Trying Again
*
Musee Des Beaux Arts
About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
W.H. Auden, 1940
Well so? The malignant glue had taken over completely; and nothing anyone could say or do made the slightest difference. He went through each agonising day without even a sense of irony for what seemed, in his grandiose abstractions, like climbing an everest of agony on a daily basis. Not a laugh, unless it was crazed. There were funny tableau's which always erupted in front of him. It was so terribly poignant, and so habitually addictive, he could not let go. It was crazed and it made no sense; but those days of crisis were a familiar blackness; as if he had been here all before. But this time he was shocked by the sheer brutality of the blackness; and scurried back on to the lapping shores; comfort.
Two Men and a Truck have pulled up outside; the sound of reverse indicator piercing the culdesac calm. Everything is different here. He doesn't hear the drunken squabbles at 4am; you ripped me off.... How long had it been; before he was dynamited out. Almost literally. With three of the ceilings collapsed, builders everywhere, nightly eroded; fighting desperately to save an impossible situation, undermined at every turn. What was it about him that made these people think they could so readily attack? Everything that was familiar was gone. We knew everybody; identities in the street. Welcomed like an old comrade at the Glengarry; if he ever dared to go; and feted as he walked, hello, hello.
Everyone knew him and the kids. The landscape became a part of the soul; gritty; looking either way to ensure you were not about to be robbed. The gentrification continued apace. But the mob on the block were doing their best to withstand the tides of progress. You look after her, you white c..., they shouted, dumping an utterly drunk Doris in front of the young police officer. I only ever drink to get drunk he declared, almost proudly. Well you've done a good job, the publican said. And the night was black and infinite and he could sense everything within a hundred kilometres; and the stars bloomed in the black sky and all was not lost; not here at the end of the adventure; at the end of one personality and the beginning of another.
He draped himself in the woes of others; even in their triumphs; but mostly in their woes. The tiny pink and blue coffins; the hushed church, the teary relatives; the mother and father and children all dead. At the hand of a gun. In one crazed moment. The woman had pulled the trigger; but somehow there was that feeling it could just as easily been the man. No one wanted to apportion blame. No one wanted to witch hunt; or speak ill of the dead. The family of the father made an ostentatious display to the family of the mother; signalling in death that there was no blame. That this terrible tragedy had struck out of the blue. And as a result of all that hard work; he was to be liberated.
It had been such a very long time. He had been a young man when it all began. And each time he rose up and the forces gathered; another entity ate him down. The froth of the landscape, the vivid colours of Sydney, the ant like nature of the inhabitants, the lifeless, conservative streets; the endless queues and traffic jams and tunnels filled with smoke; the tension between drivers; the fumes shimmering in the heat and the voices of malcontent droning on the radio; lock them up, lock them up, was their solution to everything, soft judges.
Each day things vanished into the sand. It's tourist season at one of the world's most famous beaches, Bondi, and the bodies coat the sand and the cafes are full; with little English. These languages, these intimacies, as they move closer together and swing their Euro trash perfect bodies; how far from where he had come was all this? In those early hours; walking alone in the untrusting mist, frightened by footsteps following him; frightened by the sickness he could feel all around; to here in these perfect places; the light playing across the water; everything at peace, everything whole. He would never know happiness again was now reversed; and the shadows no longer raced across the sand as he stared glumly down.
THE BIGGER STORY:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/12/14/2771512.htm?section=justin
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has stepped up his attack on the Federal Opposition over climate change policy, as he prepares to leave for the UN talks in Copenhagen.
The Opposition policy is expected to focus on measures such as energy efficiency and carbon sequestration technology.
Opposition Leader Tony Abbott calls it direct action but Mr Rudd says it is more like a case of direct regulation.
He says the Opposition's plan will be more expensive and less effective and engulf businesses in red tape.
"We have a clear cut, well-thought-through policy," Mr Rudd said.
"They are policy-making on the run. We have one which puts a cap on the amount of the amount of carbon pollution we produce. They have no cap.
"We have a clear compensation mechanism for families. They have none. Our system is fully funded. Theirs is a magic pudding."
Mr Rudd says the Opposition's plan to focus on measures like sequestering carbon in soil, better land management and more energy efficiency policies will end up costing more.
"What the Liberal Party needs to do is to take a calm, measured approach to developing mainstream policy for the future, including on climate change, rather than simply shooting from the hip, shooting from the lip and policy development on the run," he said.
But Mr Abbott has brushed aside the criticism.
"When our policy comes out before the Parliament sits again, people will see that there are much better ways to improve the environment and reduce emissions than Mr Rudd's great big tax," he said.
And he does not buy the Prime Minister's argument that the Opposition's plans will strangle businesses in red tape.
"Mr Rudd knows all about bureaucracy. What does Mr Rudd think his emissions trading scheme is?" Mr Abbott said.
"It's a great big tax to produce a massive political slush fund to provide enormous handouts to favoured groups that will be administered by a vast bureaucracy."
http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/time-running-out-for-climate-deal-rudd-20091214-krvf.html
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has acknowledged time is running out for a global deal on climate change as he prepares to enter the fray in Copenhagen.
And he's unlikely to be welcomed with open arms after taking an early battering over Australia's handling of land use emissions, which have prompted cries of cheating from countries such as France.
Talks have hit a critical stage with just four days left to negotiate a global pact to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
With the clock ticking and ructions continuing to flare between developed and developing nations, Mr Rudd has acknowledged the risk of failure remains.
"It's going to be tough to get an agreement by Friday," he told Sky News on Monday.
"There'll be plenty of predictions of total failure, emerging success, dashed dreams, dashed hopes ... we've got a lot of work ahead of us.
"I wish I had a crystal ball to tell you how it is going to turn out."
His comments come amid accusations of mass-scale accountancy fraud relating to agricultural and forestry emissions.
Government negotiators are pushing for complex rule changes in Copenhagen that will allow Australia to take credit for any cuts to emissions made through land use.
Along with other developed countries, they are arguing the planting of trees, advancement in agricultural practices and so on, should all count towards meeting emissions targets.
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/green-pot-of-carbon-gold-lures-politicians-20091213-kqim.html
IT WAS a candid remark in a private briefing. But the comments by an Australian climate negotiator in Copenhagen late last week gave some insight into where Labor intends to find a potentially ambitious cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020.
It will be in the same place that Liberal leader Tony Abbott is indicating he will go looking for his ''practical measures'' to solve climate change - and nowhere near the smokestacks of coal-fired power stations or greenhouse-intensive industries. It will be in the rolling back paddocks, grazing lands and grasslands of rural Australia, from Burke to Barcaldine, from Wubin to Wangaratta - a green pot of carbon gold.
It is hard to put a dollar value on the potential bonanza. Equally, it is hard to put an exact figure on the possible emissions reductions, but the predicted numbers are mind-boggling - enough, some say, to make Australia carbon neutral for the next three or four decades. And all that without having to impose a nasty tax, set up a complicated emissions trading scheme or clean up a single polluting pipe. It is a political win-win.
The climate change negotiator reportedly told a private briefing last week at the UN climate conference that Australia would be able to commit to a 25 per cent cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 if proposed land-use rule changes pushed by developed countries are accepted as part of a new global climate deal.
The changes are highly contentious in Copenhagen, as developing nations recognise the potential for countries such as Canada, the US and Australia to offset industrial pollution against carbon sequestration in rural landscapes. Intuitively, it seems implausible that simple changes in how we manage agricultural land might return much carbon to our soils. It's hard to imagine that perennial pastures, reducing tillage and fertiliser use and improving fire management could be any match for the relentless 24/7 pollution billowing from coal-fired power stations and grid-locked freeways.
Yet, because we have hundreds of millions of hectares of land, very small increases in soil carbon could generate huge reductions in our net emissions.
Under the Kyoto Protocol, Australia has no incentive to take up these opportunities, because we don't have to account for most land-related emissions. And from the figures revealed today showing a 657 per cent jump in the numbers since 1990, it is obvious why Australia at present prefers not to account for them.
Australia has led the charge at climate change negotiations over recent years to change the way that land-use emissions are counted in the next global climate deal. If it carved out so-called natural or ''exceptional'' events such as bushfires and drought, which cause the huge spikes in our emissions, Australia could claim carbon credits from ''forest and land-use management''. This then opens up rural lands to so-called ''carbon farming'' on a grand scale.
