This is absolutely right. The fossil fuel industry has done an amazing job at holding back the development of nuclear. In countries like Australia, which have some of the largest per Capita carbon emissions, and who coincidentally have the world's third largest coal reserves, have a moratorium on nuclear energy. It's never been properly explained why. And now fossil fuel is back with a vengeance - all because of the Ukraine war. After decades of being on the back foot, it's now being embraced again. And no one in Europe is talking about emission targets. Oil and gas company profits are at an all time high. Security and war is the only thing that matters. If I was a powerful fossil fuel executive I would probably think it's a good investment to align myself with the military industrial complex to push for a prolonged war in Ukraine.

It's interesting, if you look at the Western oil companies that were operating in Russia (Chevron, BP, Exxon, Equinor etc) and profiting from the corrupt Russian State, you might think they financially suffered due to the war and sanctions. The exact opposite. Profits have never been higher because they took out their main competition.

Or importing oil and gas from India....who got it from ...Russia.

Yes I somehow suspect these optimistic stories that the war has been good for renewables is deliberately designed to disguise the truth that the war has completely derailed the entire climate change efforts. No one is even talking about emission reduction targets now, just how quickly we can ramp up fossil fuel alternatives to Russian gas. Huge win for the fossil fuel industry as the majority of the European public is quiet on the issue.

Sadly for the planet though Europe dramatically increased imports of American LNG to replace the Russian gas, and American LNG is one of the dirtiest sources of gas available. It has far higher emissions on extraction (uses fracking) than the Russian gas. So it will take a huge renewable energy push to make this a net gain for the planet. Let's hope it really does lead to a vastly accelerated roll out of renewable energy.

....again.

From a First Nations perspective, it probably is. Genocide didn't end in 1901. There were at least 240 documented frontier massacres over a 140 year period, starting in 1794, as part of a state-sanctioned and organised attempt to eradicate Aboriginal people. Government forces were actively engaged in frontier massacres until at least the late 1920s. And then we have of course forced removals of Aboriginal children, which is considered a part of cultural genocide, which continued up until the 1970's. Linguist Arthur Capell wrote in 1964: "Government policy looks forward to the loss of Aboriginal languages so that the Aborigines may be 'assimilated'. So yeah, sadly from a First Nations perspective, the Australian flag would represent a state that was engaged in organised genocide.

What....an Australian flag?