My Copenhagen Letter to Dirty Kev

I used to battle depression over the climate crisis. These days I'm having more trouble with anger towards "the establishment". Obama makes me want to hope, but I'm terrified that he'll do a Kevin on the climate too.

There's just over a month to go before Copenhagen and activism is in top gear. I went to a local 350.org gathering last weekend and just now I took advantage of Greenpeace's Dirty Kev campaign to send a letter to the federal government. The form letter is nice, but I had more to say:

Above is a form letter which I support 100%. Personally I wish to also express my anger and disgust at the way your government has handled the greenhouse gas issue over the past two years. Your action has fallen appallingly short of the inspiring promises and uplifting rhetoric we heard in the months either side of the election.

Professor Garnaut gave you sound, realistic advice which you arrogantly (or is it fearfully?) discarded. Your proposed CPRS does almost exactly the opposite of what is required to make a meaningful, morally-justifiable contribution to protecting the climate for my children. Your renewable energy legislation actually undermines efforts to reduce our nation's use of fossil fuels.

My family, along with thousands of others around this country, is prepared to pay actual costs, suffer actual hardship and make actual sacrifices to help realise an actually sustainable future for humanity. And what a wonderful future it could be!

Please: have the guts to face up to the reality of this climate crisis. We need genuine leadership to inspire this country to make strong decisions as individuals and communities. We need:
- radical improvements in energy efficiency
- deep cuts to energy consumption
- rapid phase-out of coal power
- to stop wasting money on CCS
- real investment in appropriate cost-effective renewable energy
- an actual debate on nuclear options (Gen4 designs, especially thorium-powered ones, and yes I'd have one in my back yard in preference to coal)
- a national decision to get off our arses and do something worthwhile

In closing, it's only fair to also thank you for your investment in education and internet infrastructure. I am in absolute agreement that building a sustainable, prosperous future requires the best possible education culture and world-class information technology infrastructure. But it will all be futile if we fail to turn around the global GHG emissions trend and get back into safe territory (currently estimated to be sub-350ppm) in the next several decades.

If you have even a mild concern about the climate and global warming etc, please make yourself heard now. There are lots of ways you can express yourself - sending Dirty Kev a letter is quick and easy.

Water efficiency has become a lifestyle

It's a significant day for my part of the world: for the first time in a hundred months our regional water storage capacity is above 50%. At its lowest in 2007 we had only 16.7% and the government was seriously considering the need to truck or ship drinking water in to sustain the roughly two million people in the immediate area.

Thankfully that worst-case scenario never eventuated, and there have been a number of rain events that have brought the levels up bit by bit. Most interesting, though, has been the success of water conservation programs.

Under the most severe restrictions residents were urged to target an average per-capita water use of 140 litres each day - an enormous reduction from previous norms of around 300. By the time dam levels rose to 40% in July last year, we had stayed below "Target 140" for 52 consecutive weeks. Consumption dropped to as low as 112 litres per person today in one week near the end of that period.

Reaching the 40% storage level was the trigger for easing of restrictions and the revision of our target to 170 instead of 140. And what do you suppose happened to our water consumption?



I've trawled through the weekly press releases to obtain the reported usage stats since Target 140 was introduced almost exactly two years ago and graphed them against the target at the time. Blue line shows water consumption per person per day against the red line which is the target in place at the time: 140 and 170 respectively. There are 66 weeks reported for Target 140 and 32 for Target 170, both with a couple of weeks gap over the New Year breaks.

Visually, you might think that with the relaxed restrictions our water use went up dramatically. But in fact, the averages for each target period are 131.8 and 138.3 respectively - still under 140 even with the higher target!

Very shortly we'll be operating under a Target 200 regime. It's my hope that Brisbane residents have taken the water conservation message to heart and will continue to keep their consumption well under the nominal targets.

Because despite all the good news, our State Government still wants to dam the Mary River and is building desalination plants that will be powered by burning coal.

Oh well, it's a start.

Earth Hour? Try Earth Lifestyle

Awareness is the first step, I suppose, towards effecting a change in behaviour. So I probably should keep my inclination to pooh-pooh the whole "Earth Hour" thing in check.

Suffice to say: the amount of energy saved by switching off lights for one hour a year is going to make no noticable difference to the Earth or our continued existence on it, and giving people the idea that caring for the Earth requires us to give up electric light could backfire badly.

I pretty much ignored Earth Hour last night. Continued playing chess with my daughter, listening to some music. Our household energy meter said we were using around 200W total power - though admittedly the meter is rather inaccurate at those low levels.

My point? Conserving energy needs to be a core value that drives behaviour each and every day, not a once-a-year stunt.

Transition

I've had a link for the Transition Culture website in the sidebar over there for ages, and for the Sunshine Coast Energy Action Centre, too. In case you've never clicked on them, I ought to mention that the Transition movement is all about preparing communities for a decreasing availability of oil. It originated in the UK but has started to spread around the globe. SEAC is at its heart a Transition initiative for the Sunshine Coast... but being about an hour's drive away from me it seemed rather contrary to the point for me to try and get involved in the wonderful work I hear they're doing up there.

It's beyond me to start something like that in my own area. And it's especially challenging here because Brisbane is nothing like the kind of conglomerate town and village structure of the UK and even the Sunshine Coast. It's one enormous sprawl, with a big central city council. Not on the scale of somewhere like Los Angeles, but still big enough.

So I've been watching and waiting to see how a Transition initiative might get off the ground in Brisbane, and finally it has started to happen. I had the pleasure this morning of meeting with some of those involved in the early stages of a Brisbane transition "hub", which will play a role in fostering, supporting and connecting transition groups all around the city. (That's my paraphrase, not actually endorsed by anybody.)

Not surprisingly, this group has been brought into existence through the work of people who are already recognised for their efforts along parallel lines - people from FoodConnect (a local CSA cooperative) and the actively green communities based in some of Brisbane's inner suburbs. Links have been established with SEAC and, it seems, with a similar group based in Sydney.

At this stage there's a lot of "networking" going on, literally finding out who's doing what around the city and joining the dots. Apparently there's a very handy permaculture gardener who lives in Bald Hills but tills the soil down in Morningside. I'm hoping to make their acquaintance in the near future.

This is all very welcome as far as I'm concerned. The quiet on this blog has reflected the lull in my life with regards this kind of community engagement. Hopefully the opportunity I've been waiting for has arrived.

Too much to say

Ironically, it's been quiet here because there's too much to talk about. Or maybe it's because there's been too much talk about.

Since I started doing this the world's attention has been brought quite sharply to bear on most of the issues that concern me. There's so much high profile discussion and activity going on that my little blog seems rather superfluous. Which is great!

I just want to highlight a couple of local bits of good news.

1. Brisbane folk are now habitually conservative with their water. We managed to meet the 140L/person/day target under extreme restrictions and even now that the dams are heading towards 50% capacity we're still sitting well under the 170L revised target. I just read my water meter for the first time in 201 days, and our total household usage over that period averaged only 194L per day - actually less than the previous six months when we were watching like a hawk.

2. Politics is (generally) swinging in the right direction for sustainable civilisation. The election of Obama is of course globally significant, but even here at home we've seen the Traveston Dam project put on hold, willingness to regulate agriculture in order to protect the Great Barrier Reef, plans for floating desalination plants shelved, proactive measures from government to promote energy efficiency and GHG reductions, community gardens... heaps of stuff.

3. The combination of environmental/sustainability concerns and the economic crisis is driving a swing away from "consumerism". I so hate being thought of as a "consumer". I want to be a "contributor". But anyway, it seems that I'm far from alone in my back yard garden tinkering, chook raising, material recycling and "waste not, want not" attitude. Newspaper articles are even using words like "frugality" in a positive lifestyle sense!

So here's hoping that 2009 continues in this trend. There will certainly be bad news this year (I predict a sudden resurgence in the price of oil at some stage, going even higher than the peaks of last year) but there is also an atmosphere of hope. As I heard it said on a BBC radio interview yesterday, a crisis is an opportunity for change.

Living History

No, this is not a post about American politics, as historic as this day might be. It's about Aussie back yards.

When I was as young as my son is now - four years old - I lived in a tiny little outback town called Jericho, west of Rockhampton. We were only there for two and a half years but that experience of country life had a big influence on me.

I have some very clear memories of that time, like getting my first bike and the first day I rode it without training wheels. I recall going for a day out in the bush, catching yabbies (crayfish) from the creek and cooking them up for lunch. I remember visiting a property where two huge bulldozers were dragging an enormous chain between them, making one hell of a mess as they tore down the eucalypt forest, clearing it to become grazing land.

Just down the street from us lived another family whose children were too old for me to play with, but Mrs Bonham and my mother became good friends and I spent quite a bit of time playing around the Bonham house and yard. The yard had one particularly distinguishing feature: a thriving green bean vine growing on a free-standing trellis. This so impressed my younger brother and I that we came to gigglingly refer to Mum's friend as "Mrs Bean-Bonham". (Gosh four-year-olds think they're funny.)

We were free to pick and eat the beans as we wished. Sometimes we'd be given big bags of them to take home. Formed in my earliest years, that simple memory epitomises the notion of a bountiful garden. In the past 18 months of mucking about in my own back yard I haven't really come close to recreating that ideal.

But just recently, something special has happened.

The friendship my mother formed has been a lasting one, and from time to time she and Mrs Bonham will exchange a phone call or find an opportunity to meet if travel plans are favourable. In one of their recent conversations, Mum happened to mention that I've been playing about with veges and the like. And this past weekend, Mum handed me a padded envelope which was postmarked in Jericho.

Mrs Bonham's beans have been growing in her garden for nearly 30 years since I used to pick them as a boy. Inside the envelope was a paper-thin, dried out husk of a bean, its green flesh now turned creamy pale, itself acting as a natural envelope for the seeds contained within. Six seeds: richly dark, almost black, except for a bright white protruding ridge running about half way around the centre line.

Joshua (4), Caitlin (7) and the neighbour's boy (7) helped me to plant them. Each pressed two seeds into the moist potting mix and I put the covered tray outside where it will catch the morning sun. Three days later, a living piece of my own childhood is forming roots and shoots which - if I don't manage to kill 'em - will bring that remembered bounty back into reality for me and my kids to enjoy.

Yes, I'm getting all sentimental about bloody beans. I've talked for ages about growing some beans in the back yard. But it's just so special to me that these aren't something which came in a packet from a shop. These beans are living connections for me, to community, to my own history, and to the natural providence of the Earth independent from modern industrial society.

Mrs Bean-Bonham, thank you so much for your gift. Wish me luck as I try to grow these seeds and get the vines scaling up the side of the chicken coup. I'll keep you posted.

Renewing my energy

Just a quick one. I haven't mentioned yet that I attended a forum this past week at City Hall, where I heard talks by Andrew McNamara, Judy Wicks (www.whitedog.com), Gilbert Rochecouste (www.villagewell.org) and Robert Pekin (www.foodconnect.com.au), and saw a new peak oil documentary produced locally (aquilaproductions.com.au).

It was wonderfully inspiring, if a little sobering... not so much a pep rally as a recruitment drive in a war effort. Hmm.

So I have a renewed sense of urgency which has already prompted me to consider a carectomy, cut way back on my meat and dairy consumption (even on Ice Break) and have another stab at the backyard gardening. I also wrote letters (emails) to various people at the state, city and local community levels expressing my concern regarding the issues and my desire to be part of the solutions.

Would have been at Northey St Community Garden this morning if it weren't for the badly interrupted sleep #2 and #3 gave us last night. Instead I'm going to look at designs for chicken tractors.

Some time soon I'm going to review and update my action plan.

"Obscene" profiteering causing global starvation

Please take a few minutes - right now - to read Greenpa's post about the murderous impact of food market speculation on the world's poor and needy, and follow it up with an action.

I'm going to write to my member of parliament.

"Greenwashing" concern re Solahart promotion

I just sent the following email to Solahart's Australian headquarters:

Hello,

Let me preface this by saying that I'm a very satisfied Solahart customer, having replaced my electric system just over six months ago and not wasted a single watt-hour of electricity on water heating ever since. However I was not so impressed with your company's recent marketing initiative involving a bumper sticker which reads, "My Solahart helps offset my car's CO2 emissions."

It surprised and disappointed me to have such a misleading environmental line come from a company which does an enormous amount of good through the promotion of renewable energy technology. Quite simply, that bumper sticker statement is false and potentially harmful.

The statement is false because solar water heaters do not remove CO2 from the atmosphere, directly or indirectly, and therefore cannot be counted as an "offset" against the burning of fossil fuels in a car engine. Instead, solar water heaters simply avoid the need to burn fossil fuels in power stations or in gas heaters. There is absolutely no relationship between solar hot water and vehicle emissions.

If the community truly believed the bumper sticker then they would feel less compelled to reduce their transport-related emissions in the false belief that they were somehow "offset" to some degree by their solar water heater.

Though it may have been an honest mistake or oversight, this promotion has the appearance of "greenwashing". At the very least, please cease the distribution of this bumper sticker immediately. I would also ask that you either send a follow-up retraction letter to all those who have already been sent a sticker (such as myself), or that you post such a retraction in a prominent place on your website or in another suitable public forum.

I would be more than happy to discuss these matters with you further - please feel free to reply via email or contact me on [phone number removed].

Sincerely,
Terry Brady

Bald Hills, Qld, Australia
http://2050vision.blogspot.com

Discuss: growing food in cities, and using the internet to learn how

During the course of my work this week I had reason to visit a school in north-eastern New South Wales. That region has a reputation for attracting and fostering people with "alternative" views and values, particularly in regard to environmental protection and sustainable living. So it was that one of the teachers, knowing beforehand that I publish this blog, introduced me to a student who has a keen interest in permaculture and who is also active in a group centred around the Transition Towns concept (see link in my "highly recommended" sidebar).

Now, not that this blog has a huge world-wide audience or anything, I would like to give that student the opportunity to remain anonymous but at the same time see if I can't get a bit of discussion going here around a couple of the ideas that have come to mind as a result of our meeting.

I put that TT link over there ages ago and haven't looked at their site in months. I think they're clearly world leaders, forging a path to the future. What I'm not so sure about is how to make that path into a highway wide enough to take the cities along with the towns. I should revisit their site and see if there's been any progress on that subject.

One of the obvious things (to me) is that people in cities will need to grow food for themselves and their immediate community. More than that, they'll need to do so sustainably, recycling nutrients in efficient closed loops and doing it all with an absolute minimum of external energy inputs. In other words we need permaculture cities. Unfortunately the vast majority of city dwellers know nothing about growing anything.

Take me as an example: I have a borrowed copy of the 2nd edition of "Introduction to Permaculture" and recently bought the Digger's Club's "Australian Fruit & Vegetable Garden". I've been experimenting in the back yard for the past year or so, but so far have very little to show (or eat) as a result.

So, you thus-far anonymous student, if you're looking for school project ideas that combine IT with permaculture, you might consider starting an online library of training/instructional podcasts or other resources to help city folk like me with no horticultural knowledge transform our backyards and balconies into productive, sustainable food gardens. Seriously - was there ever a period in history prior to the present day where an entire generation of a civilisation had no idea how to grow their own food? We need that knowledge back again, and the internet provides a platform unlike anything else in human history for the distribution of knowledge.

The internet might well be our best defence against falling into another dark age as oil production falls. We stand to lose a great deal of our personal mobility. It just won't be feasible for people like me to travel hundreds of kilometers in a single day just to provide some brief specialist service. But if we can maintain and build on our communications infrastructure and the library of publicly-accessible knowledge then the physical isolation won't necessarily be a barrier to skills and ideas.

What I would like to do now is to invite you all to hit the comments and have a bit of a discussion about those two ideas and their intersection. Will city people need to grow their own food in the future? Can the internet be used effectively to deliver training in the essential garden skills and design principles? If you're a city person, what kind of online resources do you think would help you? If you're a gardening guru, how could you best capture and share what you have learned?

Can't have your solar power cake and eat it too

Let me first give kudos to the people behind Local Power, a community-based buying group which is helping to bring a chunk of new solar electricity generation online. I applaud their initiative, commitment and professionalism. More than that, though, I've paid them a deposit to have a 1kW photovoltaic array installed on my own roof.

Curiously, following on the heels of the high levels of public interest in what this group has done, the Queensland government has announced that it will offer a similar kind of service in order to facilitate the installation of a thousand PV systems on roofs in the "sunshine state" at a reduced price. Note they're not actually providing funds for the gear - just the administrative service that's required to coordinate a bulk purchase and therefore a cheaper per-unit price.

I'll leave my thoughts about the significance and value of PV in the grand scheme of things for another post. For this one I want to focus on a tricky little aspect which green-minded solar panel buyers will need to be aware of. (The particulars are likely to vary in different situations but what I'm writing here is what I understand will apply to me. I'll edit and/or post again if I need to.)

Both the Local Power and Qld government schemes are for "grid-connected" solar photovoltaic electricity generating systems. The systems include an inverter which takes the low-voltage DC power from the panels and transforms it into 240V AC power that gets fed into the electricity grid. There's a dedicated meter which measures how much power your system has supplied to the grid, separate from the one you already have which measures how much power you consume in the running of your home.

Hypothetically, let's say that in some future 3 month period my home consumes 675kWh of energy and my panels supply 360kWh to the grid. As I understand it, when I get my electric utility bill I will see the readings for both meters. Normally Tariff 1 costs about 15.5c per kWh so without the panels I'd be charged about $105 for my energy. But with the panels producing power I get recognition for their contribution with a simple deduction from my Tariff 11 consumption. The nett use would be 315kWh at around $49.

Woohoo! My investment in panels has not only saved me money, but reduced my dependence on fossil fuels by 360kWh this quarter! I can sure feel proud of myself now, having invested in environmental protection and sustainability.

But wait a moment. I might be badly mistaken about my green energy credentials.

You see, most of the time when a PV system like this gets installed, the buyer signs a little bit of paper in return for an extra discount on the up-front cost. The amount of the discount varies but as an example the system I've ordered might be discounted by somewhere between $315 and $819. Neat, huh? How nice of the government to give me a bit of an extra bonus for investing in clean energy.

Listen up: this is not a bonus. This is not free money. The form that you are offered to sign is one which transfers your right to claim the "cleanness" of the energy your panels will produce over their lifetime to another party. You are paid market price for your Renewable Energy Certificates, or "RECs" as they are known. One REC is equivalent to one megawatt-hour (MWh) of renewable power. These RECs represent the legal right of the holder to claim that the power they used (or sold to somebody else) was clean. And if you signed that paper, you don't have them any more.

So in the case of my hypothetical electricity bill, though I do enjoy a financial benefit, every one of the 675kWh of energy that I consumed must have been supplied to the grid by coal-fired power stations! If I wanted to have a clear conscience about my energy use I'd still have to opt in for 675kWh of 100% certified GreenPower. In effect I would have to pay a bit extra each quarter to buy a portion of my own original RECs back again.

I hope that's not too confusing. Just to repeat: by selling my RECs when the system was installed, I gave up the right to claim the cleanliness of the energy my system produces. Though I get a financial benefit for the energy produced by the system over time, I would still have to opt in to GreenPower schemes for the entire amount of my personal energy consumption if I want to eliminate my dependence on dirty power generators.

It's worth pointing out that you're in no way obliged to sell your RECs. You can either hold on to them with a view to eventually selling them (during which time you would have to pay the GreenPower surcharge since you're intending to give up your right to the cleanliness of your panels' energy sometime in the future) or your can ignore the whole scheme entirely and just consider all of that clean energy to be yours for as long as you're using the panels. Whatever you do, there's a bit of a gamble and speculation involved and most of us don't have the time nor skill to track and trade these things to our financial benefit.

So if you do sign up for one of these systems - which I would generally applaud even though I think PV is only a tiny part of the overall solution to our energy and climate crisis - please be aware of the significance of the RECs scheme and what it means to sell those certificates. Otherwise you might end up being more dependent on fossil fuels than you hoped you would be, without even realising it.

Fad or Fundament?

Have you noticed that the world is changing fast? For once I'm not talking about the biosphere - it's human society and politics I mean. Words based on "environment" and "sustainable" are starting to pervade the mass media, turning up in just about every political message at all levels of government and peppered through corporate communications. Advertising budgets are increasingly being spent on pointing out the "green" attributes of some product or service.

It seems that environmental groups have succeeded in using the greenhouse effect as a kind of lever to shift the massive inertia of social consciousness and direct it towards the long-term liveability of this planet. And the result has not just been all talk.

There are some great local examples, starting with the response to the water shortage of recent years. Not only have the residents of south-east Queensland succeeded in reducing their average per-capita consumption to one of the lowest rates in the developed world, we've maintained that discipline even with the rain of the past two months more than doubling the amount of water in our dams. Moreover, the sentiment of the majority of people I've spoken to is in line with official policy which says that conservative water use has become a permanent feature of life in this region!

Continuing with the theme of sustainable water use, one of the two main candidates standing for election to the office of Lord Mayor of Brisbane in a few weeks time is making a very big deal of his policies for minimising water wastage from leaking pipes and increasing the rebates for people who connect rainwater tanks for internal use in the home.

On the other side of politics, the incumbent mayor is earning a rare cheer from me for the spirit behind his latest announcement of funding to assist residents equip their homes with instantaneous energy meters of the type I've written about here in the past. I'm not totally thrilled with that particular approach (I'd rather see a loan/rent scheme) but I am thrilled with the stated objective of reducing the city's electricity consumption.

Both candidates are straining to one-up each other when it comes to public transport. Brisbane isn't large enough to have any direct control over railways but the next few years appear certain to see a very large number of new natural-gas powered buses on the city's roads and an expansion of the CityCat ferry fleet. Mr Incumbent is also touting a spending spree on bicycle paths and facilities.

I offer these examples as evidence of a major and accelerating shift in the public awareness of and concern for sustainability. I've written in the past about my belief that changing values is what brings about changes in behaviour, and I'm starting to become hopeful that values are indeed shifting in the right direction. Heck, I've even listened to speeches from federal parliament this week exhorting the nation to embrace the aboriginal peoples' attitude towards "the land", seeing oneself as literally a part of the environment and being always mindful of the need to care for it.

The question is whether this "trend" will continue. Are we really witnessing the early stages of the transformation of our wasteful, destructive, economically and ecologically irrational society into a responsible, efficient, ecologically-integrated civilisation with advanced culture and traditional wisdom as well as high technology? Well I hope so... because that's what it's probably going to take to avoid catastrophe.


So here's a litmus test for us to monitor our progress as a nation. The Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ABARE) published a report in December 2007 which predicts that, on the basis of the policies and trends in effect at that time, Australia's energy use will grow by 1.6% per year through to 2030 (that's up about 44% compared to today) with around 92% of that energy being sourced from fossil fuels. Let me suggest that if these projections match our future reality, then we're in very big trouble. But...

If society is in fact changing, embracing values of sustainability, we will necessarily see our energy use grow by a smaller amount than predicted and possibly even declining by 2030. We must also see an major decrease in the proportion of our energy derived from fossil fuels. I'll be keep an eye out for future releases like this one from ABARE to see where we're headed.

In the meantime, we all need to support those politicians who are promoting reduced energy consumption, increased efficiency and a transition to renewable energy sources.

Global Issues, Local Action!

I just received this on a mailing list:



Lots of things I love about this:
- High profile, high quality production focusing on sustainability
- We now have State Minister for Sustainability, Climate Change and Innovation (an inspired combination!)
- Local council support from the Morningside Ward Livability Committee
- Business engagement (the cinema complex)
- Fund raising for local climate change initiatives

What's more, the message came to me via a completely different political group, which demonstrates unity across a broad spectrum of parties, groups and levels of government.

I've been looking for an opportunity to hear and perhaps speak with Andrew McNamara, recently appointed as the Minister for SCCI as noted above. I'll be trying to make the time to get across the river and participate in this event. If you're reading this in Brisbane, please spread the word.

Top Aussie: "Carbon-free economy" by 2050

From the ABC:

The Australian of the Year [Professor Tim Flannery] has told an energy conference in Sydney that climate change is occurring more quickly than at first thought and time is running out to make substantial emission reductions... "what that really means is that four decades from now we have to be living in a carbon-free economy."

Wake up, Australia, before the Great Barrier Reef and Bondi Beach become nothing more than stories we tell our grandkids. That is if society survives long enough for us to have grandkids.

Whatever you think about the economy or health or education, the most important issues this election are climate change and sustainability. Please vote for the long term, not just the next term.

Sunday Sermon

It's a weekend of bad news on a global scale, I'm afraid.

I linked just now to Greenpa's discussion of the fatal flaws in the idea of replacing oil with crop-derived ethanol. From a broader perspective there's also this report at New Scientist about the UN's official conclusion that we really are facing the end of the world as we know it due to human-caused environmental destruction and unsustainable development. The point is made there that energy consumption is the number one concern. Dramatic action is needed, now.

The ABC has a story about another new report which makes the startling conclusion that if we keep digging minerals out of the ground on an industrial scale then before too long there won't be any left. Well, duh, but for some reason humanity still seems to act as if the world's resources are limitless. Maybe seven billion is too large a number to really comprehend. But that's roughly how many people are now aspiring to live something like "the American dream".

I guess if there's anything positive it's that the broader message about sustainability is starting to get mainstream exposure. The shift in society and in politics is in the right direction. And speaking of politics, I'm delighted to see the ALP, Democrats and Greens joining forces to try and break the Liberal/National stranglehold in the Senate. If you're an Australian voter who cares at all about the future of humanity, please don't let the industrial-era coalition continue in power.

The Tank Fairy

I've never heard anyone speak of the Tank Fairy, but there must be one because mere hours after sliding tank #2 onto its base both tanks have been fitted with taps and hooked up to the downpipes - almost as if by magic!

I'd better stop with the fairy story or my very good neighbour, the actual worker of magic here, might get offended. Around the same time this morning as I was typing my previous post I noticed that Pete had come home. Pete's a builder and I wanted to get his advice about the next steps to take with the tanks. My thinking was that I had to get the overflows hooked up before I did anything else, and that's a big job.

Pete had a different opinion. He reckoned we'd be pretty damned lucky to get enough rain to cause any overflow at the moment and if there was it would be welcome on the garden. So he got stuck into the job of hooking the tanks up to the gutters.

We cut holes for the overflow of course, and I'm about to go and seal them with tape to prevent insects getting inside. We fitted the main valves at the bottom ready to be connected to each other and eventually the pump. And we fitted bucket taps about 40cm off the ground to allow general outdoor use of the water without the need for a pump at all, providing the water level is high enough.

I ordered a simple gauge which will make it easy to tell how much water's available.

Getting the interconnecting pipe fitted is the next priority - especially so since I decided to give up on connecting the southern tank to the downpipes at the front side of the house. There was just too much mucking about required so it's ended up only being attached to the rear corner. That means the northern tank will get about twice as much inflow as the southern one: I need the pipe in place to allow the water to distribute itself evenly between the two.

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.

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.

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.