EcoRadio

Category: Sustainable Settlement and Agriculture

The Generator is founded on the simple premise that we should leave the world in better condition than we found it. The news items in this category outline the attempts people have made to do this. They are mainly concerned with our food supply and settlement patterns. The impact that the human race has on the planet.

  • Reprieve for old forests as Gunns down axe

     

    “Native forest is not part of our future,” he said. “We see that the conflict largely has to end. Our employees and the communities we operate in have been collateral damage to this process. We want to move our business to a plantation-based business.”

    Mr L’Estrange said Gunns wanted a constructive outcome to the forestry negotiations and the company would take in ideas from “all parties”.

    Mr L’Estrange has been repositioning Gunns Ltd since taking over from John Gay, who was ousted this year after he sold $2 million worth of shares just weeks before unveiling a 98 per cent drop in profit in the six months to December 2009. Mr Gay has since resigned from the board and has also ceased his involvement with Gunns’ controversial $2 billion Bell Bay pulp mill.

    To finance the mill, Gunns needs to attract foreign investment and has joined with Swedish company Sodra, which is insisting the mill meet world’s best practice environmental standards and rely on plantation resource. The mill, which requires final federal approval, is still hotly opposed on environmental grounds.

    Gunns and Tasmania’s environment movement have been long-time foes, culminating in a long-running bitter legal dispute brought by the company against 20 conservationists, including the Greens leader Bob Brown. The legal action failed this year.

    But the deputy leader of the Greens, Christine Milne, yesterday said Gunns should receive compensation if it pulled out of its Forestry Tasmania agreements.

  • State mulls uniform ban on outdoor smoking

     

    Half of all NSW councils now have some sort of ban on smoking in outdoor areas, up from 38 per last year, and 18 per cent in 2007, a report released today by the Heart Foundation finds.

    However, the rules vary between suburbs, with neighbouring councils implementing smoke-free policies in a piecemeal fashion since Manly Council became the first jurisdiction in the country – and only the second in the world behind Los Angeles – to legislate a smoking ban on beaches in May 2004.

    The Heart Foundation said the current situation, where smoking is banned on Bondi and Balmoral beaches, but allowed at Coogee and Cronulla, was ”ridiculous”.

    Its chief executive, Tony Thirlwell, said the foundation was part of a coalition including the Cancer Council NSW and the Local Government and Shires Associations that had been advocating a statewide approach since 2006.

    ”While we haven’t received any details about proposed legislation, we would welcome a move that bring us into line with other states and protects all NSW residents from harmful second-hand smoke,” he said.

    This week, the Minister assisting the Minister for Health (Cancer), Frank Sartor, said smoking rates had dropped by 5 per cent to 17.2 per cent since 2003, due in part to the landmark Smoke-free Environment Act introduced in 2000.

    ”We are about to release a tobacco strategy which aims to further reduce smoking to 13.5 per cent by 2016 and 10 per cent by 2020,” he told Parliament.

    A spokeswoman for the minister confirmed that legislation prohibiting smoking in outdoor areas was part of a range of policies being considered by cabinet.

    The laws would be similar to those introduced in Queensland, where smoking has been banned in all children’s playgrounds and sporting fields since January 2005 and in outdoor eating and drinking venues, except pubs and clubs, since July 2006.

    The Heart Foundation’s annual survey of smoke-free policies in NSW’s 152 councils found that 74 per cent of the 43 metropolitan municipalities have now introduced some sort of ban, compared with only 40 per cent of 109 regional councils.

    Of the 76 councils with smoke-free policies, 99 per cent cover playgrounds, making this the most common smoke-free area. Sporting fields (80 per cent), pools (46 per cent), areas within a certain distance of council buildings (42 per cent) and alfresco-dining areas (14 per cent) were included to various degrees.

    The president of the Local Government Association, Genia McCaffery, said the lack of state legislation and funding had been a significant barrier for councils implementing or expanding a smoke-free policy.

    There is emerging evidence on how smoking affects air quality in outdoor locations. A recent study showed that a person sitting near a smoker in an outdoor area could be exposed to levels of cigarette smoke similar to those experienced by someone sitting in an indoor pub or club.

    There is also evidence to suggest that smoke-free areas support smokers who are trying to quit as well as reduce their overall cigarette consumption.

  • Meat eating can be an environmentally friendly choice, argues George Monbiot

     

    We all do. Vegans have long been the ornery saints squatting cross-legged at the intersection of the food and environmental movements; only recently have things like vegan cupcakes crossed over to widespread, Food Network-validated success.

    But now those who have been arguing for a more moderate, catholic approach, one that sees pasture-based livestock raising as an equally green choice to eschewing meat altogether, have new ammunition. 

    Monbiot just read Simon Fairlie’s Meat: A Benign Extravagance (Hyden House September 2010; not yet available in the United States), which takes a close look at both sides of the carnivorous divide, particularly the meat-eating figures that are often batted about. Monbiot quotes one, that it takes “100,000 liters of water to produce every kilogram of beef,” which Fairlie argues “arose from the absurd assumption that every drop of water that falls on a pasture disappears into the animals that graze it, never to re-emerge.” And the ever-popular U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization claim that livestock are responsible for 18 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, even guiltier than vehicles, turns out to be quite a bullshit figure, predicated on several factual errors.

    The real villain here is not dodgy statistics, however, but the current U.S. industrial farming model, which depends on feeding artificially cheap grains to cattle, hogs, and chickens.

    “Cattle are excellent converters of grass but terrible converters of concentrated feed. The feed would have been much better used to make pork,” Monbiot says. And pigs should only be eating grain when there’s a surplus — the rest of the time they should be eating from the endless human food-waste stream:

    If pigs are fed on residues and waste, and cattle on straw, stovers and grass from fallows and rangelands — food for which humans don’t compete — meat becomes a very efficient means of food production. Even though it is tilted by the profligate use of grain in rich countries, the global average conversion ratio of useful plant food to useful meat is not the 5:1 or 10:1 cited by almost everyone, but less than 2:1. If we stopped feeding edible grain to animals, we could still produce around half the current global meat supply with no loss to human nutrition: in fact it’s a significant net gain.

    It’s the second half — the stuffing of animals with grain to boost meat and milk consumption, mostly in the rich world — which reduces the total food supply. Cut this portion out and you would create an increase in available food which could support 1.3 billion people.

    In the end, Fairlie — and Monbiot — are arguing for a third way, neither American-style meat-guzzling nor monastic denial: that of responsible meat-eating according to “low energy, low waste, just, diverse, small-scale … if we were to adopt it, we could eat meat, milk, and eggs (albeit much less) with a clean conscience.”

    Vegans will, of course, argue, that there can be no clean conscience when it comes to killing another living creature unnecessarily for food. But natural-born carnivores who’ve been martyring themselves for the good of the planet just might want to check out Monbiot’s column — and then head to the farmers market for some grass-fed beef, pastured chicken, or heritage bacon.

  • Green economy growing in West Midlands

    “But what we are starting to see is the knock-on growth in business advisory services that can provide the necessary support to these green economy companies.”

    Almost half (41%) of the more than 200 professional services firms surveyed reported they are already offering or developing specialised services in the green industry.

    Birmingham based law firm Martineau is cited as an example. It launched its specialist energy practice in 1994 and says it has since seen it become one of its principal practice areas.

    Catherine Burke, partner in the energy practice, said: “Our energy practice has seen tremendous growth in the past few years.

    “Now we not only advise big players in the energy market but a vast range of clients looking to take advantage of the opportunities that the low carbon and renewables agendas have presented.

    “Their involvement ranges from energy efficiency advice to large scale wind farm and biomass development.”

    The survey was carried out to analyse the region’s strengths in the professional services community and identify new growth markets.

    The study also surveyed more than 100 national privately held businesses, mainly in the manufacturing and engineering, construction and property and IT services sectors.

    It found two thirds (67%) reported a growing or strong demand for low carbon industry focused services.

    David Gibbs

    Source: edie newsroom

  • Tax row ‘exposes cracks’ in Government

     

    The Government has agreed to hold a wide-ranging summit as part of its deal with Mr Windsor and fellow independent Rob Oakeshott.

    This morning Treasurer Wayne Swan said the forum would not consider the mining tax because it was already the subject of a lengthy consultation process.

    But he now says he is open to the idea being discussed at the summit.

    “If during that period or around that period we have a tax forum which talks about Henry [tax review], I’m sure there’ll be many people who will want to discuss issues in Henry that we ruled out, they may want to discuss the draft legislation – I’m relaxed about that,” Mr Swan said.

    Opposition treasury spokesman Joe Hockey says divisions are already forming in the new government.

    “The happy couple have not even left the chapel and they are arguing about the mining tax already,” Mr Hockey said.

    “The prenuptial agreement will not last and what we are going to end up with is uncertainty and confusion.”

    Mr Windsor says he misunderstood the mining tax issue when he made his comments this morning.

    “Well, essentially by me I think we were talking at cross purposes in terms of the review,” he said.

    The Greens want the mining tax to revert to its original form, in which miners would be taxed at 40 per cent rather than 30 per cent on their profits.

    Tags: business-economics-and-finance, industry, mining, government-and-politics, elections, federal-government, tax, federal-elections, australia, nsw, qld, wa

    First posted 3 hours 32 minutes ago

  • Windsor at odds with Labor over mining tax review

     

    But Treasurer Wayne Swan today said the tax would not be on the summit’s agenda because the government was in the process of designing the measure and preparing legislation for parliamentary approval.

    “That’s the first time I’ve heard of that,” Mr Windsor told ABC Radio in response to the mining tax’s omission.

    “I thought it was going to be included in any discussions in relation to taxation and the Henry review.”

    But Mr Swan told the ABC: “I am involving all members of the Parliament, including the independents, in the discussion.” 

    Mr Swan said Labor was committed to the tax, and a panel chaired by former BHP Billiton chairman Don Argus was looking at it in greater depth.

    “Tony Windsor and the independents will have views about the design of that tax, which they can express to the government but we have to move forward with legislation.”

    The opposition says the agreement that secured a Labor minority government had failed at the first hurdle.

    “Labor is already sliding away from the deal they made with the country independents,” opposition frontbencher Christopher Pyne told ABC Radio.

    Mr Swan later told reporters in Canberra he had held productive talks with Mr Windsor about the tax in the past.

    “Tony has some views and wants to be consulted on the MRRT and would [in the] in normal course of events anyway, irrespective of anything we’ve agreed to,” he said.

    Mr Swan acknowledged the government needed to win over key crossbenchers in both houses of Parliament to have the tax enacted.

    He also said he would not prevent recommendations from the Henry tax review that were previously rejected by the government from being discussed at the summit.

    Any new legislation, especially as important as the MRRT, involved a process that took some time and rarely less than six months, Mr Swan said.

    “Whether it can be done and into legislative form at the end of this year, I couldn’t tell you.”

    With the government still in caretaker mode, the Argus committee has not been operating fully but it could now restart.

    “To some extent we are in the hands of the time that the Argus committee takes,” Mr Swan said.

    “But we will be seeking to do it as quickly as we can consistent with making good public policy.”

    There would be extensive public consultation as a matter of course.

    Mr Swan rejected suggestions that most of a $10 billion deal Labor negotiated with the country independents in return for their support would come from tax.

    Nationals leader Warren Truss has claimed about $6 billion would come from the mining tax.

    “Fair dinkum, when it comes to numbers you can’t listen to the Liberal Party or the National Party,” Mr Swan said, adding that only $500 million would be funded from the tax.

    Mr Swan said he did not plan to put off introducing legislation for the tax until the second half of next year, when the Senate would be more favourable for Labor.

    Until then, Family First Senator Steve Fielding and the Coalition would be able to block the new resources regime.

    “I would like to get this into legislative shape as quickly as we possibly can,” he said.

    “There’s no notion in my mind of delaying the considerations that are so important to this tax until we get a change in the Senate, just none.”