yeah thats what i thought - but the scammers didnt leave an addy to send money -
can someone call benny?


   Now this IS original !!

   I gather that there are 'boiler rooms' in Nigeria who just pump this stuff
   out - about the only employment that reasonably educated and computer
   literate kids can make any money!

   (I'm getting porno ads from MY email address - and can't do anything about it!
   and that seems to be from Russia)

   H

   >Hello Dear,
   >How are you doing today? I am sorry i didn't inform you about my traveling
   >to Africa for a program called "Empowering Youth to Fight Racism,
   >HIV/AIDS, Poverty and Lack of Education, the program is taking place in
   >three major countries in Africa which is Ghana , South Africa and Nigeria
   >. It as been a very sad and bad moment for me, the present condition that
   >i found myself is very hard for me to explain. I am really
   >stranded in Nigeria because I forgot my little bag in the Taxi where my
   >money, passport, documents and other valuable things were kept on my way
   >to the Hotel am staying, I am facing a hard time here because i have no
   >money on me. I am now owning a hotel bill of $1050 and they wanted me to
   >pay the bill soon else they will have to seize my bag and hand me over to
   >the Hotel Management, I need this help from you urgently to help me back
   >home, I need you to help me with the hotel bill and i will also need $1250
   >to feed and help myself back home so please can you help me with a sum of
   >$2300 to sort out my problems here? I need this help so much and on time
   >because i am in a terrible and tight situation here, I don't even have
   >money to feed myself for a day which means i had been starving so please
   >understand how urgent i need your help.i have decided not tell my family
   >so that they will not be worried.when I return I will tell them and they
   >will understand. I am sending you this e-mail from the city
   >Library and I only have 30 min, I will appreciate what so ever you can
   >afford to send me for now and I promise to pay back your money as soon as
   >i return home so please let me know on time so that i can forward you the
   >details you need to transfer the money through Money Gram or Western
   >Union.Hope to hear from you.
   >Thank you.






------------------------------------------------------------------------------


   No virus found in this incoming message.
   Checked by AVG.
   Version: 7.5.552 / Virus Database: 270.10.2/1871 - Release Date: 1/01/2009
5:01 PM


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Now this IS original !!

I gather that there are 'boiler rooms' in Nigeria who just pump this stuff
out - about the only employment that reasonably educated and computer
literate kids can make any money!

(I'm getting porno ads from MY email address - and can't do anything about it!
and that seems to be from Russia)

H



>Hello Dear,
>How are you doing today? I am sorry i didn't inform you about my traveling
>to Africa for a program called "Empowering Youth to Fight Racism,
>HIV/AIDS, Poverty and Lack of Education, the program is taking place in
>three major countries in Africa which is Ghana , South Africa and Nigeria
>. It as been a very sad and bad moment for me, the present condition that
>i found myself is very hard for me to explain.           I am really
>stranded in Nigeria because I forgot my little bag in the Taxi where my
>money, passport, documents and other valuable things were kept on my way
>to the Hotel am staying, I am facing a hard time here because i have no
>money on me. I am now owning a hotel bill of $1050 and they wanted me to
>pay the bill soon else they will have to seize my bag and hand me over to
>the Hotel Management, I need this help from you urgently to help me back
>home, I need you to help me with the hotel bill and i will also need $1250
>to feed and help myself back home so please can you help me with a sum of
>$2300 to sort out my problems here? I need this help so much and on time
>because i am in a terrible and tight situation here, I don't even have
>money to feed myself for a day which means i had been starving so please
>understand how urgent i need your help.i have decided not tell my family
>so that they will not be worried.when I return I will tell them and they
>will understand.            I am sending you this e-mail from the city
>Library and I only have 30 min, I will appreciate what so ever you can
>afford to send me for now and I promise to pay back your money as soon as
>i return home so please let me know on time so that i can forward you the
>details you need to transfer the money through Money Gram or Western
>Union.Hope to hear from you.
>Thank you.

Hello Dear,
How are you doing today? I am sorry i didn't inform you about my traveling to
Africa for a program called "Empowering Youth to Fight Racism, HIV/AIDS, Poverty
and Lack of Education, the program is taking place in three major countries in
Africa which is Ghana , South Africa and Nigeria . It as been a very sad and bad
moment for me, the present condition that i found myself is very hard for me to
explain.           I am really stranded in Nigeria because I forgot my little
bag in the Taxi where my money, passport, documents and other valuable things
were kept on my way to the Hotel am staying, I am facing a hard time here
because i have no money on me. I am now owning a hotel bill of $1050 and they
wanted me to pay the bill soon else they will have to seize my bag and hand me
over to the Hotel Management, I need this help from you urgently to help me back
home, I need you to help me with the hotel bill and i will also need $1250 to
feed and help myself back home so please can you help me with a sum of $2300 to
sort out my problems here? I need this help so much and on time because i am in
a terrible and tight situation here, I don't even have money to feed myself for
a day which means i had been starving so please understand how urgent i need
your help.i have decided not tell my family so that they will not be
worried.when I return I will tell them and they will understand.            I am
sending you this e-mail from the city Library and I only have 30 min, I will
appreciate what so ever you can afford to send me for now and I promise to pay
back your money as soon as i return home so please let me know on time so that i
can forward you the details you need to transfer the money through Money Gram or
Western Union.Hope to hear from you.
Thank you.
_________________________________________________________________
It’s the same Hotmail®. If by “same” you mean up to 70% faster.
http://windowslive.com/online/hotmail?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_hotmail_acq_broad1_12200\
8

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Hi everyone.

I've been thinking long and hard about what to write to you all to ring in
the new year.  I've come up with what follows:

2009 is the year.

We are going to win the climate change battle.

I have no doubt in my mind, nor any doubt in my heart. We are going to win.
In fact, we already have won.

The trick is to keep doing exactly what you are doing. We are on the right
track. You are part of the road to success.

If you disagree, please give me a call and I'll convince you that you're
wrong.

If you passionately agree, tell everyone you know.

Call me if you want to.

Lots of love,
Anna K
--
Anna Keenan
Youth Climate Advocate
anna.c.keenan@...
anna.keenan@...
+61 (0) 419 792 263
Skype ID: anna.c.keenan
UNYK ID: 124 AGR

The Australian Youth Climate Coalition unites over 20 diverse youth
organisations to build a generation-wide movement to solve climate change.
Our alliance combines our forces, leveraging our collective power to create
change for a clean, efficient, just and renewable energy future. We inspire,
educate, empower and mobilise young Australians to take action on climate
change. We coordinate, communicate and network with each other, and run
shared projects and campaigns. www.aycc.org.au


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

[Logo]

January 01 2009            Threat of global warming justifies breaking
the law
Michael McCarthy,  Environment Editor Independent.co.uk
The threat of global warming is so great that campaigners were justified
in causing more than £35,000 worth of damage to a coal-fired power
station, a jury decided yesterday. In a verdict that will have shocked
ministers and energy companies the jury at Maidstone Crown Court cleared
six Greenpeace activists of criminal damage. Read more here
<http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/cleared-jury-de\
cides-that-threat-of-global-warming-justifies-breaking-the-law-925561.ht\
ml>



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

SOMETHING TO FEST ABOUT.
Join me with posting this wonderful idea around, during this next week towards
the new year.

An achievable goal to seeding the Australian Ministry for Peace for within 100
days from January 1st. 2009.

(Also attached is a petition to download.)

To those who live elsewhere on the planet, let 2009 be a year of declaring peace
on the world, that blossoms into a race establishing Ministries/Departments of
Peace, which fund creations of  non violent conflict resolving
instrumentalities.

This will greatly help us citizens to concentrate on making this world a safer
place for future generations.

Benny Zable

Websites to check out.
The Peace Alliance - Campaign for a Department of Peace - Home Page
25th December, 2008
  To the Australian Prime Minister The Honourable Kevin Rudd, MP,and Leader of
the Opposition The Honourable Malcolm Turnbull, MP
  Here is an opportunity for the Australian government to lead in helping resolve
the conflicts existing on Earth among ourselves, within our region, country and
the world.
As we approach the end of the United Nations International Decade for a Culture
of Peace and Non-violence for Children of the World, 2001 - 2010, we now have an
opportunity to cross the bridge from a culture of war to a culture of peace. The
goal is to achieve the establishment of a Ministry For Peace within the first
100 days of the inauguration of the new President of the USA.
This letter asks that the Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition, along
with their parliamentary colleagues to co-operate in establishing an Australian
Ministry For Peace to achieve the following objectives:
• gather, analyse and utilize information and recommendations from local and
global peace organisations;
• formulate and advocate policies that promote peace at all levels of society,
personal, domestic, regional, State, Federal, and global;
• support and influence the already existing global movement for every nation to
establish a Ministry For Peace;
• encourage the Australian population to observe and celebrate all endeavours
created for peace on a personal, local, national and international level;
• administer an Australian Peace Academy to teach world'’s best practices and
effective techniques for the amelioration of violence and conflict among
domestic and international populations;
• promote, develop and advertise educational programs to teach violence
prevention, creative mediation and conflict resolution methods in schools,
universities, the military, and conflicting cultures both here and abroad;
• enable equal opportunities for the peacemakers to liaise with government
departments and decision makers in helping resolve local and global conflicts
towards a world-wide culture of peace and non-violence;
• liaise with civilian peacekeepers to participate in non-violent peace-building
initiatives;
• provide prevention programs addressing domestic, gang, drug, alcohol and
gambling related violence; and
• develop field-tested educational strategies to promote conflict resolution and
peer mediation in schools.
We suggest that you network and publish this initiative to inform others about
this valuable opportunity, and/or write a personal letter recommending the
proposal to the Prime Minister and your local Councils and Members of State and
Federal Parliaments.
The goal is for Australia to take the lead and establish a Ministry For Peace
within the first quarter of 2009. If Australia leads, other nations will follow.
Franklin Scarf, JPLife Member, Executive Committee of the United Nations
Association of Australia (NSW) Incwww.unaansw.org.aufranklin@...
4782 26250408 267 195




_________________________________________________________________
Messenger's gift to you! Download free emoticons today!
http://livelife.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=669758

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

New Zealand turbines being assembled
<http://www.stuff.co.nz/4801081a11.html>



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

By *Martin Khor*

December 15, 2008 -- The two crises of our times — economic recession
and global warming — should be tackled together. The trillions of
dollars earmarked for economic recovery can be spent to fight climate
change. The economic crisis should not stop governments from serious
action to combat climate change, but should instead be an opportunity to
fund climate-related activities.

Full article at http://links.org.au/node/811

Subscribe free to /Links - International Journal of Socialist Renewal/ -
at http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373

Quote  "  The review proposes a formula for assessing comparability of
effort of various countries  towards effective global efforts embodying
various degrees of ambition. Within a global effort  to hold concentrations
at 450 parts per million (ppm), Australia's proportionate share of the
effort would reduce emissions entitlements to 25 per cent of 2000 emissions
by 2020, and 90  per cent by 2050. Within a global effort to hold
concentrations at 550 ppm, Australia's  proportionate share would be to
reduce entitlements for 2020 by 10 per cent from 2000  levels, and
entitlements for 2050 by 80 per cent."


550 ppm???

Jasus!!

but relax... they are only numbers ... global warming is just a big hoax -
aimed at letting the greens control the world..(:-o)

still basically BAU (and population growthAU)

H

http://www.theage.com.au/national/australia-counts-itself-out-20081219-72ei.html
?page=-1

  Australia counts itself out

Ross Garnaut
Opinion
The Age
December 20, 2008

   IN THE course of the work on climate change, members of the Garnaut
Climate Change  Review team would sometimes ask how, when the work and the
responses to it were all  over, we would judge whether our efforts had been
successful. Would the main indicator be  the extent to which the Australian
Government accepted the final report's main  recommendations?

   "No," I would respond. "Policy decisions will reflect a range of
pressures and constraints  about which we are not now in a position to
assess, and about which the Government is  elected to form judgements. We
will have done our job if the Australian community and  Australian
governments understand the implications of decisions that are taken."

   Whatever the pressures and constraints that have shaped the white paper,
the policy  decisions embodied in it have implications for the environment
and the economy.

   The policy proposals in this week's white paper, should they become law,
will be historic. The  embodiment of the white paper proposals in law would
mark the beginning of comprehensive  action in Australia to mitigate the
growth in Australian greenhouse gas emissions. Australia  would have taken
a step at which several other countries have stumbled. It would have taken
this step in difficult times for the domestic and international economy. It
would have taken this  step in the context of the most pervasive pressure
on the policy process from vested  interests since the Scullin government,
and of the most expensive, elaborate and  sophisticated lobbying pressure
on the policy process ever in this country. It will have taken  this step
in the face of resistance from Her Majesty's Opposition.

   The white paper has been greatly criticised by environmental groups for
its "soft targets".

   The review recommended, and I support, the most widely and strongly
condemned of the  "soft targets"the commitment unconditionally to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions by 5 per  cent from 2000 levels by 2020.

   It costs much more to reduce emissions in isolation than in the context
of global action.  Action in isolation does almost nothing in itself to
solve the environmental problem. The  purpose of acting at all in the
absence of comprehensive global agreement is to keep alive  the hopes of
eventual effective global agreement. Australian emissions are currently
significantly above 1990 levels. 2020 is not far away. Our population grows
strongly, because  we, for good reasons, have chosen to keep our doors open
to people from many lands. Our  new citizens need transport, a home with
the Australian accompaniments, and access to  income from employment, all
of which generate greenhouse gas emissions. The white  paper's
unconditional target is a challenging one in the absence of an
international  agreement. To go further would run the risk that Australia's
example of early action would be  negative rather than positive in its
influence on others.

   The white paper's proposed conditional targets are more problematic.

   The review proposes a formula for assessing comparability of effort of
various countries  towards effective global efforts embodying various
degrees of ambition. Within a global effort  to hold concentrations at 450
parts per million (ppm), Australia's proportionate share of the  effort
would reduce emissions entitlements to 25 per cent of 2000 emissions by
2020, and 90  per cent by 2050. Within a global effort to hold
concentrations at 550 ppm, Australia's  proportionate share would be to
reduce entitlements for 2020 by 10 per cent from 2000  levels, and
entitlements for 2050 by 80 per cent.

   The review analyses the economic and environmental costs of global action
to mitigate  climate change, with Australia playing its full, proportionate
part. It concludes that it is in  Australia's interests to seek the
strongest possible global mitigation outcome.

   Australia should indicate its willingness to play its proportionate part
in a global agreement to  bring greenhouse gas concentrations back to 450
ppm, or eventually to lower levels. Should  this not be possible, Australia
should play its proportionate part in the best possible outcome.  This may
turn out to be an effective agreement on 550 ppm in the first instance.
International  success at this level of ambition would strengthen
confidence in and support for stronger  outcomes in subsequent
negotiations.

   The white paper proposes a variation on this theme. It proposes emissions
reductions for  Australia up to 15 per cent from 2000 levels, "in the
context of global agreement under which  all major economies commit to
substantially restrain emissions and advanced economies  take on reductions
comparable to Australia". It proposes that, "in the event that a
comprehensive global agreement were to emerge over time, involving
emissions  commitments by both developed and developing countries that are
consistent with long-term  stabilisation of atmospheric concentrations of
greenhouse gases at 450 ppm or lower,  Australia is prepared to establish
its post-2020 targets so as to ensure it plays its full role in  achieving
the agreed goal".

   The Prime Minister's speech to the National Press Club notes that
Australia would have to  reduce its emissions by more than 60 per cent by
2050 within a 450 ppm global agreement,  and that he would seek a mandate
at a general election to amend current policy as required.

   The white paper refers extensively to the review on these matters. Policy
Position 1.1 says:  "The Government accepts the key findings of the Garnaut
Climate Change Review, that  effective global agreement delivering
concentrations of greenhouse gases at around 450  parts per million or
lower would be in Australia's interests"; that "achieving global commitment
to emissions reductions of this order appears unlikely in the next
commitment period"; and  that "the most prospective pathway to this goal is
to embark on global action " that "builds  confidence". These sentences are
repeated exactly as Policy Proposition 4.1, and twice  elsewhere.

   I did not actually use all of these words. However, pursuit of the
approach proposed in the  review may lead to the same end point as the
white paper: Australia playing its full part in a  global agreement to hold
concentrations at 550 ppm or, say, 520 ppm, following  Copenhagen, and its
full part in a more ambitious agreement as that becomes possible after
2020.

   And yet the white paper's variations on the review's themes matter.

   The white paper rules out Australia contributing to a global effort to
achieve ambitious  mitigation targets prior to 2020. That is a pity. There
is a chance, just a chance, that with  Barack Obama as president of the
United States, high ambition at Copenhagen will turn out  to be feasible.
In the meantime, Australia cannot play a strongly positive role in
encouraging  the global community towards the best possible outcomes if it
has ruled out in advance its  own participation in strong outcomes.

   This weakness of the white paper could be corrected without substantial
unpicking of the  policy package.

   The review argued that an effective global agreement including developing
countries would  need to allocate emissions entitlements on a per capita
basis, converging to equal per capita  entitlements at some time around the
middle of next century. This in itself would be  favourable to Australia in
comparison with the developed and transitional countries with low
immigration and slow or negative population growth.

   But we cannot expect our advocacy of a new and superior approach to
allocating emissions  entitlements across countries to be effective in the
international community, if we accept only  implications that favour us
(taking population growth into account), but not other implications
(converging towards equal per capita entitlements).

   Three elements of the white paper proposals lead towards large transfers
from the general  community to particular interests, and to fiscal and
environmental risks.

   There is no public policy justification for $3.9 billion in unconditional
payments to generators  in relation to hypothetical future "loss of asset
value".

   Never in the history of Australian public finance has so much been given
without public policy  purpose, by so many, to so few. The best that can be
said is that these are once-and-for-all  payments  unless the spectacular
success of investment in lobbying inspires repetition and  emulation.

   There is large risk to the public finances in the five-year price cap for
emissions permits. The  cap is to be set at an Australian dollar price that
is likely to be exceeded by international  prices at some point in the
first five years of the scheme. When that point is reached, the  Australian
taxpayer will have to fund the purchase of permits from other countries at
international prices, and to underwrite the difference between the cap and
international  prices. At that point, there will be powerful commercial
incentives for market participants to  buy at capped prices and to hoard
standard permits for future use or sale. This increases the  fiscal risk.

   The proposed issue of free permits to trade-exposed emissions-intensive
industries raises  different issues. Like free permits to generators and
the price cap, it carries risks to the public  finances  in this case, of
much greater dimension. Unlike the other instruments of transfer  from the
general community to particular instruments, it is based on a sound public
policy  objective.

   The problems arise from the absence from the white paper of a sound
conceptual basis for  payments. Section 14.5 of the final report sets out
the principle upon which payments should  be made to trade-exposed
industries: compensating firms for the effect that the absence of
comparable carbon constraints in other countries has on sales prices. The
white paper  acknowledges that this is the correct principle, but does not
seek to apply it.

   The consequences of not having a principled basis for the issue of
payments are profound.

   Wherever the partial application of a carbon constraint in other
countries is having an effect  on international prices, there can be
overcompensation of Australian producers. Carbon  constraints are now being
applied in many developed countries, including most states in the  US, and
in major developing countries including South Africa and China. They will
increase in  importance.

   Sound principles would result in the automatic withdrawal of payments as
carbon constraints  emerge in other countries. With political bargaining
determining payments, as in the white  paper, there is no obvious point at
which payments would be partially or completely  withdrawn. Further, even
if there were a comprehensive international agreement that  removed the
case for payments, five years' notice would need to be given for
withdrawal.

   The July green paper proposed placing a cap of 20 per cent on value of
permits issued to  trade-exposed enterprises outside agriculture, or 35 per
cent including agriculture. As  indicated in the final report, these are
reasonable upper limits to principled initial claims.

   A principled approach to payments to trade-exposed industries would
generate an early and  continuing decline in the proportion of payments to
trade-exposed industries as carbon  constraints were extended elsewhere. By
contrast, the white paper's approach would result in  the proportion of
permit value given free to trade-exposed industries rising to 45 per cent
in  2020 on restrictive assumptions.

   The ratio would rise well beyond 45 per cent if trade-exposed sectors
grew more rapidly than  the rest of the economy, or if reductions in
emissions were greater than 5 per cent.

   The ratio could rise to 65 per cent with an emissions reduction target of
15 per cent and with  trade-exposed industries growing twice as rapidly as
the rest of the world. With similar  relative growth rates and an emissions
reductions target of 25 per cent, three-quarters of  permit value would be
transferred to trade-exposed industries.

   And yet the revenue pool from sale of permits is exhausted at 45 per cent
by the household  compensation arrangements proposed in the white paper.
Already there is nothing left for  increases in payments to households as
the carbon price rises over time. Little is left for  incentives for
research, development and commercialisation of low-emissions technologies,
which are essential components of the domestic and international mitigation
efforts. Nothing  is left for systematic support for overcoming information
and contractual market failures  inhibiting energy-saving in low-income
households.

   WHAT happens as the claims of the trade-exposed industries rise above 45
per cent? To the  extent payments to trade-exposed industries deviate from
those that are necessary to  compensate for the absence of carbon
constraints in other countries, they introduce  distortions into
international trade.

   One justification for unexpectedly high payments to trade-exposed
industries in both Europe  and Australia  and presumably other countries
one by one  is the global recession.

   The Smoot-Hawley tariff in the US in the 1930s, and the competitive
increases in protection  in other countries that it inspired, made the
Great Depression much deeper than it would  otherwise have been. Will the
treatment of trade-exposed industries become the Smoot-Hawley tariff
following the Great Crash of 2008?

   The introduction of a sound basis in principle for trade-exposed
industries is an urgent matter  for the restoration of global prosperity,
as well as for Australian fiscal integrity, and for the  avoidance of high
risks of dangerous climate change.

   Professor Ross Garnaut is the Federal Government's climate adviser.   __._,


* maybe that should be "Government's Economic climate adviser....."


_.___

Oh dear - we are so stuck on the tar-baby of economic (and population)
growth - that I despair of any rational behaviour by government on this
issue.
I suspect  that the only way to get real change is through a citizen's
revolt - assuming there are enough citizens who can pull the i-pod ear
plugs out, or turn off their DVD's.... and take notice of what is happening

What about our children's future???

what, indeed...

H





     Two articles:


1.  Warm-up act in climate war Garnaut slams climate plan
   ------------------------------
   http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24824789-11949,00.html

Warm-up act in climate war

Lenore Taylor, National correspondent |
December 20, 2008
The Australian

   ONE weekend early this month, Resources Minister Martin Ferguson boarded
a plane to  Perth to meet Woodside boss Don Voelte, who had not endeared
himself to the Rudd  Government. The energy group's chief executive had
started to attack the Government's  proposed emissions trading scheme to
reduce greenhouse gas output the day after a  discussion paper was launched
in July, and didn't let up for months.

   When the global financial crisis hit, he pronounced the ETS "dead on
arrival". Some of  Ferguson's colleagues were calling Voelte "the Sol
Trujillo of the resources sector". The  comparison to the spirited Telstra
chief showed how much they didn't like him.

   The July discussion paper on an official auction and trading system for
pollution rights to  encourage cleaner industry had included a formula for
handing up to 90 per cent of required  pollution permits free to export
industries whose overseas competitors do not pay a price on  carbon
emissions, until such time as a global climate change deal is struck.

   The problem facing Voelte and other CEOs of liquefied natural gas
companies was that the  free-permits formula was set at a level that
excluded LNG. Even in November, when officials  from the Department of
Climate Change began canvassing a lower compensation threshold  in private
talks with resource industries, LNG companies calculated they still would
miss out.  But when the Government's final scheme was unveiled in a white
paper on Monday, it baldly  asserted that LNG was "likely to be eligible"
to receive 60 per cent of its emission permits for  free. Voelte issued a
meek statement acknowledging the result.

Uncharacteristically, he  refused to make further comment.

   Officials insist the last-minute inclusion of LNG was because the
companies had finally  provided figures that showed they would meet the new
eligibility criteria after all. Those close  to the decision-making process
insist cabinet had decided that "one way or another, LNG  would get in". In
other words it was a political deal, finessed by Ferguson and other
ministers  in one-on-one meetings with Voelte and the other CEOs.

   If those who have spent months crunching the numbers to find out who got
free assistance  were astonished at LNG's inclusion in the ETS compensation
scheme, they were also  perplexed by the exclusion of coalmining. The final
scheme design explains that coalmines  produce vastly different quantities
of the potent greenhouse gas methane, depending on their  geology, and it
was therefore difficult to include them in the general compensation scheme.

   The coal industry says it would have been quite easy to include mines
above a certain  emissions intensity. But the Government chose to offer
coalmines $750 million over five  years in an "abatement fund". Some of the
abatement money will still go to buy permits for  the gassiest mines, but
they will obtain far fewer than they would have under the general
compensation arrangements. The coal industry is unhappy, to put it mildly.

   Privately, government sources are blunt. It would have been politically
unacceptable to offer  free permits for "dirty coal". Leaving it out was
another political decision. Minerals Council of  Australia CEO Mitch Hooke
has no doubt the Government made a "unilateral decision to  exclude coal
because of the political odium" of giving free permits to coal.

   The curious story of the treatment of coal and LNG is really the story of
the entire emissions  trading scheme.

   It is a political deal cut with big industries that are also big
employers, with an eye to the  forthcoming political deals that will have
to be made in the Senate and the even bigger  political deals that will be
made around the negotiating table with other countries at the UN  talks in
Copenhagen next year.

   The backdrop to all the deal-making is the economic crisis and Kevin
Rudd's determination  that Australia will start the extensive
re-engineering process of becoming a low-carbon  economy slowly and not at
the cost of Australian jobs or his chances of re-election.

   Ongoing qualitative polling and old-fashioned political common sense
convinced the  Government that while swinging voters in the mortgage belt
cared about climate change, they  weren't prepared to make big sacrifices
in terms of their standard of living. So the  Government was generous with
its industry compensation, giving away in free industry  permits a full
$2.9 billion worth of the $11.5billion it expects to raise in the first
year of the  scheme. That represents 25 per cent of available permits, but
the proportion could rise to 45  per cent by 2020, depending on how fast
these industries grow.

   The Government had already made the political compromise of offsetting
any increase in  petrol prices - blowing another $2.4 billion in the first
year - and it allocated $700 million in the  first year to ease the shock
for the dirtiest brown-coal power generators, even though its  advice
suggested it was highly unlikely there would be any disruptions to
electricity supply.

   Taken together, these political deals and compromises with industry had a
fateful effect on  the Government's ability to push ahead with the thing
the whole exercise was supposed to  achieve: actually reducing Australia's
carbon emissions.

   The Government has pledged that Australia will reduce its emissions to 5
per cent below  2000 levels by 2020, and has left open the possibility that
it could increase that target to cuts  of 10 or 15 per cent as part of a
global agreement including other leading emitters.

   But as its own climate adviser Ross Garnaut points out today, going for a
higher emission  reduction target, especially if trade-exposed industries
grow faster than the rest of the  economy, leaves open a "substantial risk"
that the ETS will no longer fund itself through the  revenue raised by
auctioning pollution permits, but will instead eat into the budget bottom
line.

   And Garnaut also points out that the Government has not set out clear
criteria for unwinding  the expensive political deals, making it very
difficult to do so.

   It has promised to review the assistance every five years but has not
said exactly how  comprehensive a global deal would be needed for the
compensation to start to be withdrawn.  It has also promised five years'
notice of any changes in the assistance program.

   Think how successive governments have failed to meet their promises to
withdraw taxpayer  assistance to the car industry and you get some idea how
long and painful the process might  be.

   The corner into which the Government has painted itself is made clear by
calculations by  local think tank the Climate Institute, according to which
the cumulative effect of the political  deals with industry severely limits
the Government's ability to bump up the ambition of its  emissions
reductions.

   According to the Climate Institute, a 5 per cent national target means
the non-shielded parts  of the economy have to reduce their emissions by 18
per cent. If the Government tried for a  15 per cent national cut, the rest
of the economy would have to reduce its emissions by a  whopping 29 per
cent.

   The Government has overcompensated low and middle-income households in
the first year -  at a total cost of $3.9 billion, assuming it gets $25 for
each pollution permit it auctions - but if  more and more of the auction
revenue is eaten up by free permits to industry, there will be  less money
available for the increasing burden on the rest of the economy.

   Officials have conceded household compensation may need to be funded from
the budget in  the future, rather than from the revenue the scheme
generates from the auction of pollution  permits. That is if there is no
comprehensive global deal and if trade-exposed industries keep  getting
bigger proportions of the free permits, and if the Government increases the
ambition  of Australia's target.
   The Government paints this as a remote possibility; Garnaut and the
Climate Institute think it  is a whole lot more likely, which means in
effect the compensation deals have almost  certainly locked in modest
targets in the first decade of the scheme.

   The Government cannot afford to go much harder, no matter what is decided
in  Copenhagen. Still, the furious shoe-throwing reaction to the
Government's compromise from  the environment movement is steeped in
politics, too. The political imperative of the Greens  is to build momentum
towards an international deal of sufficient momentum that it would halt
further global warming blamed on emissions.

   But all governments, not just ours, have other pressures bearing down on
them. The  European Union, which has led the world on the issue, has
promised 20per cent cuts on  1990 levels by 2020. But it is already well
along the way to that target by virtue of having shut  down the filthy and
inefficient production in eastern Europe. It is also protecting its
industry to  an even greater extent than Australia. European manufacturers
will have to buy only 20 per  cent of their permits at auction in 2013,
rising to 70 per cent by 2020. Australia's big  manufacturers will be
buying 100 per cent of theirs from 2010. If European industries are  deemed
to be trade-exposed, they won't have to buy any permits at all, which puts
our deals  and concessions well in the shade.

   US president-elect Barack Obama, who will finally break the impasse that
has stalled  international climate talks for eight years, is pledging not
to cut US emissions by 2020, but  instead to stabilise them at 2000 levels.

   And that's before he's even started discussing things with Congress.

   Australia, too, has a few more rounds of negotiations before its scheme
becomes law. Every  interest group and every industry that didn't quite get
what it was asking for is beating a path  to the Senate.

   Heavy industry says the costs it must bear are still considerable despite
the Government's  concessions. Industries including cement and coal are
already lobbying the Coalition for  more changes. But the Coalition is
split on the issue and using an inquiry to buy time to come  up with a
unified position by the time the Government unveils its exposure
legislation early  next year. In the meantime, conservationists are
mounting a last-ditch campaign to convince  every senator who will listen
that this scheme makes neither environmental nor economic  sense.

   It's said a camel is a horse designed by committee, which makes you
wonder what kind of  bizarre ETS creature could emerge from the upper
house.



   -------------------------------

http://www.theage.com.au/national/garnaut-slams-climate-plan-20081219-72dl.html?
page=-1

   Garnaut slams climate plan

       * Michelle Grattan
* December 20, 2008

   ROSS Garnaut has launched a scathing attack on the Government's emissions
trading  policy, condemning its failure to embrace a more ambitious goal
and the multibillion-dollar  compensation for electricity generators.

   In his first intervention after Monday's unveiling of the Government's
blueprint, Professor  Garnaut  the Government's climate guru  said last
night that the plan would get "5½ out  of 10 at a good university".

   Writing in today's Age, he says it makes large transfers of money "from
the general  community to particular interests", and warns of its fiscal
and environmental risks.

   There is "no public policy justification for $3.9 billion in
unconditional payments to generators"  for hypothetical future loss of
asset value.
   "Never in the history of Australian public finance has so much been given
without public  policy purpose, by so many, to so few," he writes. "The
best that can be said is that these are  once-and-for-all payments  unless
the spectacular success of investment in lobbying  inspires repetition and
emulation."

   But he does endorse the Government's unilateral target of a 5 per cent
reduction on 2000  levels by 2020, which is in line with his review.

   But that review said a 25 per cent target should be kept on the table in
the slight hope of a  comprehensive international agreement. The Government
says it won't consider such a  target until after 2020. The review was also
much tougher than the white paper in proposals  to compensate industry.

   Professor Garnaut urges the Government to rethink its position on the 25
per cent target  before next year's Copenhagen climate conference,
especially if the Obama presidency and  China's response bring hope of an
unexpected breakthrough.

   "Australia cannot play a strongly positive role in encouraging the global
community towards  the best possible outcomes if it has ruled out in
advance its own participation in strong  outcomes," he writes.

   He warns that high payments for trade-exposed industries in both Europe
and Australia, and  presumably other countries, justified on the grounds of
the international financial crisis, could  serve to worsen the downturn  as
happened when the US and other countries raised  protection in the 1930s,
deepening the Great Depression.

   Professor Garnaut points to large risks to public finances in the
five-year price cap for  emissions permits and in the issuing of free
permits to trade-exposed emissions-intensive  industries, although he says
the permits are based on sound policy.

   "The problems arise from the absence from the white paper of a sound
conceptual basis for  payments," which has profound consequences, he
writes. "Sound principles would see the  automatic withdrawal of payments
as carbon constraints emerge in other countries.

   "With political bargaining determining payments, as in the white paper,
there is no obvious  point at which payments would be partially or
completely withdrawn." Even if there was an  international agreement that
completely removed the case for payments, five years' notice  would need to
be given for withdrawing them.

   Professor Garnaut said last night the "next reforming Australian
government will have as its  central objective the removal of the
distortions in the ETS' trade-exposed industries".

   He said the scheme would have been better if it had taken on more of his
proposals.

   Supporting the 5 per cent unilateral target, he writes that this is a
challenging target in the  absence of an international agreement. "To go
further would run the risk that Australia's  example of early action would
be negative rather than positive in its influence on others."





-  -  -

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21490.htm



At Last, A  Date

For the first time, the International Energy  Agency has produced a date
for peak oil. And it’s not  reassuring.

By George Monbiot

December 18,  2008 "The Guardian" -- 15th December 2008 -- Can you  think
of a major threat for which the British government does not prepare? It
employs an army of civil servants, spooks and consultants to assess the
chances  of terrorist attacks, financial collapse, floods, epidemics, even
asteroid  strikes, and to work out what it should do if they happen. But
there is one  hazard about which it appears intensely relaxed. It has never
conducted its own  assessment of the state of global oil supplies and the
possibility that one day  they might peak and then go into decline.

If you ask, it always produces  the same response: - global oil resources
are adequate for the foreseeable  future.

(1) It knows this, it says, because of the assessments made by the
International Energy Agency (IEA) in its World Energy Outlook reports. In
the  2007 report, the IEA does appear to support the government's view.
World oil  resources,- it states, -are judged to be sufficient to meet the
projected growth  in demand to 2030 3(2); though it says nothing about what
happens at that point,  or whether they will continue to be sufficient
after 2030. But this, as far as  Whitehall is concerned, is the end of the
matter. Like most of the rich world's  governments, the United Kingdom
treats the IEA's projections as gospel. Earlier  this year, I submitted a
Freedom of Information request to the UK's Department  for Business, asking
what contingency plans the government has made for global  supplies of oil
peaking by 2020. The answer was as follows: "the Government does  not feel
the need to hold contingency plans specifically for the eventuality of
crude oil supplies peaking between now and 2020."(3)

So the IEA had  better bloody well be right. In the report on peak oil
commissioned by the US  Department of Energy, the oil analyst Robert
L.Hirsch concluded that "without  timely mitigation, the economic, social
and political costs - of world oil  supplies peaking - will be
unprecedented."(4) He went on to explain what "timely  mitigation" meant.
Even a worldwide emergency response -10 years before world  oil peaking-,
he wrote, would leave "a liquid fuels shortfall roughly a decade  after the
time that oil would have peaked."(5) To avoid global economic  collapse, we
need to begin "a mitigation crash program 20 years before  peaking."(6) If
Hirsch is right and if oil supplies peak before 2028, we're in  deep doodah.

So burn this into your mind: between 2007 and 2008 the IEA  radically
changed its assessment. Until this year's report, the agency mocked  people
who said that oil supplies might peak. In the foreword to a book it
published in 2005, its executive director, Claude Mandil, dismissed those
who  warned of this event as "doomsayers". "The IEA has long maintained
that none of  this is a cause for concern," he wrote. "Hydrocarbon
resources around the world  are abundant and will easily fuel the world
through its transition to a  sustainable energy future."(7) In its 2007
World Energy Outlook, the IEA  predicted a rate of decline in output from
the world's existing oilfields of  3.7% a year(8). This, it said, presented
a short-term challenge, with the  possibility of a temporary supply crunch
in 2015, but with sufficient investment  any shortfall could be covered.
But the new report, published last month,  carried a very different
message: a projected rate of decline of 6.7%, which  means a much greater
gap to fill(9).

More importantly, in the 2008 report  the IEA suggests for the first time
that world petroleum supplies might hit the  buffers. "Although global oil
production in total is not expected to peak before  2030, production of
conventional oil … is projected to level off towards the end  of the
projection period."(10) These bland words reveal a major shift. Never
before has one of the IEA’s energy outlooks forecast the peaking or
plateauing  of the world's conventional oil production (which is what we
mean when we talk  about peak oil).

But that is as specific as the report gets. Does it or  doesn't it mean
that we have time to prepare? What does "towards the end of the  projection
period" mean? The agency has never produced a more precise forecast -
until now. For the first time, in the interview I conducted with its chief
economist Fatih Birol, it has given us a date. And it should scare the
pants off  anyone who understands the implications.

Fatih Birol, the lead author of  the new energy outlook, is a small,
shrewd, unflustered man with thick grey hair and Alistair Darling eyebrows.
He explained to me that the agency's new  projections were based on a major
study it had undertaken into decline rates in  the world's 800 largest oil
fields. So what were its previous figures based on?  "It was mainly an
assumption, a global assumption about the world's oil fields.  This year,
we looked at it country by country, field by field and we looked at it also
onshore and offshore. It was very very detailed. Last year it was an
assumption, and this year it's a finding of our study." I told him that it
seemed extraordinary to me that the IEA hadn't done this work before, but
had  based its assessment on educated guesswork. "In fact nobody had done
this  research," he told me. "This is the first publicly available
data".(11)

So was it not irresponsible to publish a decline rate of 3.7%  in 2007,
when there was no proper research supporting it? "No, our previous  decline
assumptions have always mentioned that these are assumptions to the best
of our knowledge - and we also said that the declines [could be] higher
than  what we have assumed."

Then I asked him a question for which I didn't  expect a straight answer:
could he give me a precise date by which he expects  conventional oil
supplies to stop growing?

"In terms of non-OPEC  [countries outside the big oil producers’ cartel]",
he replied, "we are  expecting that in three, four years' time the
production of conventional oil  will come to a plateau, and start to
decline. - In terms of the global picture,  assuming that OPEC will invest
in a timely manner, global conventional oil can  still continue, but we
still expect that it will come around 2020 to a plateau  as well, which is
of course not good news from a global oil supply point of  view."

Around 2020. That casts the issue in quite a different light. Mr  Birol's
date, if correct, gives us about 11 years to prepare. If the Hirsch  report
is right, we have already missed the boat. Birol says we need a "global
energy revolution" to avoid an oil crunch, including (disastrously for the
environment) a massive global drive to exploit unconventional oils, such as
the  Canadian tar sands. But nothing on this scale has yet happened, and
Hirsch  suggests that even if it began today, the necessary investments and
infrastructure changes could not be made in time. Fatih Birol told me "I
think  time is not on our side here."

When I pressed him on the shift in the  agency's position, he argued that
the IEA has been saying something like this  all along. "We said in the
past that one day we will run out of oil. We never  said that we will have
hundreds of years of oil - but what we have said is that  this year,
compared to past years, we have seen that the decline rates are
significantly higher than what we have seen before. But our line that we
are on  an unsustainable energy path has not changed".

This of course is face-saving nonsense. There is a vast difference between
a decline rate of 3.7%  and a rate of 6.7%. There is an even bigger
difference between suggesting that  the world is following an unsustainable
energy path – a statement almost  everyone can subscribe to, and revealing
that conventional oil supplies are  likely to plateau around 2020. If this
is what the IEA meant in the past, it  wasn't expressing itself very
clearly.

So what do we do? We could take to  the hills, or we could hope and pray
that Hirsch is wrong about the 20-year lead  time, and begin a global crash
programme today of fuel efficiency and  electrification. In either case,
the British government had better start drawing  up some contingency plans.

www.monbiot.com

References:

1.  Eg DECC Press Office, 28th October 2008. Statement emailed to Duncan
Clark at  the Guardian.

2. International Energy Agency, 2007. World Energy Outlook  2007, page 43.
IEA, Paris.

3. BERR, 8th April 2008. Response to FoI  request, Ref 08/0091.

4. Robert L. Hirsch, Roger Bezdek and Robert  Wendling, February 2005.
Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation,  & Risk Management.
US Department of Energy, page 4.
http://www.netl.doe.gov/publications/others/pdf/Oil_Peaking_NETL.pdf

5.  ibid, page 59.

6. ibid, page 65.

7. International Energy Agency,  2005. Resources to Reserves: Oil and Gas
Technologies for the Energy Markets of  the Future, page 3. IEA, Paris.

8. International Energy Agency, 2007,  ibid, page 84.

9. International Energy Agency, 2008. World Energy Outlook  2008, page 43.
IEA, Paris.

10. ibid, p103.

11. This interview is  broadcast on the Guardian's website .
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/video/2008/dec/15/fatih-birol-george-monbi
ot

http://www.theage.com.au/national/garnaut-turns-heat-on-rudd-climate-plan-200812
19-72a7.html?page=-1


   Garnaut turns heat on Rudd climate plan
AAP The Age December 20, 2008 - 7:11PM

   The Federal Government's own climate adviser has savaged parts of its
climate change plan, describing the assistance to big business as "over the
top".

   Professor Ross Garnaut says a massive lobbying exercise by vested
interests,  unprecedented in the history of Australian public policy, has
secured an overly generous deal  for business. He also thinks the
Government should not have ruled out a deep, 25-per cent cut in  emissions
by 2020.

   The Government went for a 5-to-15-per cent cut in its plan for climate
change and emissions  trading released this week.

   Professor Garnaut, who was hired by the federal and state governments to
advise on climate  change, said the scheme gave too much assistance to
industry.
   "I think it's over the top," he said.  "There had been "unprecedented
lobbying from vested interests ... unprecedented in  Australian
policy-making, the extent of it".

   "There's no doubt that the rate of return in lobbying has been very
high," Professor Garnaut  said.

   The final result - in which there are more free permits for more
businesses, plus generous  compensation - concerned him "because it's not
based on clear principle".

   "I think that everyone will start to wonder about the wisdom of how far
it's gone. I think there  are some budget problems ahead."

   Professor Garnaut said that, in general, the white paper was a positive
step forward because  Australia would now start to cut its emissions.

   But in some key areas the paper did not follow the advice he set out in
his report on climate  change, released in September.

   Professor Garnaut stood by his findings.

   "Naturally I think it would have been better from an environmental and an
economic point of  view if we'd ended up closer to my recommendations."

   One issue is the Government's target of reducing emissions by 5 to 15 per
cent by 2020. The  target has been slammed by environmentalists.

   Professor Garnaut stood by his recommendation of a maximum 25-per cent cut.

   "I think it would have been better for Australia's environmental interest
and long-term  economic interest to have kept it on the table," he said.

   "I wouldn't have recommended it unless I thought it was best for Australia.
Mr Rudd's formed a different view".

   "I find it a little bit difficult to understand the advantage to
Australia of cutting off the ambitious  outcome."

   Professor Garnaut also criticised the government's decision to give $3.9
billion in free permits  to coal-fired power stations.

   "I don't think there is any public policy justification at all for this."

   He took aim at Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's decision to effectively exempt
petrol from the  scheme until 2013, saying with oil at $US40 a barrel there
was not an overwhelming case for  exemption.

   And Professor Garnaut stood by his recommendation that a substantial part
of the revenue  earned in emissions trading go towards energy efficiency
programs. The Government did not  take this advice.

   Professor Garnaut said the financial crisis was no excuse to go soft on
climate change.

   "I say (in my report) that the financial crisis shouldn't make any
difference. I stand by that on  policy."

   While Professor Garnaut spoke freely on how the scheme could be improved,
he said he accepted the Government did not have to take all his advice.

   The Government had accepted his advice on some issues, and rejected it on
others, he said.  He did not feel personally disappointed at the end
result.

   "When you've been through as much in life as I have, you roll with the
punches."
   AAP
  __._,

http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/rudds-defence-of-target-contains-some-telling-o
missions-20081216-6zwa.html



Rudd's defence of target contains some telling omissions

     * Tim Colebatch
     * December 17, 2008

"AUSTRALIA'S medium-term targets for reducing carbon pollution compare
favourably with those of Š the European Union.

"The EU's 20 per cent target announced over the weekend is equal to a 24
per cent reduction in emissions for each European from 1990 to 2020. Our 5
per cent unconditional target is equal to a 27 per cent reduction in carbon
pollution for each Australian from 2000 to 2020 - and a 34 per cent
reduction for each Australian from 1990.

"This is because Europe's population is not projected to grow between 1990
and 2020. By contrast, Australia's population is projected to grow by 45
per cent. If the Europeans were to adopt the same per capita effort as
Australia is proposing, their cuts would be around 30 per cent by 2020."

- Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, Monday

It's the Rudd Government's favourite line against critics of its 5 per cent
target for emissions cuts: in per capita terms, we're doing more than
Europe is. The PM, Penny Wong and Wayne Swan use it every time.

But there are two things wrong with it. The smaller error is that their
numbers are wrong - all of them!

The larger error is that they tell only a small part of the story, and the
part they don't tell matters more.

First, the numbers. On the Bureau of Statistics' median estimate,
Australia's population is on track to grow by 48 per cent between 1990 and
2020, not 45 - from 17.1 million back then to 25.3 million.

But Europe's population growth has also accelerated as migrants flood in.
Last year it added almost as many people as Australia has in the past
decade. Its population is already 6 per cent bigger than in 1990. Eurostat
projects 9 per cent growth by 2020, but that now looks conservative.

Europe's target in fact implies a cut in per capita emissions of 27 per
cent or more.

That's still less than Australia. But PM, you know something? Australians
now emit 21 and a half times as much greenhouse gas per capita as
Europeans. So it's much easier to cut some of our fat.

In 2006, United Nations figures show, Australians emitted 26.1 tonnes per
head of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxides, etc. Europeans emitted
10.4 million tonnes each - two tonnes for every five we emit.

If both achieve their lower 2020 targets, we will still emit almost twice
as much gas per head as Europeans: 16.1 tonnes compared with 8.8 tonnes.

And if we kept on at that rate, by 2050 our emissions per head would be
10.6 tonnes - back where Europe was in 2005.

Take off that halo, PM: it doesn't fit.

12 . The solar wars -- more  hidden handouts for polluters?
Canberra correspondent Bernard Keane writes:



The solar  wars have raged ever since the Budget in May. At stake has
been the Government's  environmental and renewable energy
credibility, the future of one of our key  off-the-shelf renewable
technologies and, maybe more than anything else, the  reputation of
Environment Minister Peter Garrett.

Garrett,  because of his background, entered the first year of
government with absurdly  high expectations and, in failing to live up
to them, is perceived to have been  a failure.

Yesterday  Garrett, along with Penny Wong and Wayne Swan, announced a
new solar program to  replace the current means-tested rebate. Wong and
Swan were there because it  wasn't just another program, it was part
of the Government's Renewable Energy  Target of 20% by 2020.

Media  coverage of the announcement has been rather confused because the
new scheme is  complex. On ABC Breakfast this morning the presenter was
talking about how  terrible it was that the rebate for solar systems had
been slashed while the  ticker along the bottom referred to the removal
of the means test.

In simple  terms, the new scheme replaces a means-tested Government
rebate for low and  middle-income households with the purchase of solar
energy credits by power  companies so that they can count toward the
Renewable Energy Target. Purchasers  of solar systems won't have to
deal directly with power companies, it will be  handled at the point of
sale. The new scheme is not means-tested or limited to  households, but
in the early years, it multiplies the value of the power  generated to
increase the incentive to invest in solar sooner rather than later.  It
also links the amount of power generated to the purchasable credits, so
that  solar systems installed in sunnier locations -- i.e. up north --
generate a  higher return.

The Greens  and the Opposition have criticised the new approach, as has
Greenpeace, which  wanted to see a solar feed-in tariff.

But there  are significant benefits to the new program. It plugs solar
power directly into  the Renewable Energy Target, meaning the solar
industry has an assured growth  trajectory between now and 2020. It also
links credits to actual energy  production, and isn't constrained by
means tests or for domestic use only. It  also takes pressure off the
budget by shifting the cost of renewable to where it  belongs -- power
companies.

This is  important because, in the light of the Government's cop-out
on ETS targets on  Monday, there were real questions about what
incentives there were to drive a  switch to renewable energy. As it
stands, the Renewable Energy Target will be  about the biggest mechanism
to drive a shift to low-carbon energy production.

It  would've been far more effective if the Government had designed
an ETS that  didn't reward polluters but established clear price
signals to shift to  renewables, but for the moment the new scheme is
all we'll have.

In  announcing the scheme, Garrett took the opportunity to point out
that the  now-notorious imposition of a means-test for the current
program in May had,  rather than destroying the solar industry as
predicted, caused it to surge. This  has been a fascinating policy
lesson that will be studied by wonks, academics  and public servants for
years to come. Perhaps because of publicity from a  complaining
industry, the Budget changes caused an explosion in applications for
solar systems, which went from about 370 a week before the Budget to
over a 1000  a week currently.

Far from  killing off the solar industry in one blow, as Malcolm
Turnbull predicted
<http://redirect.cmailer.com.au/LinkRedirector.aspx?clid=6947b7b3-5b2e-4\
def-a5ef-b33105009ea5&rid=0c455ffe-e339-48e4-a9a2-f9cbfb4f04e4> , it
gave it a huge shot in the arm. The program ran  through all its
allocated money so quickly the Government had to inject more  funding to
keep it going.

Just to  show that Garrett can't win, though, today he's been
accused of performing a  backflip because the new RET-linked scheme has
no  means test
<http://redirect.cmailer.com.au/LinkRedirector.aspx?clid=a41d7f0d-7669-4\
6ee-8553-fb63b780a1ae&rid=0c455ffe-e339-48e4-a9a2-f9cbfb4f04e4> .

There's  one worrying aspect of the program announced yesterday,
however. According to  the Government's own commentary on the bill
that will introduce the scheme, "the  treatment of
electricity-intensive, trade-exposed industries under the RET  scheme is
to be considered separately in the context of decisions around the
treatment of emissions-intensive, trade-exposed industries under the
Carbon  Pollution Reduction Scheme."

The issue  is the higher electricity costs incurred by trade-exposed
industries as we move  to 20% of energy coming from renewable sources.
Penny Wong is to release a paper  on this issue "before the end of the
year", which gives her eight working days.

The  Australian Conservation Foundation correctly spotted this
reference, and has  expressed concern that it doesn't mean more
handouts to big polluters.

Judging by  the ETS White Paper, that's exactly what it means. All
the likes of the cement  and aluminium industries need to do is bleat
"renewable leakage" and the  Government will, on past form, cave in and
give them a massive free kick.  Trade-exposed industries will benefit
from massive and wholly unwarranted  handouts in the ETS. They should
get absolutely nothing under the Renewable  Energy Target. Don't bet
on Wong's paper saying that, though.



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

[Greens-Media]
Wednesday 17 December 2008

Kicking the renewables sector while it's down: 20% undermined, no
certainty for solar

Just two days after delivering its 'big polluters' bail-out package',
the Rudd Government has announced a deeply flawed renewable energy
target that breaches its election promise and will entrench sector's
boom and bust cycles, the Australian Greens said today.

"After giving big polluters everything they asked for in Monday's white
paper, today the Rudd Government is kicking the renewable energy sector
while it's down," Australian Greens Deputy Leader and Climate Change
Spokesperson, Senator Christine Milne, said.

Today's ill-thought out announcement that solar panels will be given
five renewable energy credits (RECs) for every megawatt hour, while all
other renewable energy sources get only one REC, will fail to provide
the certainty the solar industry needs while undermining the 20%
Renewable Energy Target (RET).

Ongoing uncertainty over price, an absurd seven year phase down and a
senseless size limit means the solar industry will still not be able to
invest in Australia with any confidence.

Meanwhile, the fact that each megawatt hour of solar power will take up
the space of five megawatt hours in the scheme means the 20% target will
now deliver even less renewable energy into the grid than it should.

"Mr Rudd, why won't you listen to the solar industry like you listen to
the coal industry?" Senator Milne asked.

"The renewable energy sector is united behind the need for a price
guarantee scheme - known as a feed-in tariff - which has delivered
tremendous growth in jobs and investment everywhere it has been
introduced around the world.

"The evidence is crystal clear that a feed-in tariff scheme is the best
policy setting to supplement a strong renewable energy target. It gives
the industry the long-term certainty it needs to invest in creating
green-collar jobs and delivering a boom in zero emissions energy.

"The Rudd Government refused to support my Private Member's Bill for a
feed-in tariff in large part because it did not want to see the cost of
renewable energy shared by all electricity users. But today's scheme has
an identical funding mechanism - it will have the same impact on
electricity bills for less benefit. This is senseless.

"It has taken a year and embarrassment by the Greens in introducing
amendments to fulfil this election promise, and still the Rudd
Government produces a deeply flawed plan.

"This is yet another example of senseless policy on the run from the
Rudd Government.

"Mr Rudd and his Ministers need to take a good holiday break to think
seriously about their approach to climate change and return in 2009 with
a New Year's Resolution to follow expert advice instead of polluter
lobbying."

Tim Hollo
Media and Communications Adviser
Senator Christine Milne
Australian Greens Deputy Leader
ph: (02) 6277 3588
mob: 0437 587 562
Come join the conversation at GreensBlog <http://greensmps.org.au/blog>
----------------------------------------------

16th December 2008

Rudd: the devil in climate change hell

With his self-groomed halo tarnished forever more, Rudd has revealed
himself to be the devil in the detail when it comes to climate change,
after the Federal Government announced it would only set a 5% emissions
reduction target yesterday.

"This is significant step towards Federal Labor exposing themselves
as being more closely intertwined with their colleagues in NSW than they
would like to admit," says Greens MP Ian Cohen.

"For a government that was swept to power with all the grandiose
climate change promises it could muster, this paltry 5% target will
certainly prove to be lump of coal in the throats of most
Australians."

The White Paper, `Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme: Australia's Low
Pollution Future', released by Prime Minister Rudd yesterday, has
revealed a government more concerned with appeasing big polluters than
shoring up new and emerging renewable energy industries, as the $4
billion promised to the coal industry demonstrates.

"Australia is at the forefront of some of the most innovative and
exciting technologies in the world when it comes to renewable energy.
Sadly, many have been moving offshore for commercialisation because they
find it so hard to get started in our own backyard. We need to be moving
Australia into a high skills, sustainable energy based economy, not
shoring up the Jurassic interests of only a few"

"Just how much of the coal cabal's $4 billion bonanza will actually
translate to real emissions cuts? According to the McKinsey Australian
2020 carbon abatement cost curve emission reductions to be gained from
residential water heating efficiency, commercial lighting efficiency and
residential heating/ventilation efficiency are the low hanging fruit
that the Rudd Government is ignoring.

"Just look at the Sydney CBD at night. All too often whole office
buildings are lit up for no good reason - even on weekends."

"What is also glaringly absent from the Rudd White Paper is an
acknowledgement of the role of forestry in Australia's abatement
portfolio. The forestry industry makes up 31% of Australia's GHG
emission reduction opportunity yet Rudd has turned a blindeye,
preferring to bankrole a handsome corporate welfare package."
-------------------------------------------------------------

17 December 2008

Chikarovski mine report will pull plug on Central Coast water catchments

Greens MP and mining spokesperson Lee Rhiannon called on Planning
Minister Kristina Keneally to ignore the findings of the Chikarovski
Report into underground mining in the Central Coast, released today.

"The findings of the Chikarovski Report are skewed in favour of the
coal industry at the expense of the Central Coasts major water
catchment", said Ms Rhiannon.

"The report brushes aside community concerns and paves the way for the
controversial Kores long wall coal mine, Wallarah 2, to go ahead.

"The proposed underground mine panels for Wallarah 2 coal mine would
be only 154m from the Wyong River at some points and would impact
aquifers beneath the Yarramalong and Dooralong valleys.

"This project could pull the plug on a major source of the Central
Coast regions water supply. The Yarramalong and Dooralong Valleys
supply 35 40% of the Central Coasts drinking water.

"The report admits that there is a lack of monitoring of aquifer
status, lack of metering of groundwater use, absence of groundwater
sharing plans and lack of government investment in groundwater
management at the proposed site of the Wallarah 2 mine.

"The Chikarovski Report is as useful as a blindfold in helping the
government to assess whether the Wallarah 2 mine should go ahead.

"The Greens call on the government to withhold any decision on the
Wallarah 2 mine until there is sufficient information about
groundwater in the area.

"Subsidence and cracked river beds caused by longwall coal mining in
the Illawarra have drained water from rivers and aquifers.

"This Inquiry is the latest in a series of costly and lengthy
inquiries commissioned by the NSW government that are weighted in
favour of the coal industry.

"Two of the four mining experts appointed to the panel of this inquiry
have associations with the mining industry.

"The Greens will continue to work with local residents to oppose the
proposed Wallarah 2 mine and protect the water catchments of the
Central Coast", said Ms Rhiannon

For more information: 9230 3551, 0427 861 568
Lee Rhiannon, MLC
The Greens
Parliament of New South Wales
Macquarie St
Sydney 2000
Tel: +61-2-9230 3551
Fax: +61-2-9230 3550
lee.rhiannon@...
http://www.lee.greens.org.au/
http://www.democracy4sale.org/
------------------------------------------------------

Wednesday 17 December 2008


Log trucks will stop nation - Brown

The nationwide coverage of the massive log truck line up at Triabunna
yesterday will hasten the end of native forest destruction in Tasmania,
Greens Leader Bob Brown said today.

Congratulating the peaceful forest defenders who protested at Gunns
woodchip mill, Senator Brown said that in terms of wildlife and
Tasmania's natural beauty, the picture represented the axels of evil.

"This image of stopped log trucks will also stop the nation in its
tracks.
Beyond wildlife, water purity and intact ecosystems, the trucks
represent thousands of tonnes of greenhouse gas pollution for no better
reason than making wrapping paper in Japan," Senator Brown said.



Further information:  Ebony Bennett 0409 164 603
Media Advisor
Senator Bob Brown | Leader of the Australian Greens
e: ebony.bennett@...
m: 0409 164 603 | p: (02) 6277 3170 | f: (02) 6277 3185
w: www.bobbrown.org.au <http://www.bobbrown.org.au/>

The following Declaration was prepared by a committee elected for this
purpose at the Paris Ecosocialist Conference of 2007 (Ian Angus, Joel
Kovel, Michael Löwy), with the help of Danielle Follett. It will be
distributed at the World Social Forum in Belem, Brazil, in January 2009.

To add your name to the list of signatories who support the analysis and
political perspectives set forth in this statement, email your name and
country of residence to ecosocialism@...
<mailto:ecosocialism@...?subject=Add%20my%20Signature%20to%20Belem%20Decla\
ration>,

<mailto:ecosocialism@...?subject=Add%20my%20Signature%20to%20Belem%20Decla\
ration>

------------------------------------------------------------------------


   The Belem Ecosocialist Declaration

"The world is suffering from a fever due to climate change,
and the disease is the capitalist development model."
-- Evo Morales, president of Bolivia, September 2007

Humanity's choice

Humanity today faces a stark choice: ecosocialism or barbarism.

We need no more proof of the barbarity of capitalism, the parasitical
system that exploits humanity and nature alike. Its sole motor is the
imperative toward profit and thus the need for constant growth. It
wastefully creates unnecessary products, squandering the environment's
limited resources and returning to it only toxins and pollutants. Under
capitalism, the only measure of success is how much more is sold every
day, every week, every year - involving the creation of vast quantities
of products that are directly harmful to both humans and nature,
commodities that cannot be produced without spreading disease,
destroying the forests that produce the oxygen we breathe, demolishing
ecosystems, and treating our water, air and soil like sewers for the
disposal of industrial waste.

Capitalism's need for growth exists on every level, from the individual
enterprise to the system as a whole. The insatiable hunger of
corporations is facilitated by imperialist expansion in search of ever
greater access to natural resources, cheap labor and new markets.
Capitalism has always been ecologically destructive, but in our
lifetimes these assaults on the earth have accelerated. Quantitative
change is giving way to qualitative transformation, bringing the world
to a tipping point, to the edge of disaster. A growing body of
scientific research has identified many ways in which small temperature
increases could trigger irreversible, runaway effects - such as rapid
melting of the Greenland ice sheet or the release of methane buried in
permafrost and beneath the ocean - that would make catastrophic climate
change inevitable.

Left unchecked, global warming will have devastating effects on human,
animal and plant life. Crop yields will drop drastically, leading to
famine on a broad scale. Hundreds of millions of people will be
displaced by droughts in some areas and by rising ocean levels in
others. Chaotic, unpredictable weather will become the norm. Air, water
and soil will be poisoned. Epidemics of malaria, cholera and even
deadlier diseases will hit the poorest and most vulnerable members of
every society.

The impact of the ecological crisis is felt most severely by those whose
lives have already been ravaged by imperialism in Asia, Africa, and
Latin America, and indigenous peoples everywhere are especially
vulnerable. Environmental destruction and climate change constitute an
act of aggression by the rich against the poor.

Ecological devastation, resulting from the insatiable need to increase
profits, is not an accidental feature of capitalism: it is built into
the system's DNA and cannot be reformed away. Profit-oriented production
only considers a short-term horizon in its investment decisions, and
cannot take into account the long-term health and stability of the
environment. Infinite economic expansion is incompatible with finite and
fragile ecosystems, but the capitalist economic system cannot tolerate
limits on growth; its constant need to expand will subvert any limits
that might be imposed in the name of "sustainable development." Thus the
inherently unstable capitalist system cannot regulate its own activity,
much less overcome the crises caused by its chaotic and parasitical
growth, because to do so would require setting limits upon accumulation
- an unacceptable option for a system predicated upon the rule: Grow or Die!

If capitalism remains the dominant social order, the best we can expect
is unbearable climate conditions, an intensification of social crises
and the spread of the most barbaric forms of class rule, as the
imperialist powers fight among themselves and with the global south for
continued control of the world's diminishing resources.

At worst, human life may not survive.

Continue reading at http://links.org.au/node/803



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Until now all the proposals and/or agreements for addressing GHG
induced GW/CC have advised reducing CO2 emissions by X% of 1990 levels
by the year 20whatever. But Mr KRudd's proposal is a 5% CO2 reduction
of 2000 levels.
If CO2 emission levels only rose 1% per year between 1990 and 2000, a
5% reduction on 2000 levels equals a 5% increase on 1990 levels.
I'm led to believe CO2 emissions are currently growing by 2% per year
globally.
-----------------------------------------------------------------

  [Greens-Media]

Canberra, Tuesday 16 December 2008

Obama chooses Chu: US will rapidly overtake Australia

The Australian Greens today welcomed US President-elect Obama's choice
of energy efficiency expert Dr Steven Chu as his energy secretary.

The choice of Nobel Prize winning Dr Chu will help to ensure that the
USA moves rapidly into a Green New Deal that build jobs and prosperity
through energy efficiency and renewable energy. It will dramatically
increase the pressure on Australia to follow suit.

"Dr Chu is an inspired choice who will drive the transformation in the
American economy that the Rudd Government completely failed to deliver
yesterday," Australian Greens Deputy Leader and Climate Change
Spokesperson, Senator Christine Milne, said.

"Dr Chu is a Nobel Prize winning expert in energy efficiency who is
opposed to nuclear power and deeply sceptical of coal's ability to clean
up its act.

"He will champion Mr Obama's commitment to build millions of new jobs in
the clean-tech renewable energy and energy efficiency industries that
will not only lift America out of recession but simultaneously create a
new, green economy.

"If the Rudd Government yesterday could not see the writing on the wall
for its coal obsession, today that writing has become even clearer.

"Australia needs to get with the Green New Deal, ride the wave of
change, or be swamped by it."

Tim Hollo
Media and Communications Adviser
Senator Christine Milne
Australian Greens Deputy Leader
ph: (02) 6277 3588
mob: 0437 587 562
Come join the conversation at GreensBlog <http://greensmps.org.au/blog>
-----------------------------------------------------------

Canberra, Tuesday 16 December 2008

Greens to initiate Senate Inquiry into inadequacy of 5% target

The Australian Greens today released draft terms of reference for a
Senate Inquiry into the 5% emissions reduction target announced by Prime
Minister Rudd yesterday.

The Inquiry, to be moved in the first sitting week of the new year, will
examine the scientific adequacy of the 5% target in avoiding
catastrophic climate change of more than 2 degrees warming, and whether
the target does enough to play a fair and responsible part in global
climate action.

"The Rudd Government has chosen to make one of the most important
decisions it will ever make on the basis of lobbying by polluters
instead on the clear evidence," Australian Greens Deputy Leader and
Climate Change Spokesperson, Senator Christine Milne, said.

"It is vital that the Senate scrutinises this target on behalf of all
Australians, examining how it stands up on the key questions of
scientific adequacy and global fairness.

"Our hope it that this Inquiry will give scientists from across
Australia and around the world the opportunity to advise on how much
Australia will need to do to prevent catastrophic, runaway climate
change."

Terms of reference: To inquire into and make recommendations upon:
1.    The adequacy or otherwise of the Government's greenhouse gas
emission reduction target of 5 per cent by 2020 and 60 per cent by 2050
below 2000 levels in avoiding dangerous anthropogenic interference with
the climate, defined as a global temperature rise of more than 2
degrees.
2.    Whether or not, if the global community pursues a 550 ppm target
until 2020, there is any prospect of achieving a 450 ppm target - ie is
an "overshoot" emission trajectory realistic and what are the risks
involved?
3.    Whether or not, if the global community pursues a 550 ppm
target, the Government's greenhouse emission reduction targets of 5 per
cent by 2020 and 60 per cent by 2050 below 2000 levels constitutes a
fair and proportionate contribution the global abatement task.
4.    What emission targets would be consistent with a achieving a 350
ppm and a 400 ppm atmospheric concentration target, equitably shared
between (a) industrial and developing nations, and (b) between
industrialised nations?
5.    The debate into global negotiations to date on per capita
emission targets and whether or not the Government's arguments on per
capita emissions are consistent with globally understood principles of
equity underpinning burden sharing arrangements.

Senator Milne said "The Greens believe that, for Australia to play a
fair and responsible role in the global climate effort, we will need to
be carbon neutral by 2050,* with at least 40% cuts below 1990 levels by
2020. This is both achievable and necessary."

*Countries committed to carbon neutrality include New Zealand, Iceland,
Costa Rica, Niue and Norway.

Tim Hollo
Media and Communications Adviser
Senator Christine Milne
Australian Greens Deputy Leader
ph: (02) 6277 3588
mob: 0437 587 562
Come join the conversation at GreensBlog <http://greensmps.org.au/blog>
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Tuesday, 16 December 2008

Rudd ignores forest 'elephant'

The Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has ignored the 20% or so of Australia's
greenhouse emissions coming from logging and clearance of forests and
woodlands as a huge low-cost opportunity to address climate change,
Australian Greens Leader Bob Brown said today.

"Logging, from the Tiwi Islands to Tasmania, is not needed for domestic
wood needs as Australia has more than 1.5 million hectares of
to-be-logged plantations for its paper and structural timber market,"
Senator Brown said.

"The $20 billion the Rudd government has allocated for a 4% reduction in
2020 greenhouse gas emissions over 1990 levels could have far greater
benefit in terms of reducing greenhouse has emissions if put to
restructuring the logging industry, and ending land clearance, rather
than featherbedding the coal and allied industries.

"This morning, the forest defenders group 'Still Wild Still Threatened'
closed the operations of Gunns' export woodchip mill at Triabunna in
Tasmania.

"Logging and burning of forests is Tasmania's biggest greenhouse gas
emitter - bigger than all the states' transport systems put together.

"Worse still, it is largely going to Japan for wrapping paper which ends
up on rotting rubbish tips as greenhouse gases," Senator Brown said.

"Logging is an elephant in the Prime Minister's room," Senator Brown
said.

Further information: Ebony Bennett 0409 164 603
Media Advisor
Senator Bob Brown | Leader of the Australian Greens
e: ebony.bennett@...
m: 0409 164 603 | p: (02) 6277 3170 | f: (02) 6277 3185
w: www.bobbrown.org.au <http://www.bobbrown.org.au/>
---------------------------------------------------------------

Media Release: 15 December 2008

Rudd's white paper is free kick to NSW's big polluters

NSW's coal-fired power stations and its two aluminium smelters are big
winners in the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme White Paper while the
state's renewable energy industry has suffered a major setback,
according to Greens NSW MP John Kaye.

Dr Kaye said: "The federal government plans to hand over 50 percent of
the money raised from selling permits to the big polluters.

"Kevin Rudd wants to give free permits to NSW's coal burning power
stations that are responsible for 37 per cent of the state's
greenhouse gas emissions.

"He is effectively removing the need to transform this state's
electricity industry.

"Apart from rewarding and encouraging polluting behaviour, the
so-called 'assistance' is designed to prop up the asset value of the
generators and  make them more attractive for full or partial
privatisation.

"The White paper is also a gift to Australia's aluminium industry
which uses massive amounts of electricity from coal-fired generators.

"Even though each tonne of aluminium smelted in Australia produces 16
times more greenhouse gases than if it were manufactured in South
America, the operators will be given permits to cover 90 percent of
their emissions.

"NSW's two aluminium smelters will receive an annual subsidy of more
than $180,000 for each employee, even at the low carbon price of
$23/tonne CO2.

"This is money that would be much better invested in developing a
renewable energy industry, which could create up to 73,800 new jobs.

"Kevin Rudd's White paper robs from the average households to give
massive advantages to the big polluters. It hobbles the future of this
state's renewable energy industry and it's a gift to the Rees'
government's electricity privatisation agenda," Dr Kaye said.

Media alert: Greens members and supporters are rallying to protest the
5% target and the free kick to big polluters:

     11:00 am Tuesday 16 December
     Commonwealth Government Offices, 70 Phillip Street, Sydney

For more information: John Kaye 0407 195 455
Greens member of the NSW Parliament
phone: (02) 9230 2668
fax: (02) 9230 2586
mobile: 0407 195 455
email: john.kaye@...
web: www.johnkaye.org.au

mail: Parliament House, Macquarie St, Sydney NSW 2000

It would be nice if they'd link up with the Australian Youth Climate Coalition
on these actions!!  Ah well, green groups seldom work together ....

H


[Greens-Media]
Monday, 15 December 2008

Greens announce national day of action tomorrow, amidst public outcry at
5% target

Australian Greens Deputy Leader and climate change spokesperson, Senator
Christine Milne, said Prime Minister Rudd's dangerous 5% emissions
reduction target had sparked disbelief and outrage from the community.

"My office has been inundated with phone calls and emails from
Australians who are disappointed and angry at Prime Minister Rudd's 5%
target and want to know what they can do to fix it," Senator Milne said.

"I invite anyone who wants to send a message to the Rudd government that
Australians won't surrender to climate change, and that 5% isn't good
enough, to join me on the lawns of Parliament House in Canberra
tomorrow, along with my ACT Greens MLA Shane Rattenbury," Senator Milne
said.

Senator Milne said Greens were organising protests across in most
capital cities and that details were available on the Greens website
www.greensmps.org.au

NSW
11AM - Commonwealth Government Offices, 70 Phillip St, Sydney
Contact John Kaye (02) 9230 2668

Victoria
12PM - Cnr of Collins, Spring and MacArthur Sts, Melbourne
Contact Alison 0402 075 306 or pc@... Vic Facebook Event

ACT
12.30PM - Parliament House, Canberra
Contact Simon on 62476305 or office@...

SA
11AM - SA Parliament House, North Terrace, Adelaide
Contact Tammy (08) 8212 4888 or tammy@...

TAS
12.30pm - Tasmanian Parliament House Lawns
Contact Karen 03 6236 9334 or 0417 555 309 or
networker@...

WA
12PM - Wesley Church, cnr Hay & William Sts, Perth
Contact Rachel 08 9225 5799 or rachel.pemberton@...

Tim Hollo
Media and Communications Adviser
Senator Christine Milne
Australian Greens Deputy Leader
ph: (02) 6277 3588
mob: 0437 587 562
Come join the conversation at GreensBlog <http://greensmps.org.au/blog>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------

15 December 2008

CORPORATE WELFARE PAYMENTS FOR CARBON POLLUTERS

The
bigger and dirtier you are the more you get paid under the Federal
Government's emissions trading arrangements, says Greens (WA) Energy
spokesperson Paul Llewellyn MLC.

"The Government's 'free permits to polluters' policy will be a windfall for
WA's biggest polluters", Mr Llewellyn said.

"It
looks like Griffin Energy's Bluewater coal-fired power station, due to
open next year, will be bailed out with around $45m in free permits
over the next five years.  This is in spite of the company knowing full
well of the risk of being made to pay for its pollution.

"Now it looks like taxpayers pay them to pollute.

"This is only one of a number of corporate polluters who will have their
hands out for free permits to pollute.

"This
is a shameful waste of money which should be spent supporting clean
energy generation from wind, sun, wave and bio-energy," said Mr
Llewellyn.


For more information contact Paul Llewellyn on 0428 317 182 or 9848 1555
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------

Monday, 15 December 2008

Rudd raises white flag of surrender on climate change

Greens campaign for 40% target

The Australian Greens will campaign for a 40 per cent cut in greenhouse
gas emissions by 2020 to save the planet from catastrophic climate
change.

"Prime Minister Rudd's 5% target is a global embarrassment and a recipe
for global catastrophe," Australian Greens Leader Bob Brown said today.

"The Rudd target of 5 per cent will anger voters. It is exactly where
John Howard would have placed Australia in 2009 - a spoiler as the
Copenhagen conference on climate change reaches for a much higher goal,"
Australian Greens Leader Bob Brown said today.

"Kevin Rudd has made climate change the big parliamentary challenge of
2009. The Greens will initiate a Senate inquiry. If the Opposition
remains coal-captured the question is: will the government accept the
Greens' amendments to improve its climate change legislation?" Senator
Brown asked.

Greens Deputy Leader and Climate Change spokesperson Christine Milne
said today said, "Kevin Rudd's White Paper has raised the white flag of
surrender on climate change."

"Scientists agree that developed countries need to reduce their
emissions by between 25 and 40 per cent by 2020 to avoid catastrophic
climate change. Australia's high per capita emissions and our relatively
cheap emissions reduction potential means we need to be at the top of
that range, not doing less than everyone else.

"Only three per cent of funds will actually go to reducing emissions.
Half of all the money raised by auctioning permits will go to big
polluters. Not a single cent will be spent on helping householders
reduce their energy use and emissions.

"If polluters aren't paying somebody else has to; Kevin Rudd has ensured
that the Australian people will foot the bill for the big polluters,"
Senator Milne said.

"Kevin Rudd has put the coal industry ahead of Australia's children and
grandchildren. It will be much more expensive to rectify this historic
mistake in the decades ahead. The 2010 federal election is shaping up as
a referendum on tackling climate change," Senator Milne said.


------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------
Ebony Bennett
Media Advisor
Senator Bob Brown | Leader of the Australian Greens
e: ebony.bennett@...
m: 0409 164 603 | p: (02) 6277 3170 | f: (02) 6277 3185
w: www.bobbrown.org.au <http://www.bobbrown.org.au/>

[Greens-Media]
Monday, 15 December 2008

Greens announce national day of action tomorrow, amidst public outcry at
5% target

Australian Greens Deputy Leader and climate change spokesperson, Senator
Christine Milne, said Prime Minister Rudd's dangerous 5% emissions
reduction target had sparked disbelief and outrage from the community.

"My office has been inundated with phone calls and emails from
Australians who are disappointed and angry at Prime Minister Rudd's 5%
target and want to know what they can do to fix it," Senator Milne said.

"I invite anyone who wants to send a message to the Rudd government that
Australians won't surrender to climate change, and that 5% isn't good
enough, to join me on the lawns of Parliament House in Canberra
tomorrow, along with my ACT Greens MLA Shane Rattenbury," Senator Milne
said.

Senator Milne said Greens were organising protests across in most
capital cities and that details were available on the Greens website
www.greensmps.org.au

NSW
11AM - Commonwealth Government Offices, 70 Phillip St, Sydney
Contact John Kaye (02) 9230 2668

Victoria
12PM - Cnr of Collins, Spring and MacArthur Sts, Melbourne
Contact Alison 0402 075 306 or pc@... Vic Facebook Event

ACT
12.30PM - Parliament House, Canberra
Contact Simon on 62476305 or office@...

SA
11AM - SA Parliament House, North Terrace, Adelaide
Contact Tammy (08) 8212 4888 or tammy@...

TAS
12.30pm - Tasmanian Parliament House Lawns
Contact Karen 03 6236 9334 or 0417 555 309 or
networker@...

WA
12PM - Wesley Church, cnr Hay & William Sts, Perth
Contact Rachel 08 9225 5799 or rachel.pemberton@...

Tim Hollo
Media and Communications Adviser
Senator Christine Milne
Australian Greens Deputy Leader
ph: (02) 6277 3588
mob: 0437 587 562
Come join the conversation at GreensBlog <http://greensmps.org.au/blog>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------\
-------------------------------------------

15 December 2008

CORPORATE WELFARE PAYMENTS FOR CARBON POLLUTERS

The
bigger and dirtier you are the more you get paid under the Federal
Government's emissions trading arrangements, says Greens (WA) Energy
spokesperson Paul Llewellyn MLC.

"The Government's 'free permits to polluters' policy will be a windfall for WA's
biggest polluters", Mr Llewellyn said.

"It
looks like Griffin Energy's Bluewater coal-fired power station, due to
open next year, will be bailed out with around $45m in free permits
over the next five years.  This is in spite of the company knowing full
well of the risk of being made to pay for its pollution.

"Now it looks like taxpayers pay them to pollute.

"This is only one of a number of corporate polluters who will have their hands
out for free permits to pollute.

"This
is a shameful waste of money which should be spent supporting clean
energy generation from wind, sun, wave and bio-energy," said Mr
Llewellyn.


For more information contact Paul Llewellyn on 0428 317 182 or 9848 1555
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------\
--------------------------------------

Monday, 15 December 2008

Rudd raises white flag of surrender on climate change

Greens campaign for 40% target

The Australian Greens will campaign for a 40 per cent cut in greenhouse
gas emissions by 2020 to save the planet from catastrophic climate
change.

"Prime Minister Rudd's 5% target is a global embarrassment and a recipe
for global catastrophe," Australian Greens Leader Bob Brown said today.

"The Rudd target of 5 per cent will anger voters. It is exactly where
John Howard would have placed Australia in 2009 - a spoiler as the
Copenhagen conference on climate change reaches for a much higher goal,"
Australian Greens Leader Bob Brown said today.

"Kevin Rudd has made climate change the big parliamentary challenge of
2009. The Greens will initiate a Senate inquiry. If the Opposition
remains coal-captured the question is: will the government accept the
Greens' amendments to improve its climate change legislation?" Senator
Brown asked.

Greens Deputy Leader and Climate Change spokesperson Christine Milne
said today said, "Kevin Rudd's White Paper has raised the white flag of
surrender on climate change."

"Scientists agree that developed countries need to reduce their
emissions by between 25 and 40 per cent by 2020 to avoid catastrophic
climate change. Australia's high per capita emissions and our relatively
cheap emissions reduction potential means we need to be at the top of
that range, not doing less than everyone else.

"Only three per cent of funds will actually go to reducing emissions.
Half of all the money raised by auctioning permits will go to big
polluters. Not a single cent will be spent on helping householders
reduce their energy use and emissions.

"If polluters aren't paying somebody else has to; Kevin Rudd has ensured
that the Australian people will foot the bill for the big polluters,"
Senator Milne said.

"Kevin Rudd has put the coal industry ahead of Australia's children and
grandchildren. It will be much more expensive to rectify this historic
mistake in the decades ahead. The 2010 federal election is shaping up as
a referendum on tackling climate change," Senator Milne said.


------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------
Ebony Bennett
Media Advisor
Senator Bob Brown | Leader of the Australian Greens
e: ebony.bennett@...
m: 0409 164 603 | p: (02) 6277 3170 | f: (02) 6277 3185
w: www.bobbrown.org.au <http://www.bobbrown.org.au/>








________________________________



From: hugh spencer <Hugh@...>
To: ClimateChangeLinkage@yahoogroups.com
Cc: ClimateChangeAction@...;
ClimateChangeLinkage@yahoogroups.com; climateemergencynetwork@yahoogroups.com;
roeoz@yahoogroups.com; oz-envirolink@...; Steve Ryan
<campaign@...>; cairns-coev@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Monday, 15 December, 2008 6:44:47 PM
Subject: [ClimateChangeAction] Rudd Has Betrayed A Generation


http://newmatilda. com/2008/ 12/15/rudd- has-betrayed- generation

Rudd Has Betrayed A Generation
By Anna Rose
The New Matilda
15 Dec 2008

Anna Rose reports from inside the emissions trading scheme lock-up in Canberra

At a high school swimming carnival I once dived really badly off the blocks
and, in mid-air, realised that I'd screwed it up; that I'd blown the one
chance I had to get a head-start in the pool. I have that same feeling
right now. The Rudd Government has just blown Australia's chance - the
small window of opportunity we had - to avert catastrophic climate change.

I'm writing this from the White Paper "lock-up", where the Government gives
non-government organisations and business lobbyists an advance copy of the
White Paper on the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. Blair Comley from the
Department of Climate Change just gave his speech summarising the scheme's
key design elements.

This White Paper is, in the words of one of Australia's top commentators on
climate change, "totally f*cked".

The target is, as we expected, a "gateway" of 5 to 15 per cent by 2020 -
although in reality it is a commitment to the bottom end of that range. So
while the rest of the world is committing to carbon cuts of between 20 and
40 per cent, Australia is lagging behind at just 5 per cent.

There exists a remarkable disjuncture between the first sentence of the
Executive Summary:

- "The Australian Government believes that acting on climate change is
essential" - and the rest of the White Paper. They can believe it all they
like, but they are certainly not acting on that belief.

It's a sunny day outside in Canberra. We're in Hotel Realm, where I've been
before for the "consultations" in the lead up to this announcement. You can
normally see the gardens outside, but for some reason, thick black curtains
cover the windows today. There's a steady buzz of conversation. A small
corner of the room, where I'm sitting, is filled with climate change and
environment and public benefit organisations. The rest is made up of
industry representatives and business lobbyists in suits. I'm definitely
the only person here under 26 - except for the kid collecting muffin
wrappers and used teacups from the tables, who looks about 16. I wonder if
he realises how his future is going to be affected by the document in front
of me.

I've never been to a lock-up before, and it's a strange feeling. It
actually feels a lot like doing my HSC again; we had to hand in our phones
and blackberries at the door, and sign a form saying our laptops didn't
have wireless enabled.

The Paper itself is 850 pages long, and every page seems to have something
absolutely awful on it. I can't quite bring myself to fully comprehend all
the gory details; it's not just the target but also the scheme design that
has been so severely compromised here.

Here's a wrap:

Targets

The Government's stated target "gateway" is 5 to 15 per cent below 2000
levels by 2020.

However, reading the White Paper, and the explanations given here by the
Department of Climate Change, it is very clear that this actually means a 5
per cent target, because that is what they are basing the carbon price ($25
per tonne) and revenue estimates on.

We had hoped that the Government would say that it was going to leave in
the possibility of a 25 per cent cut if the rest of the world agreed to a
strong global deal in Copenhagen - and even this would be very weak - but
they have decided to leave it off the table altogether.

Instead, there's a line that should a global deal based on stabilising
emissions at 450 parts per million emerge, the Government would set
Australia's post-2020 targets to ensure we play our part in achieving that
goal. Well, by 2020 it may well be too late, because significant emission
reductions need to be made in the next four to 10 years to avoid dangerous
climate "tipping points" that could see climate change spiral out of
control.

The Government has admitted that the economic impact of such weak targets
is absolutely minimal: Gross national product per person is projected to be
between 20 and 21 per cent higher than 2005 levels in 2020 as a result of
this scheme, compared to 22 per cent higher without emissions trading. This
is equivalent to waiting four months longer to achieve the same levels of
growth.

Trade-Exposed Industries

Emissions Intensive Trade-Exposed Industries get a very sweet deal out of
this White Paper.

In fact they will actually be profiting from the scheme. Why? Because they
receive huge amounts of "compensation" (also known as hush money and free
permits) from the Government, and their carbon pollution permits are tax
deductible. That means although they have to buy their emission permits
up-front, they'll get a huge reduction in their tax. This scheme actually
costs the Government money.

In addition, there's the issue of free permits. The most polluting
businesses get 90 per cent of their emission permits for free. The second
most polluting businesses get 60 per cent of their permits for free. This
is like giving smokers free cigarettes while asking them to quit. The
duration and amount of free permits is tied to the amount of polluting that
the companies do
rather than how efficient they become. This means there is a perverse
incentive for companies to actually increase their pollution rather than
become more efficient, because they'll get more free permits the more they
pollute.

As you might expect, the business representatives and industry lobbyists in
this room are looking upbeat. I'm stunned by the extent of their victory
today. It's at moments like this that you're reminded that the Earth isn't
dying, it is being deliberately destroyed, and the people destroying it
have names and addresses, wear suits - and many are in this room with me.
It makes me feel sick.

I suppose I knew this was coming - we'd all seen the leaks in the media -
but when we found out last night that Kevin Rudd would be making the
announcement instead of Penny Wong, I had a last-minute flutter of hope.
Maybe he's changed his mind, I thought. Maybe his kids had implored, "Dad,
what are you doing?"

But now, I just feel exhausted. I put so much of my life into this process
- submissions, consultations, campaigning, media and trying to explain what
it meant to thousands of young people. And now I feel so sad, like Kevin
Rudd has just betrayed our entire generation.

So many people - especially young people - voted for him because of his
election promise to take strong action on climate change. He was elected
with a mandate to take courageous and bold action to cut Australia's
emissions and play an international role of leadership.

Today he has rejected that mandate; thrown it back in our faces.

------------
This message has been posted to the Greenleap List by:
Philip Sutton
Greenleap List Manager




       Start your day with Yahoo!7 and win a Sony Bravia TV. Enter now
http://au.docs.yahoo.com/homepageset/?p1=other&p2=au&p3=tagline

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

In Sydney there is a Protest Against Weak Carbon Emissions Targets


  at 11am, tomorrow, Tuesday 16 Dec at the Commonwealth Government Offices,
70 Phillip Street, Sydney





Help send a message to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Climate Change
Minister Penny Wong that Australia needs to show leadership and commit to
meaningful targets.


This event will be part of a nationwide protest in all capital cities and
major centres against the Rudd government's inadequate response to the
greatest threat facing our planet.





The Federal Government's Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme targets will be
announced early next week. They are widely expected to fall well short of
what is needed to tackle the climate crisis. This move will let big
polluters off the hook from their responsibility to drastically reduce
their carbon emissions and leave future generations exposed to the
catastrophic impact of climate change.

------------------------
   The AYCC  Australian Youth Climate Coalition is organising a number of
protests around  the country this week to coincide with the governments
information sessions on the white  paper on the governments carbon
pollution reduction scheme.

  We are planning a non violent, non aggressive protest outside the meetings
as well as  sending some representatives into the meetings. We will have
banners with the words  "Aim Higher! 40% by 2020" and Your Targets = Our
Future

  See details below of location and timing of meetings. I am sure there will
be a range of  other organisations present at these meetings.

  The website for RSVP if you want to attend the meetings is
<http://www.climatechange.gov.au/whitepaper/information-sessions.html>http://www
.climatechange.gov.au/whitepaper/information-sessions.html And the email
is: info@...

  If you need any further information about the campaign in general, please
contact Jessica  Willis on 0416612025. For local actions call or email the
local coordinator (see below).

  Canberra   Tues 16 December 2008 9.00 am - 11.00 am National Convention
Centre,
  31 Constitution Ave,


  Sydney Wed 17 December 2008 8.00 am - 10.00 am 10:30 am - 12:30 pmThe
Menzies Hotel, 14 Carrington Street, (note the action will take place in
the change over from 10am)
Coordinator:      Jess Willis
  Jess.willis@...
  0416 612 025


  Melbourne Wed 17 December 2008 8.00 am - 10.00 am10:30 am - 12:30 pm
Rydges  Melbourne Hotel,  186 Exhibition St, (again the actin will take
place in the change over from 10am)
coordinator Steph Smith
  verdantsynergy@...
  0422 660 111

  Brisbane Thurs 18 December 2008 9.00 am - 11.00 am  Brisbane Convention
and  Exhibition Centre, Cnr Merivale and Glenelg Streets, South Bank
Coordinator: Natalija Simic
  natalija.simic@...
  0437 014 563

  Perth Thurs 18 December 2008 9:00 am - 11:00 am Novotel  Perth Langley,
  221 Adelaide Terrace,

  Hobart Thurs 18 December 2008 9:00 am - 11:00 am Hobart Function and
Conference  Centre, 1 Elizabeth Street Pier,


  Adelaide Thurs 18 December 2008 9:00 am - 11:00 am  Stamford Plaza Adelaide,
  150 North Terrace,
Coordinator Jason Virgo
  Jason.virgo@...
  0432 694 680


  Darwin Thurs 18 December 2008 9:00 am - 11:00 am Mantra  Pandanas
  43 Knuckey Street,



  --
  Jessica Willis
  Power Shift Australian Recruitment Director
  Australian Youth Climate Coalition
  (02) 9252 5200
  0416612025
  Skype: jesswillis2008
Jess.willis@...
  www.aycc.org.au <http://www.aycc.org.au><http://www.aycc.org.au>

   -----------------------
   Tuesday December 16th, 11am, SA Parliament House Steps, Adelaide
   GREENS TAKE A STAND ON CLIMATE CHANGE  BECAUSE THE ALP WONT!
   In July, the Federal Government released its Green Paper about its Carbon
Pollution  Reduction Scheme  the central plank in the ALPs emissions
reduction strategy. It was  widely criticised by the Greens and others as
too generous to polluting industries.
   On Monday December 15th The Federal Government will release its White
Paper on its  Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme This paper will announce
Australia's medium term  emissions reductions targets. All reports indicate
that the targets will be in the range of a 5-15% reduction on 1990 levels.
   On Tuesday December 16th the Greens will respond to the Federal
Government  announcement both in Canberra and around the country with
Greens members, supporters  and their children taking a stand because our
government has not.
   If you and your family and friends can join us to take a stand in
Adelaide on the morning of  Tuesday December 16th please call the SA Greens
office on 8212 4888 or email  tammy@... to join the nationwide
action.
   Where: On the steps of State Parliament House, North Terrace, Adelaide
   When: 11am Tuesday December 16th, 2008.
   Wear: Greens "Stop Climate Change" T-shirts/green clothing.
   Bring: Yourself, your friends/family and even your children (we have a
message of not giving  up on our children!)
   ================================
   http://stepitupaustralia.wordpress.com/

   =================================
   When On Tuesday 16th of December, please join with people all around
Australia as we STEP-IN to the offices of Federal Parliamentarians, to
STEP-UP the campaign for real action against climate change. The Friends of
the Earth Climate Justice Collective are organizing simultaneous community
actions at 4 Electoral offices at 10.00AM, Tuesday 16 Dec.
   Theme The theme of these actions is This is a Climate Emergency. Climate
Emergency Services workers, identifiable by their flouro vests with CES
logos will be helping to protect the electoral offices by building sandbag
flood barriers against rising sea levels.
   Where Electoral offices of:
   Lindsay Tanner. (Melbourne ) 102 Victoria Street, Carlton Vic 3053 Ph:
9347 5000, Fax: 93471351
   Martin Ferguson (Batman) 159 High Street PRESTON VIC 3072 Ph 03 9416 8690
Toll Free 1300 301 753 Fax 03 9416 7810
   Nicloa Roxon (Gellibrand) 1 Thomas Holmes Street, Maribyrnong Vic 3032
Tel: 9317 7077 Fax: 9317 7477
   Kelvin Thompson (Wills) 3 Munro Street, Coburg Vic 3058 Ph: 9350 5777
Fax: 9350 6613
   To be involved with FoE actions You will need to meet us at a nearby site
prior to the event. For more details contact;
   Melbourne; Micheal - caucem@... <mailto: caucem@...,
Damien 0419 253 342 Batman; Roger 9489-4939, 0403 841 264,
risharp@... <mailto: risharp@... Gellibrand; Shaun 0402 337
077, westsax@... <mailto: westsax@... Wills; Ellen
0425 762 493, ellenmroberts@... <mailto:
ellenmroberts@...
   locals could also arrange to meet up before the day to plan and prepare.
   To Do Your Own (!) Get some friends together, make up some catchy
placards, costumes or props and tell your local member why climate change
is an emergency, and not something to be addressed by 2050. If every
electorate can be covered it will send out a strong message for proper
action on climate change. If you can't pay a visit your MP on that tuesday
any time in that week would be Great (electoral offices are open weekday
buisness hours) See below for more ideas.
   For Further Queries - General Contact:
   Damien Lawson - 0419 253 342, 9419 8700 (FoE Melbourne office),
damien.lawson@... <mailto: damien.lawson@...
   - Please pass this on to other people that might be interested, thanks.
   Resource Links:
   - for info on our recent visit to Martin Ferguson`s office:
   ...
http://stepitupaustralia.wordpress.com/2008/10/14/melbourne-citizens-step-in-to-
martin-fergusons-office/
   Other than that, there is currently an occupation of Rudds electorate
office in Brisbane going  on  see
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,24801861-661,00.html
http://business.theage.com.au/business/protestors-occupy-pms-office-20081215-6yp
c.html
   ==============================
   There is a sit-in at Martin Fergusons electoral office tomorrow morning
at 10am in Preston-  159 High St.
   ==============================
   http://www.greensmps.org.au/climatechangeaction
   The Greens


No white flag of surrender on climate  change

  Feature | Spokesperson Scott Ludlam, Sarah Hanson-Young, Rachel Siewert,
Christine Milne, Bob Brown  Friday 12th December 2008, 5:49pm in

  * <http://www.greensmps.org.au/taxonomy/term/1/all>Environment*  *
<http://www.greensmps.org.au/taxonomy/term/2/all>Climate  Change & the Zero
Carbon World*  * <http://www.greensmps.org.au/taxonomy/term/65/all>Climate
Change Impacts*  *
<http://www.greensmps.org.au/taxonomy/term/64/all>Emissions  Targets*  *
<http://www.greensmps.org.au/taxonomy/term/244/all>Emissions  Trading*



On Monday, Dec 15, the Government announced their 5% emission target, which
is a  global embarrassment and a recipe for global catastrophe.
  Kevin Rudd has put the coal industry ahead of Australia's children and
grandchildren.  It will be much more expensive to rectify this historic
mistake in the decades ahead.
  <http://www.greensmps.org.au/climatechangeaction>You can act now to ensure
Australia doesn't put up the white flag on Climate  Change!



A strong target can see Australia play a responsible part in the global
effort to avoid  catastrophic climate change. A weak target dooms Australia
to continuing the climate  change denial of the Howard years and will help
to undermine strong global action.
  You can make sure Kevin Rudd and Penny Wong get the message by marking the
Tuesday, 16 December as a day to take whatever action you can for climate
change.



Acting just a little bit is not an option
  If we breach tipping points in our climate, we will set in train runaway
climate  change that no human action can stop. We must do whatever we can
to prevent that  nightmare from becoming a reality.
  The stakes are so high, there can be no white flag of surrender on climate
change.



  *
<http://greensmps.org.au/content/media-release/rudd-raises-white-flag-surrender-
climate-change>Read  what Bob Brown and Christine Milne had to say about
the  Government's targets here.*  *
<http://greensmps.org.au/write-government-about-climate-change-targets>Send
a letter to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, Climate Change Minister Penny  Wong,
Minister for Resources and Energy Martin Ferguson and Environment  Minister
Peter Garrett.*  *
<http://greensmps.org.au/write-editor-about-climate-change-targets>Write  a
letter to your local newspaper.*



There should be no surrender on climate change
  The Government's reduction of greenhouse emissions by 5% of 2000 levels by
2020  is nowhere near enough to avoid catastrophic climate change.
  Australia must head for zero net carbon as soon as we can - and no later
than 2050 -  with reductions of at least 40% below 1990 levels by 2020 on
the way through.
  In the Senate, the Greens will move to fix the Governments targets to make
them  more credible.



What you can do
  Greens across Australia can play an important part in mobilising public
support  behind strong action on climate change.
  Already, Greens Members of Parliament in every state are watching the
Government's announcement of targets with keen interest and we have a
number of  activities planned.
  You can urge the Government and all Senate parties to get behind the
Greens  amendments to give Australia credible emissions targets.



Events are organised around Australia for Tuesday 16 December:



NSW
  11AM - Commonwealth Government Offices, 70 Phillip St, Sydney
  Contact John Kaye (02) 9230 2668



Victoria
  12PM - Cnr of Collins, Spring and MacArthur Sts, Melbourne
  Contact Alison 0402 075 306 or pc@...
<http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=38881481381>Vic Facebook Event



ACT
  12.30PM - Parliament House, Canberra
  Contact Simon on 62476305 or office@...



SA
  11AM - SA Parliament House, North Terrace, Adelaide
  Contact Tammy (08) 8212 4888 or tammy@...



QLD - TBA
  Contact Drew Hutton 0428 487 10 or dhutton@...



TAS
  (Time TBA) - Tasmanian Parliament House Lawns
  Contact Karen 03 6236 9334 or 0417 555 309 or networker@...



WA
  12PM - Wesley Church, cnr Hay & William Sts, Perth
  Contact Rachel 08 9225 5799 or rachel.pemberton@...
<http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=39370537490>WA Facebook Event



NT - TBA




We're asking you to make Tuesday 16 December a day of climate action.



  * Attend one of the gatherings being organised by your State  Party.*  *
<http://greensmps.org.au/write-government-about-climate-change-targets>Send
a letter to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, Climate Change Minister Penny  Wong,
Minister for Resources and Energy Martin Ferguson and Environment  Minister
Peter Garrett.*  *
<http://greensmps.org.au/write-editor-about-climate-change-targets>Write  a
letter to your local newspaper.*  * Call talkback radio -
<http://www.greensmps.org.au/talkback-radio-0>click here for phone numbers
*



Ultimately, ensure that your Government does not put up the white flag of
surrender  on climate change



Stay Informed
  Would you like to receive updates and alerts from GreensMPs from time to
time? If  so, please sign up here.
  We'll send you information enabling you to take action on a variety of
environmental, community and political issues.

  (go to website:
<http://www.greensmps.org.au/climatechangeaction>http://www.greensmps.org.au/cli
matechangeaction       )



   =============================== From Get Up


I'm writing from Canberra with an urgent message. I've just finished
reading an  advance copy of the Government's White Paper on climate change.
They aim to  reduce carbon pollution by only 5% by 2020, with an option to
go to only 15%  if the rest of the world drags us there.



A 5-15% target means Australia is aiming for a global deal so weak
scientists predict  it will destroy the Great Barrier Reef, Kakadu and the
Murray Darling Basin.  The window is still open, however, for Australia to
become a world leader on climate  solutions - if we demand it.



Many Australians voted for change at the last election on the promise of
strong  action to solve climate change. Kevin Rudd has today failed the
mandate he was  given to act; but we as a community can still show him that
action to combat  climate change is non-negotiable.



Since the Government isn't listening to your concerns about climate change,
let's translate it into the language they will listen to: votes. So we're
asking the  entire GetUp community:



Regardless of who you traditionally support, does today's announcement make
you  less likely to vote for the ALP at the next election?



<http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=4aEBfIJsFB3owEi0_2fG7u0w_3d_3d>Yes



<http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=9EVUD3PZ2Z1EQ8hcypE0Sw_3d_3d>No



The PM has said he'll be doing some holiday reading; so we'll collate the
results  and make sure they're on the desks of every member of the
Government before  Christmas. Who knows how weak the targets would have
been without your efforts  so far, but we know 2009 will take a renewed
effort - beginning with the results of  this poll.



Here in Parliament House, there's a feeling the importance of this decision
will  be lost in the distraction of the holiday season. That's why we think
the best  Christmas present we can give the Government is a reminder of the
importance of  strong climate change action.



Thanks for all that you do,
  Simon Sheikh
  GetUp National Director

  PS - We're translating community concern about climate change into the
language all  politicians speak: votes. Tell us: Regardless of who you
traditionally support, does  today's announcement make you less likely to
vote for the ALP at the next election -
<http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=4aEBfIJsFB3owEi0_2fG7u0w_3d_3d>Yes
or <http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=9EVUD3PZ2Z1EQ8hcypE0Sw_3d_3d>No?
   -========================================
   http://www.climatemovement.org.au/
   likely to list actions - not sure where on their site.
   ==========================================

http://newmatilda.com/2008/12/15/rudd-has-betrayed-generation

Rudd Has Betrayed A Generation
By Anna Rose
The New Matilda
15 Dec 2008

Anna Rose reports from inside the emissions trading scheme lock-up in Canberra

At a high school swimming carnival I once dived really badly off the blocks
and, in mid-air, realised that I'd screwed it up; that I'd blown the one
chance I had to get a head-start in the pool. I have that same feeling
right now. The Rudd Government has just blown Australia's chance - the
small window of opportunity we had - to avert catastrophic climate change.

I'm writing this from the White Paper "lock-up", where the Government gives
non-government organisations and business lobbyists an advance copy of the
White Paper on the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. Blair Comley from the
Department of Climate Change just gave his speech summarising the scheme's
key design elements.

This White Paper is, in the words of one of Australia's top commentators on
climate change, "totally f*cked".

The target is, as we expected, a "gateway" of 5 to 15 per cent by 2020 -
although in reality it is a commitment to the bottom end of that range. So
while the rest of the world is committing to carbon cuts of between 20 and
40 per cent, Australia is lagging behind at just 5 per cent.

There exists a remarkable disjuncture between the first sentence of the
Executive Summary:

- "The Australian Government believes that acting on climate change is
essential" - and the rest of the White Paper. They can believe it all they
like, but they are certainly not acting on that belief.

It's a sunny day outside in Canberra. We're in Hotel Realm, where I've been
before for the "consultations" in the lead up to this announcement. You can
normally see the gardens outside, but for some reason, thick black curtains
cover the windows today. There's a steady buzz of conversation. A small
corner of the room, where I'm sitting, is filled with climate change and
environment and public benefit organisations. The rest is made up of
industry representatives and business lobbyists in suits. I'm definitely
the only person here under 26 - except for the kid collecting muffin
wrappers and used teacups from the tables, who looks about 16. I wonder if
he realises how his future is going to be affected by the document in front
of me.

I've never been to a lock-up before, and it's a strange feeling. It
actually feels a lot like doing my HSC again; we had to hand in our phones
and blackberries at the door, and sign a form saying our laptops didn't
have wireless enabled.

The Paper itself is 850 pages long, and every page seems to have something
absolutely awful on it. I can't quite bring myself to fully comprehend all
the gory details; it's not just the target but also the scheme design that
has been so severely compromised here.

Here's a wrap:

Targets

The Government's stated target "gateway" is 5 to 15 per cent below 2000
levels by 2020.

However, reading the White Paper, and the explanations given here by the
Department of Climate Change, it is very clear that this actually means a 5
per cent target, because that is what they are basing the carbon price ($25
per tonne) and revenue estimates on.

We had hoped that the Government would say that it was going to leave in
the possibility of a 25 per cent cut if the rest of the world agreed to a
strong global deal in Copenhagen - and even this would be very weak - but
they have decided to leave it off the table altogether.

Instead, there's a line that should a global deal based on stabilising
emissions at 450 parts per million emerge, the Government would set
Australia's post-2020 targets to ensure we play our part in achieving that
goal. Well, by 2020 it may well be too late, because significant emission
reductions need to be made in the next four to 10 years to avoid dangerous
climate "tipping points" that could see climate change spiral out of
control.

The Government has admitted that the economic impact of such weak targets
is absolutely minimal: Gross national product per person is projected to be
between 20 and 21 per cent higher than 2005 levels in 2020 as a result of
this scheme, compared to 22 per cent higher without emissions trading. This
is equivalent to waiting four months longer to achieve the same levels of
growth.

Trade-Exposed Industries

Emissions Intensive Trade-Exposed Industries get a very sweet deal out of
this White Paper.

In fact they will actually be profiting from the scheme. Why? Because they
receive huge amounts of "compensation" (also known as hush money and free
permits) from the Government, and their carbon pollution permits are tax
deductible. That means although they have to buy their emission permits
up-front, they'll get a huge reduction in their tax. This scheme actually
costs the Government money.

In addition, there's the issue of free permits. The most polluting
businesses get 90 per cent of their emission permits for free. The second
most polluting businesses get 60 per cent of their permits for free. This
is like giving smokers free cigarettes while asking them to quit. The
duration and amount of free permits is tied to the amount of polluting that
the companies do
rather than how efficient they become. This means there is a perverse
incentive for companies to actually increase their pollution rather than
become more efficient, because they'll get more free permits the more they
pollute.

As you might expect, the business representatives and industry lobbyists in
this room are looking upbeat. I'm stunned by the extent of their victory
today. It's at moments like this that you're reminded that the Earth isn't
dying, it is being deliberately destroyed, and the people destroying it
have names and addresses, wear suits - and many are in this room with me.
It makes me feel sick.

I suppose I knew this was coming - we'd all seen the leaks in the media -
but when we found out last night that Kevin Rudd would be making the
announcement instead of Penny Wong, I had a last-minute flutter of hope.
Maybe he's changed his mind, I thought. Maybe his kids had implored, "Dad,
what are you doing?"

But now, I just feel exhausted. I put so much of my life into this process
- submissions, consultations, campaigning, media and trying to explain what
it meant to thousands of young people. And now I feel so sad, like Kevin
Rudd has just betrayed our entire generation.

So many people - especially young people - voted for him because of his
election promise to take strong action on climate change. He was elected
with a mandate to take courageous and bold action to cut Australia's
emissions and play an international role of leadership.

Today he has rejected that mandate; thrown it back in our faces.


------------
This message has been posted to the Greenleap List by:
Philip Sutton
Greenleap List Manager

Quote "The government does not understand that you can't negotaite with the
laws of physics and chemistry and biology that determine our climate
system."




Climate Action Centre
Climate alert #1
12 December 2008

Government carbon pollution target announcement Monday

By now the government has set its 2020 target and if reports are true the
target will lead to disaster. It is absolutely crucial that everyone
understand how appalling the decision is and that it is roundly condemned,
as this can form a platform on which to campaign for stronger and realistic
targets next year.

On Monday, it seems the government will announce a 2020 target of a
reduction of 10% (+/-5) and may even be audacious/hypocritical enough to
also announce a long-term aspirational target of limiting greenhouse gases
to 450ppm. ÝThe two are staggeringly inconsistent.

  Please read this email and take the following three actions:

1. Ring your MP and Senators and tell them these targets are unacceptable
and a disaster for Australia and the world. You can find their phone number
by searching here www.aph.gov.au/whoswho/index.htm

2. Join the step-ins planned for next week that will take a community voice
to the offices of MPs
http://stepitupaustralia.wordpress.com/

If you cant find one in your state or area give us a call 03 9639 3660 or
email info@...

3. Call Talk Back Radio and write letters to newspapers about the targets.
There are talking points below.

  Regards

  Damien Lawson and David Spratt

Talking points

*** 10% by Australia will likely result in global increases in emissions by
2020

If high per-capita emission, Kyoto annex 1 nations like Australia commit to
only 10% reduction by 2020, the developing world will reasonably argue that
their emissions can continue to increase, given the historic carbon debt on
the Annex 1 nations. ÝThus globally emissions are likely to increase.

*** 10% will kill Australia's iconic places and much more as well

  Australia's 10% target if adopted globally will ensure that the planet
passes tipping points for large sea-level rises, temperatures rises of more
than 2 degrees and ocean acidification that will destroy the Great Barrier
Reef and kill Kakadu, as well as be a disaster for hundreds of millions of
people.

*** 10% will undermine global climate talks

  Australia's position will undermine all the small gains that have been
made internationally, with the Europeans already starting to split on their
target of 30% by 2020.

***Ý10% by 2020 is not a 450ppm target

According to a recent paper in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal
Society, to stabilise at a maximum of 450 parts per million, carbon dioxide
equivalent (ppmCO2e) global emissions of greenhouse gases from the parts of
the climate system we can control need to peak by 2015, then fall by 6-8% a
year.  This is far removed >from Australia's commitment.

(Kevin Anderson and Alice Bows, 2008. Reframing the climate change
challenge in light of post-2000 emission trends. Philosophical Transactions
of the Royal Society A. Published online. doi:10.1098/rsta.2008.0138
http://www.tyndall.ac.uk/publications/journal_papers/fulltext.pdf)

But increasing carbon feedbacks show that the Anderson and Bows scenario
may be too optimistic even for 450ppm.ÝA recent paper Ýshows that the extra
warming caused by disappearing sea ice penetrates 1500km inland, covering
almost the entire region of continuous permafrost. Arctic permafrost
contains twice as much carbon as the entire global atmosphere. It remains
safe for as long as the ground stays frozen. But the melting has begun.


********  Methane gushers are now gassing out of some places with such
force that they keep the water open in Arctic lakes, through the winter.

(David M. Lawrence et al., 2008. Accelerated Arctic land warming and
permafrost degradationÝduring rapid sea ice loss. Geophysical Research
Letters, Vol. 35, 11506. doi:10.1029/2008GL033985;ÝEdward A. G. Schuur et
al, September 2008. Vulnerability of permafrost carbon to climate change:
implications for the global carbon cycle. Bioscience, Vol. 58:701-714).

*** and 450ppm is not even a 2-degree target

450ppm, according to the Hadley Centre research quoted by Stern in his 2006
report, has a 78% chance of exceeding 2C, an 18% chance of exceeding 3C, a
3% chance of exceeding 4C and a 1% chance of exceeding 5C.

For summary of impacts of 1-5 degrees, see:
http://www.carbonequity.info/docs/3degrees.html

*** and of course 2 degrees is not a safe target either

ìWe have reached a point of planetary emergency...ÝElements of a perfect
storm, a global cataclysm, are assembled...Ýthe oft-stated goal to keep
global warming less than +2C (+3.6F) is a recipe for global disaster, not
salvation.î
NASAís Dr. James Hansen, testimony to US Congress, June 23, 2008

***ÝIf not 450ppm, what is a safe target?

Professor John Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate
Impact Research in Germany: "It is a very sweeping argument, but nobody can
say for sure that 330ppm is safe," he said. "Perhaps it will not matter
whether we have 270ppm or 320ppm, but operating well outside the [historic]
realm of carbon dioxide concentrations is risky as long as we have not
fully understood the relevant feedback mechanisms.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/sep/15/climatechange.carbonemissions

NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies Director James Hansen: "CO2
~300-325ppm, may be needed to restore sea ice to its area of 25 years ago"
in ""Target Atmospheric CO2: Where Should Humanity Aim?",Ý
http://dx.doi.org/10.2174/1874282300802010217Ý

At Posnan, 49 of the least developed countries have been advocating a
target of 350 ppm, as they know their countries will be devastated by
anything higher.
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/12/4/104313/898/


***ÝThe laws of science aren't interested in political compromises and
steering "a balanced course"

  Kevin Rudd and Penny Wong will defend their disasterous targets by saying
they are been criticised by "both sides" of the debate and therefore they
have got it right.

But climate targets must be set according to the scientific imperatives,
and putting them through a political filter can only imperil the planet.
The government does not understand that you can't negotaite with the laws
of physics and chemistry and biology that determine our climate system.Ý

On ThursdayÝ11 DecemberÝKevin Rudd told theÝ7.30 Report: ìAnd I'm sure when
this [Government carbon pollution policy] is delivered, early next week,
we'll get attacked from the left, from the right, we'll get attacked by
various radical green groups saying that we haven't gone far enough because
we haven't closed down the coal industry by next Thursday ... We'll be
attacked from the far right and by various business groups, I suppose, and
certainly the Liberal Party, for doing anything at all. And we'll be
attacked by extreme green groups for not taking the most radical course of
action...ÝWe intend to steer a balanced course."

*** Appeal to scientists to speak out

  If you want to do more perhaps join this call below for scientists to make
the clear the danger and contradiction in the governments targets.
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/rooted/2008/12/11/calling-all-scientists-speak-now-or
-forever-hold-your-peace/


To sign on to continue to receive these alerts please send an email to
info@...

with ALERT in the subject heading

Given the critial importance of the internet in discussing  what are going
to be some VERY politically uncomfortable issues concerened with climate
change and the related impacts on society, we have to keep the channels
clear!!

Don't let the bogeymen of child porn and terrorism blind us to the fact
that the internet is the last channel of free communication we have. We
lose it - we may die.

Hugh


ATTENTION - THE ACTIONS ARE THIS SATURDAY!!!


Dear Friend,

Apologies for this very late notice.

This e-mail is to urge you to attend the protest this coming Saturday against
the Federal Government's Mandatory Internet Filtering legislation.

If this becomes law, every time you click on a link, that URL will be compared
to a secret database in the order of 10,000 of banned sites.  This could well
slow down Internet speeds by around d86% according to one estimate.

However, I consider the real danger is that Government bureaucrats will have
the power to ban any web site they deem to be 'unwanted'.

Until now, the Internet gave ordinary people, rather than the corporate
newsmedia and wealthy well-connected lobbyists a chance to have their views
heard by the wider public.

It is one means we have to to stand up against the vested interests who are
trashing our environment, our communities and our institutions for their own
selfish ends.

If Government's have the power to arbitrarily block any web site they
deem 'unwanted' a threat, then what guarantee d we have that your web site,
set up to oppose destruction of nearby natural habitat for developers'
profits or to oppose an unjust war won't be added to that list?

This is not about protecting our children from pornography or preventing the
production and viewing of already illegal child pornography.  Other far more
effective and cheaper means to accomplish this have been proposed by
opponents of mandatory Internet Filtering and have been ignored.

It is all about secretive and unaccountable Governments in the service of the
corporate sector gaining even more control over our daily lives than they
already have.

We cannot afford to lose this fight, so please attend the protest against
Mandatory Internet Filtering in Brisbane or your closest capital city this
Saturday 13 December and stay involved an informed on this issue.

Details are:

Brisbane:
11am-3pm
Brisbane Square
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=42526399601

Melbourne:
12pm-5pm
State Library
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=46838735931

Sydney:
11am-4pm
Town Hall
Check http://www.nocensorship.info forums for Sydney updates

Adelaide:
12pm - 4pm
Parliament
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=39343300875

Hobart:
11am - 1.30pm
Parliament Lawns
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=39329861995

(from http://wearechange.org.au)

Thank you,

James Sinnamon


See also http://efa.org.au, http://wearechange.org.au,
http://nocleanfeed.com, comments against filtering on Communications Minister
Stephen Conroy's own web site overwhelmingly AGAINST Mandatory Internet
filtering.  One example:

http://www.dbcde.gov.au/communications_for_business/industry_development/digital
_economy/future_directions_blog/topics/digital_economy_benefit

I would first like to thank you for the opportunity to provide feedback, with
the additional comment that consultation is only as valuable as the
consideration it is given. That being said I must lodge yet another voice of
protest against the internet filter. I have stated to my MP (Kevin Rudd) that
the Labor Party does not have a mandate for compulsory internet filtering, he
has been manifestly unable to provide me with any statement made prior to the
election where he informed the public that all adults would have their
internet filtered. This is an attack on freedom of speech and can easily be
used to stifle debate. Before you respond that it wont be used this way, we
only have to look at the way the Labor party has already attempted to stifle
debate on this topic by classifying everyone wanting to stand up for freedom
of speech as helping child pornography, an abhorrent and patently unethical
attempt to stop debate on a vital issue to all Australians. With the Labor
policy of introducing a NBN and have touted the economic benefits of having
faster broadband. Can you then explain the logic behind introducing a filter
that will effectively eliminate any speed benefits the new network will give?
I urge you to use the money to chase after the criminals setting up these
sites. If the Government already knows who they are why are you not pursuing
them through law enforcement? To not do so is negligence on the part of the
Government. As previously stated, the Labor Party does not have a mandate for
this policy. I urge you to make filtering optional. If you do not then I will
be voting for the coalition as all people who care bout freedom of expression
must surely be contemplating.

Too late? Why scientists say we should expect the worst

   David Adam The Guardian,  Tuesday 9 December 2008


http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/dec/09/poznan-copenhagen-global-warmi
ng-targets-climate-change

(thanks to Philp Sutton for this).



   As ministers and officials gather in Poznan one year ahead of the
Copenhagen summit on  global warming, the second part of a major series
looks at the crucial issue of targets

   At a high-level academic conference on global warming at Exeter
University this summer,  climate scientist Kevin Anderson stood before his
expert audience and contemplated a  strange feeling. He wanted to be wrong.
Many of those in the room who knew what he was  about to say felt the same.
His conclusions had already caused a stir in scientific and political
circles. Even committed green campaigners said the implications left them
terrified.

   Anderson, an expert at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at
Manchester  University, was about to send the gloomiest dispatch yet from
the frontline of the war against  climate change.

   Despite the political rhetoric, the scientific warnings, the media
headlines and the corporate  promises, he would say, carbon emissions were
soaring way out of control - far above even  the bleak scenarios considered
by last year's report from the Intergovernmental Panel on  Climate Change
(IPCC) and the Stern review. The battle against dangerous climate change
had been lost, and the world needed to prepare for things to get very, very
bad.

   "As an academic I wanted to be told that it was a very good piece of work
and that the  conclusions were sound," Anderson said. "But as a human being
I desperately wanted  someone to point out a mistake, and to tell me we had
got it completely wrong."

   Nobody did. The cream of the UK climate science community sat in stunned
silence as  Anderson pointed out that carbon emissions since 2000 have
risen much faster than anyone  thought possible, driven mainly by the
coal-fuelled economic boom in the developing world.  So much extra
pollution is being pumped out, he said, that most of the climate targets
debated by politicians and campaigners are fanciful at best, and
"dangerously misguided" at  worst.
   In the jargon used to count the steady accumulation of carbon dioxide in
the Earth's thin layer  of atmosphere, he said it was "improbable" that
levels could now be restricted to 650 parts  per million (ppm).

   The CO2 level is currently over 380ppm, up from 280ppm at the time of the
industrial  revolution, and it rises by more than 2ppm each year. The
government's official position is  that the world should aim to cap this
rise at 450ppm.

   The science is fuzzy, but experts say that could offer an even-money
chance of limiting the  eventual temperature rise above pre-industrial
times to 2C, which the EU defines as  dangerous. (We have had 0.7C of that
already and an estimated extra 0.5C is guaranteed  because of emissions to
date.)

   The graphs on the large screens behind Anderson's head at Exeter told a
different story. Line  after line, representing the fumes that belch from
chimneys, exhausts and jet engines, that  should have bent in a rapid curve
towards the ground, were heading for the ceiling instead.

   At 650ppm, the same fuzzy science says the world would face a
catastrophic 4C average  rise. And even that bleak future, Anderson said,
could only be achieved if rich countries  adopted "draconian emission
reductions within a decade". Only an unprecedented "planned  economic
recession" might be enough. The current financial woes would not come
close. Lost cause

   Anderson is not the only expert to voice concerns that current targets
are hopelessly  optimistic. Many scientists, politicians and campaigners
privately admit that 2C is a lost  cause. Ask for projections around the
dinner table after a few bottles of wine and more vote  for 650ppm than
450ppm as the more likely outcome.

   Bob Watson, chief scientist at the Environment Department and a former
head of the IPCC,  warned this year that the world needed to prepare for a
4C rise, which would wipe out  hundreds of species, bring extreme food and
water shortages in vulnerable countries and  cause floods that would
displace hundreds of millions of people. Warming would be much  more severe
towards the poles, which could accelerate melting of the Greenland and West
Antarctic ice sheets.

   Watson said: "We must alert everybody that at the moment we're at the
very top end of the  worst case [emissions] scenario. I think we should be
striving for 450 [ppm] but I think we  should be prepared that 550 [ppm] is
a more likely outcome." Hitting the 450ppm target, he  said, would be
"unbelievably difficult".

   A report for the Australian government this autumn suggested that the
450ppm goal is so  ambitious that it could wreck attempts to agree a new
global deal on global warming at  Copenhagen next year. The report, from
economist Ross Garnaut and dubbed the Australian  Stern review, says
nations must accept that a greater amount of warming is inevitable, or risk
a failure to agree that "would haunt humanity until the end of time".

   It says developed nations including Britain, the US and Australia, would
have to slash carbon  dioxide emissions by 5% each year over the next
decade to hit the 450ppm target. Britain's  Climate Change Act 2008, the
most ambitious legislation of its kind in the world, calls for  reductions
of about 3% each year to 2050.

   Garnaut, a professorial fellow in economics at Melbourne University,
said: "Achieving the  objective of 450ppm would require tighter constraints
on emissions than now seem likely in  the period to 2020 ... The only
alternative would be to impose even tighter constraints on  developing
countries from 2013, and that does not appear to be realistic at this
time."

   The report adds: "The awful arithmetic means that exclusively focusing on
a 450ppm  outcome, at this moment, could end up providing another reason
for not reaching an  international agreement to reduce emissions. In the
meantime, the cost of excessive focus  on an unlikely goal could consign to
history any opportunity to lock in an agreement for  stabilising at 550ppm
- a more modest, but still difficult, international outcome. An effective
agreement around 550ppm would be vastly superior to continuation of
business as usual."

   Henry Derwent, former head of the UK's international climate negotiating
team and now  president of the International Emissions Trading Association,
said a new climate treaty was  unlikely to include a stabilisation goal -
either 450ppm or 550ppm.

   "You've got to avoid talking and thinking in those terms because
otherwise the politics  reaches a dead end," he said. Many small island
states are predicted to be swamped by  rising seas with global warming
triggered by carbon levels as low as 400ppm. "It's really  difficult for
countries to sign up to something that loses them half their territory.
It's not going  to work."

   A new agreement in Copenhagen should concentrate instead on shorter term
targets, such  as firm emission reductions by 2020, he said. Worst time

   The escalating scale of human emissions could not have come at a worst
time, as scientists  have discovered that the Earth's forests and oceans
could be losing their ability to soak up  carbon pollution. Most climate
projections assume that about half of all carbon emissions are  reabsorbed
in these natural sinks.

   Computer models predict that this effect will weaken as the world warms,
and a string of  recent studies suggests this is happening already.

   The Southern Ocean's ability to absorb carbon dioxide has weakened by
about 15% a  decade since 1981, while in the North Atlantic, scientists at
the University of East Anglia also  found a dramatic decline in the CO2
sink between the mid-1990s and mid-2000s.

   A separate study published this year showed the ability of forests to
soak up anthropogenic  carbon dioxide - that caused by human activity - was
weakening, because the changing  length of the seasons alters the time when
trees switch from being a sink of carbon to a  source.

   Soils could also be giving up their carbon stores: evidence emerged in
2005 that a vast  expanse of western Siberia was undergoing an
unprecedented thaw.

   The region, the largest frozen peat bog in the world, had begun to melt
for the first time since  it formed 11,000 years ago. Scientists believe
the bog could begin to release billions of  tonnes of methane locked up in
the soils, a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than  carbon dioxide. The
World Meteorological Organisation recently reported the largest annual
rise of methane levels in the atmosphere for a decade.

   Some experts argue that the grave nature of recent studies, combined with
the unexpected  boom in carbon emissions, demands an urgent reassessment of
the situation. In an article  published this month in the journal Climatic
Change, Peter Sheehan, an economist at Victoria  University, Australia,
says the scale of recent emissions means the carbon cuts suggested by  the
IPCC to stabilise levels in the atmosphere "cannot be taken as a reliable
guide for  immediate policy determination". The cuts, he says, will need to
be bigger and in more  places.

   Earlier this year, Jim Hansen, senior climate scientist with Nasa,
published a paper that said  the world's carbon targets needed to be
urgently revised because of the risk of feedbacks in  the climate system.
He used reconstructions of the Earth's past climate to show that a target
of 350ppm, significantly below where we are today, is needed to "preserve a
planet similar to  that on which civilisation developed and to which life
on Earth is adapted". Hansen has  suggested a joint review by Britain's
Royal Society and the US National Academy of Sciences  of all research
findings since the IPCC report.

   Rajendra Pachauri, who chairs the IPCC, argues that suggestions the IPCC
report is out of  date is "not a valid position at all".

   He said: "What the IPCC produces is not based on two years of literature,
but 30 or 40 years  of literature. We're not dealing with short-term
weather changes, we're talking about major  changes in our climate system.
I refuse to accept that a few papers are in any way going to  influence the
long-term projections the IPCC has come up with."

   At Defra, Watson said: "Even without the new information there was enough
to make most  policy makers think that urgent action was absolutely
essential. The new information only  strengthens that and pushes it even
harder. It was already very urgent to start with. It's now  become very,
very urgent."

Please forward this message throughout your other networks:

New petition:

http://www.petitiononline.com/roxstop/petition.html

Please sign now... it only takes a couple of seconds.
------------------------------------------------------
To:  Australian Commonwealth Government

We, the undersigned, ask the Australian Government and Environment
Minister the Honourable Peter Garrett to halt the expansion of the
Olympic Dam uranium mine in South Australia.

We hold that the risks to human health, safety, the environment and
future generations are too great. The mine will add to the already
massive radioactive and toxic tailings and waste, inject acid and
toxic chemicals into the water table thereby risking our water supply
and endangering the mound springs held sacred by the local Arabunna
and Barngala peoples. The destination of the uranium mined is in no
way assured. We cannot guarantee that Australian uranium will not end
up in nuclear weapons.

Indeed the only guarantee we can have is that this mine and it's
products will generate intractable, dangerous radioactive waste which
there is no safe method of storage.

The small profit to be made by a private corporation by mining this
uranium does not outweigh the risk to the public good.

Sincerely,
-----------------------------------------------------

http://www.petitiononline.com/roxstop/petition.html

Monbiot's article (below) - indeed grim reading...

but as ever - one of the suggestions made, which in itself is well
intentioned - is aimed at replacement of residential consumer goods, rather
than refurbishment. The energy (manufacturing etc) costs of replacing
refrigerators and other inefficient goods is very high (incl cars) - we
should also be looking at modifying existing devices (such as refrigerators
and freezers - to make them more efficient - although the move to 'frost
free cabinets' (which disguises the fact that the insulation is at best
marginal) may render this difficult for designs less than 10 years old. But
the installation of external vacuum insulation sheets (which have low
material costs - but need lots of development - as they are not mainstream)
- could drastically reduce energy losses in this area. Ditto for hot water
systems,  Maintaining and upgrading existing plant is often the more energy
efficient response.

http://www.glacierbay.com/vacpanelinfo.asp

We just DON'T have the resources to upgrade existing plant in time - it
ain't gonna happen.

We need to drastically increase the price of electricity (to more like $1
per KWH) - and really attempt to educate the public to change energy useage
habits,
If that happened - we would see a plethora of up-grade and other
improvements appear - at the moment there is just no market for them.
Maybe the rapidly sliding tariff might do the job - but setting the curve
will be a very political act.

Of course if we encourage local neighbourhood shops to re-appear - then you
wouldn't need the ubiquitous freezer and refrigerator - and folks would get
exercise walking to the shop (they still do it in Sydney!)

and - of course -

a rational population reduction policy - NO baby bonuses, no IVF support,
and a campaign to discourage people from having more than one child and to
encourage them to have them as late as possible...  Maybe a tax bonus for
every year you remain childless (a sort of reverse baby bonus).

Hey!  - a pig just flew past my window.... are we winning??

H









>According to Michael's article, it may be too late to buy gold!
Monboit also says scientists have the first hard evidence that
runaway global feedback has begun.

Di

Big quetion... is there enough gold to go around anyway??  H



>>Long, detailed, impressive - but futile in the face of runaway
climate change. This environmental state of emergency demands a
bolder answer than Lord Turner's. We could start by taking six
critical stepsComments (247)


George Monbiot
The Guardian, Tuesday December 2 2008


Lord Turner has two jobs. The first, as chair of the Financial
Services Authority, is to save capitalism. The second, as chair of
the committee on climate change, is to save the biosphere from the
impacts of capitalism. I have no idea how well he is discharging the
first task, but if his approach to the second one is anything to go
by, you should dump your shares and buy gold.

His climate change report, published yesterday, is long, detailed
and impressive. It has the admirable objective of trying to cap
global warming at two degrees or a little more. This, it says, means
that greenhouse gas pollution in the UK should fall by 80% by 2050
and by 31% by 2020. But there's a problem. There is no longer any
likely relationship between an 80% cut and two degrees of warming.
This gets a little complicated, but please bear with me while I
explain why Turner's proposal is about as likely to stop runaway
climate change as the Maginot Line was to hold back the Luftwaffe.

The 80% cut he recommends for the UK more or less matches a global
target of 50% by 2050. A 50% global cut, the report says, would make
roughly two degrees of warming a "central expectation" and would
reduce the probability of four degrees (which it calls "extremely
dangerous climate change") to less than 1%.

Turner claims that to keep the temperature rise close to two
degrees, the world's greenhouse gas emissions must peak in 2016 then
fall by either 3% or 4% a year. A 3% rate of decline is most likely
to deliver a temperature rise of 2.2 degrees this century; a 4%
annual cut would produce about a 2.1 degree rise. That's more or
less consistent with his 2050 targets.

So far so good. But a recent paper in the Philosophical Transactions
of the Royal Society, using the same sources, comes to completely
different conclusions. It agrees that to deliver a reasonable chance
of preventing more than two degrees of warming, greenhouse gases in
the atmosphere need to stabilise at a maximum of 450 parts per
million, carbon dioxide equivalent (ppmCO2e). But it shows that to
achieve this, global emissions of greenhouse gases from the parts of
the system we can control need to peak by 2015, then fall by 6%-8% a
year between 2020 and 2040, leading to "full decarbonisation
sometime soon after 2050". Even this, it shows, relies on an
optimistic reading of the current data. Turner's suggested cuts are
more likely to produce four degrees of warming than two degrees.

The difference between the two reports comes down to this: Turner
assumes that greenhouse gases can rise to 500 ppmCO2e before falling
back to 450. The other paper shows that this is a dangerous
assumption. Not only does this mean that the cut comes far too late
but, far from falling back, the enhanced levels in the atmosphere
are likely to trigger more emissions as the biosphere starts
producing more greenhouse gases than it absorbs. We cannot afford to
overshoot.

Last week a paper published in Geophysical Research Letters produced
what could be the first hard evidence that runaway global feedback
has begun. In 2007 methane levels in the atmosphere, which had
previously levelled off, began rising again. The most likely reason
is that the Siberian permafrost is melting, as a result of the
runaway warming of the Arctic. This wasn't supposed to begin for
another 80 years. The great global meltdown appears to have started,
yet Turner proposes that we carry on with the old plan as if nothing
has changed. We're still digging trenches, even as the sky fills
with bomber planes.

My reading of the new projections suggests that to play its part in
preventing two degrees of global warming, the UK needs to cut
greenhouse gases by roughly 25% from current levels by the end of
2012 - a quarter in four years. But how the heck could this be done?
Here is a list of measures that could be enacted almost immediately.
They require no economic or technological miracles; but they do
demand that the government is brave enough to govern.

1 Immediately renegotiate the European Emissions Trading Scheme,
imposing a lower cap on carbon pollution and the mandatory sale of
all emissions permits to the industries covered by the scheme
(currently over 90% are given away).

2 Use the money this raises for:

a. A crash programme for training builders. As the major component
of a green new deal - delivering jobs as well as carbon cuts - the
government will immediately launch training schemes for tens of
thousands of specialist builders, insulators, window-fitters,
plasterers and decorators.

b. A home improvement scheme like Germany's, but twice as fast.
Every year between January 2010 and 2020, 10% of homes will be fully
insulated and fitted with good windows or secondary glazing, at
state expense. Landlords will have a legal obligation to join, or
lose their right to take tenants. Announce that when the scheme is
complete, gas and electricity bills will be subject to an escalating
tariff: the more you use, the more you will have to pay for every
unit.

3 Announce that incandescent lightbulbs will no longer be sold in
the UK from next April. Announce that no fridge or freezer with an
energy rating below grade A++, and no other appliance rated below
grade A, will be sold from next July.

4 Increase vehicle excise duty for the most polluting cars to £3,000
a year (from the current £400). Use the money this raises to:

a. Start closing key urban streets to private cars and dedicating
them to public transport and cycling.

b. Increase the public subsidy for bus and train journeys. Oblige
the bus companies to sign contracts providing a wider range of
services. Give us the integrated low-carbon transport we have long
been promised, in which buses are scheduled to meet trains, buses
and trains carry bicycles, and safe cycle lanes connect with each
other across entire cities.

c. Train thousands of new coach drivers and public transport
operators. Create coach lanes on all motorways and start moving
coach stations from the city centres to the motorway junctions, to
enable coach travel to become as fast and efficient as car travel.
Link them to city centres with dedicated bus lanes.

d. Scrap the airport expansion programme. Set a cap on the number of
landing slots, which will fall every year until it reaches 5% of
current capacity.

5 Stop the burning of moorland because this exposes and oxidises
peat. Grouse shoots (which are mostly responsible) produce a
staggering proportion of the UK's emissions.

6 Stop all opencast coal mining and rescind planning permission for
new works. Impose stonking taxes on the extraction of all fossil
fuels.

Is this enough? No. But it puts us on the right track. It's all a
gamble from now on: the only reliable advice is that we shouldn't
start from here. But two decades of procrastination ensure that only
emergency measures now have a chance of preventing a climate
disaster. What Turner's report - polite, measured and impressive as
it is - proposes is more procrastination.

Considering the mass release of tundra permafrost and under sea floor
  methane clathrates [*article at bottom of post] I think it quite
obvious we've (humanity) already passed the tipping point for
triggering ranaway global warming/climate change, and need to reorder
priorities for dealing with GW/CC. Like moving essential
infrastructure to high ground ect ect.

For those who think we've still got time to avert or turn GW/CC
around, here's how our elected reps are (or not) addressing the issue.
>

  [Greens-Media]
Monday 8 December 2008

Weak targets make no scientific, economic or diplomatic sense; China,
business reject Rudd-Garnaut go-slow.

The Rudd Government's plans to announce weak climate targets are already
undermining global negotiations, with China and South Africa saying the
refusal to sign up to the 25-40% negotiating range could scuttle a new
global deal, the Australian Greens today.

A statement from global business leaders today will strengthen the
increasingly troubling scientific calls for Australia to act
responsibly, arguing, as the Greens have done, that investing now in
reducing emissions will help drive the economic recovery.

"Far from being responsible, the Rudd Government is being reckless,"
Australian Greens Deputy Leader and Climate Change Spokesperson, Senator
Christine Milne, said.

"Weak emissions reduction targets make no scientific, economic or
diplomatic sense. They risk sending tripping critical climate tipping
points, will see Australia struggle economically, and will only
encourage other countries around the world to also go slow.

"If we are to have reasonable hope of avoiding catastrophic climate
change, Australia needs to be reducing our greenhouse pollution by at
least 40% by 2020 on our way towards a zero emissions future.

"That level of action, accompanied by similar action from other
countries around the world, will give us a decent chance of passing on a
safe climate to our children.

"Around the world, economists and policy-makers are pointing out that
investing now in renewable energy, energy efficiency, protecting
ecosystems and rolling out public transport is the most effective,
far-sighted way of pulling ourselves out of the global financial
meltdown.

"Gordon Brown and President-elect Obama are promoting a Green New Deal,
investing billions of dollars now in building a green economy. Australia
must ride this wave, instead of anchoring ourselves to the past with our
coal addiction.

"Already China and South Africa are demonstrating just how isolated
Australia will be at these talks. Both are already arguing that
Australia's refusal to sign up to the 25-40% negotiating range could
scuttle a global deal.

"Australians voted 12 months ago to move on from Howard-era climate
politics, and they will be deeply troubled to see that very little has
changed under Kevin Rudd."

Tim Hollo
Media and Communications Adviser
Senator Christine Milne
Australian Greens Deputy Leader
ph: (02) 6277 3588
mob: 0437 587 562
Come join the conversation at GreensBlog <http://greensmps.org.au/blog>
-------------------------------------------------------------

[Greens-Media]
Sunday 7 December 2008

Wong takes Howard tactics to Poznan; Marathon demands huge effort from
beginning to end

The Australian Greens today warned that the Rudd Government's
Howard-era negotiating tactics at the Poznan climate conference risk
scuttling any effective global climate change treaty.

The Australian delegation in Poznan is continuing to chair meetings of
the "Umbrella Group", the negotiating bloc including the USA, Canada,
Japan and Saudi Arabia, which is the main grouping holding back
progress towards an effective agreement.

The Rudd Government's refusal to commit to the minimum negotiating
range of 25-40% emissions cuts by 2020 is already being seen as a
blockage to a successful outcome.

"When Australians elected the Rudd Government 12 months ago, they were
voting for an end to Howard-era climate politics," Australian Greens
Deputy Leader and Climate Change Spokesperson, Senator Christine
Milne, said.

"Those voters will be deeply troubled to find out that Australian
negotiators are in fact continuing Howard-era tactics in the global
treaty negotiations.

"It is well past time for Australia to abandon the Umbrella Group's
sabotaging tactics and move into the progressive side of the global
climate negotiations."

Senator Milne also expressed concern about Minister Wong's dismissal
of the urgency of climate action on ABC TV's Insiders program this
morning, saying that climate change is a marathon, not a sprint.

"Minister Wong is wrong to say that climate change action is a
marathon – it is actually a sprint since we are in a global emergency
and we only have until 2015 for global emissions to peak.

"But regardless of whether you see it as a sprint or a marathon,
Minister Wong seems to have a disturbing view of what the metaphor
might mean for what we have to do.

"You don't win a marathon or a sprint by dawdling at the back of the
pack, pretending that the race isn't that hard, and all the while
attempting to sabotage those who are in the lead.

"You win both races by making sure you are in the leadership group
from the start, acknowledging how serious the challenge is, and giving
it your all from beginning to end."

Tim Hollo
Media Adviser
Senator Christine Milne
0437 587 562
-------------------------------------------------------------

[Greens-Media]
Wednesday 3 December 2008

COAG renewable energy disaster: Pressure back on Rudd Government

COAG's lowest common denominator agreement on renewable energy price
guarantees - known as feed-in tariffs - puts the pressure back on the
Rudd Government to support a truly effective scheme, the Australian
Greens said today.

Australian Greens Deputy Leader and Climate Change Spokesperson, Senator
Christine Milne, has introduced a Private Member's Bill for a national
feed-in tariff that would pay a premium price for gross energy
generation from all renewable energy technologies. A Senate Inquiry into
the Bill was strongly in favour of the idea but recommended that it be
left with COAG to deal with.

"COAG's predictable failure on renewable energy price guarantees puts
significant pressure back on the Rudd Government to do what needs to be
done," Senator Milne said.

"The renewable energy industry in Australia is revved up and ready to
go. They have the technology, they have the people, they have the
enthusiasm.

"But, instead of helping this exciting and vital industry to grow to its
tremendous potential, governments across Australia are acting as a
roadblock.

"With a few simple policy settings, governments can allow this
clean-tech industry, which is booming around the world, to flourish here
in Australia."

In much of Europe and parts of North America, feed-in tariffs have been
used to great effect to give homeowners, farmers and businesses the
confidence to invest in renewable energy. Banks are happy to lend money
for renewable energy investments when the income they will provide is
guaranteed.

Globally, the most effective feed-in tariffs have been for gross energy
generation, not net as in several Australian states and as agreed by
COAG. The best schemes are also for all renewable energy sources, from
all technologies and all sizes of installation. COAG is limited to
micro-generation and most States limit their schemes to rooftop solar
power.

Recent analyses by the International Energy Agency and Ernst & Young
have shown that feed-in tariffs are more effective and cheaper than
quota systems such as Australia's Mandatory Renewable Energy Target
(MRET). The Greens are calling for a feed-in tariff to supplement the
MRET.

"COAG's recommendation for a lowest common denominator feed-in tariff
would continue to limit the growth of renewable energy, instead of
setting it up to power all of Australia as soon as possible, as it can
and must do.

"It is well past time for the Rudd Government to drop its false view
that emissions trading is a silver bullet and embrace the range of
policy settings and investments that will back up the ETS and help
reduce emissions as effectively and efficiently as possible. A feed-in
tariff is top of the list."

Tim Hollo
Media and Communications Adviser
Senator Christine Milne
Australian Greens Deputy Leader
ph: (02) 6277 3588
mob: 0437 587 562
Come join the conversation at GreensBlog <http://greensmps.org.au/blog>
------------------------------------------------------------

[Greens-Media]
8 December 2008

Coal companies pollution breaches threat to Illawarra water catchment

Greens MP and mining spokesperson said that the Illawarra coal mining
industry*s record of non-compliance with their Environment Protection
Authority (EPA) licences threatens the region's drinking catchments.
(Illawarra Mercury today)

In the Southern coalfields, 11 mines reported 559 incidents where
coal-mining companies failed to comply with their EPA licences from 2000
- 2007. Almost a third of these breaches can be traced to one company,
Tahmoor Coal Pty Ltd owned by Xstrata.

*Coal companies are making huge windfall profits, yet the NSW
Government is failing to enforce the environmental conditions of mine
approval," Ms Rhiannon said.

*Local communities are at risk as coal companies disregard water
pollution conditions. Local communities do not want arsenic, nickel,
zinc and copper entering the water catchment.

*Companies barely get a slap on the wrist for water pollution
breaches and so they continue to reoffend.

*The NSW government continues to give the nod to new coal mines but
refuses to provide additional funding to overworked EPA offices.

*The Minister for the Environment Carmel Tebbutt needs to recognise
that mining communities now require full-time inspectors to monitor
dust, noise, vibrations, water and air quality.

"The EPA has a big job to do and needs more resources.

*The results of round the clock on-site monitoring by the EPA should
be made available to local communities, and inspectors should impose
substantial fines on mining companies whenever they breach their
planning consent conditions,* said Ms Rhiannon.


For more information:     Lee Rhiannon * (02) 9230 3551, 0427 861 568
-----------------------------------------------------------

Power stations and water supply are a dangerous mix

Media release: 2 December 2008

The NSW government must tighten the licensing requirements of Delta
Electricity's power stations on the Coxs River to protect Sydney's
drinking water, according to Greens NSW MP John Kaye.

Commenting on the release of a two year study by the Blue Mountains
Conservation Society ('River 'killed' by pollution feeds city water
supply,' Sydney Morning Herald, p. 5), Dr Kaye said: "Massive
quantities of salt, acid and heavy metals are damaging the Coxs River
that feeds directly into Sydney's largest water storage, Warragamba.

"Oxygen concentrations have fallen to disastrous levels, while the
river is rapidly acidifying. The Coxs is in a state of collapse.

"Not only is the water flowing into Warragamba contaminated but the
river will lose its capacity to act as a carrier of fresh drinking water.

"The NSW government has been aware of these problems since at least
October of last year when The Greens raised them with the Minister for
Environment and Climate Change in questions on notice.

"Minister Tebbutt continues to hide behind the licensing conditions,
ignoring the deteriorating condition of the Coxs and the long term
consequences for the Sydney's drinking water supply.

"Delta Electricity's Wallerawang Power station persists in pouring out
sulphates, acids, heavy metals and other river-destroying pollutants
at levels that cannot be sustained by the environment.

"The political power of Delta Electricity with the Iemma and Rees
governments has condemned the local community to stand by and watch
the Coxs River deteriorate as it is increasingly treated as a dumping
ground.

"It is clear that the licensing requirements are not strict enough to
protect the river and Sydney's water supply.

"It is time for the Rees government to act in the public interest,
tighten the requirements and make Delta act responsibly," Dr Kaye said.

For more information: John Kaye 0407 195 455
Greens member of the NSW Parliament
phone: (02) 9230 2668
fax: (02) 9230 2586
mobile: 0407 195 455
email: john.kaye@...
web: www.johnkaye.org.au

mail: Parliament House, Macquarie St, Sydney NSW 2000
-----------------------------------------------------------

*The Methane Time Bomb
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/exclusive-the-methane-ti\
\
me-bomb-938932.html

[extract ...  we
documented a field where the release was so intense that the methane
did not have time to dissolve into the seawater but was rising as
methane bubbles to the sea surface. These 'methane chimneys' were
documented on echo sounder and with seismic [instruments]."

At some locations, methane concentrations reached 100 times background
levels. These anomalies have been seen in the East Siberian Sea and
the Laptev Sea, covering several tens of thousands of square
kilometres, amounting to millions of tons of methane, said Dr
Gustafsson. "This may be of the same magnitude as presently estimated
from the global ocean," he said. "Nobody knows how many more such
areas exist on the extensive East Siberian continental shelves.

"The conventional thought has been that the permafrost 'lid' on the
sub-sea sediments on the Siberian shelf should cap and hold the
massive reservoirs of shallow methane deposits in place. The growing
evidence for release of methane in this inaccessible region may
suggest that the permafrost lid is starting to get perforated and thus
leak methane... The permafrost now has small holes. We have found
elevated levels of methane above the water surface and even more in
the water just below. It is obvious that the source is the seabed."

The preliminary findings of the International Siberian Shelf Study
2008, being prepared for publication by the American Geophysical
Union, are being overseen by Igor Semiletov of the Far-Eastern branch
of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Since 1994, he has led about 10
expeditions in the Laptev Sea but during the 1990s he did not detect
any elevated levels of methane. However, since 2003 he reported a
rising number of methane "hotspots", which have now been confirmed
using more sensitive instruments on board the Jacob Smirnitskyi.[end
extract]

1.3 kW domestic photovoltaic installation at $3.80 per watt. Details
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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

I suspect that  this can be said of most State governments...

H


http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/editorial/victoria-a-state-in-dangerous-environ
mental-decline-20081204-6rgz.html?page=-1

   Victoria, a state in dangerous environmental decline

Editorial The Age December 5, 2008


   SO MANY official reports come and go that they can disappear with little
trace. Indeed,  governments are often guilty of filing reports away, to be
buried under the flood of  recommendations into the too-hard basket. That
cannot be allowed to happen with the  inaugural Victorian State of the
Environment Report released  yesterday by Sustainability  Commissioner Ian
McPhail. The findings are simply too critical for our future well-being to
be  ignored by Victorians, whether they be Government ministers or members
of the public.

<http://www.ces.vic.gov.au/CES/wcmn301.nsf/childdocs/-FCB9B8E076BEBA07CA2574F100
040358?open>

   The first report to tackle the full dimensions of Victoria's
environmental issues should jolt us  all into taking stock of our way of
life. It comprehensively outlines how unsustainable this has  become: "If
everyone lived liked Victorians, almost four planets would be needed."
Rampant  consumption outpaces efficiency gains such as recycling: 60 per
cent of waste is now  diverted from landfill, but total waste output per
person doubled between 1993 and 2006.  "We simply cannot continue to
maintain our standard of living through the gradual and  continued
degradation of the natural environment," Dr McPhail warns.

   The report is an indictment of disjointed policies with conflicting
impacts. Even the  overarching threat of climate change has yet to trigger
a consistent, whole-of-government  policy response. In a week when the
Government relaxed limits on urban sprawl and  unveiled more road projects,
Dr McPhail laments the failure to join the dots between issues  on the
public radar, such as climate change and water supply, and other policies
with a direct  bearing on these problems. "There is still a tendency to see
agriculture policy as separate  from ecosystem management, yet the first is
utterly dependent on the second  to see  urban form, subdivision design and
architecture as distinct from energy and water efficiency   to see low-cost
purchase as distinct from life-cycle costs and operating and replacement
expense."

   Responsibility is shared between government and individuals. For
instance, planning laws  perpetuate urban sprawl dominated by ever-larger
houses, occupied by fewer people and  poorly served by public transport.
Yet individuals create the pressure for more low-density  development;
witness the public backlash last year when Planning Minister Justin Madden
dared lament the environmentally unsustainable trend to "McMansions". The
report observes  that "community support for government leadership is
needed". New buildings lag behind  world-best design standards. They waste
water and energy, as permitted by lax building  codes.

   The result has been a surge in demand for electricity, 95 per cent of
which comes from  brown coal, "the most greenhouse-polluting energy source
in Australia". While the state's  emissions have jumped 12 per cent since
1990, only 4 per cent of its electricity comes from  renewable sources. On
top of old-fashioned energy policy, "transport contributes 17 per cent  of
total greenhouse gas pollution largely due to our vehicle-dominated urban
design and  freight". The latest transport plan promises yet more roads,
but has at least added new rail  lines to the queue of projects.

   The assessment of diminishing "natural" areas, which are more usually
seen as the domain  of environmental policy, is no less alarming. When it
comes to the crunch, waterways and  wetlands lose out to human demands as
"the current allocation system reduces  environmental flows more than it
reduces water for consumption". Most inland waters are  degraded. Many
species that inhabit them are threatened.

   The picture of land degradation and loss of biodiversity is bleak. The
report bluntly states:  "The Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act 1988 is failing
to meet its stated objectives." The  number of rare and threatened species
in Victoria  157 animals and 778 plants - increased between 2002 and 2007.
Climate change is compounding existing pressures on the land and wildlife.

   The economic cost of land degradation totals billions of dollars. Even if
only out of self-interest, Victorians must accept the need for change to
sustain a reasonable standard of  living. The report cites air quality and
atmospheric ozone recovery as rare examples of good  news resulting from
higher and, in the short term, costlier environmental standards. It also
notes the voluntary cuts in personal water use, while pointing out the
limits of such measures.  The report implicitly challenges the Government's
preference for energy-hungry desalination  and long pipelines over measures
such as rainwater tanks, stormwater harvesting and  recycled water.

   In particular, The Age commends the recommendations on energy-and-water
-efficient  building standards, public transport provision, renewable and
low-emission energy sources,  the protection of biodiversity and the need
to "engage with the community" on drinking  purified recycled water  an
option ruled out because of political sensitivities. But the  overriding
message is this: the Government "must lead and become more strategic and
future-focused" so that all areas of economic and social policy are made
consistent with  environmental sustainability as a matter of course. If
Victorians continue to insist on living in a  fools' paradise, our own
wellbeing will eventually suffer as badly as the state's environment.
   -----
   The report is downloadable from:

http://www.ces.vic.gov.au/CES/wcmn301.nsf/childdocs/-FCB9B8E076BEBA07CA2574F1000
40358?open




Dr Ian McPhail AM is the inaugural Commissioner for Environmental
Sustainability in Victoria. Beginning his tenure in November 2003, Dr
McPhail relocated from Queensland, where he was previously the Deputy
Director-General of the Queensland Environmental Protection Agency.

Dr McPhail has extensive experience in senior roles across state and
federal government agencies. His previous positions include Executive
Director of the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service, Chair of the Great
Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, the inaugural Executive Director of the
Commonwealth Environmental Protection Agency, and the CEO of a number of
agencies in South Australia.

The Commissioner began his professional life as a school teacher. His
commitment to the environment initially as an academic geographer and
widely experienced public servant has since taken him around Australia and
the World, resulting in an exciting and rewarding career. Some of Dr
McPhail's career highlights include participating in the Rio de Janeiro
United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in 1992, and the
Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development 2002.

Dr McPhail has the unique experience of being sequentially a Commissioner
of the Murray-Darling Basin Commission for three governments - South
Australia, the Commonwealth and Queensland.

While he was Chair of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, Dr
McPhail participated in the development of Australia's Ocean Policy, which
resulted in, among other developments, the creation of the National Oceans
Office.

In 2002 Dr McPhail was appointed a member in the Order of Australia (AM)
for service to conservation and the environment. He was particularly
commended for the development of government policies and programs, and for
the reform of national parks and wildlife administration in Australia.

As Commissioner for Environmental Sustainability in Victoria, Dr McPhail
has a number of clearly defined statutory roles. He looks forward to the
closest possible relationship with interested individuals and organisations
in the fulfilment of these tasks.


........................................

send them a bouquet

Office of the Commissioner for Environmental Sustainability
16/570 Bourke Street
Melbourne 3000
Victoria, Australia

Email: info.ces@...
Phone: +61 3 8636 2197
Fax: + 61 3 8636 2099