Archived material from historical editions of The Generator
Grist features a novel way to spread the word about climate change in their feature How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic. A complete listing of the articles in How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic, a series by Coby Beck, contains responses to the most common skeptical arguments on global warming. There are four Continue Reading →
Mike Horan, Nationals MP from Toowoomba South, while speaking at the Legislative Assembly drew the attention towards the serious problems with electricity connection in Toowoomba because of the massive growth of business and industry. He said he knew the Ergon people were working flat out and were trying to do their very best and outsourcing and so forth. They had tried to cut the wait time to seven months for people to get hooked up to power.
Large investments in infrastructure should assure adequate supply: "There are major projects going ahead there. When people are borrowing money and taking great risks to build major infrastructure to employ people, I think it is important that they be able to hook up to an adequate power supply in a reasonable amount of time".
Additional govt support required: "For the economic growth of Toowoomba we need to see some additional government support provided through Ergon so that these connections can be made in a reasonable time".
Primary industries dependent on electricity: "That is particularly so for some of the major primary industries on the Darling Downs that rely on electricity for temperature control of their poultry and pig enterprises".
Reference: Queensland Parliament, Legislative Assembly, Record of proceedings, 13 March 2007, p. 939. This document is available at http://www.parliament.qld.gov.au/hansard
Erisk Net, 14/3/2007
by Greg Pahl, Vermont Biofuels Association, Co-Founder
Although we have the necessary resources and technology to meet most of our energy needs in the future with renewable energy, until fairly recently one key strategy has, for the most part, been overlooked in North America. This strategy involves the cooperative or collaborative installation and ownership of renewable energy projects at the local, community level.
CSE projects are somewhat similar to Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). The main difference, however, is that instead of investing in potatoes, carrots, or cucumbers, with CSE, local residents invest in energy projects that provide greater energy security and a wide variety of other benefits.
Community Supported Wind could fill a huge gap in the present wind power sector. And this approach is not limited to wind power, but can be applied to virtually any type of local renewable energy project such as solar thermal or photovoltaic panels, biogas digesters, a variety of biofuels production facilities, geothermal or geoelectric projects, and small-scale hydro.
Mark Hordon Baker, of Liberal Party representing Braddon, Tasmania, told the Federal House of Representatives that opportunities existed in the renewable energy sector not only in connection with construction and the creation of clean, green energy but also for maintenance services to the existing wind turbines both in Australia and overseas.
For example, Australia currently has 542 wind turbines. Another 119 are under construction and an additional 426 have been approved for construction. Approximately another 220 are expected to be built in New South Wales, and others have been proposed in Victoria.
Govt policies support investment in renewables: He said that the Howard government’s programs and policies had directly supported or generated investment in renewables in excess of $31/2 billion.
Wind power in Tasmania: Baker said he wanted to continue with the theme of renewable energy in the state of Tasmania and acknowledged a company called Roaring 40s, a joint venture between Hydro Tasmania and CLP Power Asia Limited. The company not only operates the Woolnorth Wind Farm in Tasmania’s far north-west but also is involved in some of the great work and industries that they are creating in China.
Wind turbine market offers tremendous potential: There was a growing trend towards wind power as countries tend to accomplish their renewable energy targets.
current estimated market value for wind turbine maintenance and service in Australia is $10 million with CSIRO forecasting it to grow to $100 million by 2016; substantial overseas maintenance and service opportunities exist, including in the New Zealand market, which is growing significantly due to New Zealand’s high renewable energy target. The growth of the maintenance market in New Zealand is expected to reach some $130 million by 2016; and the value of wind turbine establishments in Asia is predicted to increase substantially over the next decade, adding to this opportunity. Major wind energy projects are underway in China, the Philippines and Malaysia. Taiwan is expecting its demand for wind turbine components to grow from $US80 million to $US 550 million by 2009.
by John Michael Greer
Second part of a three-part review of David Korton’s Great Turning.
As the first part of this review suggested, David Korten’s widely praised book The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community proposes what amounts to a political solution for the predicament of industrial society. Korten argues that replacing current “developmentally challenged” politicians with new leadership drawn from the upper ranks of today’s progressive social change movements will foster a shift from a society based on the old ideology of Empire to one based on his preferred ideology of Earth Community. This shift, he claims, is the only effective response we can make to the crisis of industrial civilization he surveys so eloquently in the third chapter of the book. Yet it’s only fair to ask just how Korten anticipates that a society guided by his “emerging values consensus” will deal with, say, the immense practical challenges of coping with peak oil
You can read The Great Turning from cover to cover without finding an answer to that question. Look up “peak oil” in the index, and you’ll find that the only places in The Great Turning that mention it at all belong to the section of the book dedicated to showing just how awful Empire is. Like global warming, terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and the likely implosion of an unstable economy founded on the smoke and mirrors of hallucinated wealth, peak oil appears only as one of the “sorrows of Empire” for which Earth Community is Korten’s solution. The sections of his book devoted to describing Earth Community never stoop to mention these troubles at all, much less propose solutions to them.
The nearest approach Korten makes to a discussion of such practicalities is a claim that once Empire is replaced by Earth Community, people will no longer want possessions they don’t need, and this will free up enough resources that everyone will be able to have their needs met. As a response to our current predicament, of course, this isn’t even remotely adequate. One of the most inescapable dimensions of the crisis of industrial society is the hard fact that six and a half billion people now live on a planet that can support, at most, two billion sustainably. While today’s wildly skewed distribution of wealth and access to resources certainly won’t help, no amount of redistribution can change the harsh realities that a species in overshoot faces as its resource base falls out from under it.
At the same time, Korten’s suggestion that everything will work out if we just learn to share is more than he has to offer for most of the other dimensions of our contemporary crisis. Quite a bit of his vision of Earth Community, in fact, has an uncomfortable resemblance to sound bites from a political stump speech. His response to the bitter poverty that burdens more than half of our species, for instance, amounts to proclaiming that every human being has the right to a worthwhile means of livelihood, backed up by unemployment, retirement, and health care plans, irrespective of their ability to pay. It’s a fine slogan, but without an awareness of the massive challenges that need to be faced to provide these things to six and a half billion people in a deindustrializing economy – an awareness Korten nowhere displays – a slogan is all it is.
by Matthew L. Wald Published: March 14,2007 WASHINGTON, March 13 — A coalition of industrialists, environmentalists and energy specialists is banding together to try to eliminate the incandescent light bulb within the next 10 years. In an agreement to be announced Wednesday, the coalition members, including Philips Lighting, the largest manufacturer; the Natural Resources Defense Continue Reading →