What Australia needs now is a sensible debate on what is the best way to actually reduce emissions with least damage to the economy

Australia urged to drop ETS and adopt a carbon tax

I simply copied this because it makes sense.

In the wake of Copenhagen, one of Australia’s foremost energy academics has called on the Federal Government to introduce a carbon tax immediately and drop plans for an emissions trading scheme.

Professor Tony Owen, the Santos Chair of Energy Resources and Director of the University College London’s School of Energy and Resources in Australia, says the general failure of the Copenhagen climate change talks has left the Australian public “hopelessly confused by the plethora of countervailing political claims regarding the optimal policy for Australia to reduce its carbon footprint”.

“That lack of decision from Copenhagen gives Australia the opportunity to now stand back and reassess our carbon pollution reduction scheme and replace it with a more efficient and flexible mechanism – a carbon tax,” says Prof Owen.

He says the simple conceptual appeal of an ETS, that of sharemarket-like trading paired with emissions target compliance, hides wasteful complexity and cost that will inevitably be passed on to consumers.

“The devil is in the detail and in its current form, the ETS requires a range of new mechanisms including auctioning and administrative allocation, a registry and audit body, an enforcement body, a monitoring body and a trading institution,” Prof Owen says.

“A profitable industry will inevitably develop around the acquisition and sale of the permits with the profits from such activity going to traders and entrepreneurs who use the system to make money while having no commitment to greenhouse gas reductions.

“This will achieve nothing other than drain resources from the intended greenhouse gas abatement objectives.

“The better way of imposing a cost of carbon on the Australian community that avoids many of the practical inefficiencies of an ETS, is a carbon tax.”

Prof Owen argues carbon taxes – fixing the price of GHG emissions in dollars per tonne of CO2 – were transparent and simple to apply. Often, the existing tax structure could be used, minimising operating costs.

“Carbon tax revenue can be used to offset existing, inefficient taxes – such as employment taxes or stamp duties – or to compensate poorer sections of the community or to support research into low carbon prospective technologies,” Prof Owen says.

“In common with an ETS, a carbon tax will also encourage adoption of low-carbon technologies through price signals.

“Carbon taxes give a known cost of reduction of emissions, removing a major risk for investors in the energy sector – a benefit the ETS does not have.

“While it is true compensation is also an issue with a carbon tax, exemption for energy intensive export industries can be handled in a similar manner to rebates under the GST.

“This also supports the polluter-pays-concept for exported Australian energy products and removes the potential adverse competitive impact of a carbon price on exports as the ultimate polluter is the final overseas customer.”

Jean Cannon

Jean is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want greater efficiency and reduced stress!

If you sometimes need to deal with staff errors and what is even worse, covered up errors that come back to bite, you are riding a time bomb and Jean will help you defuse it. Plus get you real recognition from markets and regulators.

The good news is that this is now available as online training so you only need to commit to one hour per week and no travel. You can even Do-It-Yourself! .

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Last week I said that to build any workable management system we need to identify the risks and do risk analysis then build a management plan that includes:
•    Overall objectives
•    The targets that need to be met to achieve those objectives
•    The resources that are needed
•    Assigning firm responsibility and a set time line.

What came out of Copenhagen was significant because it did set an objective of 2C
And it set a commitment to include developing countries.

They still need to assign the firm responsibility and set time lines.

I like the idea of countries having the flexibility to reduce their emissions in the way that best suits their culture and economy and I find it reassuring that China is actually doing a lot.

China has set a 40-45% reduction target and is closing a large coal power station every week and building more renewable power stations than anyone else.

China is acting while we are talking and we need to remember that Chinese emissions are caused by producing the goods we use in the developed world.

Jean Cannon

Jean is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want greater efficiency and reduced stress!

If you sometimes need to deal with staff errors and what is even worse, covered up errors that come back to bite, you are riding a time bomb and Jean will help you defuse it. Plus get you real recognition from markets and regulators.

The good news is that this is now available as online training so you only need to commit to one hour per week and no travel. You can even Do-It-Yourself! .

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A new poll shows 89 per cent of Australians believe drought and water shortages are the most pressing environmental concerns, over pollution and damage to wildlife.

But there is much less concern about climate change in general.

In 2007, 91 per cent of us said we were concerned about it, compared to 71 per cent in 2009.

The challenge for regulators was how to engage the community on environmental issues they couldn’t see, feel or hear, he said.

Most people  believed  that climate change was a factor in extreme weather events, such as the Victorian bushfires  and, 75 per cent said they’d be OK with a higher cost of living and lifestyle changes as long as it meant real action on climate change.

Consumer spending on healthier and sustainable products increased by a third from $12 billion in 2007 to $19 billion this year, the study found.

I think the community is confused, frustrated and/or bored by the political action or lack of it, in really doing something about climate change

Jean Cannon

Jean is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want greater efficiency and reduced stress!

If you sometimes need to deal with staff errors and what is even worse, covered up errors that come back to bite, you are riding a time bomb and Jean will help you defuse it. Plus get you real recognition from markets and regulators.

The good news is that this is now available as online training so you only need to commit to one hour per week and no travel. You can even Do-It-Yourself! .

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Thinking outside the box in Victoria’s National Parks

I love this idea!  In Victoria, Australia, Some poultry farmers have been using Italian Maremmano-Abruzzese sheep dogs to care for free range poultry with no fencing..  The dogs have been used for centuries as livestock guardians to protect mainly sheep from wolves.

But now they are also looking after penguin and shearwater colonies on coastal islands and keeping them safe from foxes.  I watched this on the ABC’s Landline  Program.  There were some interesting approval issues with no dogs in national parks except these “nanny” dogs caring for the birds.

This reminds me of when my 3 children were young.  We lived on a small farm in far north Queensland.  When my youngest was born I got a Labrador puppy whose job was to be always with the children.  Even when the children were 10-12 year olds, no one outside of the family was ever able to touch my kids if the dog was there.  With absolutely no aggression she would wag her way between the kids and other people.  She barked, and called for help when they saw snakes, she herded them gently away from the creek and waterfall on our property, barking loudly if she needed me to backup her up.  She certainly appointed herself “nanny” to my kids and did a really good job. 

Jean Cannon

Jean is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want greater efficiency and reduced stress!

If you sometimes need to deal with staff errors and what is even worse, covered up errors that come back to bite, you are riding a time bomb and Jean will help you defuse it. Plus get you real recognition from markets and regulators.

The good news is that this is now available as online training so you only need to commit to one hour per week and no travel. You can even Do-It-Yourself! .

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Do you remember that I told you recently that I am originally a marine biologist and then about twenty years ago I became involved in my family’s computer business which grew ………

and consumed all our time, money and energy – Just like so many small businesses.

So around 1990, I decided to learn about quality assurance to get the business under control, give us some more time, make us more efficient, increase our profit and give us back our lives.

It worked.

The business grow to a $5million turnover business employing 17 people and we were free to take weekends and sometimes even a week or more away from the business and go to our holiday house on Yorke Peninsula.

I LOVE the benefits of management systems.  They save you time and money.  They increase profits.  They reduce risk.  They return sanity to overworked business owners.

When we sold the computer shop and I started my current business, my clients were mostly larger businesses until several smaller businesses asked me how they could get the same help and keep their costs right down.

So I developed my consultancy into a structured training program that works effectively for groups of small businesses.

And over time I was working with people from scattered places around Australia wanted to do ISO systems and especially ISO 14001, the environmental standard.  Either they came to me for three separate two-day blocks or else I travelled to them.  When we integrated Safety with ISO 14001, the clients mostly asked me to run a three-day workshop rather than have a fourth session.

This worked and my clients became successfully certified but I knew I could find a better way for them:

• My clients needed a solution that allowed them to stay in their workplace and fit the training/consultancy into their normal day.  I knew that they did not want to take days at a time out of their business

• And I knew that my clients did not want to waste time traveling to workshops nor spend a lot of money on paying for my airfares either

• Most importantly I knew I needed to avoid anyone feeling overwhelmed by getting too much information in only a short two or three days.  Especially when it is a long time since people were last in a learning environment.

And I listened and understood when my clients told me that taking time out from work meant even more work when they got back.

Heck,  I can still remember that feeling at the old computer shop before we had the quality system so that the system ran the shop – not me.

I had to prevent that overwhelm when they returned to their workplaces because I did not want my workshop training pushed rapidly into the background making it difficult for them to implement what they had just learned.

Then when I was working with a group of prawn farmers, some farms were in Darwin, several farms were between Cairns and Townsville, another in MacKay and yet another near the Gold Coast.  I was in Adelaide.  Talk about distances!

We held the workshops in Cardwell, in Townsville and in a shed on the farm near the Gold Coast.  And I arrived with my notes, data-projector and computer and suddenly we had a portable training program.

This is when I got the idea of doing training online.

Online training allows you to get only small bite sized chunks of information each week so that you don’t get overwhelmed.

Plus you get an audio file so that I talk you through it and clients often tell me that they listen while they are commuting or even driving tractors.

And then you have a weekly phone conference so that you can ask questions and get help.  This way it stays easy

“It is so easy to do because of the way you have simplified it and we loved the online training because we only need to take around 50 minutes each week away from taking sales calls.  We could never have taken a day or half day off.”  Jean Kennedy, Turf Farmer Qld

Plus you interact with other clients who have often faced the same or worse problems than you have and found practical answers

“It was very helpful having others from another industry in the group because we go to hear how they coped with similar problems. Some of the worries I had with contractors and employees were so much less than they had coped with and they explained how they did it. This added perspective and a broader viewpoint. “  Peter Dunne, Farmer Central Qld

Between each module you get a 2 week “catch up” or implementation break before you move on to the next module.

One of the big advantages is that you are still located IN your business and you can look around you to see how the topic being discussed really applies to you.

It is practical, hands on and really simple training and coaching that makes getting certification easy

I am only an email away when you need help plus you build a network of other people in your group and I often find group members communicating with and helping each other outside my sessions.

The lack of travel also really reduces costs and of course, all of our environmental footprints.  All you need is access to a phone.  If you don’t have broadband, you let me know and I post you CDs with all the weekly training you need.

The next environmental certification course begins in Mid January and as I only take a small number in each group, get in touch soon to book your place and don’t miss out.  Here is your ISO 14001 priority booking form.

If you want to integrate either quality (ISO 9001) or Safety (AS/NZS 4801 – Australia and NZ or OHAS 18001 internationally) that group will start at the end on January.  Here is your integrated system priority booking form.

Jean Cannon

Jean is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want greater efficiency and reduced stress!

If you sometimes need to deal with staff errors and what is even worse, covered up errors that come back to bite, you are riding a time bomb and Jean will help you defuse it. Plus get you real recognition from markets and regulators.

The good news is that this is now available as online training so you only need to commit to one hour per week and no travel. You can even Do-It-Yourself! .

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I found this information very disturbing.

Especially as when I spent 3 years living in an apartment and while it was very convenient, modern and easy to care for, I continually had a cough.  Summer and winter I coughed.  When I moved I stopped coughing.  I don’t know why but I seldom cough now and this stopped overnight.  Was it formalin in all the kitchen fittings and MDF trim?  I got rid of the carpets so it was not that.
The rest of the building was not coughing so I must have been sensitive or idiosynchratic

Anyway here is the story I read about a family in Sydney who found hundreds of potentially dangerous chemicals inside their Marrickville house.  The chemicals included parabens  which ”mimics female hormones and linked to breast cancer”, optical whiteners  which”upsets immune systems and kills fish” and sodium lauryl sulfate  which ”strips skin’s protective oils”.

The home owner said ”iIt is a bit scary, there is no real conversation about this stuff. It is all about how many germs this thing will kill or what it cleans, not what it leaves behind.”  He has suffered from psoriasis, while wife Harriet, 30, and children Isla, 2, and Olive, 7 months, have also had skin problems.

Environmental scientist and National Toxics Network co-ordinator Jo Immig said everything from our carpets to our computers contained toxic chemicals and these included t perfluorochemicals (found in stain resistant chemicals in carpets, upholstery and some clothing) that have been found to be potentially carcinogenic and risky for pregnant women; brominated flame retardants (found in electrical goods such as computers and televisions) that have been linked to cancer and reproductive damage; and lead (found in old paint in many homes and in some imported products, such as toys) that has been linked to learning disabilities and behavioural disorders.

Then there is triclosan found in products labelled ”antibacterial”, including wipes, shower curtains, even toothpaste; and formaldehyde found in building materials such as chipboard that is a known carcinogen.

Blimey!  Should we be living indoors with all of this.

Apparently regulatory action had been taken on three types of brominated flame retardant in 2001, while the use of perfluoros had been monitored since 2002 and a restriction on lead in industrial paints was made effective on January 1, this year.

I don’t want to be alarmist but every time I look at labels they seem to list huge numbers of chemicals I don’t know about.  I do not eat things with lists of chemicals but do we know what is in fresh food.

I worry about the adverts for continually pumping out insecticide to repel flies and mosquitoes.   What does that do to me if it kills insects?

I am not a wild greenie but shouldn’t life be simpler?

Jean Cannon

Jean is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want greater efficiency and reduced stress!

If you sometimes need to deal with staff errors and what is even worse, covered up errors that come back to bite, you are riding a time bomb and Jean will help you defuse it. Plus get you real recognition from markets and regulators.

The good news is that this is now available as online training so you only need to commit to one hour per week and no travel. You can even Do-It-Yourself! .

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In the past three years the Chinese have closed down more than 54 gigawatts of inefficient coal-fired generating capacity – equivalent to closing all of Australia’s coal-fired power stations twice over. Australia hasn’t closed a single one for the purpose of reducing greenhouse pollution. We’re dusting off old coal-fired power stations and extending their lives instead.

By closing down inefficient ones at the extraordinary rate of Victoria’s Loy Yang B power station every three weeks, Chinese coal-fired power generation is already cleaner than Australia’s.

China also is the major manufacturer of solar technology.. They are investing in renewables at twice the rate we are per unit of GDP.
While Australia has wasted so much time fashioning a carbon price that avoids economic transformation, China is transforming towards a low-carbon economy and without a carbon price.

Various democracies in Europe are cutting their own emissions, and the world’s biggest democracy in India just decided to increase its solar power capacity from near zero to 20 gigawatts by 2020 – that’s more solar power than is currently produced worldwide.

Jean Cannon

Jean is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want greater efficiency and reduced stress!

If you sometimes need to deal with staff errors and what is even worse, covered up errors that come back to bite, you are riding a time bomb and Jean will help you defuse it. Plus get you real recognition from markets and regulators.

The good news is that this is now available as online training so you only need to commit to one hour per week and no travel. You can even Do-It-Yourself! .

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The Copenhagen talks are bringing out some very strange “emissions” from politicians.  They are quoting amazingly different statistics as they each try to get their private view point across.

It does appear that our carbon emissions have risen significantly. The accounting methods also appear to be seriously “woolly”

It also appears that if Australia manages its soils and forests better we could make serious cuts in our emissions, which is not really a surprise.  This does make more sense that most suggestions.

If they get clean coal technology working it may not be until well into the 2020s and it may never be viable and it may never be safe.

If they go nuclear and survive electoral fallout, that will also take many years to get online.

Use of natural gas makes sense, there are a whole range of alternative technologies that make sense, and properly retrofitting both homes and commercial buildings will make big savings in reductions.  The other thing we need is to seriously implement a very wide range of ways to reduce our waste emissions

Putting up prices of energy will cause behavioural change so long as the large emitters and low income are not subsidised so heavily that they have no need to change.

I am not sure I want to read on or write more.  It is all too tricky.  Let’s go back to my comments on the need for morality in the way we run our lives, our businesses and our nations.

Jean Cannon

Jean is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want greater efficiency and reduced stress!

If you sometimes need to deal with staff errors and what is even worse, covered up errors that come back to bite, you are riding a time bomb and Jean will help you defuse it. Plus get you real recognition from markets and regulators.

The good news is that this is now available as online training so you only need to commit to one hour per week and no travel. You can even Do-It-Yourself! .

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We often see very successful sports stars making their business of sport unsustainable because of their moral decisions and there is a prominent golf example at present.

A large part of quality assurance is customer satisfaction and that is definitely based on the morality of delivering what we promise.

We are just emerging from a global financial crisis that really was caused by greed.

Can you think of any area of life where there lack of morality does not come back to bite you? It does not seem to matter whether it is sport, in business, in finance and in other fields

This week 190 nations and over 100 world leaders are debating what may well be the biggest moral issue of recent history and without wanting to preach, because that is not my thing and I can’t stand being preached at either; but there are several salient points:
•    It does not matter whether you personally believe it or not, the consensus among the majority of scientists who are qualified in this field is that human pollution of the atmosphere is causing climate to change much more rapidly than is natural and this will have seriously unpleasant consequences for future generations.
•    Human population is still growing exponentially.
•    Those of us in western economies consume unsustainable amounts of resources (see the figures from last week)
•    75% of the greenhouse emissions have come from EOCD countries.
•    Di you know that most of China’s emissions are the result of making goods consumed in the developed world.
•    Many third world countries cause environmental damage because they cannot afford to feed their children if they don’t.  They burn dreadfully polluting fuels, they clear forest, they have unsustainable agricultural practices, they overfish and dynamite reefs to get fish etc.
•    The effect of deforestation is almost the same as the effect of ALL petroleum based vehicles.  Surely helping to retain forests is a priority.

I am sure you have looked at the news and seen chaos in the streets of Copenhagen.
What a mix!
Climate change deniers
Left wing radical greenies
Activists from developing nations with their hands out
And lots more

I don’t know about you but …………..thank goodness I don’t have to try to balance all that.

In my opinion this is a sustainability issue – just a giant scale of what each and every business faces in many areas, not just environmental.

Like building any workable management system the experts need to identify the risks and do risk analysis without all the noise and emotion.  Then the negotiators need to build a management plan and this includes:
•    Overall objectives
•    The targets that need to be met to achieve those objectives
•    The resources that are needed
•    Assigning firm responsibility and a set time line.

Inevitably the resources needed will cost money and the developed world will need to help those who can’t afford to make changes and will need to supervise those changes so that the money is not diverted.  And it needs to be done so that the recipients still have dignity.

Inevitably also those wanting help will be unhappy because more would be better and those giving will be unhappy because they have had to make commitments and contributions then justify them when they go home.

Please let me clearly state that I am a small business owner well aware of the need for balanced books and I am originally an environmental biologist.  I am not a “greenie”.  I am also a grandmother and concerned for my grandchildren’s future.

Jean Cannon

Jean is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want greater efficiency and reduced stress!

If you sometimes need to deal with staff errors and what is even worse, covered up errors that come back to bite, you are riding a time bomb and Jean will help you defuse it. Plus get you real recognition from markets and regulators.

The good news is that this is now available as online training so you only need to commit to one hour per week and no travel. You can even Do-It-Yourself! .

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What another crazy week!  Just when you think things are slowing down, it’s the mad rush to get things done before the year finishes.  What are you doing now in your business and what are you planning for 2010?

December is the month to get moving on next year so that 2010 does not just happen.  It is managed.  And that way you only lose the one month of holidays and parties, not nearly two months while you wind down for the silly season, go on holiday, then crank up again.

Over 10 years ago, I saw a gap in the marketplace and chose to be different from the other management systems consultants.

Since then I’ve been helping my clients save money, reduce stress and also help the environment because of my two major differences.
•    I teach people to understand HOW to manage your own management systems and
•    I show you how keep it really simple and low paper.

So if you want a simple and effective quality, environment or safety management system you know where to come….
or if you have a quality manager who is always moaning, about the number of forms he needs to get right before the next audit, contact me for a clean-out consultation to make your and his life easier.

I do not believe in leaving you with expensive maintenance programs or lots of paper.

There are several tricks to an effective management system:
•    The fist trick is to keep it simple and low paper so that your life becomes easier, you reduce risk and hassle, you save money and you attract more clients.

•    The second trick is to understand your own system and know how to make your own changes without having ongoing consultancy.

•    The next is to get all your staff “on board” so that every one agrees that having a simple system is the easiest way to do things.

•    And you need to include simple and effective corrective and preventive action and if you missed last week’s teleseminar, here is the PDF and recording to help you.

So what are you doing now in your business, what are you focused on?

And what are you planning for 2010 in your business?  You will find that having simple systems will make what ever you are doing easier and December is the month to plan so that next year does not just happen.  Contact me now to discover get your business on track for January

It is time to be implementing the management system that you need most.
•    For many of you it will be an environmental management system and if you certify it to ISO 14001 or to its baby brother EnviroCert, you will have credibility when you sell to the rapidly growing “green” consumer market.
•    Some of you will want ISO 9001 or quality because you main focus is on your customers, as it should be.
•    Others will want Occupational Safety AS/NZS 4801 in Australia and New Zealand and called OHAS 18001 internationally

And those of you who want the greatest benefits will integrate more than one of these systems and you will be amazed at how simple and cost effective it is using the training modules that I have developed for you.

Did you know that you can have all these systems fully integrated but you can choose to be certified in just one system if that is more cost effective for you?

And don’t panic about it being too expensive because you can also choose Do-It Yourself courses that include all the same training and help as the coached courses but without the telephone coaching.  The phone coaching is still available if you need it of course but you would only pay when you need it.

Jean Cannon

Jean is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want greater efficiency and reduced stress!

If you sometimes need to deal with staff errors and what is even worse, covered up errors that come back to bite, you are riding a time bomb and Jean will help you defuse it. Plus get you real recognition from markets and regulators.

The good news is that this is now available as online training so you only need to commit to one hour per week and no travel. You can even Do-It-Yourself! .

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