environmental issues will work to cap projections on likely or achievable profit levels. (Banks will learn or may even be forced by governments to plug ethical questions re environmental health into their responses to loan applications. This will become clearer once the dust has settled from the 2008 world financial crash.)

Energy: Energy supply operations will likely be asked to manage systems which enable small producers to contribute electricity to their regional grid, and be paid for it. (From wind farms, from mini-hydro-electricity, etc.) Both provisions and uses of electricity will be commodities.

FFF

Food: Worry about food prices. The use of agricultural land to provide material for conversion to fuel for vehicles (biofuel), merely increases the price of food, so this allocation of land is unsustainable (as governments will find). Corporations using agricultural land and existing, developed-world management assumptions have a lot of rethinking to do.

GGG

Government (Australia): Australian journalists have a quaintly glib habit of remarking, and repeating, that "a week is a short time in politics". Why is it then that they have so little conception of how short a week is in the history of good government? And how long a week can seem where bad government reigns? Expect greater concentration of media ownerships in Australia as advertising revenues slacken in years to come.

GGG

Globalisation: research on: Friends of this website have lately recommended a useful website on issues of globalisation. The website is produced in Canada and is sceptical about globalisation, to say the least. See: http://globalresearch.ca

III

Israel: A country (or, a new entity as a State) wondrously invented in 1948 by unique UN mandate, based on Zionist dreams nurtured in Europe and the UK the previous 70-80 years in ways not so far removed, in terms of a race-based ideology (alleged "pro-Semitism") of "blood, soil and parentland, to wit, 'the chosen people'", from what became (gulp) Nazism in Germany. Historically, seldom has the UN otherwise fallen for a religious shibboleth in its deliberations. This unique political invention by the post-WWII UN dispossessed millions of (those who are today) "Palestinians", who are still seriously inconvenienced by Israeli chutzpah about the future of their newly-invented state, plus the now-standard Israeli view of the continued non-future of the dispossessed Palestinians in question. But in general, don't mention this ongoing war, particularly not in the mainstream US media, or you'll be bashed to death with a copy of The Old Testament/ Talmud/ Judaeo-Christian heritage/ whatever and accused in public of anti-Semitism as well by fiercely unscrupulous Zionists. Of course, none of this nonsense can continue once the old, hardline Israeli Zionists die out (several of them having been terrorists for their cause in their youth). Israel, of course, once the Zionists die out, is destined to become a much kinder, gentler, modern, sane and secular, multi-cultural and proper democracy, and much less of a legacy-footprint of race-based, Hitlerian-Nazi ideology based on insupportable historical propositions and alleged theological precendents ("preposterous claims", as some informed pro-Palestinians say). God and various economic and other pressures willing. Shalom, as terminal compassion-fatigue re Israel's history sets in for this website, in a phosphorous-bombing kind of way. Or as we say in The Antipodes, God help Israel, since no one else but the US will, and the US is on the skids. It does rather seem to this website, that the only realpolitik reason the USA has ever backed Israel since 1948 is because Israel gives the US and its interests a reliable footprint in the Middle East, quid pro quo. And if not in time to come, then not. Once again, Shalom. -Ed

JJJ

More to come

KKK

More to come

LLL

LPG Gas: In Australia, why aren't more car owners (and vehicle fleet owners) switching to an LPG gas fuel supply? We wonder, why not.

MMM

More to come

NNN

More to come

OOO

More to come