Another year will soon be over. Green Left Weekly will take a short break so the many volunteers who worked very hard all year to keep our project going can have a little holiday.
Thank you to all our regular readers and subscribers and all the people who kindly contributed to keep this project alive.
The values, ideas and vision that Green Left promotes are anathema to the rich and powerful and their agents. Just last week Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull made another attack on the push for renewable energy.
“Are we seriously going to deindustrialise Australia because of some green left ideological crusade for wind farms and solar panels,” he sneered during a November 27 visit to the BlueScope Steel plant at Port Kembla, NSW.
The “green left ideological crusade”, as the silver-spooned former merchant banker from Point Piper calls it, is actually the growing public pressure for Australia to stop acting like a dirty-coal-company-run climate change rogue state and start taking some urgently needed measures to shift to renewable energy before it is too late!
The green left perspective is grounded in the reality that capitalist business-as-usual means ecocide. That's a fact — not “ideology”. There will be no just and sustainable future that is not a green left future.
Another hard fact is that, despite all the great technological advances that have now made a radical shift to renewable energy much more effective and reliable, 100 large fossil-fuel industry corporations account for 77% of global warming since the 1980s.
Further, as the recent COP23 climate summit in Bonn, Germany, was told, global greenhouse gas emissions are on the rise again after flattening for a couple of years.
These 100 powerful corporations on the climate crime sheet all have “business models” that are “structurally dependent on the continued extraction and burning of the very fossil fuels that are fast making the planet uninhabitable,” said Kate Aronoff in an article in Intercept. “Much as they might talk up investments in clean coal or token renewables projects, they won’t walk willingly into a low-carbon future.”
This toxic self-interest has driven record inequality and the seemingly permanent war imposed on large sections of the world, which gives rise to more and more refugees — other big issues that absorbed much of our focus this year.
We can predict more big struggles ahead and projects like Green Left are up against very powerful foes.
To help us come back fighting strong next year, we are making a special appeal to readers to help pay the bills for another year of struggle. Here are some examples of the bills we have to raise money to pay:
- Our printing bill for a year is about $50,000;
- Postage and freight for a year is $31,000;
- Power for a year is about $7000; and
- Internet is $1500.
If you can make a donation that covers any or part of these bills you will be helping Green Left fight for another year.
Finally, please consider giving a gift subscription to Green Left to a friend or family member this holiday period. Every new regular reader becomes part of the solution in a world so desperately in need of system change.
Direct deposits can also be made to Green Left, Bendigo Bank, BSB: 633-000 Account number: 160058699. Otherwise, you can send a cheque or money order to PO Box 394, Broadway NSW 2007 or donate on 1800 634 206 (free call from anywhere in Australia).
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