News Round-Up: Australia Quadruples Mining in the Name of Climate, Cash as Far-Right, and Porsche Erased Jesus
Every week, the editorial team of Freedom Research compiles a round-up of news that caught our eye, or what felt like under-reported aspects of news deserving more attention.
Over the past week, the following topics attracted our attention:
Australia is planning to more than quadruple its mineral extraction in the name of climate.
Porsche deleted the image of Jesus statue from its promotional video, later apologised.
Austria's chancellor voices support for enshrining cash into the constitution, Reuters calls the idea far-right.
Pop culture museum cancels the Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling due to gender issues.
Nearly 16 million trees have been felled to create wind farms in Scotland.
Australia plans to more than quadruple mineral extraction for climate change
Australia's Federal Resources minister, Madeleine King, is calling on the mining sector to expand its extraction activities in order to boost the production of critical minerals for achieving net zero, The Epoch Times reports. The country's Treasurer, Jim Chalmers, also concurred in a speech at the 26th World Mining Congress in Brisbane in June that a 450% increase in mining is needed to reach net zero.
Speaking in parliament on Wednesday, King said that more mining was important for products needed in achieving net zero – electric vehicles, wind turbines and battery storage. Products for everyday use, such as mobile phones and laptops, will also need plenty of mineral resources.
"As I have said, the road to net zero runs through the Australian resources sector. To get to net zero we’ll need more mining, not less," King said. "Global demand for critical minerals will increase over the next seven years by 350 percent. That is an extraordinary level of growth, and Australia has the natural resources that will enable us as a nation to respond to this international demand," she said.
"We are the world’s largest producer of lithium, the third largest producer of cobalt, and the 4th largest producer of rare earth elements. This represents an unmissable opportunity for our nation and one that this government will not miss," King added.
Last year was a record year for the Australian mining sector, which earned a total of $460 billion (AUD), or €276 billion.
The country has abundant reserves of lithium, cobalt, nickel, manganese and graphite, for example, which are all needed to make batteries for electric cars. At the same time, however, the production of an electric car requires significantly more mining than an internal combustion engine car.
Sherry Duhe, interim CEO of Newcrest Mining, a large mining company, pointed out that the amount of earth needed to be moved to produce one electric car is ten tonnes, or six times more material than an internal combustion engine vehicle. "It just shows you the enormity of the problem and the challenge that we’re facing. And that’s just to electrify vehicles; that’s just one element of the electrical system," she said. Bigger mines will have to be built and we have to go deeper to get the minerals, while doing it faster than before, she added.
In June, the Australian government also unveiled a plan to make Australia a critical producer of mineral resources for the world.
Porsche deleted the image of the statue of Jesus from its promotional video, later apologised
Luxury car maker Porsche has celebrated 60 years since the production of its 911 model with a promotional video of the car speeding along beautiful roads. In one shot, a red Porsche 911 drives along the road with the 25th of April Bridge, a famous Lisbon landmark, looming in the background. However, viewers of the video were quick to notice that in the same shot another famous Lisbon landmark had completely disappeared. It is the statue of Cristo Rei – Christ the King – representing Jesus Christ with his arms outstretched, which should be clearly visible in the same shot. However, in the first version of the video released, it was deleted in post-production. From the other side of the river, behind the bridge, only a tall pedestal with a viewing platform on top of it could be seen, which should also have contained the statue of Christ. The video quickly amassed millions of views, and thousands of people took to the web to sharply criticise Porsche for deleting the statue of Jesus.
Porsche is not, of course, the only company to have removed Christian symbols from its promotional materials. In 2017, for example, the supermarket chain Lidl did so by using photos of various beautiful churches on its marketing materials and packaging. For example, it chose a photo of a church on the Greek island of Santorini for its packaging of Greek-themed products, but processed the photo to remove the cross from the roof of the church in order to achieve 'religious neutrality'.
However, as far as Porsche is concerned, they decided to remove the video first and admit the mistake and apologised a day later. The statue of Jesus was put back in its place and the video was republished.
Austrian chancellor expresses support for enshrining cash into the constitution, Reuters calls the idea far-right
Austria's conservative chancellor Karl Nehammer has come out in favour of enshrining the right to use cash into the constitution, Reuters reports. The news agency describes the idea of constitutional protection for cash as far-right, as it has been supported for years by Austria's national-conservative Freedom Party (Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs - FPÖ), which has lately been labelled extremist.
Opinion polls show that the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) is currently the most popular party in the country, leading before both the Social Democrats, which are in opposition with them, and the Austrian People's Party (Österreichische Volkspartei - ÖVP), which shares government responsibility with the left-wing Greens.
"The issue of cash is very important to people," Nehammer commented. "It is important to me that cash be written into the constitution," he added, noting that he had asked Finance Minister Magnus Brunner to draft a proposal.
Why the cash issue is currently politically hot in Austria was also covered in one of our previous news reviews in early June. In October last year, Austrians collected more than half a million signatures on a petition calling for the constitutionalisation of cash. The country has a rule that petitions with more than 100 000 signatures must be debated in the parliament.
While many countries have made great strides towards a cash-free society and on average cash is still only used for about a third of transactions in Europe, in Austria about half of all the transactions are still carried out in cash and therefore protecting cash in circulation has been a political issue for years. In fact, it was the ÖVP that proposed writing cash into the constitution in 2019. In the meantime, the FPÖ seemed to be the only party to support the idea. Commenting on the issue, FPÖ leader Herbert Kickl now asked whether the rival was not ashamed to steal their ideas.
The ÖVP and the FPÖ would not be able to muster the votes to change the constitution. Between the two of them they have 55% of the seats in the lower house of parliament, but passing the change would require the majority of two thirds.
Pop culture museum cancels the Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling: she is said to have hateful and divisive views
A pop culture museum in Seattle, Washington, USA, will continue to present Harry Potter themes and related exhibits, but all references to the author of the story world, J.K. Rowling, have been removed. Rowling has also been removed from the museum's Hall of Fame, reports The Telegraph.
The reason given for the unusual move was Rowling's views, or rather her critical stance on so-called transideology, in other words, seeing a gender difference between men and women regardless of whether a man wants to be called a woman or vice versa. As a champion of women's rights, Rowling has long been the target of insults from trans activists. She has defended, for example, women who have been sacked for stating the biological facts of male and female sex. She has also criticised the use of language based on transideology. In 2020, for example, she protested against the use of the phrase "people who menstruate" instead of women, with her trademark irony, and came under attack from angry trans activists.
Among others, Rowling's words were also taken offence at by actors Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint, who played the characters she had created in the Harry Potter film series and became world-famous.
She has also received numerous death threats because of her public statements.
The Seattle Pop Culture Museum announced last week that it “unequivocally stands with nonbinary and transgender communities”. Museum employee Chris Moore wrote in a blog post on the museum's website: "This certain person is a bit too vocal with her super hateful and divisive views to be ignored…Her transphobic viewpoints are front and centre these days, but we can’t forget all the other ways that she’s problematic." In addition to transgender issues, Moore also accused Rowling of 'fat shaming' and racial stereotyping in her work, as well as under-representing the LGBTQIA+ community. Moore considers herself (?) as well to be 'transgender'.
Nearly 16 million trees have been felled to create wind farms in Scotland
Since 2000, a total of 15.7 million trees have been felled on 7,858 hectares of Scottish state-owned land. That's more than 1,700 trees every day, writes The Telegraph.
The rush to cut down trees for wind farms was acknowledged by the governing Scottish National Party’s (SNP) Rural Affairs Secretary Mairi Gougeon, who said developers would be expected to replace the trees cut down with compensatory planting elsewhere. However, Forestry and Land Scotland, the agency responsible for managing forests and land, said the volume was roughly equivalent to their annual felling programme. In addition, they claimed to have planted more than 500 million trees since 2000 – in the course of 22 years that would be more than 62,000 trees every day.
The government wants to continue the rapid development of wind farms. Scotland already has turbines theoretically capable of generating 8.4GW of power, which is more than half of the UK's total. The government wants to add a further 8-12GW. The government's latest planning framework relaxes controls on building more turbines, with protections for unspoiled wild land watered down. The John Muir Trust, an independent nature conservation group, warns that the new threshold is so low that it would be impossible for wind farm developers not to meet it.
The government's strategy also includes replacing smaller wind turbines that are reaching the end of their lifespan with new and more powerful ones. Indeed, some developers would now like to erect 850 feet tall (260-metre high) wind turbines.