Greenhouse
It is commonly accepted within the environmentalist movement that the increasing concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere due to industrial activity will lead to a warming of the globe — the so-called greenhouse effect. In order to prevent such an event happening, and all the dislocation caused by rising seas and altered rain patterns, we are being asked to reduce our CO2 emissions. Further, we are asking the third world to forego the fossil-fuel powered development that we in the industrialised countries have already achieved and continue to exploit.
To ask such a sacrifice from the third world one would hope that the premise, that CO2 will cause global warming, is sound. But is it?
One can make quite a convincing case that increased CO2 will not cause global warming. Warmer ground temperatures mean more evaporation, more cloud, higher albedo and more light reflected back into space. Result: a net cooling. The most important greenhouse gas is water vapour, it seems.
But what about the measurements which show that the world is getting warmer? Most measurement stations are in cities. What they have been measuring is the fact that cities, with increasing paved areas and cars, have been getting warmer. Accurate measurements go back less than 100 years, yet the time scale of weather variations can be many times this length of time. In short, we do not have sufficient data to predict the weather or global warming.
Rising sea levels? Similarly, the data are inconclusive. Land rises and falls and measurements vary. Don't get me wrong. I am not advocating a burn-for-all-you're-worth attitude. Conservation and efficiency bring their own rewards. Coal can be burnt cleanly and this technology should be encouraged in the first and third worlds. But if we don't burn coal are we to use nuclear power? British Nuclear Fuels seems to think so with double page colour ads in the New Scientist about how nuclear fission is one safe plant in the greenhouse.
Conservation and efficiency should be the positive catch cries of the environmental movement. Crying wolf about the greenhouse effect will leave the movement discredited and merely aids the advocates of nuclear energy.
Peter Sobey
Emu Ridge ACT
[Edited for length.]
Guatemalan appeal
The External Commission of the National Union of Guatemalan Women (UNAMG) has launched an appeal to save the lives of three Guatemalan women and their children. This appeal is one of three projects which illustrate the horrors of life in capitalist Guatemala where the military control over life and death overshadows all. The projects give people around the world an opportunity to act in solidarity by contributing money to save and strengthen the lives of Guatemalans.
The External Commission of the UNAMG was formed at the end of 1980. In that year, even more violent repression was carried out against the organised popular movement. Many incidences of torture and s occurred (and still occur today as the government is engaging in Peace Talks with the URNG, the umbrella organisation that unites progressive Guatemalan groups who are fighting for the right of the Guatemalan people to live a life worthy of human beings).
In late 1980, a large number of UNAMG compañeras were forced to leave the country to save their lives. In the years since then the Union of Guatemalan Women has carried out many different activities to organise and support Guatemalan women in exile, or refugee women in Mexico, Costa Rica and Nicaragua. They are working hard to gain help from the international community.
The UNAMG also works within Guatemala, supporting other organisations, such as the women's group "Pro-Family Improvement".
The project "Save The Lives of Three Guatemalans Families" is an urgent appeal for help for three UNAMG compañeras who have received threats from the army. In Guatemala, this means either you leave the country, or you are murdered. Money is needed to enable women and their children to leave and provide them with temporary housing and support in Mexico.
The second project, the opening of a Guatemalan Women's Support Office in Mexico, is aimed at supporting the women's movement in Guatemala, as well as organising shelter for refugee or exiled women.
UNAMG wants to be able to use their tradition of struggle and experience to benefit other women's organisations in Guatemala.
The third project involves training work that will be carried out by the Women's Support Centre. Workshops entitled "To Be An Indigenous Woman" will be held to give indigenous women the skills needed to work and train others in their own communities. These projects cannot be done openly in safety in Guatemala.
Money is urgently needed. If it is possible for you to make a donation, no matter how small, please send it to the Committee for Human Rights in Guatemala, P.O Box 337, Fortitude Valley, QLD. 4406.
Dita Peterson
Lota
Brisbane.
'Mankind'
In reply to R.J. Symonds (Armidale) letter about Remembrance Day, Â鶹´«Ã½ November 20, 1991.
I too pray for mankind and his nature, I pray for his people not free ... I wonder why mankind finds it necessary to kill and plunder and control and rage and pillage, all in an effort to gain power over nature and womynkind?
Do you have an answer R.J. Symonds? Do you know why mankind finds it necessary to go to war and then celebrate dead heroes every year? And reproduce their deaths in endless Hollywood movies, trashy novels and violent videos?
Do we have a "Remembrance Day" for the womyn who are killed by jealous lovers each year? Or for our sisters who are victims of rape and incest? Or what about mankind and his religious ues to murder womyn? Do you remember, R.J. Symonds?
If we were to spend "just one minute to remember, and pay homage to, the fallen and the blood spilt" for womyn's struggle for freedom we would never get anything done — and people like you would have crumpled shirts, no food on the table and unruly children (among other things!)
I too am Australian and wish to maintain my pride — but above being Australian, I am a womyn and I'll be damned if I am going to let mankind continue to go to war and kill our boys for his collective ego! I want a better world for my Australian children.
Think about humanity, R.J. Symonds — not just mankind!
Simone Finch
Marrickville
Reclaim the night
The "Reclaim the night" event in Darwin was as expected rubbished by the Murdoch press and while the Sunday paper had the decency to publish letters from outraged women many Â鶹´«Ã½ of society still have an awful lot of growing up to do. Of particular interest was the notion that women "smooching" in public would be bad for children to watch. Well, one of these days people might actually realise that loving affection of a homosexual or heterosexual nature is preferable to the staggering amount of acceptable violence prevalent in our society. With such attitudes of the media in this country reclaiming the night is made even harder.
Michael Rose-Schwab
Rapid Creek NT
Nude bathing
Nude bathing should be allowed on every beach and in every hotel in Australia.
Voyeurs guilty of harassment and jeering should be taken to jail, mental hospital or kindergarten.
Men aren't any good unless they're nude.
No more worthy social package would be more welcome at this time from a liberal point of view.
Kerrie O'Rourke
Killara NSW
GST
Heard John Hewson's Consumption Tax will be at a rate of 15%; then heard an ANC rep on radio reply to the question: "what is the rate of De Klerk's Consumption Tax?" Answer (fair dinkum) "Fifteen per cent". Synchronicity is alive and well in the Fascist International!
Denis Kevans
Wentworth Falls NSW
Big mates
Not only are the Aboriginal people of Australia expected to pay imperialist pastoralists and greedy governments for the right to own and live on land they have looked after remarkably well for 40,000 years. The greedy government itself is now facing a $300 million payout to get the land on North-West Cape, given to the world's greatest gunslingers years ago for a spy base and prime nuclear target. They'll pay up though, because Australia just loves having mates who use anybody's and everybody's turf for spying and plotting democratically elected governments.
After all, these are the mates you really need — they'll sell you the land you pinched from someone else and then you sell it back to the original owners! In the end, all you lose is the little good mate but you get to keep the big gunslinging mate, and with a few under-the-table deals, mining rights worth millions on your ex-mate's land!
Peter McMillen
Gaia
I have been reading a book lately called The Gaia Peace Atlas. From my reading of the book, it is time for all good people to set themselves a world agenda. Top of the list would be:
1) To pressure all governments to disarm immediately both their nuclear weapons, and conventionally.
2) We have only 15 years to reverse global environmental catastrophe. (By the way, Bill Kelty and others have been arguing recently for more economic growth. The authors of this book are strongly against growth, and argue for a "steady-state" economy.)
3) A redistribution of wealth both within the west, and to the rest of the world. (It is no accident that all the major wars since 1945 have been in the long-suffering South.)
Who wants to join us?
Graeme Merry
Clarinda Vic