Free insulation, solar hot water
I’ve been asked about the Federal Government’s grants for insulation, so here is the relevent link.
Basically you can get $1600 back for either installing solar hot water or installing ceiling insulation. The insulation grant is only available if you currently have no ceiling insulation or your ceiling insulation has an R-value of less than 0.5. (The recommended R-value for ceiling insulation in Sydney, for instance, is 2.5.)
In most cases, this grant will make installing ceiling insulation free.
This is separate to the grant for installing solar panels.
Is the meat ant a cure for cane toads?
Scientists hope they may have found something to stop the cane toad in its tracks – and it’s a native.
Introduced to combat the native beetle that was destroying introduced sugar crops in Queensland, the cane toad has become Australia’s enemy number one, on a seemingly unstoppable march across the nation’s tropics.
But now scientists have found that the native meat ant seems immune from the cane toad’s poison. Could they be the weapon to stop the cane toad invasion?
Still, we’ve been down this path before. The article ends with a warning from Professor Ian Lowe:
The delusion that you can have effective biological control still seems very strong in Australia. People talk about managing environmental systems as if it’s no more complex than managing a jam factory. We should have learned from the cane toad that the cure is often worse than the disease.
Solar air conditioning
Here’s something that might make a difference. The ANU is developing a solar air-conditioning system. Air conditioning is one cause of peak loading on the electricity grid, when everyone puts on their air-cons at the same time on hot days. Reduce peak loading and you don’t need so many power stations.
You’d think some form of thermal solar air conditioning would be a no-brainer. After all, when do you need air conditioning? When the sun’s shining, of course.
At the same time, it’s interesting because a supposed inability to cope with peak loading is often cited as a drawback of renewable energy.
Talking of the ANU, if you’re wondering what’s happened to their sliver cell technology, which could dramatically reduce the cost of photovoltaic solar panels, here’s an update of sorts.
Multiply your PC, cut your emissions
A company called NComputing has brought out an interesting-looking gadget that allows multiple users to hook into one computer. Each computer needs their own screen, keyboard and mouse, but they all share the actual computer itself. The company says most computer users only use a fraction of the processing power and RAM of their computers, and so they can easily share the terminal.
The company says up to 11 users can hook up to one computer, with huge savings on hardware and software cost, and also on energy use.
Carbon trading or carbon tax? It\’s immaterial.
An article in Online Opinion by Geoff Carmody presents the case for a carbon tax rather than a carbon trading scheme.
I\’d agree. But I\’d add: it doesn\’t matter.
Why not? Because until Governments decide tackling climate change is a higher priority than economic growth, any approach is doomed to fail.
Climate change is a big issue and it needs a \”big ideas\” response that will transform society, not tinkering around the edges.
Reducing emissions will reduce economic growth. Emissions continue to rise because we continue to make more and more things, then transport them huge distances around the world. That is what economic growth means, and that is what causes emissions.
At the moment Governments are choosing to pursue growth, while trying to make us – and themselves, perhaps – believe we can have our cake and eat it: that we can have both emissions reductions and growth.
Modern politicians, almost to a man, subscribe to Bill Clinton\’s famous maxim: \”It\’s the economy, stupid.\” Elections are won and lost on the battlefield of economic prosperity.
The ETS (or rather, the CPRS) won\’t work because the targets are set deliberately low, to avoid it impacting on economic growth, and the Government is spooked, by industry claims that it will hit the economy, into handing out free permits and exemptions.
For the same reasons, a carbon tax will fail because the Government will set the tax rate too low to significantly dampen demand for energy, and would give big polluters tax breaks and exemptions.
It all starts with political will. At the moment there is no political will to tackle climate change. You only have to look at the global summits and billions of dollars thrown at the financial \”crisis\” compared to the energy and money put into climate change solutions to see that.
What politician will have the courage to come out and advocate a no-growth economy? Or a contracting economy?
Yet that is, I believe, the only solution to climate change.
But an end to growth needs to be sold in positive terms.
Above all, it does not mean we will be less happy. Indeed, studies tend to show increasing material wealth in Western societies has not led to any increase in happiness, and in fact may have had the opposite effect.
Fulfilling working lives, vibrant and caring communities and nourishing contact with the natural world are, I believe, more important factors in quality of life than material possessions or even material comforts. A country such as Cuba has a healthcare system and life expectancy that equals or surpasses the USA, despite being a far poorer nation.
Nor does it mean we need all become killjoy wowsers. Spend time in any number of poor communities in developing nations and you\’ll find no shortage of laughter, joking and joie de vivre.
Climate change, if what the science tells us is true, will end economic growth anyway. Indeed, indefinite economic growth is not sustainable for a range of environmental reasons, of which climate change is only one. The choice facing us is between a \”managed descent\” to a smaller economic base, or the blind acceleration of continued economic growth until we head off the cliffedge into a nightmare future of runaway climate change, food shortages and resource wars.
This isn\’t a case of left versus right. This is a whole new political paradigm.
This isn\’t a case of the technicalities of tax systems. It\’s a big picture, transformation of society issue.
Carbon tax or carbon trading? We need a much bigger vision than that.
Electric battery breakthrough
Batteries are a big deal these days. To be precise, electric batteries that hold enough charge to power a car, say, for a few hundred kilometres and that can be recharged in minutes.
In fact, they have become one of the current holy grails of the green tech industry. A longer-lasting, faster-charging battery will trigger a wholesale switch to electric cars, for instance.
A US company, EEStor, has been promising to bring out a lithium ultra capacitor for a while now. And now researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have announced their own lithium iron phosphate competitor, which they say could be on the market in two to three years.
If either of these – or another competitor – delivers on their promises, it will signal the beginning of the end of the petrol engine.
A tale of three meetings
This is a quick tale of three international meetings that took place this week.
The Sydney Morning Herald’s resident climate denier Miranda Devine was allowed to devote a page lead op-ed story to report on a climate sceptic conference in the US, where a few of the usual suspects rehashed familiar, discredited, climate sceptic lines.
Elsewhere, more credible scientists were meeting in Copenhagen for an International Scientific Congress on Climate Change. The congress issued an urgent appeal to world leaders to act now on climate change, warning that in the last two years global warming seems to have speeded up dramatically, surpassing the worst predictions of even the most recent IPCC report of 2007, and we may only have a few years to prevent an irrevesible planetary catastrophe.
Curiously, none of Australia’s op-ed writers picked up on that one.
And where were those world leaders?
Many of them were meeting in England to discuss the economic downturn – a “crisis” they clearly believe is more urgent and important than climate change. (After all, where is the trillion-dollar environmental crisis package we really need?)
EU cap and trade scheme working shock!
An interesting report in the New York Times recently cites a study claiming the European Union’s cap and trade greenhouse gas emissions reduction scheme is finally producing results. The study found a 3 per cent fall in Europe’s emissions in 2008, and attributed 40 per cent of that fall to the cap and trade scheme.
Liposuction – the answer to climate change
April 22, 2009 · Filed under commentary · Tagged climate change, consumerism, food
Who’d have guessed? A new report links obesity to climate change. Fat people, believe it or not, eat more food and are more likely to haul their lardy arses around in cars than to get out the bike.
As George Monbiot points out in The Guardian, it’s unfair to blame fat people per se. Obesity is simply the most visible sign of the overconsumption that characterises our whole society. Food, cars, gadgets, toys, clothes… you name it, we’ve got too much of it.
On the other hand, working on the basis that every crisis is also an opportunity, there’s always liposuction. I’ve blogged before about the amazing Earthrace boat but what I didn’t mention was this.
OK, so it only went 15km on human fat, but it’s a start.
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