Joyce opposes biofuels tax
Nationals Senator Barnaby Joyce has again split from the Government, this time over voting against introducting a tax on biofuels. Full article
Category: Archive
Archived material from historical editions of The Generator
Gov bails out fisheries
With increasing competition for dwindling catches, the Federal Government has offered to buy out fishermen’s licences, effectively retiring their fish quotas. And this covers a huge area from Sydney right to Kangaroo Island including Tasmania. Full article
Fed Gov obstructs wind farm industry
State Environment Ministers have accused the Commonwealth of attempting to curb the growth of wind farms in Australia in favour of nuclear power. Full article
Illegal land clearing symptom of weak NSW Gov
The NSW Government needs to do more than just buy back water for marshes in the north west of the state, according to a waterbird and river ecology scientist at the University of NSW, Richard Kingsford, writing in The Sydney Morning Herald 921/6/2006, p. 5). Entire ecosystem at risk: Kingsford said the government would have Continue Reading →
Australia builds its empire
By John Pilger
http://www.newstatesman.com/200606260026
Monday 26th June 2006 – In my 1994 film Death of a Nation there is a scene on board an aircraft flying between northern Australia and the island of Timor. A party is in progress; two men in suits are toasting each other in champagne. "This is an historically unique moment," effuses Gareth Evans, Australia’s foreign affairs minister, "that is truly uniquely historical." He and his Indonesian counterpart, Ali Alatas, were celebrating the signing of the Timor Gap Treaty, which would allow Australia to exploit the oil and gas reserves in the seabed off East Timor. The ultimate prize, as Evans put it, was "zillions" of dollars.
Australia’s collusion, wrote Professor Roger Clark, a world authority on the law of the sea, "is like acquiring stuff from a thief . . . the fact is that they have neither historical, nor legal, nor moral claim to East Timor and its resources". Beneath them lay a tiny nation then suffering one of the most brutal occupations of the 20th century. Enforced starvation and murder had extinguished a quarter of the population: 180,000 people. Proportionally, this was a carnage greater than that in Cambodia under Pol Pot. The United Nations Truth Commission, which has examined more than 1,000 official documents, reported in January that western governments shared responsibility for the genocide; for its part, Australia trained Indonesia’s Gestapo, known as Kopassus, and its politicians and leading journalists disported themselves before the dictator Su-harto, described by the CIA as a mass murderer.
Power generation and transport must be focus for cutting greenhouse gas emissions
The real test in greenhouse gas emission reductions had to involve action in power generation and the transport sector, Kelly Thambimuthu, chairman of the International Energy Agency (IEA) greenhouse gas technologies research program said in an interview with Reuters.
Thambimuthu said burying carbon dioxide (CO2) would typically raise electricity generation costs from a coal-fired power plants by 50 per cent. "At the same time the public demands cheap electricity," he noted.
Thambimuthu said the 15 euros (about $US19) a tonne on Europe’s carbon trading market was not enough to encourage investment in storage.
"You need to have a threshold of at least about $US30 a tonne or higher," he said.
European Governments could cut CO2 allocations to industries to push prices higher if they were serious about fighting climate change. Alternatively, they could give tax breaks or other incentives.
Reference: Digest of latest news reported on website of Climate Change Secretariat of United Nations Framework on Climate Change Control (UNFCCC). 20 June 2006. Address: PO Box 260 124, D-53153 Bonn. Germany. Phone: : (49-228) 815-1005, Fax: (49-228) 815-1999. Email: press@unfccc.int
http://www.unfccc.int
Erisk Net, 21/6/2006