http://www.thepunch.com.au/author-bios/dave-sag/ Dave Sag is a pioneer of the Australian carbon management industry, with expertise in carbon accounting, engineering, trading and offsetting. A serial entrepreneur, Dave’s career began in information technology and later led him to complement his experience with careers in online retail, satellite-launch re-insurance trading and work at the European Patent Office. Having founded and grown a number of companies in Australia and Europe, Dave’s diverse experience provides him the insight to guide clients through the rapidly evolving carbon market. Most recently, Dave has been nominated as one of the 50 most influential carbon professionals in Australia by ABC Carbon for his leadership in the green and eco movement and commitment to sustainability. en Copyright 2012 The Punch penberthyd@newsltd.com.au penberthyd@newsltd.com.au Sat, 26 May 2012 20:00:40 +0000 Sat, 26 May 2012 20:00:40 +0000 Politics, opinion, world news, sports news, latest news, views, Barack Obama, Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, Nathan Rees, Malcolm Turnbull, Peter Garrett, Barnaby Joyce, Australian, federal politics, opinion polls, election, The Punch, thepunch, punch ExpressionEngine 1.6.7 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss 15 http://www.thepunch.com.au/images/punch-logo-rss.png http://www.thepunch.com.au/ 144 70 Politics, political opinion, world news, sports news and the latest news and views updated live, daily on The Punch - Australia's best conversation. Search The Punch keywords http://www.thepunch.com.au/search/ http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/its-time-for-direct-action-no-not-the-abbott-kind/ I was at the Press Club debate - how could I resist? I’ve also been lucky enough to see Ian Plimer talk.  Both Monckton and Plimer are wonderful, persuasive speakers. They are entirely affable, avuncular individuals who are entirely unafraid to blend fact and fiction in such a way that, to the uninformed listener, what they say can seem both reasonable and reassuring.  Unconstrained by the need to actually tell the truth, and with a gift for cherrypicking facts that support their world-view (especially when taken out of context) they rattle off non-sequiturs and utter nonsense to support their main argument which is, in a nutshell, that the world is not warming, even if it was warming it’s not human activity driving it, and even if human activity is driving global warming, doing nothing at all about it is the best solution. In one of two rather oblique references to the Nazi party, Monckton quoted Albert Einstein who maintained, quite rightly, that 100 people’s (ie a consensus) opinion is not needed to disprove a theory; in fact only one single fact is needed. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Dave Sag) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/its-time-for-direct-action-no-not-the-abbott-kind/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/its-time-for-direct-action-no-not-the-abbott-kind/#item6333 Wed, 20 Jul 2011 19:40:34 +0000 Dave Sag | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/2012-movie-review-best-apocalypse-ive-ever-had/ Every now and again a film comes along that defies your expectations, raises the bar for all film-makers working in the genre, and leaves you feeling much much better than when you went in.  When that happens you feel blessed; films that hit the mark like that come along so rarely they deserve your respect, your money and, dare I say it, your love. I am an unashamed fan of disaster movies; they capture the essence of what is important about humanity and remind us that we people are one with nature and not apart from nature.  The first genuine disaster movie was Deluge, made in 1933 in which a paper model of NYC, and most especially the Statue of Liberty, is destroyed by a tsunami (Roland Emmerich referenced this in The Day After Tomorrow). Like all such films to follow it concerned the struggle of a good, honest working man, trying to protect his loved ones in the face of almost insurmountable odds. Disaster films tend to introduce a new kind of special effect to the audience.  The Poseidon Adventure gave us the first realistic depiction of a capsised boat (though if you watch the capsising scene frame-by-frame you can actually see the actors pulling the table-cloths off the tables as they run past them).  The Towering Inferno was the first to show fire in reasonable proportion to the building (watch old episodes of The Thunderbirds  to see the opposite of this, where flames and water give away the scale of the models to humourous affect.)  Earthquake in 1974 introduced Sensurround to the jaded masses and The Swarm in 1978 (I saw it with my Mum) gave us some pretty convincing bee-clouds. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Dave Sag) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/2012-movie-review-best-apocalypse-ive-ever-had/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/2012-movie-review-best-apocalypse-ive-ever-had/#item1786 Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:35:39 +0000 Dave Sag | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/medias-carbon-confusion-is-grist-for-the-lumber-mill/ I am fortunate to work in an industry whose whole raison d’être is saving the world.  Saving the world used to be the job of clusters of environmental NGOs.  But, and I’m going to be frank here, apart from some spectacular tactical victories and some incredible work by groups like Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd, at their very heart such organisations simply can’t direct the necessary levels of finance that saving the world needs.  Charitable organisations simply don’t have the ability to restructure the world’s economy, affect the baseline drivers of deforestation, or roll out millions of wind-farms and solar panels in the short time needed.  Saving the world has become an industry.  And some people either can’t accept that, can’t understand it, or can’t find a way to adapt to fit into this new world order. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Dave Sag) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/medias-carbon-confusion-is-grist-for-the-lumber-mill/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/medias-carbon-confusion-is-grist-for-the-lumber-mill/#item1196 Sun, 13 Sep 2009 19:40:38 +0000 Dave Sag | Author bios | The Punch