Environment

More extremely hot days fewer cold ones; wetter in the north and drier in the south of the country; sea levels higher around the country: this is not a forecast for Australia’s climate but a snapshot of the changes to our climate now.

The thousands of scientists working for both the CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology have been studying and observing the many changes underway to our climate and, as a result, our weather for a number of years now.

Who hasn’t wondered recently what is going on with the weather?

Continue reading "Nation’s top scientists agree: the climate is changing now" »

In what was an unprecedented move, Australia’s two leading climate science agencies, the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology, combined this week to release a statement of confidence in Australian climate change science. No doubt this “climate snapshot” will have the blogosphere buzzing and the skeptics up in arms but I for one am glad to see these institutions taking a stand.

Only a few days ago around 200 scientists from all over the country descended on parliament house for face-to-face meetings and forums with politicians in Canberra. Everything from new research on facial tumours in the Tasmanian Devil to concerns over biodiversity loss were brought to the attention of the folks on the hill. Not surprisingly, climate change figured prominently and especially the need for politicians and the public to focus on the evidence based science.

Interesting then, that on the very same day, the Chairman of the ABC, Maurice Newman, would publicly criticise journalists over their lack of critical coverage of climate science. On the need for critical coverage of all topics we wholeheartedly agree. The media should provide balance. But this should not be balance for balance’s sake.

Continue reading "Balance in climate coverage nothing without quality" »

Few would dispute that Australia is in urgent need of a radioactive waste management facility. Over 50 years, some 4000 cubic metres of accumulated radioactive waste from hospitals and medical research facilities has stored up in hundreds lock-up sheds around the country. It is clearly an inadequate situation.

To make matters more pressing, Australia has an obligation to take back nuclear fuel from Sydney’s Lucas Heights research reactor, which was sent to Scotland and France for reprocessing and is due to return to Australia in 2015-16.

It makes sense to secure radioactive waste in one central, safe location. But because no one wants the thing in their backyard, the Northern Territory – which lacks the powers states have to fight off the federal government – is going to get it.

Continue reading "Labor close to fission over nuclear waste dump" »

OUR major trading pals the Chinese are about to celebrate the Year of the Tiger, but one Queensland businessman would like to see a Year of the Cane Toad introduced soon.

None of this has anything to do with the once- celebrated pro golfing Tiger who morphed into a “cheetah”. Nor is it about trying to get the Chinese to back our NRL team famous for eating Cockroaches for dinner.

But it could help rid the scourge of warty immigrants from South America, now hopping their way as far south as Melbourne and west into the Northern Territory, destroying native fauna along the way.

Continue reading "Killing cane toads with love" »

The NSW State Government has built a house.

It’s got three bedrooms, rooftop solar panels, state-of-the-art lighting, water-saving appliances, a fuel cell that converts gas to electricity, a worm farm and an electric car. Located in a nice suburb it’s around 30 minutes from Sydney CBD and comes with a 12 month lease. It’s also 100 per cent rent free.

As any member of the begrudging, under-slept and over-caffeinated Sydney rental set will tell you, there’s few opportunities like it. In fact you’d have to see it to believe it. And you wouldn’t be the only one.

Continue reading "A free house for the most undeserving" »

As we observe the first anniversary if the horrific firestorms that ravaged whole communities on Black Saturday, a typically scorching summer has again gripped much of Australia, providing a stark reminder that such dangers are a constant threat for those living in a sunburnt country.

Yet despite an ongoing Royal Commission, a flurry of catastrophic warnings and a flood of big-ticket resources which go right up to a water-bombing jumbo jet, little attention has thus far been given to the vital role that sustainable forestry traditionally played in essential aspects of fire management.

In recent decades, as politicians clamoured to placate the noisy environmental movement, they blissfully ignored the long-standing efforts of a sustainable forestry industry in managing forests, reducing fuel loads, building and maintaining access routes and fighting fires.

Continue reading "Renewable forestry vital to defend against bushfires" »

Having arranged the Newcastle leg of Lord Monckton’s Australian tour and listened to his exposition of the failings of the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change [IPCC] science it astounds me that carbon dioxide is still being described as a pollutant by the increasingly shrill advocates of anthropogenic global warming [AGW].

As well as the litany of mistakes, subterfuges and potential corruption by the IPCC two new peer reviewed papers show that the carbon cycle has only negligible sensitivity to temperature change [Frank et al, 2009 Nature 463] and that the human emissions of CO2 have negligible effect on the climate as measured by the fraction of human emissions of CO2 staying in the atmosphere which has not changed since 1850 [Knorr, W; 2009 GRL 36]

Continue reading "Will carbon dioxide really destroy the world?" »

Sorry Lord Monckton. You are a fraud.

Let’s leave the argument about climate change for other people and another day.

This is all about your continued claims to be something you are not - the winner of the Nobel Prize.

Continue reading "Good Lord, Monckton is no Nobel laureate" »

A group of 36 Canberrans from all walks of life met last weekend with what many would consider a bizarre objective.

Grandmothers, tax office workers, lawyers, teachers, small business people and farmers gathered at a scenic rural location just outside the nation’s capital to learn to catch and release some of the world’s deadliest snakes.

None of us enrolled in the Wildcare snake handling course had any experience with the reptiles, save for the occasional sighting, which in my case, usually involved the blood draining from my face and sending my heart into high-octane overload.

Continue reading "Catching snakes on a plain, just outside Canberra" »

Climate scepticism is all the rage these days and it’s become very fashionable to doubt the scientists and suspect global fraud.

The sceptics will denounce mainstream opinion for attempting to supposedly silence them, all the while loudly denouncing their opponents on talkback radio, the internet and mainstream press. They criticise minor errors in massive reports and loudly attack sloppy emails, but they play fast and loose with the facts themselves.

Sceptics are rarely accountable for their statements on temperature, on climate or carbon dioxide levels, preferring instead to rely on unsophisticated arguments like ‘it’s crap’.

Continue reading "Climate changes sceptics a threat to national security" »

It is an absolute tribute to the men and women who built the Snowy Mountains Scheme that their engineering marvels continue to supply drinking, irrigation and environmental water to two million people who call the Murray Darling Basin (MDB) home.

Because if it wasn’t for the man-made miracle that is the Snowy Mountain Scheme, the only thing coming out of many taps in the MDB would have been dust.

Permanent plantings of citrus, stone fruits, grapes and the myriad of fresh food that lands on our table would have been wiped out. Whole communities would have had to pack up and leave and the environment would have worn the full fury of Mother Nature with death a daily reminder of the power of the weather gods.

Continue reading "Posturing over water ignores our history of drought" »

In the wake of the Copenhagen anti-climax there’s been a political vacuum in climate change politics.

The expectations were enormous at the UN summit and the talks collapsed into rhetorical justifications by Kevin Rudd, Barack Obama and other world leaders as China and India flexed their muscles.

At home last week, the Greens tried to step in and fill that vacuum and reassert themselves in what is a bedrock issue for them.

Continue reading "Why Rudd would rather talk economics than environment" »

As Sir Humphrey Appleby would say, it is a truly ‘courageous’ strategy by Tony Abbott to chose the environment as his first major battleground to combat the Rudd Government.

Does Tony Abbott, climate change sceptic and wild river hater honestly believe he can woo the hearts and minds of green-minded voters? Is there really a nature-loving softy behind the political hard-man façade?

Abbott’s quest for the green vote began in earnest with his declaration that climate change is “crap”. A few weeks later, aided by the well known deep “practical” greenies of Nick Minchin and Barnaby Joyce, Abbott successfully overthrew Malcolm Turnbull and established climate change denialism as the preferred path of the Liberal Party. This is an interesting first play for green votes.

Continue reading "Tony you can’t pull the green wool over our eyes" »

In a move reminiscent of John Howard’s “headland” speeches ahead of his successful 1996 campaign, Opposition Leader Tony Abbott last night delivered the first of his direction statements ahead of this year’s poll. And he adopted a decidedly green hue, saying it was time to scotch the misnomer that conservatives could not be good environmentalists.

The speech contained two policies - the national takeover of the Murray-Darling river system and the creation of a so-called 15,000-strong “Green Army”  - and a promise of more to follow, with Abbott conceding he did not yet have a finalised position on carbon emissions but would do so within the fortnight.

The first policy should have Kevin Rudd worried as if he had been acting as a decisive national leader he would already have stepped in to wrest control of our biggest river system off the squabbling states. The second policy seems more a bit of gimmickry - and expensive gimmickry at that, with a potential bill of up to $750 million to send 15,000 environmental fix-up folks into the bush at $50,000 a pop.

Continue reading "Abbott goes green with one top idea, one dodgy gimmick" »

We live in a society where almost everything can be purchased single serve, individually wrapped and stuffed with enough preservatives to last a life-time – a very short life-time for most of us if we don’t pick up some slack.

A simple fact of life is that some things just come in packets. Bread, even from a bakery, comes in a plastic bag. We don’t go the butcher to be handed a handful of mince meat, and a carton of milk wouldn’t be much chop without the carton.

Beyond that simple carton of milk, it is easy to cut corners with pre-packaged ingredients: garlic from a jar, powdered stock, instant noodles, canned vegetables and packet mixes. I too am guilty of pre-prepared ingredients in times of need. It seems easy to buy a packet mix, add meat and pre-chopped vegetables and microwave some pre-boiled vacuum packed rice than cook from scratch – but it’s not real food. We are sacrificing our health, and the environment, to eat food that brings instant gratification but no satisfaction - the idea that it takes a long time to make something from scratch is a myth.

Continue reading "The nine biggest sins of packaged food" »

In their haste to get an agreement on national management of the Murray Darling Basin Kevin Rudd and Mike Rann quite literally sold the dream.

Now, as Mike Rann realises the deal he signed has left the Southern Basin high and dry despite floods flowing into the system up north, the South Australian Premier has been left so impotent that all he can do is write a letter to the Prime Minister.

It is reminiscent of the satirical movie Team America: World Police who lampooned former chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix over his incapacity to bring North Korea to heel, with his character saying:

Continue reading "The real letter Mike Rann should write to Kevin Rudd" »

It’s snowing here in Copenhagen, as leaders feel the heat over climate change.

In the winter gloom, the flashing lights of police motorcades snake through the city. Is it Obama, Gordon Brown, or Kevin Rudd? It’s certainly not the President of the tiny, vulnerable Maldives, the shock troops of rising sea levels.

Walkouts by developing nations, angry clashes between protesters and police, people dressed as polar bears, Greenpeace ships moored in the canal not far from The Little Mermaid statue, business leaders selling wind power, electric vehicles, even shoes with recycled rubber soles.

Continue reading "Copenhagen: let it snow, let it snow, let it snow" »

When Al Gore talked about melting ice caps overnight at least he didn’t break out yet more of those risible maps showing what’s going to happen to your neighbourhood once Greenland’s ice melts.

Those animations are like something out of a Jerry Bruckheimer film showing satellite images of icons like London’s Houses of Parliament, lower Manhattan and the Sydney Opera House disappearing slowly under water, as if we’ll all just stand around saying, “I say dear, the harbour is in the front lawn.”

What about dams, sea walls and rock revetments?

Continue reading "Bad news on sea levels. Dam" »

While Kevin Rudd desperately reschedules his attendance at the Copenhagen Summit in a craven attempt to ensure he’s in the presence of US President Barack Obama, there are very interesting parallels in the political scenarios on either side of the Pacific.

These are two political leaders elected in almost Messiah-style euphoria.

Their elevation was supposed to ring in “change” after long periods of conservative Government that the elites and media had openly grown to loathe.  There was little public scrutiny of the substantive skills each man would bring to the job – their popularity was a triumph of style over substance.

Continue reading "The mirror ‘Messiahs’ dogged by bad policy" »

IF YOUR job involves one of Australia’s major export industries such as mining or manufacturing, then you probably return home to your family content in the knowledge you are being well paid for a hard day’s work.

You help build the profits that keep the shareholders happy and you are making a valuable contribution to your nation’s economy.

But what if you came home from a hot day at the coal face, the aluminium or steel smelter, to kids accusing you of killing off the planet?  That would never happen, right?

Continue reading "This is close to brainwashing kids on climate change" »

Developments in computer hacking, Australian politics, and an acrimonious meeting in Denmark have produced the unlikely result that climate change is now almost as hot a conversation topic as Tiger Woods’s sex life.

With our ready-reckoner guide to global warming barneys, you too can have a circular argument in which all facts are disputable and no insult is too cutting when climate change comes up in the pub, at a barbecue or during tea and biscuits at your next Liberal Party branch meeting.

And best of all, there are no losers because by the time the arguments are proved or disproved either way we’ll all be dead.

Continue reading "Handy guide to name-calling and abuse in climate rows" »

Just hours ago printers started running wild in Copenhagen with the leaking of tightly held negotiating text that rich countries have been writing. In summary: it’s bad news for the climate – but the good news is it’s far from locked in. There is no mention of the 25-40% reductions that scientists say are required, and nothing is legally binding.

For some time now a small group of rich nations, known as the ‘commitment circle’ have been meeting in secret to develop their version of what the Copenhagen Agreement should look like.

The text is designed to be a basis for the high level negotiations that begin next week, and is seen by developing nations as an attempt by rich nations to bully them into signing a weak deal that calls for sacrifices from the poor while locking in higher emission rights for countries that contributed most to creating the problem of climate change.

Continue reading "Leaked Copenhagen draft is bad news for the planet" »

The second day of the UN Climate Conference is wrapping up on a dynamic and explosive note.  A few hours ago the Guardian revealed a leaked the “Danish text” a secret alternative text thought to be created by the Danes, Americans and British. 

The text provoked a furious reaction from many nations due to its significant departure from the principles of the Kyoto Protocol and potential to undermine the existing UN process.  In particular, concern has centred on the omission of the principle that wealthy countries, who have benefited from emitting, must compensate poorer countries who have contributed the least to the problem but stand to be dramatically effected.

After the leak surfaced there was a spontaneous and powerful protest in the corridors of the United Nations by African youth and civil society delegates. 

Continue reading "African anger at betrayal over climate change" »

“Australia generates 1.5 per cent of global greenhouse emissions and this ETS will reduce world levels by the smallest sliver, which self-evidently will have nil effect on global climate whether you believe in climate warming or not.” Barnaby Joyce – The Innate Problems With Labor’s Emissions Trading Scheme, 17/12/2008.

Using numbers to lend credibility to a flimsy argument is not a new tactic. In the case of those opposing serious action on climate change however, one statistic about Australia’s proportionate global emissions forms the central flimsy plank of their argument. The argument goes that given Australia is responsible for only 1.5% of global emissions, anything we do to reduce CO2 levels is hardly going to make a dent globally. We can’t save the Great Barrier Reef, so the rest of the world is going to have to.

It must test well in focus groups because everyone opposing action on climate change has been trotting it out ever since the debate began. And let’s be honest, as a message it is working.

Continue reading "If we can’t lead on CO2, we shouldn’t in sport or science" »

Australians expect their political leaders and their political parties to take effective action on climate change because it is an important issue for them and their children.

The Opposition has always had significant concerns with the Rudd Government’s CPRS legislation. That is why we fought for changes to the proposed scheme, to improve its design and protect Australian jobs.

As a result of the changes secured by the Opposition, tens of thousands of Australian jobs have been saved, farmers have been protected by permanently excluding agriculture from the scheme, $1.1 billion in direct support to small and medium businesses will be delivered, and the threat of blackouts and interruptions to the electricity supply has been removed.

Continue reading "Climate debate a turning point in Liberal Party history" »

Just when you thought climate change debate couldn’t get any more hysterical, polar bears start falling out of the sky into city streets. (Warning: this may upset you if you really love polar bears.)

In the ad by climate change campaign Plane Stupid, the message after dozens of polar bears plummet to violent deaths is: “an average European flight produces over 400kg of greenhouse gases per passenger ... that’s the weight of an adult polar bear”. So the logic seems to be: belch 400kg of gas, kill one 400kg animal. Simple.

Actually it’s nonsense of course, but this kind of non sequitur has come to typify both established orthodox sides of the climate change debate in leaked email exchanges and the climax of negotiations over critical environmental laws today in Canberra.

Continue reading "Falling polar bears: Losing the plot on climate change" »

Two weeks ago I argued that, as a politician, real action on reducing carbon emissions is always going to be more about what individuals do than just what Governments do.

That’s why yesterday I was excited to learn about a new initiative called one million women (www.1millionwomen.com.au). Now I doubt I would agree with the politics of all those backing this scheme, but that’s not the point.

What I agree with is their focus on keeping the politics out of this debate and focussing on the practical choices of individual Australian women.

Continue reading "One million women can’t be wrong" »

Momentum is a fundamental concept in both physics and politics.

It’s a concept climate change skeptics like Barnaby Joyce just don’t get.

As Penny Wong and Greg Combet shepherd the sensible people in the Australian Parliament towards a bipartisan agreement on a CPRS, Barnaby is still out there howling at the moon to his diehard audience of deniers.

Continue reading "Climate challenge missed by Coalition howlers" »

The patrons leaning on the bar at bustling country pub Flannery’s and Gore were shocked when a wild-eyed man with a slide-rule in his pocket burst in the door.

The man leaps on the bar and shouts: “Everybody, this pub is about to collapse.

“I’m an engineer and I’ve just been looking at the walls outside - they’re about to give way.” In the stunned silence, some punters think they hear a faint creaking noise from the walls, but can’t be sure it’s just not the crickets.

Continue reading "A climate change parable, where you write the ending" »

THE evaporation of Queensland Premier Anna Bligh’s hopes of building the Traveston Dam could end up being her Waterloo.

But last week’s intervention by Federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett to scuttle the controversial $1.6 billion dam planned for the Mary Valley, north of Brisbane, citing ecological concerns, also has wider political and planning implications across Australia.

Unlike the protests against Tasmania’s Franklin River dam project in the 1980s where generating hydro-electricity was the primary motive, the Traveston is a portent of battles likely to be waged around the country involving choices between protecting the environment and supplying drinking water to keep pace with urban growth.

Continue reading "Will Traveston Dam be Anna Bligh’s Waterloo?" »

The journey started a few years back when a tomato and pumpkin self seeded in the mulch in our backyard.

And it’s culminated now with me doing my best to avoid the supermarket for fruit, vegetables and meat by producing my own.

And in between - while I profess no inside knowledge about trends in food shopping - I have concluded that when blokes like me start talking about self sufficiency, the retail supermarket giants have to lift their game.

Continue reading "My goats say a lot about supermarkets" »

Everyone must radically change the way they live - and even their culture - to save the planet, the Greens say. They want people to live in car-less “urban villages’‘, feed off community gardens and re-localise schools and hospitals.

Deputy leader of the Australian Greens Christine Milne outlined her green dream in a speech in Canberra earlier this year. “Our wealth has not brought us happiness,’’ Senator Milne told the National Press Club. “The political, social and economic makeover required is so transformative that it creates the opportunity to go greenfields.’’

Here is a preview of what this world looks like…

Continue reading "Greentopia 2050: How I became one with a lettuce" »

In a choice between the life of a cute, fuzzy orang-utan and tighter food labelling regulations, who’d be surprised if the orang-utan won?

It’s what Melbourne Zoo is betting on in their campaign to have Food Standards Australia New Zealand regulate palm oil to be labelled as a separate ingredient on groceries.

Melbourne Zoo’s campaign is predicated on concerns that the developing country farmers aren’t doing enough to stop deforestation and the loss of habitat for orang-utans in their quest to keep themselves above the poverty line. And the solution is a misguided campaign to stop Aussies and Kiwis buying palm oil.

Continue reading "Poor palmed off by a load of old monkeys" »

Beach house barbecues are risky business. Apparently, tucking into a bit of medium-rare Angus rump while watching the tide roll away could lead to your little coastal retreat collapsing into the sea in the not-too-distant future.

After a parliamentary report issued some depressing warnings about the effects of climate change-driven sea level rises on Australian coasts, one of the world’s leading environmental economists has now declared vegetarianism the way to go to save the planet.

It’s enough to make you cry into your T-bone.

Continue reading "Run for the hills, or at least become a vegetarian" »

It was refreshing to hear something new in the public debate on climate change today. Liberal frontbencher Chris Pyne told Sky News: “If a modern political party wants to be taken seriously it cannot be a climate change sceptic party”.

Is there any issue which draws more predictable responses from people than climate change? The mere mention of it sparks a round of boring twaddle as folks argue from fixed positions over whether the latest news shows climate change is caused by people or even real - or, most hilariously, a massive conspiracy cooked up by an evil network of thousands of scientists with a twisted sense of humour.

But there’s one thing surely everyone agrees on. If sea levels rise and rain stops falling, we are all totally and utterly screwed. So we should probably deal with it.

Continue reading "People haven’t stopped caring about climate change" »

The environmental policy of “planned retreat” pioneered by the excellent folks at the Byron Bay Council has created a handy precedent for those who find themselves locked in reluctant weekend battle with the forces of nature.

That group of people - often referred to as “husbands” - now has at its disposal a noble excuse for refusing to trim the edges, sweep up the lawn clippings or take out the vegetable scraps.

The next time you get a death stare because you’re entering your third hour on the couch in front of Fox Sports, the handy zen-like rationale is that you’re not bludging but walking lightly on this earth.

Continue reading "Our home and part of the living room is girt by sea" »

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.

Continue reading "Media’s carbon confusion is grist for the lumber mill" »

As the climate change debate held centre stage in Parliament last week, I found myself at a nearby primary school wrestling a chicken for the cameras. With kids milling around, my task was to casually hold this hen (the kids had named “Roast”), while the photographer from the local paper took pictures.

As we struck our pose with beaming smiles, Roast pooed over my new suit confirming the old piece of advice to never work with kids or animals. But of course to take that advice in politics would deprive pollies of 90 per cent of our photo-ops.

In this case, the kids were central to the event at hand: the launching of CarbonKids at Forrest Primary School, Canberra.  In equal measure, even though they may not yet realise it, these kids are also central to the debate raging on the Hill.

Continue reading "How a chook helped teach kids about the planet" »

There’s an ad running at the moment by a green group that attempts to paint anyone who isn’t fully supportive of “urgent” attempts to fix climate change as a dinosaur.

The so-called Climate “Institute” (cue images of scientists not activists) labels any Australian not fully behind clean energy as a scaly throwback to extinction.

“It’s time for these dinosaurs to evolve and support strong action on climate change,” the ad says.

Continue reading "Job-destroying green purists are deadlier than dinosaurs" »

Don’t worry if you don’t understand what the ETS is supposed to do or what the letters even stand for. You’re not alone.

Peter had no idea what the letters E, T and S stood for when we asked him, but did manage his own summary of the policy:  ‘It’s gonna cost extra. You don’t get anything for free. Soon they will be taxing the air that we breathe.” Well they kinda are actually Pete, at least what we put into it.

With all the debate about Climate Change and the focus very much on the ETS, here at The Punch we decided it would be a good idea to go out and see what people actually knew about it.

Continue reading "Punch survey: 15% of us know what the ETS is" »

In 2007, Chris Goodall contended that walking may cause more environmental harm than driving.

A noted that a 5km drive would add 1kg of carbon to atmosphere while a walk would seemingly add nothing if you just looked at its direct effects. However, Goodall contended that for many people, they would need more energy to sustain a regular 5km walk. To make up the 180 calories would likely generate 3.6kg in carbon emissions. The trade-off wasn’t even close.

What is significant is that Goodall wasn’t some member of an anti-environmental think tank but himself a strong environmentalist and the author of How to Live a Low-Carbon Life.

And it was he who was suggesting, contrary to one of Al Gore’s dicta in An Inconvenient Truth, that substituting driving for physical transportation might not be environmentally-friendly at all; even if it is friendly to your physical health.

Continue reading "How and why the ETS could cost you" »

There’s a quiet revolution going on in the suburban backyards of Australia. 

Rather than sitting back and admiring our perfectly manicured “outside rooms”, gazing lovingly at our mondo grass, perfectly coiffed hedges of murraya, buxus or newly acquired rows of trendy agaves, we are choosing to head outside armed with buckets of kitchen scraps, water collected from baths and showers while we attempt to figure out where we should build a chicken coop, locate the veggie patch, compost heap and herb garden. 

Suffering a slow death (and not for lack of water) is the passive, over-structured garden.  Instead we are rediscovering how much fun it is to actually interact with Mother Nature and the vital lessons she has to impart to us and our children about nourishing ourselves and our environment.

Continue reading "Chooks and chokos are more fun than mondo grass" »

Big retailers are scared, it was reported this morning, to say what they think about the checkout-counter effects of the Federal Government’s plan to help save the planet with its emissions trading scheme.

The supermarkets are worried they will enrage environmentally-conscious customers if they dare to so much as suggest there might be some unpleasant side-effects to the ETS.

In case you’ve missed it, The Australian reported retailers are worried the cost of groceries will go up, by about 5 per cent, under the Rudd Government’s plan.

Continue reading "Food for thought - will the ETS hit us at the checkout?" »

Cheers to The Punch for the opportunity to respond to recent contributions on nuclear power, in particular those by Clive Mathieson and David Penberthy.

Clive claims that nuclear power is “a debate Labor desperately doesn’t want us to have” and David says “our dominant politicians are determined to not even allow a debate” on the issue.

Clive and David ought to spell out exactly what they want from the government.

Continue reading "How exactly are we to introduce nuclear power?" »

Eighteen months ago, the world was in peril.

Ice shelves were melting and sea levels rising as a future threat to our cities.

Everyone from the G-8, Al Gore, Stern and Garnaut were warning us.

Continue reading "At least the states aren’t copping out on climate" »

Lately, I’ve got to thinking about the importance Australians place in burning great things – things of immeasurable value.

Take a drive to the Hunter Valley and you’ll see the ugly side of Australia’s predilection for carbon - the precious fossil fuels we peddle round the world and the huge economic power they wield in this country.

Around the mining town of Muswellbrook is a landscape ravaged by mining; farmland gouged away for the sake of the big deposits beneath, its air thick with coal dust and the smell of decay.

Continue reading "Torching God’s country" »

As the emissions trading scheme debate moves towards a frenzied climax in the Senate, Australia is sadly overlooking the biggest environmental issues facing this country right now.

I believe the greatest threat to this nation’s environment right now is not global warming but feral animals and noxious weeds.

Cane toads, lippia, foxes, serrated tussock, donkeys, feral cats, rabbits, Fireweed and Parthenium weed are hardly subjects of household discussion, yet between them they are destroying our native fauna and flora at an astounding rate.

Continue reading "Rudd’s ETS more poisonous than a cane toad" »

The most baffling aspect to the entire debate surrounding the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme is how so many who agree on a problem can be so divided about the best solution.

With the exception of a few mavericks in the Nationals and the Liberals and one lone Senator from Family First, parliament accepts that the scientific debate is over.

Anthropogenic climate change presents us with the most pressing and complex policy problem humankind has faced. Ever. And personally, I can’t help wondering what planet climate change denialists are living on.

Continue reading "Rudd acting like a used car salesman over ETS" »

Last week I was bored to death reading coal industry propaganda and needed some inspiration, so I took $50,000 worth of new green technology for a test drive.

The Prius is the worlds first and biggest selling hybrid car, meaning it has both an electric motor and a petrol engine, which work in tandem to minimize petrol consumption. It also features a HUD heads up display, like in a military jet and solar panels built into the roof. If Captain Planet had a car, this would be it.

The market for hybrid cars is driven (sorry) by both Peak Oil and climate change. Peak Oil is the term for ecological limits as they apply to crude oil, or more specifically, the point in history at which oil production reaches a peak.

Continue reading "Volt heads can rev up, as I’ve test-driven the future" »

Here’s a quiz for your readers. How many green jobs did Kevin Rudd announce at the Labor Party Conference and how many of them were new?

Many readers of the Punch could be forgiven for thinking they heard the Prime Minister promise to deliver 50 000 new green jobs.

Unfortunately like so many of the Government’s announcements about a large array of job creation and training programmes it pays to read the fine print.

Continue reading "Labor’s green jobs promise is a huge lie" »

I went shooting recently. A couple of old friends and I spent a few days on a farm in northern NSW which can only be described as a target-rich environment.

I’ve never seen so many rabbits in one place ... between us we nailed about 300 of them and left thousands more chewing up the paddocks.

So numerous were they that at night you could have walked through the pastures with a cricket bat and scored a century.

Continue reading "Wowser-watch: shooters are making environment’s day" »

OK, so I know the drill is that we’re meant to dust off our LPs and find the angriest Midnight Oil lyric about uranium mining or nuclear war, present it as a damning tearsheet, and then use a photograph such as the one below - taken at the Sydney protests against French nuclear tests in the Pacific in 1995 - to declare that Environment Minister Peter Garrett is the mother of all hypocrites.

It was certainly the position Malcolm Turnbull took last night after Garrett signed off on the Four Mile Uranium Mine in South Australia. Turnbull might be our alternative, conservative prime minister but he sounded for all the world like some campus Trotskyist as he led the sell-out charge against the former Oils frontman.

“What this approval just shows today is that Mr Garrett is as big a phoney as the Prime Minister,” Turnbull said, happily side-stepping the fact that, in endorsing Australia’s fifth uranium mine, Garrett has done the exact thing the Liberal Party has been urging him to do.

Continue reading "Oils ain’t oils, but it’s the Liberals who are hypocrites" »

A funny thing happened on the weekend: the world’s second largest greenhouse gas emitter - the US - took the first step towards establishing a carbon reduction scheme and almost nobody wanted to talk about it.

The Obama-endorsed scheme passed the US House of Representatives and only has to clear their Senate to become law.

In Australia, a few people welcomed the vote and applauded the move, but almost no-one dared to lift the carpet and comment on the design of the US scheme.

Continue reading "Looking to America for some sense on emissions" »

I’m so glad The Punch doesn’t arrive wrapped in plastic.

If it did, I’d be accused of hypocrisy in trying to convince my fellow Premiers to follow South Australia in banning check-out style plastic shopping bags.

Every year, four billion of these bags are dumped into Australia’s environment, clogging landfill or choking the nation’s waterways.

By stopping this in South Australia, that’s 400 million bags a year that won’t be causing massive environmental damage.

Continue reading "Plastic not fantastic for our precious waterways" »

A review of the United States’ Waxman-Markey climate change bill by Australia’s Parliamentary Library has exposed some interesting facts on safeguarding industry.

Handed down on Monday, the parliamentary report on the US Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) says: “Industries with proportionally high import or export values are potentially fully shielded from the scheme until the majority (greater than 70 per cent) of global production in that sector is subject to emissions pricing.

“The (Waxman-Markey) bill allows for up to 100 per cent compensation for all direct and indirect costs to industries that are assessed as emissions intensive and trade exposed.”

Continue reading "ETS will cost jobs - just ask Barack Obama" »

The Australian Government likes to claim we are doing our part to avoid dangerous climate change. Australia’s current target is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 5 to 25 per cent by 2020, compared to 2000 emissions levels, with a 60 per cent drop by 2050.

This sounds impressive enough, and there is no doubt that this will require transformative changes in energy use if it is to be achieved. Other developed countries have similar targets. President Obama’s aim for the USA, for instance, is to get back to 1990 levels by 2020 and 80 per cent lower by 2050.

So we’re doing our bit. But is this bit enough, or fair, or feasible? In short, no, no and no. Let me explain.

Continue reading "Even halving our emissions won’t be enough. Here’s why" »

So, “clean energy” stands as one of the infrastructure centrepieces of the Federal Budget. It’s an investment intended, we’re told, to both pull the economy out of recession and get us on the pathway to a low carbon economy. A princely sum of $4.5 billion is directed to renewable energy, infrastructure for climate-observing systems, and funds for low emissions technology development.

It sure sounds impressive, but under scrutiny, it turns out to be mostly just smoke and mirrors.

Breaking down the numbers, we find that $1 billion is a rollover of existing funds, while $2.4 billion has been directed towards research, development and demonstration of low-emissions coal technology, or “carbon capture and storage” to us scientists. A little under half a billion will go towards establishing a body to support research into renewable energy.

Continue reading "Can’t see the environment measures for all the smoke" »