Is it worm breeding season?

I took a peek in my worm farm this morning. Oh my gosh there are a lot of baby worms in there - roughly the thickness of a dressmaking pin and upwards. At least I hope they're baby worms and not some other kind of worm which shouldn't be there. Not to worry, this is an experiment after all.

The lower chamber looks to be almost completely consumed (ie converted to poo) and there's the beginnings of a good layer of castings in the upper chamber too.

After several months of feeding them not much at all, it seems like I now need to step up the pace a bit. Michelle went to a Tupperware party last weekend and ordered a little gadget which might come in really handy for this, though I'm sure that wasn't what she had in mind. More on that one after it's delivered.

Reflections on the Climate Change Forum

Many thanks to all who attended last night's forum at the Chermside library, hosted by BNCWAG. There were around seventy people including the group members and the politicians which means fifty or more responded to our invitation.

We had five politicians participating:
- Wayne Swan, ALP (current member for Lilley)
- Simon Kean-Hammerson, Greens (candidate for Lilley)
- Andrew Bartlett, Democrats (senate representative for Qld)
- Larissa Waters, Greens (senate candidate for Qld)
- Phil Johnson, Climate Change Coalition (senate candidate for Qld)

In some ways I felt it was a little unbalanced to have two Greens candidates on the panel, but I guess it's representative of their concern for the issue of climate change that they would consider it worthwhile to spend their time with us.

We opened with Dr Trevor Berrill's presentation which appeared to be well accepted by everyone present, including the politicians. Trevor did a brilliant job of setting the context for the night, with an emphasis on climate change as part of a broader concern for sustainability. He brought the issue home with a look at the local impacts and a call for local responses.

Mr Swan's political experience and professionalism is immediately obvious and he has an engaging speaking style - a combination which gives him an edge in keeping people's attention while he talks. I interpreted his position (and by extension the position of the ALP) to be that although climate change is the single most urgent issue facing humanity, it's not important enough to take any action which might harm the Australian economy. Unlike the Liberal party they've announced a target for GHG reductions by 2050 - I think it's 60% below year 2000 levels, based on the recommendations of the Stern report from the UK. But they are refusing to say anything about shorter-term targets until their own economic advice comes through from an analysis which is currently underway.

Mr Bartlett is somewhat more softly-spoken, with the air of somebody who weighs his words carefully before he permits them to become speech. A serious but not sombre man who earned a warm reaction from the audience for his assessment of "clean coal" as a marketing term chosen more for its emotive effect than its accuracy. As he pointed out, "less-dirty coal" is more truthful but doesn't have the same ring to it. And although I can't recall many specific policy details I gained the firm impression that this thoughtful bloke represents a party that's genuinely interested in the advancement of humanity in an ethical, prosperous and sustainable fashion.

Mr Kean-Hammerson was the third speaker, and I mean no disrespect when I say that he did not appear to be very practised in the art of public presentation. The Greens policies have been online since March so there's not much to say in that regard other than to suggest you go and look them up if you aren't familiar with them. With regard to climate change specifically and sustainability in general, I suspect that my own vision and values are more closely aligned with the Greens than with the other "major" parties. I'm not entirely sure I'd be comfortable with a Green majority in parliament but their influence, especially in the Senate, is welcome. To get back to Mr Kean-Hammerson individually, I was fascinated by the insight gained through his childhood in Kenya (I think it was Kenya, please correct me if needed) with regards to social and industrial development. If you're a voter in the Lilley electorate, try and find an opportunity to speak with this man and get to know him a little better.

The introduction of our fourth speaker marked a small milestone in history. The Climate Change Coalition was only registered as a political party three weeks ago and last night was the first public address by Mr Johnson, who is standing for election to the Senate. As you can infer from their name they have a fairly focused agenda. Mr Johnson has a background as a professional in the health sciences and acquits himself well in front of an audience. The sceptic in me rates the party's election prospects as poor, but I'm a bit inclined to give Mr Johnson my primary vote as a statement of support for his policy objectives.

Ms Waters had the closing statement and an opportunity to repeat the Greens key messages. A 30-year-old environmental lawyer with a somewhat vivacious style, she pressed the case for Greens seats in the Senate as the only way to break the Liberal/National coalition's influence in government even if Kevin Rudd is successful in his bid for the Prime Minister's office. It's an argument that bears some serious consideration.

Now to try and summarise some of the audience's questions and the responses as best my recollection allows.

A challenge was made regarding the accuracy of the term "clean coal". Unsurprisingly four out of five candidates agreed that it was an oxymoron while Mr Swan stuck to the party line in stressing the belief that coal-sourced power is essential for Australia's economy in the foreseeable future.

The candidates were asked whether any of them were brave enough to face the public and urge us to change our consumptive behaviour in the interests of efficiency and sustainability. The most memorable response came from Ms Waters who declared that she tells people not to buy things they don't need because it won't make them happy and it harms the environment.

Mr Swan was challenged regarding the relative importance of climate change versus the economy. His response was the standard ALP cake-and-eat-it line with reference to the Stern report and the need to wait for the results of their own analysis before committing to any "rash" actions. I understand the need for a large party like the ALP to be cautious with their policy development and disclosure but I can't avoid the impression that they consider the possibility of recession to be worse than the predicted effects of climate change. If that's not true, the ALP needs to do a better job of communicating it.

An insightful question came from none other than Doone Wyborne of Geodynamics fame - the company which is attempting to develop the hot rock geothermal resource in South Australia. He asked about the parties' stance on population management. Unfortunately I wasn't able to listen to all of the responses but I did catch Mr Bartlett's comment that he wasn't a fan of "steady-state economics" but saw economic growth within a stable population as being necessary to alleviate poverty. Mr Swan expressed concern about the social consequences of a reducing population, advocating instead a long-term policy of "replacement", ie zero population growth. Mr Kean-Hammerson described a conversation with an African villager in which numerous children were seen as a necessary component of family life at least partly for their capacity to do work such as water carrying: the provision of electricity to perform such practical tasks would, it was claimed, reduce the incentive to bear more children.

I also took the opportunity to ask a question myself. It was prompted by Malcolm Turnbull's comment about the prospect of achieving a global zero-emissions electricity sector sometime this century and based on my belief that values drive behaviour. The first part of the question was directed towards Dr Berrill: is it feasible? His answer, essentially, was yes - provided we're all bloody serious about achieving it. The second part was for the politicians and all I needed was a yes/no answer. "Do you dare to envision a society like that?"

I was pretty sure that the Greens and the Climate Change Coalition would answer in the affirmative. The Democrats I had hope in. But I was concerned that the ALP - in reality the only party with a chance of wresting control from the nuclear-bent Liberals - would prevaricate or maybe even deny the possibility that an advanced technical society could achieve balance with nature. If the ALP wasn't even considering a zero-emissions future then the fight for climate action in the next few years would be a difficult one indeed.

To my delight, every one of the candidates including Mr Swan delivered an unqualified "yes" in response. I am yet hopeful for the future of human civilisation.

Free recycling for old computers: Oct 27-29

For my fellow residents of the Brisbane area.

A certain international computer company renowned for making lots of lots of stuff that people want to buy is running a free recycling program around the country for any old computers and related junk. Brisbane's turn is next month with six locations around the city open to take your unwanted stuff.

There are conditions on what's accepted but there are no strings attached. Full details online here.

More on Howard's "Clean Energy Target"

Since reading this morning's announcement and posting my initial response, I've come across more coverage from the ABC including an interview with Federal Minister for the Environment, Malcolm Turnbull. The transcript is here.

Apart from the mandatory political bluster and spin, there was this most amazing statement from the minister:

"Our approach to climate change... is pragmatic and practical. We are determined to meet this [target], we are determined to get to the point in the course of this century, where the whole world has a zero emission electricity sector, and we will aim to achieve that in Australia, but we've got to get there and do it practically."

I was only this morning wondering to myself when we'd see a political party come out with some kind of long-term vision for energy supply, and in particular whether it was too much to ask for a party to look ahead to a 100% renewable, sustainable energy infrastructure. Out of the blue (no political pun intended) Mr Turnbull drops half of my dream into a national radio interview.

The whole world, with a zero emission electricity sector, this century. Credit where it's due: that's a great goal.

However... and you knew that had to be coming... zero emissions technology does not necessarily mean sustainable or even particularly desirable technology. Wind power has no waste products. Coal plants have megatonnes of CO2, fly ash and contaminated water, plus an ongoing dependence on oil for coal mining and transportation. Uranium-based nuclear is arguably worse. And in time even coal and uranium supplies will dwindle, leaving the world dependent on a greater energy supply than it can sustain.

(Rhetorically:) Minister, what would it take for you to at least aspire to a truly sustainable clean energy future? If not this century, then next? How much could we achieve even by 2050 if we truly put our hearts into it?

I begrudgingly concede that this is a step in the right direction, a slight improvement over what was. But I have to agree with John Connor of the Climate Institute who pointed out that Spain has a target of 30% renewable energy by 2020, prompting the question of why in sun-drenched Australia we couldn't aim to match or better that.

Still a case of "target, schmarget" as far as I'm concerned. Somebody bring me some real policy.

Target, my arse!

I hope that subject line got your attention. Because that's exactly the strategy employed by our Prime Minister with his weekend announcement of a "National Clean Energy Target". Hopefully I've got something more useful to say than he does.

The more astute reader may have already picked up on my subtle hints and started to suspect that I'm not particularly impressed with Mr Howard's efforts in the area of clean energy. But for the sake of not being an arse myself I'll make the majority of this post as objective and even-handed as I can, starting... now.

There are three major aspects to the announcement: the what, the how and the when.

What: 30,000 gigawatt hours of energy per year. It sure sounds like a lot (it's meant to) but it's a funny way of putting things. Since one year has around 8,760 hours in it we can convert it to a measure representing the average instantaneous rate of power generation. Dividing 30,000 by 8,760 gives a smidge over 3.4. That's 3.4 gigawatts. To put that into perspective, Tarong power station in South-East Queensland has a generating capacity of 1.4 gigawatts, so we're talking about just under two and a half Tarongs worth of energy. I've loaned my copy of Mark Diesendorf's book to a friend so I can't look up what fraction of Australia's total present energy generation that is but my initial estimate would be "not much". To be fair, increasing our total renewable energy capacity to this level would be a significant step forward, but see the next paragraph.

How: This is not a "renewable" energy target or even a "sustainable" energy target. This is an allegedly "clean" energy target which refers to "technologies that emit less than 200 kilograms of greenhouse gases per megawatt of electricity generated", explicitly including coal-fired systems with carbon capture and presumably including uranium-based nuclear plants. There's a serious omission in that definition, which is the amount of time over which those emissions will be measured. Multiplying 200kg/MW by 3.4GW gives 680 tonnes. But is that 680 tonnes per year? That would be quite impressive actually, but it could well mean 680 tonnes per HOUR. Regardless, it appears to be a business-as-usual approach from a government which has pledged its support for the coal and nuclear industries, declared its faith in the gospel of carbon capture and storage and demonstrated its disinterest truly clean, renewable, sustainable energy sources.

It must also be pointed out that this scheme is intended to replace all the existing state-based schemes and coalesce them into a national one. There could be some real advantages from an administrative and economic perspective in doing this. But whereas the existing schemes are largely being implemented using true renewables this new arrangement seeks to bring coal and possibly uranium-based nuclear energy under the same umbrella.

When: Mr Howard's announcement sets the year 2020 as the goal for implementing this scheme. That much at least is clear and unambiguous. But if 3.4GW is only a small fraction of today's consumption, it'll likely be a much smaller fraction in twelve years time unless dramatic action on energy-efficiency is taken between now and then.

In the end this policy has the appearance of a misleading pre-election publicity grab designed to give the marginally-concerned majority the impression that the Liberals are being proactive about addressing climate change and sustainability, when all they actually intend to do is sweep the carbon under the rug and rush to build uranium-based nuclear plants as soon as they possibly can.

Regarding baseload power

Just following up on my last post where I briefly mentioned that the reason we can get such cheap power on off-peak rates is that coal-fired power stations can't be shut down overnight and the energy they produce has to go somewhere.

Found an interesting article today (via EcoGeek) from which I take the following quotes:

"Baseload is what those older technologies provided, not what we need... We need something that follows the natural load."

In other words, the grid is currently constructed to accommodate capital-intensive fossil fuel plants that need to run 24/7 to be most efficient and economical. The natural load, on the other hand, is the demand for electricity created by people's and the economy's daily rhythm. That demand naturally peaks when people are up and about and falls at night when they're asleep. Renewable energy sources, Mills argues, more closely mirror human behavior. Solar electricity production soars when demand does during the day. At night, stored solar energy and other renewable sources like wind, which tends to blow strongest in the evening, can more closely match lower demand as people and machines wind down.

Those of us who wish to support the expansion of the renewable energy industry need to counter the argument that renewables cannot supply sufficient baseload power. Perhaps we should be pointing out that the demand for such high power consumption overnight has been artificially generated to suit the coal-fired power stations.

But I'll also take that as justification for my decision to invest in a solar water heater even though it doesn't appear to make economic sense under current conditions. By reducing our night-time electricity consumption I'm ever so slightly changing the demand curve and eroding the argument that we need technology which can provide such large amounts of energy 24 hours a day.

Money and power

This past week has had a fairly clear theme for me: the price of energy. There's the record-breaking crude oil prices, a discussion at our BNCWAG meeting about the confusing options for buying renewable electricity and then of course the replacement of our hot water system with a solar one.

Lets leave the oil issue alone for the moment (partly because the record prices are being kicked along by a weak US dollar which reduces the significance of the raw numbers). Just now I'm more interested in the electricity market.

Here in Queensland the energy market is regulated. There are fixed tariffs for the supply of electricity to various types of customers for various purposes. Most homes have two circuits: one which supplies electricity for general domestic purposes 24 hours a day for roughly 15c per kWh, and another which typically is connected to a water heater but only works during off-peak hours and is billed at a much lower rate (as low as about 6.5c per kWh).

These prices are the new ones, following an increase at the start of July which was largely attributed to the rising cost of producing electricity with cooling water being in short supply due to the drought. Ironically the drought conditions have led to a significant reduction in shower times and a corresponding reduction in the amount of water heating required. My most recent figures have us averaging 7.3kWh per day this winter at a cost of around 47c.

Now here's the bit which is bugging me. If my shiny new solar hot water system was so good that it never needed any electrical boosting (it's not), and assuming that we required that same amount of heating all year round (we don't), it would take just shy of 30 years for us to recoup the cost of the new unit from the savings on our electricity bills.

I can imagine my wife's raised eyebrow and my father's shaking head about now. But even having run these numbers I would still make the same decision again. It's only bugging me because it makes it harder to convince other people that it's a decision they'd want to make too. There are three reasons I want to point out here.

1. This is mostly about saving energy, not money

The pursuit of short-term economic advantage is what led to our current dirty coal infrastructure and is what maintains the hegemony of the coal industry in Australia's energy industry.

The reason that electricity is available at less than half price overnight is that the massive steam turbines in the coal-fired power plants cannot be switched on and off in a daily cycle. The operators of these plants need to smooth out the demand curve over the course of the day and these skewed pricing arrangements help them achieve that by encouraging additional energy consumption during the night.

It works too: this past quarter my water heater used more energy than everything else in the rest of the house combined! Though it will reduce our bill by less than 30% and at these prices will never pay for itself, installing a solar hot water system is going to approximately halve our total electricity consumption.

2. Electricity prices are likely to rise sharply - even for dirty coal.

There are a number of pressures on the electricity market which I suspect will cause prices to rise sharply over the next couple of decades. If you forgot about sustainability concerns completely you'd still have decreasing availability of cooling water, increasing global demand for coal, increasing local demand for electricity and the need for infrastructure work on generation and transmission.

Now I do hope that the sustainability and environmental agenda is going to have a powerful influence on future policy and development. This would lead to greater reliance on wind and other renewables which have a lower overall capacity, generally higher cost (than the present price of coal where many costs are subsidised or simply not accounted for) and a different delivery profile (solar, for example, is obviously linked to daily cycles).

All in all I expect the price of a unit of energy for the end user like you and me is going nowhere but up. Hopefully through a range of efficiency measures we can keep our overall costs from rising. My Solahart might turn out to be an economic winner in the future.

3. It's in keeping with the philosophy of sustainable design

I keep thinking back to McDonough's work on architecture and building design and his philosophy of making the best use of the available natural resources. Without the solar water heater up there the sunlight's energy would be wasted. My vision for the future is nowhere near as vivid as McDonough's but I'm quite certain that I'd expect to see solar heating in a place like Brisbane.

Sunshine on tap

True to their word, the Solahart mob came and installed our new water heater today. The tank was only filled mid-afternoon so it's not had a chance to capture much sun yet and the water coming out of the tap is merely tepid. We've got the electric booster switch turned on tonight so that we can have a shower in the morning, but hopefully tomorrow night the kids will be enjoying the warmth of the sun after dark as they take their bath.

He was only 19... now where's the new kid?

There was a death in the household today. Finally!

Our hulking great electric-storage hot water system sprung a leak this morning after spending 19 years turning one of the most useful forms of energy into one of the least. Hooray and good riddance.

It was a bit of fun in a way. The silly thing was installed inside (presumably so we didn't lose too much heat during Brisbane's biting winters...?) which meant that a sudden leak was something of an emergency. Had to try and shut off the water coming into it and hold open the valves to let as much water as possible escape through the overflow pipe instead of onto the laundry floor. Then discovered that the inlet shut-off tap, which probably hadn't been used in nearly 20 years, just didn't work. The only way to stop the water from flowing was to turn it off at the mains.

Right about then I called Solahart and booked a guy to come out and see us ASAP, which was originally defined as 4:30pm but ended up being closer to 6 after he forgot and I had to chase him up. Oh well, these things happen. In the meantime I had to restore mains water for all our other needs like drinking and flushing the toilet - I ended up removing the inlet tap completely and sealing off that pipe with a brass cap that set me back the princely sum of one hundred and five cents.

I was surprised in the end by the advice we received and the product we ended up ordering. The bloke said that in a place like Brisbane which gets so much sun you should actually avoid buying the most thermally-efficient solar water heaters because for much of the summer you'll end up with water being heated to boiling point, which means a whole lot of water being released down the drain and being completely wasted. With that in mind and having given due consideration to the orientation of our house and the load-bearing capacity of the roof, we're getting a 300L roof-mounted model from the lower-end "L Series".

Because of the weight distribution it'll be mounted flat on the roof facing slightly north of west instead of on a riser which would have had it facing slightly east of north. To compensate for the reduced exposure to the sun it'll have three collector panels instead of the usual two.

If we're lucky it'll be installed before the weekend.

Imagine (not quite) all the people

A really, really long post but one which means a lot to me.

There are a whole litany of serious environmental and resource-depletion crises besetting this amazing Earth. We're fairly well aware of Climate Change and Peak Oil because of media exposure and their direct impacts on us, but there's also the destruction of habitats and the resulting mass extinctions, the over-exploitation of fisheries leading to ecosystem collapses... and on and on it goes. At some level we can frequently find links between these issues and purely human problems like war, poverty and disease.

Everybody in the developed world knows all of this. Most of us care to some degree but are generally too involved in our immediate, day-to-day concerns to try and do anything serious about alleviating these problems. Most of the time it all just seems overwhelming. But in the backs of our minds lurks one simple, indisputable, dangerous fact which offers a solution to all of these woes and at the same time is almost anathema:

The Earth would be far better off if there were not so many people living on it.

It doesn't sound so scary on the surface, but let's scratch at it a little. Arbitrarily, let's say we think that three billion of us would be a nice sustainable number. That's a bit less than half the number of people living today. How do we get from here to there?

If it would save the world, would it be justifiable to deliberately kill off half of humanity? I don't think so. But not everybody would agree with me. White supremacists, for example, would be very quick to suggest which half of the population should inherit the Earth. Still, simply halving the population is a foolish notion anyway because the real long-term problem is with population growth.

Pretend that our current world population of six-odd billion is sustainable in environmental and resource availability terms. Then ponder for a moment (a long moment, preferably) how we might keep the population at that level and no higher.

This is the really hard bit. Remember my recent post about how values drive behaviour? (Here) As far as I can recall, Maslov didn't explicitly talk about humans having a "need" to have children. Perhaps he should have, or perhaps it's just so obvious it didn't need to be mentioned. But I believe that as clever and "evolved" as we are, we are still deeply driven by instinctive, natural forces to go forth and multiply. Every single one of your ancestors, right back to Adam or the Amoeba (depending on your world view) did exactly that. It's who you are. It's intrinsic to the nature of every living thing.

Over time that instinct has been reinforced by the natural law of strength in numbers. Species which have more offspring tend to have a survival advantage whether it be through simply playing the numbers game (like sea turtles) or through group behaviours (like ants or bees).

Getting back to that simple, indisputable, dangerous idea... I think we find the notion of population limits so troubling because it's unnatural.

My wife and I have three children, each of them deliberately conceived and dearly loved. It's natural and wonderful and I delight in my family. But in choosing to have a third child I have become part of the overpopulation problem.

(In my defense let me note that Michelle was about five months pregnant already when I had the emotional breakdown which resulted in me taking up the cause of sustainability. We won't be having a fourth.)

I get to wondering about what possible hope there might be for the future. It seems obvious to me that if we continue on our present and entirely natural track we're going to repeat the Easter Island story on a global scale, or something similarly catastrophic. Somehow we must become self-limiting not only in our consumption of resources (which we are actually starting to do!) but also in our reproduction.

Pause there and take a breather before I try and condense all of the above into a single paragraph...

We're bringing calamity upon ourselves and the rest of the world as a result of us simply doing what comes naturally. It's not ethical (or in any way practical) to try and cull the existing population. Saving the world will require nothing less than all six billion of us agreeing to deliberately limit the number of descendants we have, in direct defiance of nature itself. Failure to do this could result in the extinction of humanity and possibly of most or all life on Earth.

It's an impossibly daunting idea.

But just imagine if it could be done. What would such a society be like to live in? If we're going to succeed in the long term I suspect we'll see well-established pockets of this kind of society by 2050.

By definition I'm not talking about a "one child policy" such as exists in China. That's a strategy for reducing population rather than maintaining a steady one. In a steady-state population each adult would have exactly two children, on average.

Perhaps a "two child policy" will form the basis of our future civilisation. For the sake of human rights I don't think it's something which should be in any way enforceable by law - if a couple wanted fourteen children I feel it would be morally wrong to forceably prevent them from having them (assuming that the children would be properly cared for). But at the same time if birth numbers were carefully monitored then a system of "voluntary allocation" could be devised to help keep the population steady.

Start with the notion that beyond the inherent right to reproduce, it's reasonable for every person to have two children. Of course you need two people to make a child so this is not a doubling process. Each child represents two combined "rights" from two parents.

I suspect that in a society with a strong philosophy of sustainable population there would be an increased number of people who would choose to remain childless. It may be that they wish to live a life of rich experience without parental responsibility. Or they may feel that the best way for them to contribute to society would be by devoting themselves to professional or philanthrophic endeavours. Such a person could notionally "give up" their right to have two children and in doing so make it reasonable that another couple somewhere might have one more. (Remember that individuals don't have children - couples do. Making one child requires two "rights" to come together.)

It's almost certain that there will always be premature deaths. If an adult dies before having produced any offspring then "their" children could reasonably be had by somebody else. Should a child die, I imagine the bereaved parents would be considered to have the right to bear another should they so desire - but if they chose not to then it seems reasonable that another couple might have an additional child to make up for the one lost.

On the other side of the equation there are those who become parents of more than two children by accident or who simply desire a larger family. In a voluntary steady-state population there would ideally be enough people making deliberate family planning decisions on the basis of the overall population balance that a zero growth rate could be maintained.

I reckon I could live in a world like that. One more thing before I wrap this up: could it possibly work in real life on a global scale?

Honestly, I have no idea. On the positive side I do know that people can choose to alter their behaviour if their values demand they do something other than what's "natural". Witness suicide bombers...

The negatives are pretty big though. Avoiding pregnancy requires either contraception or sexual restraint - already a big challenge in the developing world for several reasons. As far as I know the world's system of economics considers population growth to be necessary thing. And in strategic military terms a larger population is generally more powerful than a smaller one (the old strength in numbers thing) and there's more than enough national, racial and religious tension in the world to make that a current concern.

Yet again for me it comes down to a question of values. If humanity wanted to maintain a sustainable population, I believe it certainly could do so.

What do you think? If you agree with me, what can we do to bring about this kind of change in the world?

Thanks so much for reading.

The best news I've had in ages

Check out this story in today's local newspaper, then come back to me.

With the exception of some of the public comments at the bottom, I am absolutely delighted to see this. No, I haven't finally gone mad, this is actually really good news.

Why? Two reasons.

First, because Andrew McNamara has been appointed as Minister for Climate Change and Sustainability by new Qld Premier, Anna Bligh. Andrew has been on my watch list for a little while now as both the Member for Hervey Bay and the patron of the Australian branch of ASPO - the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (and gas). This guy clearly understands that we are facing an enormous threat in the form of soaring fuel prices and he's now been placed in a position of authority where there's the potential for taking real action towards reshaping our society to cope with it.

Secondly, Peak Oil is now front page news. I've said in the past that I think it's a pity Climate Change got the public's attention first. In my opinion Peak Oil is the more critical problem - though of course our response to it must include a comprehensive strategy to deal with the climate issue. It was inevitable that people would bump into the oil problem eventually but I think today goes down in history as the day that South-East Queensland first took notice.

I wonder how long it'll be before Canberra does the same.

Event: An Inconvenient Truth presentation

Brought to you by the BNCWAG...

We are delighted to have Chris McGrath from Environmental Law Publishing coming to present Al Gore's famous slideshow. Chris was one of the 85 Aussies trained by Mr Gore last year to help spread the message about humanity's impact on the climate. As well as the presentation itself there's plenty of opportunity to ask questions - both of Chris and our group members.

Wednesday 10th October, 6:30pm for a 7pm start.
Chermside Library meeting room.
375 Hamilton Road, Chermside.

Mr S and I are hoping to have a display set up to show people how we're reducing our greenhouse gas emissions through energy efficiency measures and the use of renewable energy. If you have any suggestions or questions please let me know in the comments.

BNCWAG

All the good names are taken. This is a problem for anybody who wants to start a blog, a business or even a community group. So it is that I find myself a proud participant in the Brisbane North Climate and Water Action Group, or BNCWAG for short.

Yes I'm having a bit of a joke about the name, but I'm quite sincere about the proudly participating bit. I mentioned this group in a previous post and in the weeks since have had a chance to get together with them a few more times. It's still small and highly informal, which is good for the time being. There are a couple of strong personalities providing most of the direction and a fair chunk of the courage but there's still a need and opportunity for everybody to contribute to a level which suits them.

Prior to my involvement this mob had been meeting for only a few months yet had already had meetings with a number of high-profile politicians including Peter Garret. Although formally apolitical there's naturally a strong sympathy for many of the policies and activities of the Greens. One of our group members donned a bear suit for the "Walk Against Warming" and added a lot of colour to the event - even running up and hugging Bob Brown, so I'm told.

On Sunday week ago a number of us went for a brief tour of the local Kingfisher Recycling Centre which was established by one of our group in the 1980's and is today a world leader in community-based materials recycling and work provision programs for people with a reduced work capacity. It's inspirational stuff.

Then on Thursday night we held our first public forum with guest speakers: one man who's at the forefront of hot rock geothermal power generation in Australia (if not the world) and another who's a recognised authority in energy-efficiency and renewable energy technologies in general. There wasn't a huge turnout but there were enough to make us all feel that the night was worthwhile with plenty of opportunity to improve in the future.

For my part I've agreed to help promote our activities by providing information to various online events diaries. Mr S and I have also volunteered to host a little information stand at an upcoming event where we'll demonstrate a lot of the things we're doing towards sustainability in our own homes. He's even gone so far as to get us playing with video cameras to try and produce some short demo clips which we can upload to YouTube.

If anybody local is reading this and wants to get involved, I'd love to hear from you. The group meets approximately every second Wednesday in Chermside and we're looking to host some kind of event approximately on the first Sunday afternoon of each month.

Watch this space, more info coming soon.

Giving up the pot

While we're on the subject of addictions...

Just kidding. I'm tired and it seemed funny at the time. This is about plant pots, more particularly their absence.

Some of those little capsicum plants which we grew from fresh seed as a random experiment have really flourished in the recent wet and warming weather. Many of the others were starting to show signs of stress, presumably from overcrowding. Today I decided it was time to try our first bit of in-ground planting.

There's an existing garden bed very near to where the capsicum seedlings have been growing. The previous owner of this house put some effort into improving the soil but over the past two years that bed has been totally taken over by something that might be aloe vera. This afternoon I removed a pile of them and cleared about two square meters of the bed.

On top of that I put a layer of compost - my first significant use of the stuff which I've been brewing up in the back of the yard. Michelle and I transplanted about six really strong-looking seedlings and four more which were the best of the rest from the pot into the compost. Then all around them went a layer of the mulch which I made two weekends ago.

It's pretty simple stuff, really, but apart from some really naive poking about when I was a kid this is the first time I've done anything like this: growing seedlings in a pot, making compost, making mulch, planting out a garden bed. To be honest I'm half expecting the plants to die but that's all fine in the spirit of an experiment.

Thankfully our lives don't (yet?) depend on a good capsicum harvest in the back garden. But with a bit of luck we'll have some of our favourite salad fruits from our own crop on the table and the BBQ this summer.

My body goes green

(You're actually reading a post with a title like this? Ew... you're gross...)

Some time ago I made a non-core promise that for the sake of reducing my ecological footprint in terms of water and land use, methane production, oil consumption and waste generation I'd restrict the amount of Ice Break I consume to 375ml per day. Of course I have to call it a non-core promise now because I've utterly failed to keep it. But that's OK if you rename a broken commitment and call it an NCP.

Unfortunately for my vast network of Ice Break suppliers, my body appears to have a higher standard of ethics than that.

I have a heart condition which basically comes down to not being good at keeping a steady rhythm. Lately it's been getting worse. Much worse. And I noticed a pattern - it was worst on the days when I had consumed the most Ice Break. A little bit of experimenting seems to have confirmed that if I drink more than the allocated 375ml in a day I get bad arrhythmia.

In terms of values driving behavioural changes my addiction has so far proven stronger than the idea of preventing some cow farts and giving VISY a few less bottles to recycle. But if drinking less Ice Break is going to stop my heart from skipping like an epileptic wallaby while I'm trying to go to sleep at night then the country air's going to be just that little bit cleaner from now on.