A full moon, dirt track, not able to travel more than 20km/h not because of the dirt and darkness but because of the overwhelming number of Kangaroos, wallabies and possums.
Arriving at Cape Cassini Wilderness Retreat we were warmly welcomed by our host, David and shown our luxurious accommodation.
....Waking up to breath taking panoramic ocean views was a moment to remember!
David Spratt, author of Climate Code Red, has written a series of blogs on the Climate Spectator website exploring why the "climate message" - the need for strong action to stop global warming - is not cutting through. Public support for action, and indeed public acceptance that global warming is actually happening, has fallen since 2007-8, despite the science becoming more convincing and more alarming.
Spratt identifies two key problems.
First is the idea that you should avoid bad news and focus on positive messages and good news stories - a strategy known as "brightsiding". Key advocates of climate change action such as President Obama, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard and big environmental NGOs have adopted this strategy. They focus on the potential of clean, renewable energy rather than the dangers of global warming. Mustn't sound "alarmist", after all.
EcoDirectory had a stand at the EcoXpo in Sydney on the weekend, the expo was a success, a constant stream of visitors explored our website, tasted the MY E organic energy drink, played with our solid-ink printer ink blocks and asked questions about sustainable living information we had on offer.
EcoDirectory will be at EcoXpo this weekend at the Entertainment Quarter, Moore Park, Sydney. We will be handing out free My E organic energy drinks. Please come and visit us.
There's a saying in journalism: everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but not to their own facts.
If you can't distinguish fact from opinion, debate is reduced to a shouting match.
That was the problem with last night's ABC climate special, in which climate activist Anna Rose tried to convince former Liberal senator and climate sceptic Nick Minchin about climate change.
As one of the people interviewed, English science writer Ben Goldacre, said, it just lent the appearance of credibility to Minchin's "own facts" on climate, which simply are not true. Of course, there was climate activist Anna there to counterbalance his view. But the format of the program gives the impression both views are equally valid. That's wrong.
The key fact is this: more than 97 per cent of climate scientists agree humans aredangerously warming the planet through greenhouse gas emissions. That counts as a scientific consensus. The views of people like Minchin - and mining fat cat Clive Palmer, who appeared on the following Q&A panel discussion - are as flaky as those who believe vaccinations do more harm than good, or smoking doesn't cause cancer.
Unless people like Minchin and Palmer accept basic facts such as the existence of a scientific consensus on the subject then their opinions are not fact-based and should not be presented in a context that suggests they are credible. It's nothing to do with free speech. Rather, the media has a responsibility to separate fact from opinion. Programs such as this confuses the two. That's simply bad journalism.
To put this media failure into perspective, one of the Q&A panellists, pollster Rebecca Huntley, noted her research showed less than 15 per cent of Australians understand the basis science of global warming. That represents a huge failure by our media to communicate the fundamentals of the most significant issue of our (and probably any other) generation.
It's not just a failure of the media, but of politicians. A recent US study concluded that (given most people can't understand the science) the main drivers of public opinion about climate change are the media and the attitudes of politicians.
It's generally easy to be environmentally friendly around the house when you live on your own and you own your own home, but it can get a little more complicated when you're a renter, as many of us are. Worse still, when you share a house with people who aren’t environmentally friendly or sustainable at all. Their lazy actions make your bills increase and you’re left to foot the bill. If you’re like me, it probably drives you crazy when your housemate leaves the light on after they leave the house and won’t even use the recycling bin. Seriously, how easy is it to recycle these days? So how do you make a lazy flatmate change their habits and be a little more sustainable and eco-savy?
A short documentary by Brent Melton about the fight to save the Tarkine wilderness in Tasmania. The Tarkine, one of Australia's great wild places, is threatened not just by logging, but by proposals for up to nine new mines in the area.
Will the Greens fade away with the departure of Bob Brown as leader?
No, for one simple reason: because they have what every succesful political party needs: a "big idea".
In other words, they actually stand for something. Unlike the Democrats.
And, it's tempting to say, unlike Labor. Labor used to be the workers' party; one that stood for trade unionism, public ownership and public services funded by progessive taxation. These days, it doesn't seem to really believe in any of these things. That's why it's support is waning.
The problem for Labor is the world has changed.
The key progessive "big idea" in politics today is not class war, liberty or equality. It's the environment. It's increasingly obvious that if we don't stop damaging the environment, nothing else will matter.
Hence the rise of the Greens. Let's not forget Australia's Greens are part of awell-established global movement, now two decades old. There are green parties throughout the world, all growing steadily. Greens have a committed support base and elected representatives everywhere from Tasmania to Scotland
This year's Climate Action Summit is being held on 27-29 April at the University of Western Sydney's Parramatta Campus. Speakers include Mark Diesendorf, Christine Milne, founder of Beyond Zero Emissions Matthew Wright, Ted Trainer, Costa Georgiadis and Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature and founder of 350.org. For more information see the Climate Summit website.
Amid all the shake-ups (mainly cancellations) of various solar energy schemes, Australia's original renewable energy scheme - GreenPower - seems to have dropped off the radar. Does it even still exist?
Well, yes. And a large number of Australian residents and businesses still subscribe to the scheme, which involves paying a premium on your electricity bill, used by your energy supplier to purchase renewable energy - mainly wind, hydro or biofuel from burning landfill.
That renewable energy must be in addition to the energy supplier's mandatory Renewable Energy Target, thus increasing the total amount of renewable energy generated in Australia.
But GreenPower has fallen from a 2009 peak when 904,716 customers, purchasing more than two million MWh. By June 30, 2011, that had dropped to 739,854 customers.
There are three probably reasons to customers feeling the squeeze of higher electricity prices, the media focus in recent years on solar rebates and feed-in tariffs, and a decline in media/public concern about climate change since Copenhagen in 2009.
Yet three quarters of a million consumers and businesses are still willing to pay extra to support clean energy. GreenPower is still the simplest way for Australians to "go green" and reduce their carbon footprint. But it is in dire need of some love and (media) attention.
I recommend this post on the Climate Progress blog for some useful statistics about renewable energy (albeit with a US focus) that shatter the idea that it is expensive, uncompetitive or impractical.
A US study has concluded young people today are less concerned about the environment than previous generations. The longitudinal study of college students found only 5 per cent of young US students considered themselves "committed environmentalists" with 90 per cent saying they wouldn't be seriously inconvenienced or pay a cost to protect the environment.
Commentators in this New York Times article blame the decline in environmental concern on the fact that fewer young people today have much physical contact with the "unpaved world", and on fatigue and confusion over climate change created by vocal climate sceptics.
It began with test drives of the only volume-produced 100% electric vehicle on the market, the Mitsubishi i-MiEV. Dead silence, it was already on. It’s smooth handling impressed.
Vegetable / soy based blocks of ink were then used to print stunning photos on the Fuji Xerox ColourQube 8570 cartridge-less printer - no waste!
Our website launch went really well, a lively event and engaged attendance probing and asking alot of questions about the Mitsubishi electric car, Fuji Xerox Solid Ink eco-printer and EcoDirectory new website.
The Daily Telegraph has been campaigning recently about Sydney's gridlock. But is the solution to urban gridlock really to build more roads? Or even railway lines?
The North West Rail Link? OK, that's a must. You can't have a huge chunk of a modern city without any public transport.
A fast rail from Sydney to Canberra and Melbourne? Maybe. It would link the national capital to the country's two largest cities and allow Canberra to be developed as Sydney's second airport (while reducing demand for air travel: Sydney-Melbourne is one of the world's busiest air routes).
Light rail in the CBD? Definitely. Private cars just aren't a viable way to move huge numbers of people small distances in city centres. Light rail is relatively cheap and easy to "retrofit", as it uses existing roads.
But as for the rest - new freeways, fast rail to Newcastle and so on - forget it. They're all hugely expensive and involve bulldozing people's homes or tunnelling through Sydney's crumbly sandstone.
That's not to say you shouldn't upgrade existing roads and rail. Some of Sydney's trains run slower than fifty years ago.
But solving traffic problems by building roads, in particular, is doomed to fail. Ask any urban planner. Better roads only move bottlenecks to wherever the road ends, and by encouraging people to drive, it ultimately makes congestion worse.
The way to reduce traffic is to remove the need for people to travel in the first place.
Fakegate: a loss is as good as a win for climate sceptics
In an obvious echo of the Climategate affair, leaked documents from the US Heartland Institute, a leading propagator of climate sceptism, show the organisation funded prominent climate sceptics such as Australian Bob Carter. The sums are not huge: climate sceptics will point to larger sums spent by governments and other organisations putting the climate change message across.
But to compare dollar for dollar spending is too simplistic because climate sceptics have some big advantages in this debate.
1) Climate sceptics get disproportionate media coverage. Less than 3 per cent of climate scientists dispute man-made climate change, yet sceptics often get as much press coverage as the mainstream science, for two reasons. Firstly, because white conservative men - the demographic most likely to be climate sceptics - are overrepresented in the media. And secondly, it's because journalists think - and report - in adversorial terms. If someone says yah, they'll find someone who'll say nay. It looks like balanced, impartial reporting even if one of the viewpoints has no credibility. And conflict makes sexier copy.
2) Dealing with climate change requires huge change. To go down that path, politicians need a huge groundswell of public support. Sceptics only need to create a little doubt to scare politicians off such a big challenge. Sceptics don't need to win - or even draw - the argument. They simply need to make people think there IS an argument.
Even if you're worried about fracking and water pollution, the gas lobby tells us, gas is the cheapest low-carbon energy source and therefore essential to stop global warming. But a new study presents the strongest case yet of what looks like an inconvenient truth about natural gas: when it comes to emissions, it may be little or no better than other fossil fuels.
That's double the industry's estimate of 2 per cent but in line with another independent study published last year. (And note the study excludes leakage in transmission pipes and by the end-user - both almost impossible to measure but potentially also significant.)
These figures are critical because natural gas - methane - has roughly 25 times the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide. By some calculations, anything above 2 per cent leakage of methane makes natural gas worse than coal in terms of global warming.
When I reported on this in a previous post I said natural gas could be humanity's suicide note. Read why here.
EcoDirectory has partnered up with the Sustainable Living Festival (SLF) to bring you the latest green, eco and sustainable innovations and products from the festival's BIG WEEKEND in Federation Square, Melbourne, this weekend. We will be tweeting LIVE! from the festival starting this Friday.
A new book by Rachel Botsman and Roo Rogers called What's Mine is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption, which Time magazine recently called one of 10 ideas that will change the world.
So what is it? Essentially, a trendy word for sharing stuff, updated for the internet age.
Sharing is green because it means we don't need to buy so much new stuff which means less resources and energy used to make things. And it seems we are sharing everything from land to cars and bikes to our homes and gardens.
For instance, car share schemes are springing up around the world and many cities, including London and Paris, run bike sharing schemes, where you can hire bikes from numerous stations throughout the city.
Then there are community gardens, and seed saving networks.
Some collaborative consumption websites are listed below.
The trend away from ownership is reflected, too, in the internet "cloud". This is the term for websites that allow you to access media - music, books, movies, games, computer software and so on - when you want, without actually needing to physically own the CDs or DVDs, or even own the downloads or software.
Then there's Freecycle where you can find, or hand on, unwanted goods.
But the grandaddy of the new sharing networks is LETS. Through my local LETS group I've lent or borrowed kayaks, food dryers, tents, trailers, lawnmowers and a host of other expensive things that would otherwise spend most of their lives sitting in someone's shed. (Most Australian LETS groups now operate on the Community Exchange website.)
Lester Brown is one of America's leading environmentals, and founder of the Earth Policy Institute and Worldwatch (which produces the annual state of the planet reports). World on the Edge, his latest book, outlines the Earth Institute's "Plan B", a big-picture blueprint to save the world/civilisation from environmental catastrophe.
The first part of the book rounds up our current environmental woes. It's familiar territory, but a useful overview nevertheless.
The underlying problem, Brown says, is over-population (itself made possible by using fossil fuels, soil nutrients and water at unsustainable rates). This, in turn, is driving rapid deforestation, soil depletion and desertification, draining ancient freshwater aquifers and pushing fish stocks to collapse.
Rapidly rising consumption in emerging economies such as China, India and Brazil is exacerbating these problems.
On top of all that, increased use of fossil fuels is causing climate change. This will devastate agriculture through sea level rises, changing rainfall patterns, heat stress, increased drought and melting glaciers. For instance glaciers, most notably in the Himalaya, act as frozen freshwater aquifers on which a quarter of world food production depends. A one metre sea level rise would shrink Asia's rice harvest. Drought is spreading Africa's Sahara desert south. Ocean acidification and ocean warming will destroy coral reefs and devastate already depleted fish stocks.
Depressing, huh?
But Brown believes we already have the knowledge, technology and money to prevent climate change and environmental disaster.
Read the book if you can, but here's a condensed summary of Brown's plan to save the world...
1. Drive a switch to greater energy efficiency and clean energy by including the full environmental and social costs in the energy price. Make energy companies pay to clean up their pollution; they will pass the cost to the consumer. That would instantly make renewable/zero-carbon energy cheaper than fossil fuel and make energy efficiency more financially compelling. (Currently, taxpayers subsidise fossil fuel through government spending on health and environmental cleanups, and the loss of environmental services and amenity.)
2. Reverse population growth. It is well-established that improved primary education, healthcare and birth control will achieve this in poor countries, which are where the growth is taking place.
3. Implement an "earth restoration plan" of massive reforestation and more environmentally aware farming techniques. This will check soil erosion, stabilise water supplies and draw down carbon from the atmosphere.
4. Redefine "security". Most conflicts and failing states are due to environmental stresses, which leave governments unable to feed their populations. If we redirect some of our "security" budget from military spending to environmental restoration, Brown calculates we can fund his population and earth restoration programs with just 12 per cent of the world's annual military spending. (Or, 28 per cent of the $661 billion US military budget alone; America accounts for 43 per cent of global military spending.)
5. Act quickly: history shows change of sufficient speed and scale is achievable, if the political will is there. Brown cites President Roosevelt harnessing America's industrial might in the second world war in less than three years, and how Iran halved its birthrate between 1987 and 1994.
Of course, generating the political will is the real problem. Brown doesn't have an answer to that. I guess it's up to the rest of us.
It's well worth setting an hour aside to watch this lecture by Canadian journalist and historian Gwynne Dyer. Dyer's book, Climate Wars, explored scenarios that could arise from global warming in the coming decades, as changing climate creates food and water shortages and leads to increasing global conflict over resources. Dyer (whose has been dubbed, apparently, "Grim Die-er") doesn't paint a cheerful picture.
We hope you have a beautiful and wonderful Christmas and New Year. We hope it is full of lots of delicious organic food, great green gifts and exciting sustainable events.
Michael Duffy in the Sydney Morning Herald urges us to give up the fight against invasive introduced species. Instead, he says, conservationists should concentrate on creating "novel" but viable ecosystems that integrate introduced species with native ones.
Duffy, a contrarian environmentalist who likes to challenge mainstream green positions, points out there hasn't been untouched wilderness in Australia since Aboriginal people arrived 50,000 or so years ago and wiped out the megafauna. That's a generally accepted view, popularised by Tim Flannery in his book the Future Eaters.
Duffy argues that untouched nature isn't necessarily "better" than modified ecosystems. I think that goes too far: if we define "better" as an ecosystem with more stability, biodiversity and biomass, I think nature does a better job if left alone.
The problem, of course, is nature hasn't been left alone and Duffy is surely right to say we now have no chance of restoring Australia (or anywhere else) to a pre-colonial, or pre-human, state. We can't bring back the megafauna and we won't get rid of introduced species. Cats, rabbits, foxes, rats, mice, goats, camels, wild horses, buffalo, feral pigs, cane toads, carp, tilapia and the rest are here to stay. Foreign plant species now make up around half of Australia's flora, according to this study. Weeds such as Paterson's curse, blackberry, willows, bridal creeper, gorse, lantana and soursob are rampant.
So what is the goal of landcare, bushcare, national park management plans and other conservation strategies?
Some conservationists now propose we focus on enhancing the resilience of ecosystems, even if that means using introduced species to fill ecological niches and/or recreate a balanced ecosystem. In an essay in Nature in June, US ecologist Mark Davis and others argued many invasive species are harmless, and we shouldn't waste time trying to eradicate them.
And while it's hard to argue feral cats or foxes are harmless, trying to hold back the tide of invasive species is as futile as King Canute. Yet attempts to re-engineer ecosystems can backfire badly - think of cane toads. There's no easy answer, but it's a serious question.
I was reading AIM HIGH Summer 2012, Australian Ethical Investment’s newsletter recently, it has a good article in it titled “The truth behind the mining boom”. It discusses the mining boom’s negative impact on other parts of the Australian economy, such as the manufacturing sector.
Did you know a single annual increase in U.S. military spending can be greater than the entire military budget of the next biggest military spender, China? Seven of the 10 largest arms-producing corporations are in the U.S..
EcoDirectory had a stall at the Fair@Square fair trade and ethical festival in Federation Square. People with a large amount of, to those with little awareness of ethical consumption attended the stall, it was a great success!
The Essential Services Commission of South Australia (ESCOSA) — the independent economic regulator for essential services in the state — released a report this week which highlighted the increase in customers' take up of solar energy sources as South Australians look to offset rising energy prices.
With expectations low for the forthcoming Durban climate conference, it looks increasingly like our best hope is falling renewable energy prices. Here are a couple of interesting stories on that subject from Climate Progress and Yale360.
If that equation is projected into the future, the cost of wind will fall another 12% by 2016. The Bloomberg report states: "in the best locations [wind] generation is already cost-competitive with fossil fuel electricity, and that will be the case for the majority of new onshore turbines installed worldwide by 2016.
Fatih Birol, chief economist at the OECD's International Energy Agency (IEA) - hardly an alarmist greenie organisation - has issued a dire warning the world is heading for irreversible climate change within the next five years.
"I am very worried – if we don't change direction now on how we use energy, we will end up beyond what scientists tell us is the minimum [for safety]. The door will be closed forever," says Birol.
The warning comes as US Department of Energy figures show 2010 saw the biggest-ever annual rise in greenhouse gas emissions - an increase of 6 per cent, or 564 million tonnes. Emissions from burning coal, the biggest single source of carbon dioxide emissions, rose 8 per cent.
Greenhouse gas levels are now higher than the supposedly "alarmist" worst-case predictions of the 2007 International Panel on Climate Change report.
EcoDirectory had a stall at the Woytopia festival on the weekend. People enjoyed walking around the Eco stalls, listening to the music being played and talks on offer, the festival had a great relaxed atmosphere. EcoDirectory had its new website on show to the public, the Fuji Xerox Solid Ink printer was a success again and people were interested in the information we supplied about the Mitsubishi electric car.
Wind turbines have, in recent times, attracted negative publicity in Australia with a number of people living near wind farms reporting health problems as a result of the constant low level noise emitted by the three-bladed turbines.
Consequently a number of anti-wind farm groups have been formed to oppose their construction. See here for a report in The Australian over an ongoing court case, which details typical allegations raised over this divisive issue.
However a radically new Australian design called the Eco Whisper Turbine has been developed with increased efficiency and reduced noise in mind. Rated at a 20kW capacity, the turbine is 23 metres high with 30 blades extending out from a 6.5 metre radius from the hub.
On October 31st, a newborn baby will take the world's population to seven billion.
Population is the elephant in the room in any discussion of the environment. One reason is that most population growth is in Asia, Africa and South America, and left-leaning greenies don't want to be seen to blame the poor nations of the "global South" for the planet's woes.
You see, the global North - the rich nations of Europe, north America, Japan, Australia - created most of our environmental problems. Capitalism, a European/American invention, drives our endless and rapacious consumption of the natural world. Colonialism turned much of the global South into a giant logging and mining operation. Most of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere were put there either by rich nations, or by developing nations such as China producing goods for consumption in those rich nations.
But we can't ignore population. It's obvious that seven billion people will use more natural resources than the billion who lived in 1800, or the two billion in 1920.
Our current rate of population growth + consumption, as a species, is unsustainable. We are using natural resources, such as forests or fish, faster than they can regenerate. The Global Footprint Network calculates September 27 was "Overshoot Day" - the day we used up our sustainable supply of nature for the year.
Some, such as James Lovelock (who formulated the Gaia Hypothesis), predict human population will crash to about a million by the end of the century. Disease will thrive in the hotter temperatures of a globally warmed world. Human food supply will collapse as farmland is exhausted through drought and over-farming, and fish stocks will collapse through overfishing and ocean warming and acidification. These things are already happening. Fish stocks are hugely depleted. Arable land around the world is turning to desert.
EcoDirectory's owner/manager Karel Boele was recently invited to the launch of the Mitsubishi i-MiEV in Melbourne. The small car is the first volume-produced 100 percent electric vehicle to be released in Australia and we caught up with Karel to ask his thoughts on the launch and the future of the electric car in Australia.
The debate over water reform has received less scrutiny of late with the drought easing in much of the country and national attention turning to matters such as the carbon tax debate, the bankrupted Malaysian refugee solution and of course the start of the footy finals.
Organic wine is reasonably common these days, but you don't see many organic beers. But it seems that's changing, with a number of microbreweries now producing organic beers.
Recently I came across Koala Beer's (I've only just noticed the pun) Burragumbilli Organic Lager. Boutique Sydney brewery and beer cafe Redoak makes the tasty Redoak Organic Pale Ale and long-established NSW winemakers the De Bortoli family have gone into the beer business with their Williams Pale Ale.
The Victorian Government has officially opened development at the suburb of Toolern, situated near Melton, west of Melbourne, describing it as the country’s first “water neutral” suburb. A joint project between Melton Council and Lend Lease, the development is expected to begin by the end of the year and will house an estimated 50,000 people by 2030.
Here's the deal. Ecuador is a poor country and needs money for development. A rich supply of oil under its eastern lowlands is an obvious source of that money, and in recent years, Ecuador has derived 40 per cent of its national income from oil revenues.
Now oil companies have identified a vast supply of oil beneath the Yasuni National Park. Jackpot! Well, yes and no. The problem is Yasuni is one of the most biodiverse spots on earth. Maybe THE most biodiverse. This is the upper Amazon, a place where cool moist cloudforest tumbles down the eastern slopes of the Andes into steaming rainforest.
A survey of 91 solar operators in NSW by the Australian Solar Energy Society (AuSES) and the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) last week found 416 jobs have been lost and 25 per cent of solar businesses have closed or are planning closure in the next month.
Australia's only manufacturer of solar panels, Silex Solar, has also announced the loss of 30 jobs.
The solar industry, which employs about 15,000 people nationwide, has been hit by the recent axing of solar feed-in tariffs in NSW and Western Australia - a key incentive for consumers to buy solar panels.
Ironically, China has just gone in the opposite direction, announcing the introduction of a national feed in tariff for solar panels. Admittedly the tariff is small (16cents per kW/h) but as Giles Parkinson writes in Climate Spectator, China's solar industry is growing so rapidly anyway that prices are tumbling. In recent years, module prices have been falling by 20 per cent for each doubling in demand to a point where, in some situations solar power is close to competing on price with coal-fired power.
As most solar panels sold in Australia are made in China, the growth of solar in China should also see the cost of solar power fall sharply for Australian in the next few years.
A key report released yesterday by the Australian Government’s Climate Commission has served a grim warning to coastal regions of Western Australia on the effects of climate change.
EcoDirectory's stand at the International Organic Expo and Green Show was a success. We got comments such as “your stand is the best in the whole expo”.
It seems the Greens were right to reject Kevin Rudd's emissions trading scheme and CPRS (Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme) and hold out for a better deal. According to an assessment by climate-change think tank Climate Works, based at Melbourne's Monash University, the Gillard government's current carbon tax and Clean Energy Future Plan will generate double the emissions reductions of Rudd's package.
Two major environmental announcements from the Labor/Green alliance in Tasmania last week have seen the state set the agenda in mitigating the effects of climate change. The introduction of the projects may also be a sign that the junior Greens members of the coalition government are beginning to flex their political muscle, amidst a battle royale between left and right over a forestry agreement for the state.
A recent article in The Guardian looks at how climate - in the form of drought and food shortages - has been a critical factor driving the Arab Spring.
An interesting article in the Australian this week looks at how mudbrick homes are failing the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency's new mandatory six-star energy ratings.
Despite being two years away from an official federal election, the government’s knife edge majority has seen us move to an apparent permanent election footing. However while hard hat-wearing, baby kissing politicians are becoming more visible on our news screens, quality policy discussions on vital infrastructure issues appear to have taken a permanent back seat in favour of the personal political attacks, soundbites and slogans so favoured by our media.
If you want to know what a government really thinks, look at Treasury forecasts. These show that the Gillard government expects - as a result of its carbon tax package - that Australia's emissons will increase by 50 million tonnes by 2020, and will be 545 million tonnes a year by 2050. That's only 30 million tonnes less than we produce now.
As anticipated, the targets and price are too modest and compensation overgenerous. There isn't nearly enough to promote energy efficient. But there are some good things in the Gillard Government's carbon tax package.
Weird weather seemed to be the norm in 2010, and persisted into the first half of 2011.
These two articles from The Guardian's environment editor John Vidal explore whether it's just a bunch of freak coincidences, or global warming to blame - or this year's climate buzzword, "global weirding".
The Tasmanian forestry industry stands on the verge of a historic deal. The question is, can it, and its estwhile green adverseries, get the thing over the line?
If it flows, dam it. I've blogged previously about huge dam projects in the Amazon and Tibet, and Chile's plans for a dam in pristine Patagonia is also attracting fierce criticism from environmentalists. But Turkey's plans to harness "100 per cent" of its hydro-electricity potential by building 4000 dams in the next 12 years are breathtaking even by those standards.
Turkey has one of the world's fastest growing economies. Largely as a result, the country is hungry for energy. Currently it depends heavily on Iranian and Russian natural gas and the re-elected liberal-leaning government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan is keen to develop a degree of energy independence.
Laws are being drafted allowing hydroelectricity schemes to proceed even in nature reserves. And each hydro scheme will be allowed to take 90 per cent of the water out of a section of river, leaving the remaining 10 per cent as "lifeline support".
They should come to Australia and study the Murray-Darling first to see what happens when you do that to a river.
Read more in this report.
Getting electric batteries to delivery long-distance driving range at a realistic size and an affordable prices is proving elusive. And while the 100-150km range of an electric battery is fine for everyday city driving 50 weeks of the year, consumers want a car they can also take on holiday a couple of times a year.
One solution to this problem could be the rollout of a battery-switching network, such as that planned by Better Place. Drivers will simply drive into a Better Place station and switch their battery for a fully charged one in a couple of minutes.
If that works, electric cars may overcome the distance problem.
Hold the front page. The conservative British government has just announced a "carbon budget" that will legally bind the UK to cut its greenhouse emissions to half of their 1990 level by 2027.
The US climate change organisation 350.org is coordinating another worldwide day of protest and events to call for greater action on climate change. Called Moving Planet, it takes place on 24 September.
With the nuclear industry on the back foot after the Fukushima reactor crisis in Japan, natural gas is now being positioned as the "only realistic" clean energy option. In the last few years, billions have been poured into gas exploration and development - far more than has gone into developing renewables such as solar or wind. Natural gas is is claimed, generates half the greenhouse gas emissions of coal, making it a valuable transition fuel in any strategy to reduce emissions. But is this true? It's a key question, because if the world invests for gas it will inevitably delay the development of low or zero-carbon renewables such as solar and wind. So if gas doesn't lead to a lower-emissions future, we're in big trouble.
As I've blogged before, it's been suggested that if as little as 2 per cent of gas escapes into the atmosphere - called "fugitive emissions" - the global warming impact of gas could be just as bad than coal. That includes leaks during extraction, flaring to burn off excess gas, leaks while the gas is piped to the user, and even in your home - if, say, you turn your stove on then fumble for a match. Maybe it's no accident that figures for gas leakage are almost impossible to find, but some studies suggest it is not far off the 2 per cent mark. One US Enivonmental Protection Agency study put leakage at 3.3 per cent.
The hot new frontier in the fossil fuel world is shale gas, or coal seam gas - gas trapped in layers or earth and rock, including coal seams, and extracted by a process called hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking", which involves cracking open underground rocks to release the trapped gas. China is about to get into shale gas in a big way.
Last week, SBS screened a documentary about fracking called Gasland, which has also just been released on DVD in Australia. Coal seam gas featured in a recent Four Corners report.
Critics of fracking say it can release methane locally (as well as carcinogenic chemicals used in the extraction process) including into underground aquifers. Gasland shows methane coming out of the kitchen taps of local residents. Maybe that would be a necessary evil if it reduced emissions. But now a new study claims the fugitive emissions from shale gas might make it worse than coal in terms of emissions.
Ironically, within a decade or two solar power is likely to be competitive with coal and gas. But by then gas extraction, along with coal, may have pumped enough greenhouse gases into the atmosphere to set off disastrous feedback mechanisms, such as the release of methane currenly locked into the frozen tundra in northern Siberia and Canada, that would make global warming unstoppable. Far from saving us, going for gas could turn out to be the greatest mistake in history. With stakes this high, we mustn't just take the word of the gas lobby. Greenhouse emissions from gas must be given the closest scrutiny possible.
Last week union boss Paul Howes threatened to oppose the carbon tax if it led to the loss of one job in the steel industry. Australian industry, sensing a weakened Government, is queuing up to demand special treatment.
NSW consumers are facing power bill increases of around $300. Of that, something like $100 will be the result of subsidies for solar panels and other green schemes, through mechanisms such as the solar feed in tariff. Most of the rest is due to increased infrastructure costs - building new power lines and so on.
The Greens won their first ever lower-house seat, Jamie Parker in Balmain, in the recent NSW state election. They won 10.3 per cent in the lower house, up 1.3 per cent. With 90 per cent of counting complete for the upper chamber, they have 11.16 per cent, up 2 per cent on 2007. They have two more senators, to give them a total of four. A third senate candidate, Jeremy Buckingham, is narrowly leading Pauline Hanson for the final seat.
But... is that good?
On the face of it, yes. It's the Greens' highest ever vote and first lower house seat. They are clearly the third party in Australian politics. The gap between them and the Labor Party is closing.
But with so many voters deserting Labor, the fact the Greens didn't pick up another 2 or 3 per cent must be a worry.
One issue that may have hurt the Greens was the call to boycott Israel by Marrikville candidate Fiona Byrne (in her capacity as Marrickville mayor), supported by prominent NSW Green Lee Rhiannon. This foray into left-ist fringe politics was a godsend to conservative media commentators keen to portray the Greens as extremist lunatics.
Greens leader Bob Brown thought so. "NSW voters wanted to hear about issues that were effecting them day to day ... I think it was damaging to the campaign," Senator Brown said.
The Greens are at a tricky point in their evolution. As the only party that takes climate change seriously, they will continue to grow, because climate change is the key issue of our time.
But growth brings challenges. Being a junior partner in government risks means you are tarred with the same brush when the government is on the nose. It also means compromising, as with the carbon tax, and thus risking alienating your own core support.
The Greens must do two things. Firstly, they must find candidates who come across as intelligent, respectable, reasonable people who do not alienate "middle Australia". Bob Browns, not Lee Rhiannons.
Secondly, they must keep focused on their core issue, which is the environmental.
Political parties need a core narrative, a guiding principle at their heart. Liberals stand for the free market. Labor stands for worker rights and universal access to public services such as education and health. (Labor's problem is they no longer believe unequivocally in either of these.)
Noted UK environmentalist George Monbiot says in the Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/21/pro-nuclear-japan-fukushima that the Fukushima nuclear incident has persuaded him nuclear power is safe. If a 40-year-old nuclear plant with shoddy maintenance can survice a 9.0 earthquake and a tsunami without a major release of radioactivity, we should worry less about nuclear power.
Climate change legislation is dead in the United States. So dead that President Obama didn't even mention global warming in this year's State of the Union address.
So who will save the planet?
You’d think a cotton shirt – a natural fibre – would be better for the environment than a polyester one. After all, polyester is derived from oil, isn’t it.
Instead, according to a new report in the journal Science, it was the Amazon rainforest, courtesy of a devastating drought that resulted in billions of trees dying. As they rot, the trees release vast quantities of carbon dioxide. The 2010 drought follows a similar "once-in-a-century" drought in 2005.
It looks like the Federal Government will use the Queensland flood levy to kill off a few ill-conceived funding programs, including a raft of green schemes.
Tipped for the chop are the cash-for-clunkers and green car innovation schemes, and funding for carbon storage.
The White House oil commission has concluded that cost-cutting by BP was at least partly to blame for the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. It identified nine decisions that increased risk; BP was involved in all nine decisions. Seven of those decisions saved time and (hence) money.
The conclusion could expose BP to billions more in compensation claims.
As we enter the era of peak oil, with extraction moving to ever-more-inaccessible places, the fear is that we'll see more of these sort of disasters in the coming years.
But the commission refused to back calls for a halt to all offshore drilling - and, as a telling detail is towards the bottom of this follow-up article in The Guardian, notes that BP shares rose 2.8 per cent on the news.
The more money we spend, the less happy we get.
Or at least, according to a new study, beyond a certain point increased wealth does not make us any happier.
I notice some in the Australian Labor Party are trying to stir up debate on nuclear power. The main argument of those spruiking nuclear is that the clean energy alternative - renewables - simply can't meet our energy needs.
You may have read about Sydney City Council's plan to build "trigeneration" plants that will use natural gas - and, ultimately, biogas generated from the city's composting waste and sewerage - to produce electricity, heating and airconditioning for buildings in the city.
I've always thought, if you had a spare few million dollars and a team of computer geeks, that creating a computer game would be a great way to get (mainly young) people to engage with the complexities of environmental issues.
And now someone has done just that.
A new British strategy computer game called Fate of the World puts you in the position of an eco-minded World Bank type organisation trying to prevent runaway climate change. Your options apparently range from the usual building wind farms and public transport to killing everyone over 30 to reduce human population.
Another game, EnerCities allows you to build your own sustainable city on Facebook.
The big question is, of course, are they any good?
