OK, nobody panic or anything, but it seems another key plank in Gina Rinehart's plot to destroy the Earth has been given the green light. Gina Rinehart's multibillion-dollar Alpha coal mine and rail project in central Queensland has been granted federal government approval, ABC.net.au said on August 23.
This comes at the same time as terrifying news that July was the 329th consecutive month of above average global temperatures. And now Rinehart has got the go-ahead for a new huge coalmine expansion — at a time when we badly need to start a transition to phase out coal and begin a jobs-rich transition to renewable energy.
This must either be because Rinehart is a representative of a system so incapable of operating rationally, that each capitalist seeks to maximse profits at all costs to beat their competitors — ignoring even the threat of an unprecedented ecological catastrophe — or Rinehart is one of a group of comic book-style supervillains plotting our destruction simply because they are pure evil.
Personally, I hope she is an evil supervillain, because when confronted with evidence of the growing reality of global warming, like the fact half of US counties are officially designated “disaster zones” due to drought, or a Sydney thunderstorm in bloody August, I love to shake my fist and cry “GIIIIINNNNNNAAAAAA!!!!” But that might just be me.
Of course, all evil masterminds need minions. It took the federal Labor government to approve yet another coalmining expansion. The government of Treasurer Wayne “I love Bruce Springsteen” Swan has given the billionaire mining magnate what she wants — yet again.
Swan loves to attack Rinehart and fellow mining billionaire Clive Palmer as greedy fat cats with undue influence. And give Labor its due, it is working as hard as it can to prove Swan right.
Then again, Rinehart can be pretty convincing. She uses highly creative forms to express her views in a way that seems able to win over even her harshest critics in the Gillard government.
You only have to look at how influential her poetry is. In a poem that she had engraved on a giant lump of iron ore in the Perth suburb of Morley, Rinehart opined: “Develop North Australia, embrace multiculturalism and welcome short-term foreign workers to our shores/to benefit from the export of our minerals and ores.”
And, in a stunning example of the power of art to achieve social change, Labor agreed to implement her call to bring in poor Third World people as cheap labour to work down her mines by adopting Rinehart's call for special “guest worker” visas in May.
Sure, Labor despises Rinehart and all that she stands for. We know this. Swan and the rest keep telling us. But when “shores” is rhymed with “ores”, not even the hardened class warriors in Labor's cabinet can resist Rinehart's call to super-exploit poor foreign workers in conditions of quasi-slavery.
So, it seems to me, either Rinehart is an evil genius, or Labor is full of bullshit.