Posted by: Karel Boele
on 27 Mar, 2012
Have you seen Post Growth Institute's latest project?
Posted by: sustainadelic
on 06 Feb, 2012
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.)
Posted by: Mark Mann
on 24 Jan, 2012
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.
Posted by: Karel Boele
on 10 Dec, 2011
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.
Posted by: sustainadelic
on 26 Oct, 2011
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.
Posted by: Karel Boele
on 15 Sep, 2011
EcoDirectory attended the National LETS Conference in Perth from the 9th to the 11th of September.
Posted by: sustainadelic
on 04 Aug, 2011
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.
Posted by: sustainadelic
on 12 Jan, 2011
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.
Posted by: sustainadelic
on 04 Aug, 2010
Responsible investment fund manager Australian Ethical is pioneering an interesting new approach to ethical investment.
Responsible investment usually avoids the big bad guys, such as fossil fuel companies and the like. But Australian Ethical's aim with its new Climate Advocacy Fund is exactly the opposite - to become a shareholder in big polluters.
Why? Because that gives the fund the right to attend shareholder meetings and raise questions about the companies' greenhouse emissions and responses to climate change.
Posted by: sustainadelic
on 20 Oct, 2009
A good article in The Australian by Glenn Milne picks up on research by the Australia Institute into the ETS.
Posted by: sustainadelic
on 08 Oct, 2009
The financial crisis shows we aren't taking climate change seriously
According to the always-excellent Paddy Manning in the Sydney Morning Herald, governments around the world have spent some $US5000 billion ($A5800 billion) fighting the global financial crisis.
We can deduce two things from this.
Firstly deduction: when governments think something is really, really important, this is the sort of money they spend.
And they aren't spending it on climate change.
It's proof, if proof was needed, that few (if any) governments are seriously trying to reduce emissions and prevent climate change. Let's be honest - a couple of billion here and there is just PR spending.
Sadly, the brief flicker of hope governments would see the financial crisis as an opportunity to launch a "Green New Deal" proved to be wishful thinking.
Pumping bucketloads of money into essentially trivial programs such as building school halls instead, as the Australian government is doing, only adds insult to injury. The message seems to be: "we'll spend the money on anything EXCEPT tackling climate change". Or perhaps it's just another indication of how far most world "leaders" and politicians still are from grasping the full implications and urgency of climate change. And of how peripheral "the environment" remains in mainstream politics and economics.
Second deduction: when governments think something is really, really important, they don't leave it to the "free market".
If the market will sort everything out, then why all the financial stimulus spending? Why bail out GM? Why prop up failing banks?
Because, of course, governments don't believe in letting the market solve crises.
For that matter, if the free market is so effective, why do states have armies? Why not allow the market to find the most cost-effective way to fight terrorism and global jihad?
On that subject, the US government has spend an estimated $915.1 billion dollars on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - with no end in sight.
Posted by: sustainadelic
on 02 Sep, 2009
A recent study by British consultancy Oxford Economics values the Great Barrier Reef at $51.4 billion - or $2500 for every Australian alive today.
Posted by:
on 02 Apr, 2009
There's an excellent series of videos featuring leading Australian environmentalists in the SlowTV section of The Monthly's website.
Posted by:
on 06 Mar, 2009
Kevin Rudd meets South Korean President Lee Myung-bak in Canberra today. No doubt they will be discussing the financial meltdown. Let's hope Rudd takes notes, because Korea's stimulus package is probably the greenest in the world.
Posted by:
on 26 Feb, 2009
Posted by:
on 05 Feb, 2009
The message from Government's $42 billion economic stimulus package is Kevin Rudd doesn't take climate change seriously.
Posted by:
on 03 Feb, 2009
South East fibre Exports - who run a woodchip mill near Eden, New South Wales - have failed to convince major electricity companies that a biofuel plant run by burning wood is worthy of being called accreditable renewable energy.
Posted by:
on 02 Jan, 2009
Along with many environmentalists, I'm not a fan of carbon trading. In my view it's unwieldy, too open to rorting and lobbying by industry pressure groups and it's ability to actually reduce emissions remains totally unproven. More likely, it will only serve to make some traders rich with little emissions reductions.
Posted by:
on 23 Oct, 2008
The financial crisis could be our best opportunity to save the world.
Posted by:
on 23 Oct, 2008
Some big guns in the US are beginning to throw their weight behind renewable energy. Over there, the issue is often presented as "energy security" and reducing dependence on foreign oil imports, rather than reducing climate change, but never mind.
Posted by:
on 23 Oct, 2008
In this article from the UK Guardian website, their environment correspondent John Vidal looks at what the money spent on bailing out the world's banks could have achieved. You know, stopping deforestation, developing renewable energy, feeding the 862 million people in the world who go hungry every day, providing clean water to the 2.5 billion people who lack access to it... little things like that.
Posted by:
on 16 Oct, 2008
Our German cousins over at Solarserver.de report some developments on the manufacturing front in the solar industry.
