More snippets from todays newscasts.

• Hybrid diesel has been developed in Queensland.  This is a hybrid between diesel and liquid petroleum gas (LPG) and it radically increases fuel efficiency.  Apparently the conversion cost is arounf A$3,000 after the Federal government rebate.
• UK suggesting increased registration tax on vehicles that use more fuel. It was causing uproar among the 4 wheel drive Mums. There is a genuine problem with child safety seats as the smaller the person the more room they take up with the current range of child restraints. I don’t buy the story that you need to drive something like a truck to fit the kids and the shopping in and to share a car run does require more legal seat space than it did when my kids were small and there was less child safety. Don’t get me wrong - my car is also cluttered up with seats to hold my grandchildren safely I am all for keeping them safe but I suggest that there could be better design here so more efficient cars can also fit in kids safely.
  I am all for tax incentives to change behaviour but recognise the pain of families who can’t afford soaring petrol prices, increased registration and vehicle devaluation because of the tax change. Probably needs a slightly slower introduction.
• Dare I say we need better public transport - that is safe with seat belts on all seats. Or is it more cost effective to just patch injured people up than to pay for seat belt installation? Refer to my accident in a bus in November.

There are increasing new ideas for transport but unfortunately the prices of conventional fuel may need to cause us a lot of pain before it becomes economically viable to develop new technologies.

In fact humans are really inventive but they usually wait until it is too painful to stay the same before they decide it is a good idea to change.  It is time we got out of our comfort zone.

There has been a mixed bag of reactions to the Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’ discussions about coal sales to China, clean coal and what some people are calling the hypocrisy of our mining and selling coal to China.

I agree that the entire world needs to move completely away from fossil fuels but I am also a pragmatist and I realise the size of the industry here and the huge damage it would do to our economy if we suddenly stopped so I believe that the coal industry’s research efforts into developing clean ways to use coal make sense. And selling these technologies to China along with the coal also makes sense.

I know this makes some people very angry and someone recently said to me “clean coal – I’d like to see that!” The problem with being angry about something is that the people who are angry stop communicating and only tell. Unless the dialogue is two way, there is no communication and the differing viewpoints never meet to find the best outcome. It is a bit like swimming in a rip – fight it and you drown.

I believe we need a mix of energy sources and would like to see large scale development of solar because we have so much sun in Australia and especially at times when demand for air-conditioning is greatest. Our small scale domestic solar installations are very expensive to install and while great for the environment are out of the reach of most people.

The USA are installing very large scale and economic solar plants to power entire towns in Arizona and the large scale technology has been in use in California since the 198s and is well tested and reliable. There is a process using huge amounts of salt that can store the solar heat to enable the power generation around the clock.

When wind, wave, solar and geothermal energy is in mainstream use and alternative technologies are developed and economically viable together with attitudes and behavioural change we will able to reduce our energy use without much changing out quality of life. At that time the cost of coal and oil will rise to become uneconomical unless they can be audited as having worked out how to effective reduce their emissions. Their incentive will be the cost of their carbon emissions.

There are other very exciting new technologies emerging for retrofitting established buildings to make them energy efficient. I suspect there needs to be support to get these out into more visible demonstration sites.

Developing these technologies, including clean coal, and reducing dependence on coal and oil requires a national and global vision plus implementation and incentives.

Humans are very good at change and adaptation when they know their backs are against the wall but the problem is they do not all recognise the need for action now.

I was watching an interesting program today on TV. Apparently by 2016 all house (or was it new houses? - happy to be corrected) will be required to have zero carbon emissions. They are exploring all kinds of initiatives including solar tiles for roofs.

There is a lot of action and thought going into green roofs where, subject to structural checks, people are putting soil and plants on their roofs. Some were very interesting and beautiful The ideas including much improved thermal insulation and also CO2 absorption. This was especially suggested in cities.

So perhaps we will go forward to “caves” but high tech ones with plants on the roofs rather than back to caves as we reduce our energy use. A well designed high tech “cave” with heaps of light from skylights and huge double glazed widows around a courtyard and a wonderful roof garden would be the one thing that would tempt me out of my apartment - providing I found a location like where I live, on a bus route, within walking distance of the city CBD and of shops. I would LOVE to be involved in building and living in ssomething truly sustainable

Last week Enviro Action had a stand at the Carbon Trading Expo in Melbourne. it was combined with a major safety expo and was a huge event. The number of people coming through was almost overwhelming. Thankfully I had two wonderful guys helping me.

Enviro Action is about reducing carbon and other environmental impacts which is the major step we need to take. We were very busy & I also spoke at the conference.

It was most interesting seeing what is on offer. The entire carbon trading area is still in a premature muddle with a mixture of tree planters and others. The auditing requirements are not yet set, the tree planters, while mainly very well meaning need to be clear on both how much carbon they really sequester and from when, the effect a bushfire will have on their operation and very importantly the ecological impact of their planting and what the ecology was of the land they are planting on. There are some horror stories about unsuitable trees being planted on what was an natural ecology that did not “look like forest” but actually worked better than the artificial community put there with wrong species.

I am NOT against tree planting and as a member of a volunteer group in the past, have planted thousands. I have responsibly collected local seed, dried it (taking over almost the entire northern side of a previous house I owned) and direct seeds and well as tending tube stock.

I have been a member of Trees for Life for around 15 years and am now a sponsor because I like the fact that they collect local seed, work with local landowners and are very ecologically responsible. But i fail to see how you can do accurate carbon accounting on this even though it is very good for the environment and the planedt.

The first 300 Australian companies start mandatory carbon reporting on July1. Interesting times. The figures will eventually be put on public view. It is estimated that businesses will have to spend $7bn on rebuilding corporate computer systems and overhauling workplaces to meet the federal government’s new greenhouse gas emission reporting requirements.

The real issue is reduction and there is a huge interest in this. The accountancy firms are taking on more people in their sustainability and assurance services and accounting sooftware firms like MYOB are apparently exploring how to help facilitate the process.

The big emitters like coal and oil are lobbying hard to try to be exempted ye gods! Predictable but ludicrous if they get away with it. I guess the big dilemma for the Labour government is their dual commitment to the people who voted them in for their perceived “green” credentials and promise to sign Kyoto vs their huge membership in the outer suburbs where there is limited public transport, major mortgage stress and petrol prices are very sensitive.

These two key greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere rose sharply in 2007, and carbon dioxide levels this year are literally off the chart, the US government reported today.

Atmospheric carbon dioxide, the primary driver of global climate change, rose by 0.6 per cent, or 19 billion tonnes last year. Reported by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in ts annual index of greenhouse gas emissions. The amount of methane increased by 0.5 per cent, or 27 million tonnes, after nearly a decade of little or no change.

Methane’s greenhouse effect is 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide’s, but there is far less of it in the atmosphere. Overall, methane has about half the climate impact of carbon dioxide.

The primary source of carbon dioxide is the burning of fossil fuels, which is increasing, said Pieter Tans, who studies greenhouse gases at the laboratory. China was now the world’s biggest emitter, followed by the United States.

Carbon neutrality is the next challenge for property groups and the Initial Report of the 2020 Summit says: “Through a National Sustainable Cities Program the Federal Government could lead a nationally consistent approach to urban and regional planning which drives water efficiency and reductions in emissions.

“This could be supported by the implementation of tax and other policies that encourage the use of public transport relative to other modes of transport.”

Another idea to come out of the summit was an initiative to require carbon neutrality for all new buildings constructed after 2020. The major question is what will be the definition of what makes a building carbon neutral. The Green Building Council of Australia (GBCA) reported lots of questions about this and commented that “Buildings need to have zero emissions in their construction, operation and embodied energy to be truly carbon neutral.”

It is possible to achieve zero net operational carbon emissions from buildings but truly carbon neutral buildings, including their embodied energy are a significant challenge, unless carbon offsetting is used. Personally, I feel that people should regard offsetting as a last resource AFTER exhausting other avenues.

The 2020 summit in Australia had the environment and climate change as one of the major issues with the result that it really hit the news and also public awareness. Last week I went to a local small business networking function and the change in attitude to my business was enormous. Instead of the majority of small businesses saying it is too hard and their little bit does not matter, there was general concern about what they can begin to do. WOW!

Enviro Action has a stand at the Carbon Trading Expo in Melbourne this week and I think the timing is very good. Personally I have deep reservations about the emphasis on carbon trading. My belief is that this should be a last resort AFTER people have reduced their greenhouse gas emissions in other ways. The whole regulatory framework around carbon trading is very unreliable at this stage and the scheme that was developed in Europe has major flaws.

There is a lot of work to do to reduce our emissions and change our behaviour and the strength of Enviro Action’s training is that we teach people HOW to identify their environmental impacts, including their carbon emissions and to change the culture within their business to get all their personnel “on board” with behaviour change to implement their system. I firmly believe that to get the true benefits of environmental management systems, skills and capabilities must be transferred into the businesses themselves and their people and not stay with consultants.

While we need to think along these lines for more than 1 hour a year, I was very disappointed with Adelaide’s effort. I live on the second floor of an 8 storey apartment building and I went out to look over Adelaide and saw NO evidence that our Government or businesses had made any effort. The lights of Adelaide looked exactly the same as usual.

The power use did go down 3% but I suspect this was due to lots of small users and households. I certainly noticed that there had been no effort to turn off the 24 hour passage lights in my building. I cannot understand why we can’t have these on motion detectors at night.

My 2 cats were fascinated by the candles!

Technorati Tags: Earth Hour, Adelaide, no effort made, no effort for Earth Hour

The latest news is that in the Antarctic, the temperature is rising five times faster than elsewhere. Many of the penguin colonies are under threat. It was really sad watching film of penguins with eggs surrounded by soft snow melt that was drowning the eggs. A new situation the parent birds had no behaviour to cope with.

We all know by now that polar bears are becoming endangered as their ice shelf disappears.

I read yesterday that the rate of species extinction at present is greater than when the dinosaurs became extinct.

Technorati Tags: Arctic, Antarctic, global warming, polar bears at risk, penguins at risk, penguin colonies under threat