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Community-led Tarong coal action & media

Hi all,



Loads of media from yesterday - just a glimpse (I love how the media
keeps calling us "Power Protesters").

We made ABC, 10 and 9 evening news :-) I think we made it into local and regional print media (Kingaroy, Nanoonga, etc) - we're visiting the State Library today to find out.

Check out www.enoughhotair.com for photos, videos and more links (coming soon).

Australia:

Two Charged Over Power Station Protest - Channel 9 News (with photo)
http://news.www22.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=661871&rss=yes

Tarong Power Plant Protesters Arrested - Courier Mail
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,20797,24615621-952,00.html...

Protesters Arrested at Tarong - Brisbane Times
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/news/queensland/protesters-arrested-a...

Police Arrest Tarong Power Protesters - ABC
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/11/07/2413600.htm

'Peaceful' activists chained at power plant - News.com.au
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,24615589-1248,00.html?from=publi...

International:

...an excellent article from the BengaliTimes - compliments of Reuters.
http://www.banglalive.com/news/NonLeadNewsDetail137_11_2008.asp

Climate Activists Disrupt Australian Power Plant - The Standard, Hong
Kong (Reuters Feed!)
http://www.thestandard.com.hk/breaking_news_detail.asp?id=9228&icid=4...

3 Climate Protesters Chain themselves to Coal Equipment - News.uk.msn
http://news.uk.msn.com/article.aspx?cp-documentid=10751237

Syndicated at:

Sydney Morning Herald
http://news.smh.com.au/national/two-charged-over-power-station-protes...

The Mercury (Tasmania)
http://tools.themercury.com.au/stories/10008681-breaking-news.php

The West Australian
http://www.thewest.com.au/aapstory.aspx?StoryName=528523

The Age
http://news.theage.com.au/national/two-charged-over-power-station-pro...

Climate Ark
http://www.climateark.org/shared/reader/welcome.aspx?linkid=110000
Sunshine Coast Daily
http://www.thedaily.com.au/news/2008/nov/07/aap-protesters-chained-at...



--
Clare Towler
m: 0412 055 600
skp: clare_t
http://stepitupaustralia.wordpress.com

"If not now, when? If not here, where? If not us, who?"
www.enoughhotair.com
www.climatemovement.org.au

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Electric car infrastructure just four years off

23/10/2008
From

WITHIN four years, most Australians will be able to drive an electric car and recharge it at special plug-in points at home, the office or shopping centres.

The mass use of electric cars moved a giant step closer to reality today, with power company AGL and finance group Macquarie Capital signing an agreement with international group Better Place to provide infrastructure to support the environmentally friendly vehicles.

Under the agreement, Macquarie will raise $1 billion to build an electric-vehicle network in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, and AGL will power it with renewable energy.

...

Well I hope this is true. Let me see if I can find other references:

• Red Herring.com
  
• The Motor Report.com
  
• EV World.com
  
• The Australian (IT)
  

Yep, looks pretty convincing. I guess that isn't a hard one. Now that they spoke of "using renewable energy for fueling stations" (what does this mean) lets see if Coal fired power stations get closed. When that starts happening (and Coal exports reduce) then we're really cooking with gas (excuse the pun!).

There's no mention of the big energy companies. I wonder if they are somehow involved, will fight to the end to keep petroleum as a major source of road vehicles or will roll-over and let the change happen around them. I'm guessing its the first though it will be interesting to see how this one plays out.

Note that I haven't dug too deeply on this and leave it as a reader exercise. Wanna add in references as a comment (don't forget to wrap in an HTML Anchor tag so we can just click on it!.

Read the article.

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Imagine paying someone to be a prick

Greenpeace anti-coal industry song / video. What a cack!

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Forget carbon trading - we must go straight to renewable energy

July 22, 2008
From Sydney Morning Herald letters

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Reprinted in full in-case the letter disappears (due to age).

The confusion around emissions trading has served to disguise for too long that Australia needs a crash program to replace its national energy system and exchange coal and oil for renewable power. The longer this is postponed, the more difficult the ultimate effort will be, yet it is necessary for our survival and to help other countries make this revolutionary change.

Three-quarters of greenhouse gas emissions that are produced by human activities result from burning fossil fuels for power generation and transport, one-quarter from industrial agricultural practices, and another significant portion from cement production.

Yet instead of focusing on these practices and finding ways to replace and change them, the emissions trading scheme distributes the onus for fixing the problem across the entire economy - from large companies to, ultimately, every owner, operator and consumer.

The stated aim is to drive efficiency and reduce demand, and to make alternative energy production more competitive. Yet primary polluters are granted relief and exemptions from this scheme, and motorists are buffered from price rises.

Equally paradoxical is the reliance on a national and global system of fossil fuel and agricultural subsidies. None of this will help in stabilising the global climate, nor shield Australia's economy from the terminal oil shock that is upon us.

Instead, this myopic fixation on an incomprehensible carbon trading regime will mean the old combustion systems stay in place, and efficiency measures are slow to commence.

By focusing all the attention on pollution trading, the core emitters - coal and oil producers, refiners, electricity generators from coal, diesel and gas - shift the focus onto the consumers of dirty energy, which is all of us. The entire economy is hence held hostage: do something about climate change and everyone will suffer.

Let's call this bluff. Instead of wasting time with an impossibly complex and ultimately hopeless carbon trade regime, let us swiftly implement a 100 per cent renewable energy system, replace coal and oil with the country's abundant solar, bio-energy, wind and geothermal sources.

We can do this by using feed-in tariffs, production tariffs, structural adjustment support to retrain and re-employ workers in the outmoded high-carbon energy industries, direct investment in intelligent grids, efficiency standards and regulation - and negative-carbon soil and land cover management methods. We would make enormous savings and we just may have a chance to turn the corner in time.

Peter Droege Faculty of Engineering, University of Newcastle

Read the letter.

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Garnaut's interim report on climate emission reduction mechanisms

Wed Jul 2, 2008
By David Spratt
From ABC News Australia

Ross Garnaut, the Rudd government's climate advisor, will this week deliver his interim report on climate emission reduction mechanisms, but the bigger policy questions will remain unanswered.

The report will outline proposals for a carbon emissions trading scheme, perhaps better described as a cap-and-auction scheme, in which the government sets a declining cap on carbon emissions, with permits to pollute allocated by way of auction.

...

Garnaut knows that climate science is demanding emissions reduction much faster than the government appears willing to contemplate, noting "the diabolical nature of the policy challenge", and the "widespread view, based on the science, that the risks of 'dangerous' climate change and the risk of abrupt climate change, are already at unacceptably high levels at this point".

In contrast to Garnaut's acute observations that the issue may be "too hard for rational policy-making in Australia" because "the vested interests surrounding it [are] too numerous and intense, the relevant time-frames too long", the government is caught in a policy fog, unable to find its way out of a bureaucratic framework that is now out of date. The Rudd government's current policy target of a 3-degree rise would destroy the Barrier Reef, the tropical rainforests, cause widespread desertification, a mass extinction, and a sea-level rise of perhaps 25 metres, amongst many impacts. Most worrying, the government seems unaware that this would be the consequence of a 3-degree target.

...

Read the article.

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Environment is secondary to private profits

May 22, 2008
From The AGE

Investing in renewable energy is being ignored to keep fossil fuels burning.

THE idea that coal-fired electricity generation can continue to be the major contributor to global electricity generation and the world can still restrict carbon dioxide emissions to a level constant with holding climate warming below 2 degrees is a fairytale, according to letter in the premier science journal Nature (published online, May 7, 2008).

Vaclav Smil, of the University of Manitoba, in Canada, makes a new point that is critical to the debate as it is being run by state and federal governments in Australia: "Carbon geosequestration is irresponsibly portrayed as an imminently useful large-scale option for solving the challenge. But to sequester just 25% of carbon dioxide emitted in 2005 by large stationary sources of the gas we would have to create a system whose annual throughput by volume would be slightly more than twice that of the world's crude-oil industry, an undertaking that would take many decades to accomplish."

And yet the Brumby and Rudd Governments persist in pouring money into geosequestration research at the expense of developing solar energy, among other renewable alternatives. Last month Premier John Brumby announced a $127 million package to develop "clean coal" including a $110 million fund to establish new large scale, pre-commercial carbon capture storage demonstration projects. These latest commitments will take Victoria's total clean coal investment to more than $244 million since 2002.

...

Read the article.

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Australia Stuck in the coal age, when the solar century has already begun

Wed May 21, 2008
From

Martin Ferguson let the cat out of the bag shortly after the Budget, when he said that carbon capture and storage would be "essential for the long-term sustainability of coal-fired power generation." With those words, he betrayed the fact that his Government prioritises the coal sector's profits over climate protection.

If that seems like a long bow to draw, look at the evidence that the Budget presents.

In the vital area of commercialisation of technologies, the myriad of renewable energy options that are ready to roll out now were allocated precisely zero for the coming year, with only $125 million in this term of Government. Next to that, the pipedream that is 'clean coal' received $35 million this year and $250 million this term.

When immediately called to task by the geothermal industry, which was, like many other renewable technology developers, calling for urgent commercialisation funding, the Government chose to make that sector an ad hoc $40 million grant, instead of shifting funding priorities. What's worse, instead of taking the $40 million from the coal sector's windfall, the Government took it out of the Energy Innovation Fund, money that had been earmarked for research into storage of solar energy.
...


Renewable energy has the potential to power our whole country with zero emissions within the near future, something coal cannot dream of. However, in terms of fast, cheap emissions reductions, nothing can beat energy efficiency. The Greens' proposal for a systemic infrastructure upgrade across Australia, to increase efficiency by 30 per cent or more across the economy, stands in stark contrast to the Government's piecemeal, tokenistic approach. A few tens of millions in rebates, grants and loans will cover a tiny percentage of homes, businesses and industry, while the cash-only offer fails to address the other well-known barriers to energy efficiency, such as lack of information and priority. Tackling energy efficiency provides a tremendous economic and social opportunity, let alone the climate benefits. Yet it was largely ignored by the Rudd Government.
....

Read the article.

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Govt won't extend emissions cuts: Wong

From ABC News Australia


No this is right, despite the Federal Labor Party's commissioned report on how Australia should set its policies to tackle climate change, Penny Wong, the minister of Climate Change, has said that the party will NOT adopt one of the key recommendations. That is that Australia needs to play a lead role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions by going beyond its stated target of a 60 per cent cut by 2050.

Labor expected an economists report from the Economist Garnaut, and instead they got the truth and it doesn't fit in with their economic policies. So they've decided to take less interest in what he says. The prior Australian Federal Government, the Liberals, were heavily criticised for their role in ignoring climate change. The Labor party got elected partly on the basis that they are going to do something about the problem. Labor didn't want to read in the report that to make the best of a bad situation, Australia needs to drastically change the way it operates. Garnaut's recommendations are supported.

Read on for more information.

Executive Director of the Australian Conservation Council Don Henry, says it accepts the need for deep carbon emission cuts.

"Here's a leading economist saying that we need strong targets, that we've got to get cracking and he's saying it's bad for our economy if we don't act and good for our economy if we do," he said.

"I mean this a really important call for the whole of the Australian community, business, government and all of us at home, that we've got to get cracking on climate change.

Greens leader Bob Brown says the Government had previously put a lot of emphasis on Professor Garnaut's research, but now appears to be backing away.

"Penny Wong has reduced Ross Garnaut to input," he said.

"There are huge vested interests at play here - the coal industry, the aluminium industry, the forest logging industry - and it's up to the Rudd Government to put this country ahead of those vested interests."

Read the story.

Read the story on Garnaut's report (Aust 'most vulnerable' to climate change: Garnaut).


Read the Climate Code Red Report on the state of global warming from David Spratt of Carbon Equity and Philip Sutton from Greenleap Strategic Institute. Very sobor reading. Here's the overview:

The extensive melting of Arctic sea-ice in the northern summer of 2007 starkly demonstrated that serious climate-change impacts are already happening, both more rapidly and at lower global temperature increases than projected. Human activity has already pushed the planet’s climate past several critical “tipping points”, including the initiation of major ice sheet loss.

The loss in summer of all eight million square kilometres of Arctic sea-ice now seems inevitable, and may occur as early as 2010, a century ahead of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projections. There is already enough carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere to initiate ice sheet disintegration in West Antarctica and Greenland and to ensure that sea levels will rise metres in coming decades.

The projected speed of change, with temperature increases greater than 0.3°C per decade and the consequent rapid shifting of climatic zones will, if maintained, likely result in most ecosystems failing to adapt, causing the extinction of many animal and plant species. The oceans will become more acidic, endangering much marine life.

The Earth’s passage into an era of dangerous climate change accelerates as each of these tipping points is passed. If this acceleration becomes too great, humanity will no longer have the power to reverse the processes we have set in motion.

We stand at a time where we still have the power to make a choice. Only by dealing with the full scale and urgency of the problem can we create a realistic path back to a safe-climate world. Targets should be chosen and actions taken that can actually solve the problem in a timely manner. A temperature cap of 2–2.4°C, as proposed within the United Nations framework, would take the planet’s climate beyond the temperature range of the last million years and into catastrophe.

The loss of the Arctic sea-ice unambiguously represents dangerous climate change. As the tipping point for this event was around two decades ago when temperatures were about 0.3°C lower than at present, we propose a long-term precautionary warming cap of 0.5°C and equilibrium atmospheric greenhouse gas level of not more than 320 parts per million (ppm) carbon dioxide.

The USA’s leading climate scientist, James Hansen, stated recently that we should set an atmospheric carbon dioxide target that is low enough to avoid “the point of no return”. To achieve this, he says, we must not only eliminate current greenhouse gas emissions but also remove excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and take urgent steps to “cool the planet”.

These scientific imperatives are incompatible with the “realities” of “politics as usual” and “business as usual”. Our conventional mode of politics is short-term, adversarial and incremental, fearful of deep, quick change and simply incapable of managing the transition at the necessary speed. The climate crisis will not respond to incremental modification of the business-as-usual model.

There is an urgent need to reconceive the issue we face as a sustainability emergency, that takes us beyond the politics of failure-inducing compromise. The feasibility of rapid transitions is well established historically. We now need to “think the unthinkable”, because the sustainability emergency is now not so much a radical idea as simply an indispensable course of action if we are to return to a safe-climate planet.

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Drop the fission line

Friday 29 June 2007
(URL for source to be found)
From Courier Mail, QLD, Australia



Smart State ambassador Ian Lowe warns against a nuclear future

THE Queensland ALP conference this weekend offers an important forum for the Beattie Government to steer the state away from the risks of a radioactive future and towards sustainable energy options.

Prime Minister John Howard is actively promoting nuclear power as a belated answer to global climate change. Recent media reports suggest a wider federal nuclear agenda for Queensland that includes uranium enrichment and nuclear power.

Against this background it is important Premier Peter Beattie continues to keep the door firmly shut on uranium mining and the nuclear industry.

Uranium mining in Queensland would be economically short-sighted and environmentally disastrous. If we want to be the Smart State, we must use solar energy and other forms of renewables.

We should move towards better efficiency, turning our energy more effectively into the services we want. There are many more jobs and dollars in becoming a world leader in clean energy.

We have known for more than 20 years that burning coal, oil and gas is changing the global climate. Moves by the coal industry to clean up its act and reduce its pollution are welcome, but rushed pledges of taxpayer funding to assist this are not. The same money would do much more to curb greenhouse pollution if it were allocated to efficiency improvements and clean energy.

Some claim nuclear energy could help to slow climate change, but this is not a sensible solution. Even the Switkowski report, put together by a hand-picked group of pro-nuclear technocrats, did not make a convincing case.

The summary was optimistic, but the fine print of the report shows it would take about 15 years to build one nuclear power station if we started today, and the cost of electricity would more than double.

Even the most fanciful crash program, dotting 25 nuclear power stations all over the landscape, would only slow the growth in greenhouse pollution by less than 20 per cent. The science shows we need to make serious cuts, 60-90 per cent by 2050, not allow more increases.

Would uranium exports be an economic bonanza? No. The most optimistic forecast of the possible export income is about a third of our earnings from cheese exports. Uranium accounts for only about 1 per cent of our mineral exports and there is little prospect of it becoming a big earner.

What would be the cost of mining and exporting uranium? Huge volumes of radioactive mine tailings, depleted and degraded water resources and an increased risk from nuclear weapons and waste. We are still living with the legacy of the mines at Mary Kathleen and across the Northern Territory border at Rum Jungle.

Uranium mining needs large volumes of water -- not easy to find in Queensland at the moment -- and uses vast amounts of fossil energy, actually worsening greenhouse pollution.

Finally, as the Ranger uranium report said 30 years ago, uranium exports inevitably produce high-level radioactive waste that will have to be managed for hundreds of thousands of years and equally inevitably increase the risk of nuclear weapons.

Even if we say we have the best safeguards in the world and only export to the most responsible leaders, they won't be in power forever and can't control what others will do with the fissile material we sell.

We should learn the lesson of Iran. The world is now getting nervous about its possible nuclear developments. Thirty years ago, we were being urged to export uranium to Iran, and the US was trying to sell its nuclear technology to the Shah. Had that deal gone ahead, Iran would now have all it needs to build nuclear weapons.

The report A Bright Future showed we could get 25 per cent of our power from a mix of renewables by 2020. We should use solar hot water universally. Going that way would create literally thousands of real, skilled and permanent jobs in regional Australia.

Rather than facing a future of leaking tailings dams and increased pressure for nuclear reactors and waste dumps, Queensland can lead Australia and the world in sustainable and clean energy solutions.

The smart sunshine state is a much better option than being a toxic quarry.

Before last year's state election, the Premier stood firmly against the nuclear lobby and promised that the state would not support the mining or processing of uranium.

Beattie also resisted the silly suggestion that we should allow others to inflict on Queensland other stages of uranium processing, such as enrichment or dumping waste. As a Smart State ambassador, I strongly urge the Premier to resist those who want to drag us back into the Dark Age of uranium mining.

Ian Lowe is emeritus professor of science, technology and society at Griffith University and president of the Australian Conservation Foundation

...

Read the article.

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Liberal and Labor, make a call: how much heat can you stand?

Richard Di Natale Adam Bandt
June 11, 2007
From The Age (Aust)

WHAT risk of a plane crashing do you accept before buying a ticket? If it was 85 per cent likely, you'd never fly; 10 per cent, or even 1 per cent, would be too much.

Knowing that a plane might go down isn't enough; we want to know the degree of risk. So it's odd that we are prepared to make decisions about the planet's future without knowing the risk or likelihood of catastrophic consequences if action is taken, or not taken.

It can be hard to cut through the fog of figures about global warming targets: the difference, for example, between a 60 or an 80 per cent cut in emissions, by 2020 or by 2050, is difficult to crystallise.

This confusion is being exploited by both major parties and manufactured debates are played out relentlessly. Labor presents itself as tough on climate change while the Coalition says it puts economics above abstract goals.

But more than anything else, there is one number that really counts. It is the first step on the ladder of climate-change policy — and it is the one to which neither Labor nor the Coalition is willing to give an answer.

Given the science and likely impacts, how hot are we willing to let the planet get? Two degrees, three degrees, four degrees hotter?

And what risk will we accept of exceeding this target?

Temperatures have, already, risen 0.74 degrees above pre-industrial levels and, even if human activity added no more to current greenhouse gas levels, the planet will continue to warm about 1.4 degrees due to lags in the climate system.

The CSIRO last year predicted that, if we exceed a two-degree rise, 97 per cent of the Great Barrier Reef will be bleached annually and an 80 per cent loss of Kakadu's freshwater wetlands is likely. At just under three degrees, there's a 99 per cent risk of Greenland irreversibly melting, with an eventual global sea level rise of five to seven metres.

In the two to three-degree range, we can conservatively pencil in about 20 per cent of the planet's species becoming extinct and a one in five chance of the oceanic currents that regulate the planet's temperature simply shutting down.

A three-degree rise is simply way outside human experience. The last time it was that hot, in the Pliocene, 3 million years ago, beech trees grew in the Transantarctic mountains and seas were 25 metres higher.

If we can limit warming to less than two degrees, knowing about 1.4 degrees is already locked in, the consequences will still be severe, but the risk of triggering runaway climate-change events (where we lose the capacity to control the consequences) lessens significantly.

This is why German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the British Conservative party — both from the right of European politics — have recently reaffirmed the importance of a two-degree limit. The Howard Government, by contrast, isn't even in the realm of reason on this question, with the Prime Minister saying a rise of four to six degrees might make life "uncomfortable" for some, but that it was difficult to predict with any certainty.

His comment shows fundamental ignorance. The planet as we know it will not survive past a five or six-degree rise: it is predicted that, at four degrees, hundreds of billions of tonnes of carbon locked up in Arctic permafrost — particularly in Siberia — will enter the melt zone, releasing the greenhouse gases methane and carbon dioxide in immense quantities.

Labor might know where the ballpark is, but they haven't bought an entry ticket yet. The ALP's Peter Garrett set out his party's policy on this page recently (The Age, 5/6), relying on a CSIRO submission to the Prime Minister's emissions taskforce that says a 60 to 90 per cent cut to industrialised countries' emissions is needed to stabilise climate change.

But Australia, as one of the worst emitters among the industrialised countries, requires a cut at the higher end of this range.

The CSIRO research and other research makes it clear that the "temperature stabilisation" associated with a 60 per cent cut is considered by many as too risky, giving us a massive 80 to 85 per cent chance of overshooting a two-degree target. Labor's policy for Australia of a 60 per cent cut by 2050 is therefore more about hope than science.

There is literally a world of difference between a two and three-degree rise in the impacts of climate change on both humans and the environment.

Caught between the science and the politics, Labor's Peter Garrett talks vaguely in the two to three-degree range, never being specific, never committing Labor to putting even one foot on the first rung of the climate change policy ladder — an unambiguous target.

And Labor does not have a short-term target — in many ways much more important than targets five decades away.

The Greens policy is to achieve emissions cuts of 30 per cent by 2020 and 80 per cent by 2050. This would give us an 80 per cent chance of keeping the temperature rise below two degrees. To maximise the chance of staying below two degrees, we must make big cuts early. For John Howard, a climate-change sceptic, this is more about smoothing over a political problem than real action. But Labor, too, falls short of the mark — they do not even set a temperature target.

Professor Tim Flannery, the Australian of the Year environmentalist, said recently his greatest wish was that political parties would state their "temperature limits" as to how hot the planet should get. The Greens recently moved a motion in the Senate to have a two-degree limit endorsed as Australia's target. The ALP joined with the Coalition to defeat the motion.

The challenge to the major parties is: just how hot are you prepared to let the planet get?

Dr Richard Di Natale and Adam Bandt are Greens candidates in this year's federal election.

...

Read the article.

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Beattie to lift coal royalties

May 09, 2007
From Courier Mail (QLD, AUST)

QUEENSLAND'S coal industry will be hit with increased royalties in next month's state budget to help curb climate change.
Premier Peter Beattie said today he was planning to increase coal royalties to force the industry into paying for clean coal technology research.

Speaking in New York, Mr Beattie said the increase would be for their own good because if the industry did not clean up coal it would not survive.

He said research was vital to cut greenhouse gas emissions, save the planet and ensure the long-term future of Queensland's powerhouse coal industry.

He angrily accused the state's coal companies of reneging on an agreement to provide $300 million for research into clean coal technologies.

...

Read the article.

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Solar energy storage system

2 May 2007
From Australian National University

This is further proof that base-load energy demands can be supplied by renewable energy sources.

“Because we are storing energy before generating electricity, we can deliver multi-megawatt base-load electricity and meet peak loads on-demand in the same way as coal, nuclear or gas fired power stations do. The efficiency of our storage system is also very high because we use a chemical process that has no extra energy losses regardless of how long the energy is stored.

Read the article.

See ANU Engineering description of the technology.

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Public purse props up fossil fuel industries

May 8, 2007
From Sydney Morning Herald

GOVERNMENT subsidies to some of Australia's electricity generation companies are so big they exceed the profits made by those companies, a report on energy and transport subsidies says.

Government support for the coal industry and coal-fired electricity is so generous that in some cases it has led to the construction of coal-fired power plants when other types of electricity generation would have been cheaper, the report by the Institute for Sustainable Futures at the University of Technology Sydney has found.

Subsidies to fossil fuel energies, worth close to $10 billion, result in a serious market distortion, create an unfair disadvantage to renewable energy, and help increase greenhouse gas pollution, says the report, written by the institute's research principal, Chris Riedy, and commissioned by Greenpeace.

...

Read the article.

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John Howard has absolutely no idea

John Howard visited Brisbane in Queensland (Australia) and demonstrated what a dinosaur he really is. He has no touch with reality. Economics is what is most important he has said many times in relation to Environmental matters. It is true that there is more to running a country than dealing with Climate Change, though it has to be accepted as a top priority and I don't believe Howard understands this. Some Environmentalists are argueing for a 90% reduction in GHG. The level of effort required for that would be significant and so our governments must not underestimate the task.

In the linked to article John Howard also singles out the USA and China as towering over us in terms of greenhouse gas emmisions. It reminds me of the poster of people sitting in a sinking rowboat. One end is high in the sky, the other is filling with water and being frantically bailed by the occupants at that end. The high and dry guy says "Not my problem". I'm trying to find that on the net somewhere now.

The fullpost below also contains a recent email conversation I had with some family members regarding our conservative Federal Liberal Government.

April 23, 2007
From Courier Mail

PRIME Minister John Howard today rejected Labor leader Kevin Rudd's claim that climate change was the overwhelming moral challenge facing Australians.
Mr Howard said Australia was a minor emitter of greenhouse gases and could not influence the global climate by acting alone.

The Prime Minister said he rejected the Labor Party's zealotry about the issue.

``Do we need to lower carbon emissions over time? Of course we do,'' he told the Queensland Media Club in Brisbane. ``But to say that climate change is the overwhelming moral challenge for this generation of Australians is misguided at best and misleading at worst.

``It de-legitimises other challenges over which we do have significant and immediate control.''

Mr Howard said such an approach also obscured the need for balanced government decision-making and fed ideological demands with kneejerk policy reactions.

Climate change was a serious policy challenge and a major priority of his government, he said.

``At the same time we know that independent action by Australia will not materially affect our climate,'' he said. ``Australia emits fewer greenhouse gases in a year than the United States and China emit in a month.''

Read the article.

---

Family email conversation

Greenpeace email

It all started from a Greenpeace game of guess how many times the Federal Treasurer will say Climate Change in the coming Federal Budget


From: "Greenpeace Australia Pacific"
Date: 20 April 2007 13:49:24 GMT+10:00
To:
Subject: Take a punt on Peter Costello


In the past 11 Federal Budgets, Treasurer Peter Costello hasnt even
mentioned the words climate change. Not once. And this year may be his
last chance.

Tell us how many times Costello will say climate change in his Budget
speech. If youre right, you go into the draw for a great solar backpack.

Vote Here: https://secure.greenpeace.org.au/budget2007/index1.html


Climate Change and the 2007 Budget

We have all been hearing plenty of talk about climate change lately and
the Government is starting to feel the heat after ignoring the issue for
so long.

The 2007 Federal Budget will be released on 8 May and this is a big
opportunity to take real action. Its where the Government actually puts
our money where their mouth is.

Climate change is Australias greatest threat. But every year, the
governments Budget actually helps fuel climate change by handing out over
a billion dollars of taxpayers money to the coal and fossil fuel industry.
Its hard to believe that our taxes are given to Australias richest
companies for them to pollute our future with greenhouse gas emissions.
Meanwhile, the solutions to global warming - Australias renewable energy
industries are overlooked every year.

Peter Costellos 2007 Budget speech on 8 May will show if the government
is serious about solutions to global warming. Take a punt on Peter now:
https://secure.greenpeace.org.au/budget2007/index1.html

If Costello wants to be PM, this could be his last chance. With an
election around the corner, his Budget needs to deliver what the voters
want a Big Switch that puts an end to fuelling climate change and
initiates renewable energy solutions.

Maybe Costello has been saving his best Budget for last.
How many times will he say climate change? Take a punt on Peter and
watch how he reacts:
https://secure.greenpeace.org.au/budget2007/index1.html

If you have trouble with any links in this email, you can take a punt on
Peter at the Greenpeace Australia Pacific website:
http://www.greenpeace.org/australia/

ML's email

I’d rather Costello spending sensibly on climate change than Rudd wasting it on unnecessarily rolling back an excellent track record of economic management and workplace reform.

Pity many voters don’t know what it is like to pay 17 percent on their home loan interest rate, under Rudd they will soon learn. Lets not forget the tragedy of labor administration and poor economic management.

LD's email

Thanks for letting us know how you vote ML.

This is the problem as I see it. It's not all about the economy. Or economic management.

And though I am not holding my breath I'd like to see any government with a focus on quality of life, which might happily mean less pay, less work hours, higher tax and a concentration on government spending where it will have long term benefits for future populations (ie. infrastructure, health education, hospitals, universities....).
So call me a leftie greenie intelligentsia, small l- liberal soft socialist dreamer and I'll thank you for the compliment !!!

Let me reiterate I know I'm dreaming, so you and those who vote with you are as safe as your (and my) mortgage !

I don't reckon Costello will mention climate change. He might say 'water crisis' or 'drought' or something else that implies the situation is temporary.

LD

ML's email

Thanks LD. Always happy to share the way I vote, I am a loud proud blue ribbon capitalist liberal.

The irony is never lost on me...Brooke working for this big quasi military company making squillions and ruining our earth, you running your own business, your family mostly farmers and me, the hard nosed capitalist working for the charity sector trying to make ends meet for the betterment of a sub-culture not ordinarily associated with capitalism, with an organisation that recycles, reuses and reduces everything it uses!!

You gotta love it!

:)

ML

Brooke's email

Gidday ML, LD and all,

Wow, I love a healthy discussion. BAL are big, and a small part of their business is involved in the military. It's unfortunate but true. The position of the military in our world has only been made more intense by Bush and the Coalition of the willing creating and supporting an unjust war. Prior to this, and when I joined BAL, the military was being used mainly for peaceful purposes (think Kosovo). Most of their business was in commercial aircraft.

You know my focus is not on Labor or any particular politics, except Green politics. Green politics includes social and environmental aspects, both of which the coalition government have such a poor record in. It's great that they have improved the economy, but at the cost of everything else. We are facing an enormous crisis at the moment, and it is the climate change deniers (John Howard was one until just before the Walk Against Warming held last November) that have been dragging this out for so long. Professor Ian Lowe (President of the ACF) co-wrote a papers in late the late 80's saying CO2 was increasing in the atmosphere and that it is causing climate change. Why has it taken so long to get momentum enough to have the world start to realise it needs to change - because deniers wouldn't take it seriously. The economy was king. Now Howard and similar parties are sproating tripe about fixing up the Environment would cost the economy (See Malcolm Turnbull on Lateline 29/3/2007 - http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2007/s1885183.htm). That has been proved to be so wrong (see the Stern Report - http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/independent_reviews/stern_review_economics_climate_change/stern_review_report.cfm, http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,1935211,00.html, http://mustelid.blogspot.com/2006/02/stern-report.html). So why would they continue to claim this? Because they are dinosaurs, they just don't get it. How can you have a growing economy when so much money will have to go into repairing our environment? Did you know that when the Kyoto Agreement was drawn up in 1995 that the level of CO2 reductions we had to meet was 12% on 1990 levels? And that today the level of reductions we have to meet are now atleast 60% (if not more with some like Monbiot saying 90% is the real target). The deniers dragging their feet have caused the bad economy we are about to see. You cannot convince me otherwise.

On the subject of people telling us ages ago that things have to change is the topic of Trees - Old Growth Forests, rainforests, remnant bushland and other forests. We have to stop tearing these down, we were told. But economy is king and we kept our destructive behaviours up. Its jobs after all, and we need to fuel the worlds appetite for paper and timber. How correct those 'greenies' / 'hippies' / 'environmentalists' were. We know that today. We know what an important position existing stands of trees play in a world loaded with too much carbon pollution. Yet our stupid economy-is-king based society STILL continues the crazy behaviour.

At BAL I am the chairman of the Environment Committee and have been in the group since it started back in 2003. We have implemented a number of initiatives including full recycling throughout, the removal of foam mugs (encouraging the use of normal mugs), water use reduction, educational sessions and external activities such as tree planting and clean up australia day. I don't know how much has been a result of our efforts, but Boeing Australia is employing an Environment Manager who will ensure that it reduces its environmental footprint (the B Company I believe is going this way also). We have a measure of 25% reduction in Greenhouse gas emisions year after year. The committee will discuss how we are going to achieve this. With BAL being a big consumer of resources, i think it is fantastic to work there and help make the changes. 2000 people or so work in Boeing Australia, and the changes we make will have a direct influence on how everybody there views the world. I am quite proud to be a part of this. BAL also pays me quite well and this gives me time to do volunteer work at Friends of the Earth and to lead Climate Action Brisbane who have organised the Brisbane Walks Against Warming in past years and will continue to do this plus persue other educational and action-based plans.

In conclusion, the economy-as-king attitude has helped ruin this planet. It is time for alternate environmentally-focused parties to lead us out of this mess and into better times. Does this mean our lives need to change? Once upon a time, not much though a bit more effort is required now. If we leave it any longer then it will mean more drastic changes will need to be made. You choose.

Regards,

Brooke

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Get Up: Our message to Labor (Australian oposition)

From Get Up

The Australian Labor party looks likely to displace the current Australian Coalition of the Liberals and Nationals at the federal elections later this year. The pressure is on to have them form worthwhile policies to address the environmental issues including Climate Change.

This is what I submitted to this campaign to:

Dear Arch Bevis,

This is it. We can't afford to make mistakes. Full and holistic research, analysis and development needs to be put into the solutions we require to solve the environmental problems we face. Global warming is our most immediate problem. My beliefs on the matter include:

1. Clean Coal may be a solution but the $500 million Labor has currently allocated to it should be put into renewable energy R&D (Labor has no current R&D investments for renewables). Clean coal should only come after all efforts and energies have been allocated to renewables. BTW many think Clean Coal is not only an oxymoron but that it is not feasible for Australia or the world. We CANNOT continue to burn the amount of coal we do;
   
2. Put in programs to reduce the energy dependence of Australians;
   
3. Make our society more energy efficient - public transport being one obvious area.
   
4. Stop logging operations. Those trees soak up carbon. Cutting them down releases carbon. Animals and plants die and extinctions occur. We are part of the web of life and we can longer afford to destroy any more of it
   
5. Work with the rest of the world. Stop all wars and promote peace and diplomacy. Remember, they are your neighbours (http://www.globalcommunity.org/flash/wombat.shtml)
   

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Grim toll in doomsday forecast

February 11, 2007
From News.com.

HEATWAVES that kill thousands, gigantic bushfires and regular 100-year storms are part of a frightening new climate change forecast for Australia.

A leaked CSIRO report into the impact of global warming predicts a century of climatic horrors for the nation.

The doomsday scenario will form the basis of the Australian chapter in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, the Federal Government's key stocktake on global warming due for release in April.

The United Nations' IPCC reports into climate change represent the world's most up-to-date assessment of how rising global temperatures will change our planet.

The CSIRO report found that extreme fire days will be more common across Australia.

The report predicts Tasmania and Victoria's east coast will be battered with massive 100-year storms, adding to beach erosion and the destruction of coastal properties.

Eucalypt forests will start to disappear, along with the delicate habitat necessary to sustain Australia's native animals.

Human lives in bigger cities will come under increasing threat, with the annual death toll from heatwaves expected to reach 1300.

And refugees from Pacific Islands submerged by water will flock into the country.

Without solid rain, Australia's crops will be affected, despite the higher temperatures helping increase the yield.

The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has forecast a rise in average global temperatures of between 1.1 per cent and 6.4 per cent by 2100.

The CSIRO report looked at the impact of a range of temperatures, from a small decline to a rise of more than 5 per cent.

It examined the impact of rising temperatures in five key areas: ecosystems; crops, forestry and livestock; water resources; public health; and human life.

A senior CSIRO scientist said: "For the higher levels of warming, it's pretty serious for Australia."

The CSIRO paper - based also on input from universities and private groups - is the Federal Government's most authoritative report into the local impact of climate change.

The report's findings were yesterday backed by predictions of worse droughts, bushfires, floods and less marine life for Tasmania.

At a Global Warming and Politics seminar in Hobart yesterday, scientific experts and politicians agreed the clock is ticking.

"Climate change is real, its effects are happening now in many forms," visiting expert Stuart Rosewarne, senior lecturer in economics at Sydney University, said yesterday.

Dr Rosewarne said many effects were already having an impact on Tasmania and yesterday's seminar heard the more populated areas and major agricultural and farming regions would be hardest hit.

"The drought that is being experienced in Tasmania at the moment is very much shaped by global warming," he said.

"The impact will vary across Tasmania significantly with agricultural areas to be hit the hardest.

"With declined rainfall and increased temperatures, some of the forests will be badly affected.

"Some of the plantations that are being developed at the moment are not growing as fast as anticipated which is directly related to climate change and rainfall patterns."

Dr Rosewarne said rainfall was expected to decrease 10 per cent in summer but in some areas it could fall a further 20 to 30 per cent.

"There has been a fairly significant decline in rainfall patterns in some areas of Tasmania in the past five years," he said. "Predictions indicate this will only get worse."

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Coastal sites flagged for nuke reactors

Tuesday Jan 30 22:35 AEDT
From http://news.ninemsn.com.au

Nuclear reactors are likely to be spaced out along the Australian coast from Townsville in Queensland to Port Augusta in South Australia under a nuclear-powered future, a new study says.

Queensland would have six reactors and the coast around Sydney from Port Stephens to Jervis Bay would have four power plants, left-wing think-tank the Australia Institute says.

Victoria would have four more and South Australia three, including one at Port Adelaide, it suggests.

In all, the study names 17 likely sites for reactors, based on criteria such as proximity to seawater for cooling and access to the national electricity grid.

The institute also surveyed 1,200 Australians on their attitude towards having a reactor in their local area and found that 66 per cent were opposed.

A quarter of those surveyed, 25 per cent, were supportive and nine per cent undecided.

Fifty-five per cent were strongly opposed and just 10 per cent strongly in favour.

The study follows a determined push by the federal government towards the nuclear generation of electricity.

A government commissioned inquiry headed by Dr Ziggy Switkowski last year reported reactors would have to be positioned within tens of kilometres of the east coast national power grid.

It found that nuclear generation was attractive in the battle against greenhouse gas emissions and could be viable if there were to be a price on carbon.

That inquiry posed the scenario of 25 reactors producing a third of Australia's electricity needs by the year 2050.

The institute's director Dr Clive Hamilton said overseas experience showed that the siting of power plants is one of the most politically contentious aspects of the nuclear debate.

"The prime minister has called for a thorough and full-blooded debate about nuclear energy," Dr Hamilton said.

"We cannot have this debate without considering siting issues."

Report author Andrew Macintosh said the fact that nuclear energy attracted moderate levels of support at a general level but fierce opposition from local communities when concrete proposals were put forward suggested the presence of the not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) phenomenon.

"That is, even if people do not oppose nuclear power plants at a general level, they often object to proposals to construct them in their local areas," he said.

The report raised the possibility that governments might compensate communities in a bid to placate local opposition to nuclear facilities.

Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane declined to comment on the report, saying the nuclear debate was too young to be talking about placement of reactors.

"It's too early to start speculating," a spokeswoman for Mr Macfarlane told AAP.

"He just wants to talk about it and start investigating it. Deciding on sites is something that's going to happen way down the track."

Labor's resources and energy spokesman Chris Evans said people in the communities identified by the report should expect a nuclear power plant in their area if Prime Minister John Howard's nuclear plans are successful.

Labor is opposed to a nuclear industry in Australia.

"Instead of talking up nuclear power John Howard should be encouraging an immediate increase in the use of renewable energy and the introduction of clean coal technologies," Senator Evans said.

"With Australia's existing energy resources, there is no reason for us to go down the nuclear path."

Labor's environment spokesman Peter Garrett said the report was further evidence Australia should not go nuclear.

"Australia needs to go on a low carbon diet, not a nuclear binge, and these figures show John Howard is increasingly out of step with Australians who are desperate for real action on climate change," he said.

Greens senator Kerry Nettle said the report unsurprisingly showed that populations close to the suggested sites did not want nuclear power plants.

"Instead of talking about 25 possible nuclear power plants, the prime minister should be looking for another 25 sites for major wind power stations and another 25 solar power stations," she said.

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Tim Flannery: We can all fight the threat to our rare species

January 15, 2007

Climate change is now worsening the danger to Australian animals, writes Tim Flannery.

AUSTRALIA has the worst record of animal extinction of any continent. Since European colonisation began, about one tenth of our mammals — 23 species in all — have vanished. The victims are a diverse lot, ranging from obscure native rats and mice, to bandicoots, wallabies and the thylacine.

The extinctions began around the 1850s, as the great pastoral expansion pushed far into the inland. It peaked with the plague of foxes and rabbits that overran our land in the early 20th century, and only ceased in the 1950s or 1960s, when Australians had begun to care enough about their unique fauna and flora to institute conservation programs and establish national parks.

All patriotic Australians should look back on that century of extinction with horror, for it speaks of a disregard for our natural wealth that is truly shocking. Yet there are signs that, after 50 years of no species loss, the extinctions are starting again. This time, though, the cause is very different.

I trained as a mammalogist and am still a member of the professional association called the Australian Mammal Society, so receive its annual bulletin. This newsletter normally contains synopses of obscure studies of chromosomes, reproduction, the diets of our mammals, and such like. However, the latest bulletin (October 2006) contains far more disturbing news, for scattered among the more usual articles are contributions showing that no less than five of our unique mammal species have declined so precipitously in the opening years of the 21st century as to be in grave danger of extinction.

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Canberra to sell uranium to China

Friday, 5 January 2007



Australia will soon be able to export uranium to China, Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer has said.

The two countries signed an agreement earlier this year, which means the exports can begin in 30 days, he said.

Australia has 40% of the world's recoverable uranium, while China needs a huge amount of energy for its large population and rising economy.

Beijing is keen to increase its use of nuclear power, to cut down its dependence on fossil fuels.

Two bilateral nuclear treaties - the Australia-China Nuclear Transfer Agreement and the Nuclear Co-operation Agreement - were signed in April during Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's visit to Canberra.

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