Apart from the fact that we don’t yet know who won the recent Australian election, the resulting alliances may well require some consideration of climate change and improved broadband because the balance of power rests with regional MP’s know have seen the effects climate change is already having in their regions in a way that city based politicians do not and also the Greens who dominate the upper house.

Interesting.

I think who ever ends up being Prime Minister, some climate action and some broadband improvement should be a result.  I did not like the proposed ETS because it exempted all the biggest polluters so it is hard to see how this was to be an incentive to them to reduce their emissions and switch to less taxed renewable energy.

2007 was known globally as Australia’s “climate change election” and most people predicted that in 2010, climate change would no longer be an issue.  The question is – did people vote green as the only alternative to 2 parties they did not want, or did they actually want some environmental improvement?  I doubt if many had read all the Greens policies, some of which are very odd.

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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Can we afford the cost of oil and coal extraction?

Does Alaska Show what will happen to the Gulf of Mexico and the NW Australia and Indonesian coastline?  Over 20 years after the Exxon Valdez oil spill, the Alaskan fishing industry is still devastated, The fish stocks are way down, there is still oil in large amounts on rocks and in sheltered inlets, the compensation was less that 10% of what was needed and people are suffering major health effects from the chemicals used in the oil “clean up”.  Plus suicides are still happening with people who lost everything.  Alaskans are very worried for the people of the Gulf of Mexico.

Indonesian fishermen are suffering from major damage to the fisheries caused by the spill in Australia’s northwest but because it is remote in Australia it has had little attention in the diagonally opposite side of Australia where most people live and policies are made.

Apparently BP are using the most toxic dispersants even though the US EPA specified lower toxicity products and there is a huge underwater layer of oil that has not been touched.

The same thing appears to be the case with coal and coal gas tailings polluting rivers in Queensland.

The process appears to allow the companies to do what they wish, allow for accidents and “shit happens” then minimise the clean up and compensation.  and none of this even touches on the climate impacts of using fossil fuels.

Can we afford to allow this type of damage to continue?  Can we afford to allow new offshore drilling?  When you look at the long term economic, ecological and social impacts of something going wrong, the cost of developing renewable energy seems much more affordable.

I want to be very clear, I am NOT anti development but let’s develop things that are less damaging.

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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Dog owners are being urged to clean up their pets’ mess in the bush because of an increase in livestock being diagnosed with neospara, which is spread through the faeces of infected dogs

Farmers are now calling for “poop-scooping” to be introduced in even the most remote areas of countryside amid claims that dog-related diseases are killing livestock.

The National Farmers’ Union in Scotland has warned that faeces left by dogs near agricultural land is harming cattle and sheep. There has been an increase in cases of a disease, neospora,and another parasite, sarcocystosis, spread by contamination of grass by dog faeces.  This  can cause illness and death in livestock.

In Scotland there is a push for posters to be put up in farmland areas to raise awareness of the problem, plus a change to the Scottish Outdoor Access Code to spell out the risks more clearly and more “poop scoop bins” to be provided by councils in rural areas.

Research suggests about one in five aborted cattle foetuses are infected with the neospora parasite, with an increase in the problem in recent years. Similarly, sarcocystosis has been killing an increasing number of animals.

Dogs get infected with the neospora parasite when they eat infected material from cattle, such as placentas from newly calved cows. It is then spread through the faeces from the dog. The parasite survives for several months and can contaminate the pasture and water supplies.  And dogs do love eating “revolting messes” that they find.

Once cattle have the parasite, they are infected for life and pass it on to any surviving offspring.

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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This is a fascinating double video:

First by an architect growing houses from living plants and from cultured MEAT cells – yes really meat – watch it to believe it!

Then the second half of the video is the clearest explanation of how a smart grid for electricity works

Both are well worth watching but especially the second half

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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There is an informal e-waste industry in India exploiting young children and imposing huge health risks on them

A United Nations report launched in February described how mountains of hazardous waste from electronic products are growing exponentially in developing countries.

In a typical ‘facility’ Asif, aged seven, dismantles electronic equipment in a tiny, dimly-lit unit in east Delhi along with six other boys.  They don’t go to school.  They extract the valuable components at a huge health risk to themselves.

T.K. Joshi, head of the Centre for Occupational and Environmental Health at the Maulana Azad Medical College in New Delhi studied 250 people working in the city as recyclers and dismantlers over 12 months to October 2009 and found almost all suffered from breathing problems such as asthma and bronchitis.  Plus they had dangerously high levels — 10 to 20 times higher than normal — of lead, mercury and chromium in blood and urine samples.

The toxic metals and poisons enter workers’ bloodstreams during the laborious manual extraction process and when equipment is crudely treated to collect tiny quantities of precious metals.

“The recovery of metals like gold, platinum, copper and lead uses caustic soda and concentrated acids,” said Joshi.  “Workers dip their hands in poisonous chemicals for long hours. They are also exposed to fumes of highly concentrated acid.”

Safety gear such as gloves, face masks and ventilation fans are virtually unheard of, and workers — many of them children — often have little idea of what they are handling.

“All the workers surveyed were unaware of the dangers they were exposed to. They were all illiterate and desperate for employment,” said Joshi. “Their choice is clear — either die of hunger or of metal poisoning.”  And that is a slow, painful death.

The Indian government has proposed a law to regulate the e-waste trade, but Delhi environment group the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) said any legislation would miss the army of informal workers such as brothers Asif and Salim.

The concept of occupational health and safety does not exist for these children.

We have a problem in this country because there is little in the way of convenient disposal of e-waste, batteries and used fluoro light globes so there is a real temptation for people to dispose of these in normal household waste allowing heavy metals leaching from landfill into our ground waters but at least we are not slowly killing our children.

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 has happened and is still happening in the Gulf of Mexico is nothing short of disastrous and should be a real wake up call to us in Australia.

Australia had a serious spill recently in the North West and I doubt if we all know the full impact of that because it was so remote.

The Gulf of Mexico spill happened in an area where there are so many wells and lots of ready to hand spill management facilities and these are not readily available in Australia.

New exploration licences have now been granted for deepwater wells off the Great Australian Bight and south of Kangaroo Island But are we setting ourselves up for a Gulf of Mexico saga – or worse because of our very minimal response facilities

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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At Cardiff North Public School in NSW, students are using permaculture as the basis of their School Environmental Management Plan.  Getting kids involved in good environmental management is sound common sense.

The students are turning areas of the grounds over to permaculture – “permanent agriculture”  to create a long-term, low-maintenance but highly productive outdoor learning environment.

Permaculturalist Geoff Lawton visited the school to make recommendations about the best ways to involve students in setting up the kind of permaculture that is most suitable and to establish low-maintenance, sustainable gardens to grow food for the school and for sale. The school already has worm farms and confirmed plans for frog ponds contributing to a “learnscape” – an active, practical outdoor learning environment that can be used support literacy, maths, science and other subjects.

In my grandson’s school they have replaced playground monitors with “eco warriors” and they have special meetings and feel very important about their clean up tasks.  That is thinking outside the box.

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 was reading about a matting manufacturer who is making environmentally sustainable matting from 100 percent recycled materials bonded to a vinyl backing. It even mops up spills and is easily cleaned.

Great – this is what our grandparents did by cutting old clothing, old sheets etc into strips and plaiting them into long colourful plaits then sewing the plaits into circles or oval mats.  These lasted for years, absorbed small spills wonderfully then simply went into the wash and the “other” rug from the cupboard came out to replace it. The other way was to cut the fabric into small squares and knot them through the holes into rug canvas making colourful recycled rugs that are warm and washable.

Worn jumpers were also used for this and I still have one of these that my grandfather made.  It is made from old woollens and he died it all dark blue.  I keep it by the patio door because it is so thick and absorbent and everyone comes in with clean feet.  Because it is so old I get it professionally cleaned now and the carpet cleaners always have a shock with it but respect that it is an antique and they are amazed at how thick and also attractive it still is.  It actually feels lovely when you have bare feet.
We live in such a throw away and done for you society now that this is no longer something that anyone did.  He made rugs during long dark winter evenings in the north of Scotland long before TV.

We used to plat rag srips and sew them around to make the shape of a shoe sole when we were kids, then sew these to the bottom of thick socks for slippers.  They were lovely and warm and also soft and comfy.

There are so many things that you can do to save money by living more sustainably and there are lots of practical time and money saving ideas in my book Reduce your Carbon Footprint.  This particular example is NOT in the book – I just read the article about the “new idea” of making rugs from recycled materials and looked at Grandad’s rug and laughed.

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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Oh dear, I read a report today that during the last three years, BP has committed 829 of the 851 wilful health and safety violations among all the refiners cited by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration in the USA.  And they have had a series of deadly incidents and smaller ecological accidents.  This does look as though the big spill was an accident waiting to happen.   Why didn’t the regulators see this as a potential problem?

There certainly needs to be good government supervision of operations that can have major flow on effects and part of the licence conditions should be having an effective disaster recovery plan in place.

11 men lost their lives on April 20 and there is huge ongoing suffering for the local people, wildlife and ecology of the Gulf states.  I think we can all visualise that picture repeated on TV of the oil soaked pelican struggling to get its head over the boom into clear water.

Hopefully the administration  around the world will not just look on in horror but look on with determination to manage these operations very much better and to demand adequate emergency planning.

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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When I was 17, which is more years ago than I want to admit, I visited Tasmania and took lots of photos.  When I visited again 20 years ago I was horrified to see large cleared areas where there has been dense old growth forest last time.  Locals tried to tell me that the area had always been cleared but my photos show the difference.  Very dating that is!  As well as being sad.

There are a lot of other areas where there is a strip of forest along roadsides and cleared areas and pine forest behind the “tourism screen”.  I don’t like it at all but it is outside my area of influence and I prefer to work where I can have an impact.

But today I was sent this file and I believe it is worth a good look.  It is more of the same.

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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