Why give “look, hang and toss” Christmas cards to your clients and prospects this Christmas?

There is still time for you to buy to buy your own personalised copy of “Reduce Your Carbon Footprint” book with Your Logo on the front cover, YOUR preface from your CEO (2 pages) and YOUR marketing messages for the back two pages and inside and outside the back cover.

YOUR book will be kept and handed around.  The average book is read by at least 8 different people.

Your book and your messages will be handed around for years – not simply tossed like a card and it does not cost much more than a printed card.

You will find that this book saves you money.

Better than that- it saves money for everyone who reads it.

You can get enough books to give to your clients and prospects, to give to your staff and to keep extras for your next trade show and for new prospects.

“I wanted to let you know that I was so happy when I got my latest electricity bill.  It dropped by over $200 compared with the last couple of years.  Every household needs to read your book ‘Reduce Your Carbon Footprint’ because there are so many good points in there and they do work”.  Kellie Simon, Virtual Assistant, Elizabeth, SA.

Your marketing will stay around and be valued

Can you imagine YOUR book, with your cover, your foreword and your marketing being kept for years and each copy read by an average of eight people!  That is the value of reprin rights.

How much better than a card that just gets thrown away.

Contact Jean by phone, fax or email to organise your books urgently to get them out to your clients for Christmas.

envirojean

Save Money with Simple and Effective Management Systems

Jean Cannon is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want to save money by implementing simple and effective management systems. Sign up to discover how YOU can save money with sensible energy management and ISO 14001.

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•    In 2008, global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels were nearly 40% higher than in 1990.
•    Over the past 25 years temperatures have increased at a rate of 0.19°C per decade, closely following the predictions based on increased greenhouse gasses.  Even with the decrease in solar forcing during the past ten years, the trend continues to be one of warming.
•    Ice-sheets, glaciers and ice-caps demonstrate beyond doubt that both the Greenland and Antarctic ice-sheets are losing mass at an increasing rate and glaciers and ice-caps are melting faster in other parts of the world since 1990.
•    Summer-time melting of Arctic sea-ice is 40% greater than climate models.
•    Sea-level rise underestimated: Satellites show average sea-level rise is3.4 mm/yr over the past 15 years) ~80% above past IPCC predictions.
•    By 2100, global sea-level is likely to rise at least twice as much as projected by Working Group  for unmitigated emissions it may well exceed 1 meter. Sea level will continue to rise for centuries after global temperatures have been stabilized, and several meters of sea level rise must be expected over the next few centuries.

The longer we delay the more irreversible the damage.  If we wait for higher levels of scientific certainty some tipping points will be crossed before they are recognized.

What we must do to avoid catastrophic problems:

• To limit global warming to a maximum of 2 °C above pre-industrial values, global emissions need to peak between 2015 and 2020 and then decline rapidly.
• To stabilize climate we need a decarbonized global society – with near-zero emissions of CO2 and other long-lived greenhouse gases and this needs to be reached well within this century.
• More specifically, the average annual emissions per head will have to shrink to 80-95% that in developed countries in 2000.

envirojean

Save Money with Simple and Effective Management Systems

Jean Cannon is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want to save money by implementing simple and effective management systems. Sign up to discover how YOU can save money with sensible energy management and ISO 14001.

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Californian officials have issued America’s first blueprint for a broad-based cap-and-trade plan.

It would allow companies to buy and sell emission allowances among themselves to reach an overall goal of cutting planet-warming pollutants 15% below today’s levels by 2020.

The Federal Government is still stalled in the Senate  Sounds a bit like Australia.

European nations have operated a cap-and-trade program for the last five years.  It is estimated that California’s program could cost industry as much as $8 billion a year by 2020 if carbon trades at its current price on the European market of $20 per ton.

But industry groups warned it could cost more than twice as much, and result in more expensive electricity, gas, housing and consumer goods.

This scheme is likely to influence the shape of eventual federal regulations.

There is opposition with some claiming that it would encourage “the most entrenched polluters, including oil,” to continue emitting toxics and smog-forming pollutants, which are associated with carbon emissions.

The state’s proposed cap-and-trade program would take effect beginning in 2012, complementing other rules like limits to carbon dioxide from automobile tailpipes and the carbon content of fuels. The law requires greenhouse gases to drop to 1990 levels by 2020.

Environmentalists want all permits to be auctioned, with the money spent on clean energy projects and on communities heavily affected by air pollution.

Industry prefers that most allowances be given out for free.

One controversial provision would allow industries to purchase “offsets,” such as contributing to the preservation of a forest or the capture of methane from a landfill, to meet 49% of their obligations to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

Companies prize offsets as an alternative to installing often-expensive pollution controls, or, in the case of utilities, to building solar and wind farms to replace fossil fuel plants.

But some warn that the draft rule “allows polluters far too liberal use of offsets to buy their way out of reducing their emissions.”

Six other Western states and four Canadian provinces have joined with California in a Western Climate Initiative with an eye toward linking in a regional cap-and-trade program.

envirojean

Save Money with Simple and Effective Management Systems

Jean Cannon is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want to save money by implementing simple and effective management systems. Sign up to discover how YOU can save money with sensible energy management and ISO 14001.

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The role of the Australian senate is to review legislation from the lower house and get it right before passing it.  Instead it seems to have turned into a playground for overgrown bullies and prima donnas, many of whom are totally out of date dinosaurs.

For goodness sake, how difficult is it for supposedly educated people to see that continuing pollute the atmosphere may have some consequences.

Even if they personally have doubts about the science, the whole world wants to reduce greenhouse gas pollution and the ETS/CPRS legislation needs to reduce that greenhouse gas pollution without unnecessary economic damage.

Normal political posturing would be fine here but the current tantrums from sceptics are totally out of order.

The big problem that the public and possibly also the politicians have is that we have not been given adequate information in manageable sized bites about the need and also the consequences of the emission trading legislation.  The information we have been given is mainly incomplete and emotive.

It was interesting that on the morning chatty news show, Sunrise, could not find a scientist who was both qualified to comment on climate change who was also a sceptic.  Equally there are many rumours about the potential political implications of the Copenhagen agreement may be and these need to be explained to the Australian people.

We want politicians who will explain and lead, not squabble like playground bullies (applies to all sides) and also we don’t want to be treated like mushrooms – kept in the dark and fed on b.s.!

The original advice Professor Ross Garnaut gave the government gave thorough explanations but the advice was not really followed up in the resulting legislation.

envirojean

Save Money with Simple and Effective Management Systems

Jean Cannon is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want to save money by implementing simple and effective management systems. Sign up to discover how YOU can save money with sensible energy management and ISO 14001.

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Countries like Indonesia DO need financial help to make a difference in reducing greenhouse emissions.

New data shows that in 2006, burning peat in Indonesia released up to about 900 million metric tons of carbon dioxide.

This is more than the total amount of CO2 emitted in Germany in that year, and represents about 16 % of the emissions associated with deforestation worldwide

Deforestation has the same impact on the greenhouse gas emissions as all the cars in the world.  We need to take this seriously and accept that impoverished countries need our help to prevent this damage.

envirojean

Save Money with Simple and Effective Management Systems

Jean Cannon is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want to save money by implementing simple and effective management systems. Sign up to discover how YOU can save money with sensible energy management and ISO 14001.

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We do need to have energy security or there will be big economic consequences.

We also need to have emission reductions

At present there is so much uncertainty about the direction the government will take that there is no incentive for existing coal fired power plants to put money into preventive maintenance and this could well impact on our energy security.

Our government appears to be pinning its hopes on carbon capture and storage so that we can maintain the status quo with coal fired power.  Over seas the Danish company, Dong Energy is dropping the development of Carbon Capture Storage (CCS) technology as it is too expensive.

However in Australia CCS research is said to be fairly advanced – with Santos in SA being a commercial leader who has been storing natural gas underground for over 40 years.

I read earlier today that there is quite a lot of additional activity around CCS in Australia with the majority of the funding available from the Federal government and some State Governments also pursuing various initiatives.

I could quote Einstein again “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them”.  The government does seem to be clinging to thinking about coal fired power!  I am unclear how this will solve the problems that excessive coal use has caused.

envirojean

Save Money with Simple and Effective Management Systems

Jean Cannon is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want to save money by implementing simple and effective management systems. Sign up to discover how YOU can save money with sensible energy management and ISO 14001.

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A demonstration project at one of the state’s largest power plants, Tarong, may potentially hold the secret to reducing carbon dioxide emissions from heavy-polluting coal- and gas-fired power stations.

So-called clean-coal technology is expensive and a long way off, as well as being potentially dangerous.  The latest and greatest is the ”algal synthesiser”.

The idea of storing carbon dioxide from coal-fired plants by recycling it through algae or in the soil is a likely solution to the problem of carbon pollution from power stations, smelters and refineries.

Carbon emissions from coal fired power stations can be used to grow algae which can then be turned into plastics, biodiesel for transport and, more likely, animal feed.

This is still early days and whether is will be cost-effective is still unsure.  Other questions also remain like how much land is needed for a commercial operation and what long-term trials of the animal feed will show. The big question and even if how much it will reduce carbon emissions.

Much of the carbon dioxide stored in the algae could end up being released back into the atmosphere if it is used to produce feed for cattle or biodiesel transport fuel.  But the carbon is being used twice before being added to the atmosphere.

The difficulty with producing biodiesel from algae economically is that it needs a very high carbon dioxide input. You basically need to put your algae farm next to a power station, refinery, ammonia plant or sewage farm.

Algal recycling may reduce emissions more than by replacing coal-fired power stations with gas or wind power

It is hoped that the company’s algal project at Tarong would be scaled up to become an 80-hectare demonstration plant within a few years.

envirojean

Save Money with Simple and Effective Management Systems

Jean Cannon is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want to save money by implementing simple and effective management systems. Sign up to discover how YOU can save money with sensible energy management and ISO 14001.

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The Prime Minister of New Zealand, John Key is probably not going to Copenhagen and doubts there will be a deal on climate change. Not a big, binding and lasting deal. Not one that might be called historic or that locks the United States and China, the world’s two biggest greenhouse gas emitters.

He said ”What you will get out of it, is you’ll get a high-level political statement and work program in 2010.”

Mr Key is certainly not a climate change sceptic and believes the world has a ”moral obligation” to deal with climate change, and that consumers – more to the point, voters – broadly agree that action is necessary but objects to some of the financial implications of the proposed agreement.

The real question is, what do you do?

In New Zealand about 70 per cent of its energy already comes from renewable sources.

Mr Key says, the growth of emissions has been completely offset by planting 600,000 more trees.

Primary production in New Zealand accounts for about 48 per cent of the economy (against about 16 per cent in Australia) and half of all greenhouse emissions come from agriculture.

They have been rolling back the ETS introduced by a previous government.  Interesting.

envirojean

Save Money with Simple and Effective Management Systems

Jean Cannon is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want to save money by implementing simple and effective management systems. Sign up to discover how YOU can save money with sensible energy management and ISO 14001.

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One in three Australians does not believe climate change is caused by humans, a new survey suggests.

But at least that’s greener than the US where only 57 per cent believed in man-made global warming.

As a whole, the survey found climate change was less of an important issue for Americans, with only four per cent rating it the most important issue for the US, compared with the economy (46 per cent) and health care (13 per cent).  I notice in the blogs that this varies enormously across the country with California being way a head of Australia in its desire to make changes to prevent climate change and middle America being much less likely to accept the reality of change.

Mean time a friend of mine who recently returned from China was telling me that China is making real efforts to reduce their environmental impacts and their carbon emissions.  Having odd and even car registrations allowed to drive on different days has actually reduced the traffic by 50% and also the emissions.  He commented that it may well be easier for a totalitarian country to make some of these changes.

envirojean

Save Money with Simple and Effective Management Systems

Jean Cannon is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want to save money by implementing simple and effective management systems. Sign up to discover how YOU can save money with sensible energy management and ISO 14001.

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It would be wonderful to think that humans can continue to increase our populations, consume resources and emit greenhouse gas pollution in a totally unlimited way and not stuff things up.

It sounds a lot as though we are all ignoring the advice my father gave me about “never shitting in our own nest”.   We only have one planet and we are definitely over exploiting it.  Inevitably there are and will continue to be consequences.

Climate change is a major consequence and we need to start living within our means.  We demonstrated that if we exceed our means financially we cause a global financial crisis and thankfully, Australia has come out of it better than many other countries.

Like it our not, believe it or not, sceptic or not, there are limits to growth.  That is the name of a book I read in the early 1960s and it has taken 50 years almost for crunch time.

Now I am not an unrealistic greenie.  I am certainly not a left wing idealist.  But I have been on this planet long enough, walking in its forests and swum in its seas to see changes happening at a much faster rate than is sustainable.

I am concerned about the challenges my grandchildren will face and whether we are teaching them the skills they need to know and preserving the only place they have to live in the way we need to help them live the full and wonderful life that has been possible for us.

WE need to change the way we approach energy efficiency and use of resources.  WE need to make a shift and create ourselves a new reality and I do not think that the current political process has it right.  I hope it will be flexible enough to cope with change and to cope with discovering errors in potential agreements.

Even Einstein has emphasized that in order to create a new reality, we must initiate a major shift in our thinking (he said, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them”).

When we look at climate change and the recent economic meltdown we need to listen to Einstein’s words.  We need to change our thinking and I do not see a lot of evidence of this.

envirojean

Save Money with Simple and Effective Management Systems

Jean Cannon is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want to save money by implementing simple and effective management systems. Sign up to discover how YOU can save money with sensible energy management and ISO 14001.

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