Savannah Cats to be banned in Australia

Environment Minister Peter Garrett has initiated a review of the potential impacts of hybrid Savannah cats, which could see the cats banned in Australia. Mr Garrett said a draft assessment report had been released to assist considerations about the potential impacts of the cats on the Australian environment and whether they should be prohibited from import, under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act).

When you consider the appalling impact of domestic cats both in the suburbs and those that have gone feral I would think this does not even need consideration!

Energy efficiency of commercial buildings in Adelaide’s CBD.

The South Australian Government and the Property Council of Australia (SA Division) have teamed up to undertake a $2 million project to improve the energy efficiency of commercial buildings in Adelaide’s CBD.

The State Government is to provide $2 million over four years to extend the operation of an existing program to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions produced by existing commercial buildings in Adelaide.

The Building Tune Ups-2012 project aims to improve the energy performance of all eligible commercial office buildings in the Adelaide CBD and has the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions produced by Adelaide’s existing commercial building stock by about 70,000 tonnes annually.

Projects to help Australia’s vulnerable coastal communities plan for the effects of climate change.

$2.8 Million has been allocated by the Federal Government for this planning. This included mapping coastal urban areas for inundation risks from climate change in as Perth, Brisbane, the Gold Coast, Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide.

The project will be implemented in collaboration with key national organisations such as the Cooperative Research Centre for Spatial Information, the Australia and New Zealand Land Information Council, Geosciences Australia, CSIRO, and relevant state government agencies and commercial terrestrial mapping and monitoring companies.

They are also looking at how climate change affects variations in offshore wave characteristics will be developed by combining climate modeling and spectral wave modeling

Emissions trading and lobby groups

Associate Professor Richard Denniss of the Crawford School at The Australian National University has been studying the likely effectiveness of the New Zealand Government’s Emissions Trading Scheme for his paper The NZ Emissions Trading Scheme – why is it so bad and can Australia’s be any better?

“Given the recent consternation in Australia over very small reductions in the price of petrol, it is difficult to see how we are going to have a sensible debate about an effective Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) in Australia,” he said.

“The worst thing Australia could do would be to follow New Zealand down the path of incurring all the costs of an ETS, while missing out on all the economic and environmental benefits. He stated that New Zealand has gone for the worst of both worlds, but hopefully Australia can do better.”

He says that Australian policy makers need to look across the Tasman to learn a number of valuable lessons before the introduction of any national Emissions Trading Scheme, to ensure the New Zealand experience is not repeated here. It is to be hoped that powerful industry groups are not allowed to insulated themselves from the emissions trading.

Our Right to Sunlight

This has been an issue for years with people wanting sunlight to grow vegetables and having ‘discussions” between neighbours and planners for the right to sunlight. This has taken on a new twist with the right to collect sunlight on solar panels.

One recent example from Hunter’s Hill in Sydney has left the home owners both out of pocket because of loss of the $8,000 solar rebate and also because the local planners has just approved a development next door that will shade the panels they have just spent $40,00 0 to install.

The home owner said “The whole idea was to reduce our carbon footprint – we knew it would never pay for itself – but that will now be pretty much worthless. We weren’t going to make any money out of doing this. We were basically just trying to do the right thing.”

The 20 panels cover half their roof, and generate about 4.2 kilowatts of electricity when in full sun – enough to meet the energy needs of an average house. The property next door is being renovated, with an extra storey and a parapet to be added.

Should the right to sunlight be a planning consideration? I would have thought so!

Technorati Tags: Savannah cats to be banned in Australia, Australia, Savannah cats, South Australian Government, Property Council of Australia

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 25th, 2008 at 6:25 am and is filed under Latest activities & outreach. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.