VOGUE is an exclusive magazine about what is really fashionable. This month Vogue Australia has a feature on the ‘Climate Crisis’.
Australian Green’s Senator Christine Milne explains in the article that unless we change our ways there may be no polar bears in the wild and Australia will lose its natural icons. The Great Barrier Reef, Kakadu and the snow caps on the Snowy Mountains will apparently be gone by 2030. Also, our beaches will have eroded and many Australian cities will be in managed retreat.
The solution, according to the Senator, is for women to “roll up their sleeves just as our great-grandmothers did in the Women’s Land Army during World War 11” and reduce our personal impact on the climate by one tonne of carbon dioxide in a year.
The fashionable way to achieve this is through simple choices including turning the airconditioner down a notch, catching the train once a week and reducing, reusing and recycling what we buy.
It can’t be easy getting a story in Vogue. It is testimony to the widespread appeal of this doom and gloom issue that it is featured in this month’s issue. Of course almost all of what is written is untrue, but then fashion has never been about the truth.
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Extraordinary times call for extraordinary action. By Senator Christine Milne pg 339-340. Vogue Australia. September 2009.
Vogue images are all copyright. So my daugher, Caroline, provides a fashion theme for this blog posting … she was on the catwalk at a hair fashion event a few years ago.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
If there is one thing the greens are good at, it is identifying and exploiting niche cohorts of gullible bimbos. And how appropriate that they should team up with the industry most associated with the ruthless exploitation of third world child labour and an outrageous record of abuse of occupational health standards. This is also the industry that has taken unsustainable “planned obsolescence” to a high art form. Away from all the glitz, this industry’s squalid reality combines spent condoms with used syringes and 14 year old girls with barf breath and anal herpes.
Save the planet? Yeah, right.
Q. What did the blonde Environment Minister say when she woke up in Rio?
A. Are you sure all these guys work for Greenpeace?
Q. What was the last thing she said the night before?
A. Oh alright then, if you’re sure it will save the planet.
Ian, not sliming Ms Whiteboard Whatzername are we? Or did you just wake up cranky?
http://images.google.se/imgres?imgurl=http://www.goteborgsfria.nu/files/bilder/gft22-greenpeace.preview.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.goteborgsfria.nu/artikel/79804&usg=__rS52xwE3hbnfqp7iv1ysxIuAsFE=&h=340&w=600&sz=50&hl=sv&start=12&sig2=k_tdvMfjQjeZUiuSFvoSyg&um=1&tbnid=xrdaNShQEyOm8M:&tbnh=77&tbnw=135&prev=/images%3Fq%3DIsadora%2Bwronski%26hl%3Dsv%26sa%3DN%26um%3D1&ei=CbeUSpaXNMWu-gbf271W
Frankly the women in Greenpeace are much more beautiful than those in VOGUE. Just check above link!
As the saying goes, “you might think that, Helen, but I couldn’t possibly comment”. There could well have been quite a few blonde environment ministers at the Rio Conference. And from all accounts they were all equally deserving of contempt.
Cranky? I just love laying into the fashionistas. Child molestation offends me as much as the systematic undermining of female self esteem. The industry will posture for any sort of sleazy marketing gain but imagine the outcry if all us sawmillers decided that, for this year only, all 4×2’s would only be 93mm x 46mm, or the Dairy farmers decided the milk container would have only 1.77 litres and sugar would have to be doled out in a different sized spoon each year?
May the major parties apologise for Pristine, she was elected on preferences after failing to get a quota on her own. However perhaps you could have used this photo http://www.foe.org.au/christine_opt.jpg to show her appeal to a fashion magazine – printed on paper – made from pulp- pulp from trees!!
If you will allow me to take this thread down a slightly different direction.
It seems to me the world could use a magazine devoted to global warming skepticism.
I look down the sidebar of Tom Nelson and the blogs he links always have something interesting to say. Enough to fill a magazine and then some. Jennifer’s daughter could be the first cover girl.
But there has to be hundreds of attractive people who doubt global warming just aching to be offered a cover.
And you could slide in the pug uglies like Richard Lindzen on the inside sleeve.
bird
I hardly eve comment on taste, but surely, you must put your glasses back on and have an other look!
As always we have non solutions. Australians emit 27 tonnes per annum and are responsible for another 27 in exports. So roll up your sleeves and reduce it by about 2%. If it is only the women then much less than 1% since not all females are adult. Give us a break lets get out the shovels for this BS we need them. I thought Bob Brown wants 6 tonnes each less by 2020 and no energy exports!
Dear Bob on the China crisis “It’s the China Syndrome all over again” that is dumb. Just look at China Syndrome on IMDB maybe he thinks Jane Fonda was a Chinese spy!
Personally I like Ugly Betty:)!
Personally I think as well that Motty is right on this issue. The fashion industry is destroying young people.
Now 17 year old girls wish a bob job as their graduate gift, making wonderful natural girls looking like sleazy whores!
“Personally I like Ugly Betty:)!”
Personally I think Ugly Betty’s cute too, but sigh, I’m too ugly for her.
The AGW sales articles are nearly all the same, word-for-word:
You can save the planet by recycling/using better lightbulbs/going organic/etc. ad nauseum.
The only thing that is changed is focusing on the readers of Vogue/newsweek/popular mechanics/etc.
Speaking of “Betty La Fea” (Ugly Betty)
The original was much more interesting:
http://www.zonalatina.com/Zldata185.htm
And the original Betty, Ana María Orozco, was much better than the US Betty:
http://www.prensalibre.com/pl/2008/febrero/11/_Img/366174_101.jpg
Hot off the presses!!!
More evidence of that global cooling trend…
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,25986961-5005961,00.html
And now for the real news…HOT CHICKS!
I could probably talk about inner beauty…but meh…why bother? You can’t buy it…
RWFOH,
so when last year’s record cold waves were occuring in the SH, that was weather, right?
And this year’s cold NH summer is just weather.
But a heat wave for a week is AGW.
AGW is such a great pseudo religion.
Ann, whilst you chastise Australia for emitting 27 tonnes of CO2 e gas per year, like Christine you fail to acknowledge this per capita statistic has dropped by a massive 17% from Kyoto 1990 levels of almost 32 tonnes per head. This achievement mirrors that of my State of Tasmania that in total terms has reduced emissions by 23% led by the forest sector, yet Christine who is a Senator for the State, the IUCN and Greenpeace condemn Tasmanian forestry.
According to the World Resource Institute total global GHG emissions for 2005 was 44,153 MtCO2 e, Australia’s GHG inventory for 2005 from http://www.ageis.greenhouse.gov.au/ shows 584 Mt CO2 e, according to my calculator this is 1.3%.
Again the WRI shows the land use change at only 12% of world GHG for 2005, down from earlier estimates of 18%. Forestry (afforestation, harvest and management) contributed less 1% of world’s emission in 2005. see http://www.wri.org/chart/world-greenhouse-gas-emissions-2005
Tasmania is set do even more with building a modern ECF pulp mill (just like you have in Europe) that will sell renewable energy from the black liquor produced as a waste product of the pulping process and will reduce shipping export emissions by a million tonnes of GHG each year. But guess what; Christine opposes such a saving.
What the fashion tragics will never understand is the simple truth that the most erotic part of female anatomy is the mind. Without that connection the rest is little more than a sequence of graceless, almost bestial grindings in pursuit of entirely selfish appetites. The greatest irony being that scrawny pouting clothes hangers generally have the libido of a piece of cold three day old pizza.
But how apt that the green movement should seek to align themselves with an industry so devoted to unabashed deception, the presentation of an entirely fabricated image of the fashion victim, and the triumph of form over substance. Clearly, likes attract.
poking around some I found out that Gwyneth Paltrow, Natalie Portman, Jennifer Leigh Cook, Bono, Mathew Maconnahey, Katie Holmes, and Alicia Silverstone – all have eco fashion clothing lines.
All deep thinkers I’m sure.
But my favorite celebrity sponsored eco fashion line comes from Julia Stiles, because Julia Stiles Cares About The Environment More Then Us.
Cinders I don’t think Ann actually commented on Australian emissions. That was the DMHO.
Ann commented on bob jobs. You know “Bob the Builder” Can we fix it? Yes we Can.
Bob was the inspiration behind the current US Presidents successful campaign.
Personally I think Australians should be applauded for gifting 27 tonnes of clean carbon plant food per annum (is that per person?) to the rest of the world’s farmers.
James, you are right, my apologies to DMHO and Ann , who was the next poster, who I thought was talking of a hair cut style. Cartoon characters like Bob the Builder, movie and Tv stars, even authors have all been enlisted to the cause of ‘saving the planet” it means ordinary people and even professionally trained foresters must accept the celebrity view as this previous post shows.
http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2008/12/the-cult-of-celebrity-and-tasmanian-forestry/
The 27 tonnes is a simble maths equation dividing the latest estimate 597,156,550 tonnes by the Australia’s population of 21,889,000.
Now lets not get wound up about per capita emissions because about 15% of China and India (330 million people) have an income and lifestyle similar to ours. They drive cars, have all the gadgets, have weekenders, go on holidays etc which all emit comparable CO2 to us. But due to the fact that their countries have so many low income folks, these equal emitters are exempt from controls. It is a benefit derived solely from the deprivation of the rest of their countrymen.
More importantly, almost all of the non-OECD countries that have no emission restrictions have low per capita emissions primarily due to the fact that their birth rates did not decline over the past century. It is not so much that their national carbon footprint is low but, rather, their failure to curb their birth rate has spread their carbon budget over many more people.
Curiously, neither the UN, nor its subordinate IPCC, have recognised the simple truth that excessive (unsustainable) population growth reduces per capita burdens as well as per capita benefits. The warnings about the dangers of extreme population growth, as distinct from modest (sustainable) growth, have been widely accepted for at least the past half century.
Yet, there is absolute silence by the green/left climate lords in respect of the third world’s responsibility for their current circumstances. Their per capita CO2 emissions are so very low, and our’s are so comparatively high, because they failed to curb their birth rates when we did.
Instead, the disparity is paraded to us as some sort of evidence of our ill-discipline and their unmet entitlement.
Even more curiously, the IPCC climate lords have taken it upon themselves to penalise the low birthrate nations that welcome settlers from these high birth rate nations as immigrants. They have the sort of intellects that can allow an urban professional in Mumbai to face zero costs or penalties for his emissions but the moment he makes the same emissions in Sydney or Brisbane he adds to our existing burden.
Our rate of natural increase (births minus deaths) is 150,000/year or only 0.66 of 1% of our population while net migration adds another 75,000/year or 0.33 of 1%. Furthermore, more than 50% of our migrants come from other carbon constrained countries like the UK and NZ. Their arrival here makes the emission targets in their home country that much easier to meet and it makes our targets that much harder.
If Rudd, Wong and the rest of the sorry bunch of plodders had even a rudimentary grasp of equity principles, and intergenerational equity in particular, they would first define their emission targets based on the nature of the burden taken up by the other OECD nations and THEN adjust that target upwards each year by the rate of our migration sourced population growth rate.
But no, they remain in the Gucci Green/Left equivalent of the colonial cultural cringe. They are “lick-spittlers to forces abroad” as Keating once put it. They are too busy grovelling to Brussels to recognise that if a fair emissions reduction target for some Euro-province with a static population is 30% of 1990 emissions by 2030 then a fair target for Australia would be, 1990 emissions x 1.0033 for 40 years, minus 30%. That is, our 1990 emissions would grow to 114% by 2030 due to net migration and our just and equitable target should then be 30% of that 114%, or 79.8% of 1990 levels.
In fact, if we took a global approach and used the weighted global mean rate of population growth as a benchmark we would discover that our below average rate of natural increase also deserved some sort of carbon accounting bonus.
Er … no hunter, record temps for a week are only just weather too.
You need a long term 30 year trend for climate … and the trend is up. Well that’s what Hadley, GISS, UAH, etc say so I’ll take their word for it. Dribblers on blogs don’t count as authoritative sources of anything … except … (wait for it) … HOT AIR !!! (jeez I crack myself up sometimes).
I prefer the Hanson eco fashion line
sackcloth & ashes
Ian I couldnt agree with you more, i have been saying for years now that if co2 is a problem, any controls should be based on a countries own capacity to absorb its emissions. Because we recognise the limited carrying capacity of our country and have therefore been prudent/ sensible in our population growth…our leaders want us punished! We absorb far more co2 as a country than we emit…so carbon credits to us i say!
Agriculture makes up 30% of our total emissions but we consume only 25% of our beef, only 15% of our wheat and only a tiny fraction of our wool. So a large part of our emission profile for the very noble cause of feeding other people and keeping them warm. Most of those consumers are in non-OECD nations without carbon constraints but we all know where the associated emissions rightfully belong. The per capita emissions of food importing countries are being seriously under reported while those of food exporting nations are seriously over stated.
Another large part of our gross emissions are for exported wood chips in which the carbon is completely intact at the wharf. Those emissions rightfully belong in the country where the newspaper is discarded and the emission actually takes place. But the IPCC has refused to account for all emissions consistently. The europeans rightly accept responsibility for their oil based emissions. No-one would ever suggest that the Saudis should be lumped with the lot at the well pump. So there is no excuse for not treating wood based emissions the same way.
Indeed, all emissions should be accounted for along the whole value chain. The logical place to account for them is the last point at which larger scale accounting can take place. For most food items it would be when it arrives in the supermarket chain’s warehouse. The major retail chains know exactly how much of each product they have purchased and sold and that is the point where the associated carbon can be correctly accounted for. At wholesale level there is likely to be a portion of sales that are exported to other countries and that portion does not belong in our inventory. But in respect of small retailers, the scale of the accounting units would be too small for efficient reporting so this part of the industry should be accounted for at wholesale level.
The same should apply to emission intensive industries like cement and aluminum. If the product is exported then the related emissions should be attached as well. The test should rest on “who, and where, is the user”.
A similar situation applies to international airline fuel emissions. We attach those emissions to the country that owns the airline when we should be attaching them in proportion to the nationality of the passengers. Passenger kilometers are a standard accounting unit in the airline business and this can be readily linked to fuel consumption. It is a very simple step to then attach the nationality of the passengers to their true and fair share of the emissions.
But of course, climate poo-bahs have enough trouble grasping atmospheric fundamentals, let along complex international trade and commerce. And when all is said and done, carbon is an imaginary problem anyway.
Since my idea of a fashion statement is a loincloth and a rawhide vest, I can’t really grok where fashion buffs are coming from. Nevertheless I’d like to put the environmental impact of the fashion industry into perspective.
Yes, high fashion CAN BE an environmentally wasteful form of conspicuous consumption. But suppose that some wealthy Fashionista always donates last year’s fashion items–still in excellent condition–to charity. Then it would be reasonably accurate to describe this person’s actions as being philanthropic in nature.