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The Generator news service publishes articles on sustainable development, agriculture and energy as well as observations on current affairs. The news service is used on the weekly radio show, The Generator, as well as by a number of monthly and quarterly magazines. A podcast of the Generator news is also available.
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  • NSW oil rig proposed

    The listed company told the Australian Stock Exchange on Friday: “MEC was reviewing new data from an airborne survey conducted east of Newcastle which detected evidence of petroleum seeps on the sea surface.”

    Responding to the newspaper report, Greens MP Lee Rhiannon said companies exploring for oil off the NSW coast could face lawsuits because of mounting evidence that such operations harm whales, and the potential for an oil spill could wreak untold harm on the tourism and fishing industries.

    “There is no guaranteed benefit for the people of NSW from coastal oil and gas exploration and there is a real chance such activities would cause harm and stress to migrating whales,” Ms Rhiannon said in a statement.

    “If seismic testing is used to explore for oil, the shock waves could distress whales migrating along Australia’s east coast.”

    She noted indigenous people in Alaska and conservation groups filed a lawsuit last month against Shell Oil and British Petroleum to stop exploration planned for the seas above the Arctic Circle where bowhead whales migrate.

    “This problem and the associated potential for oil spills demonstrate that proposed oil exploration off the NSW coast should be scrapped before it starts,” Ms Rhiannon said.

    Furthermore, the exploration off the NSW coast would not reduce petrol prices or secure oil supplies as “offshore oil fields take at least five years to develop so such reserves would have minimal impact on the peak oil phenomenon”.

    The MEC report estimates undersea reserves of up to 1 billion barrels of oil and enough gas to meet Sydney’s needs for a decade. It is seeking shareholder approval to restructure its oil and gas assets to improve access to capital for exploration.

    A joint contract led by MEC and Bounty Oil is expected to be executed this year and the project has applied for an extension of a licence to explore the site while awaiting the arrival of the drilling rig to Australia, which is expected by May next year, the newspaper reports.

    A spokesman for NSW Premier Morris Iemma confirmed to the newspaper the application had been received, and MEC has told shareholders it expects approval to be granted.

    Drilling in NSW will send petrol prices down: Opposition

    If the venture is successful the public will benefit from a drop in petrol prices, NSW Opposition Leader Barry O’Farrell said.

    The promise of oil would be welcomed by the public, Mr O’Farrell said.

    “The beneficiaries are the public,” he told reporters in Sydney.

    “As is evident by the increasing price of oil, we’re reliant on international oil cartels and the prices are currently only going in one direction.

    “If we’re talking about oil rigs 20 kilometres off the coast, if that offers the hope of increased oil [and] reduced petrol prices, I think the community will welcome it.

    “We see both State and Federal governments talking long and hard about working families but doing nothing practically to assist the cost increases they’re facing.”

    Mr O’Farrell said that the environmental impact would be minimised by safeguards such as those in place for other mining projects.

  • Court orders Bush to release Climate report

    Most of the findings, like the spread of warmth-loving pests and the inevitable loss of low-lying lands to rising seas, are not new. But the report included new projections of how the poor, elderly and communities with lagging public-health and public-works systems will face outsize health risks from warming.

    Among the report’s new conclusions on health: “An increased frequency and severity of heat waves is expected, leading to more illness and death, particularly among the young, elderly, frail and poor.” It added that deaths from cold would decline, but said uncertainties on both projections made it impossible to characterize the overall risk.

    It gave high odds (essentially a two out of three chance) that Lyme disease and West Nile virus would have expanded ranges because of warming. The report gave the same odds that some food- and water-borne diseases would also increase among susceptible populations, but said “major human epidemics” were unlikely as long as public-health systems remained effective.

    Under a 1990 law, presidents must submit a report to Congress every four years summarizing what is known about impacts of climate change and other global environmental problems on the United States.

    The last such assessment, undertaken in the Clinton administration and published in 2000, was attacked by groups and industries opposing restrictions on greenhouse gases. References to it were deleted from some government reports by political appointees in the White House.

    Environmental groups sued to force the completion of a new study. In court, the White House contended that a series of more than 20 studies requested by President Bush in 2003 satisfied the 1990 law, but Judge Saundra Brown Armstrong of Federal District Court for the Northern District of California rejected that assertion last August and ordered a comprehensive assessment to be published by the end of May.

    “This assessment is an example of what federal scientists can and should be doing when they are freed from political interference and allowed to actually do their jobs,” said Kassie Siegel, climate program director for the Center for Biological Diversity, the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit.

    Senator John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who was the lead author of the 1990 law, strongly criticized the White House.

    “The three-year delay of this report is sadly fitting for an administration that has wasted seven years denying the real threat of global climate change,” Mr. Kerry said in a statement. “In these lost years, we could have slowed global warming and advanced clean energy solutions, but instead America’s climate change strategy has been at best rhetorical, not real.”

  • Failure of rice crop costs Riverina jobs

    World rice prices have doubled in 12 months but that hasn’t helped Riverina growers.

    Australia has recorded its smallest crop due to a lack of irrigation water.

    The Riverina, NSW, is traditionally the country’s largest rice producer.

    But in the past season just 30 of 2500 growers planted crops and the final harvest was down to just 18,000 tonnes.

    As well, 180 SunRice will staff were put off, including 30 in Leeton Shire, NSW.

    Council economic development manager, Peter Kennedy, says there is little he can do to soften the blow.

    “The last three months have involved the final round of redundancies,” he said.

  • San Francisco introduces local carbon tax

    Officials expect to collect about $1.1 million per year from the fee, with most of that coming from the 10 largest polluters, who together will pay more than $800,000. The largest Bay Area emitter — a Shell oil refinery — would have to pay $195,355 based on its 2005 emissions of 4.4 million metric tons.

    The majority of businesses will pay less than $1 per year for their CO2 emissions.

    “It doesn’t solve global warming, but it gets us thinking in the right terms,” Daniel Kammen, a renewable energy expert at the University of California, Berkeley, told the AP. “It’s not enough of a cost to change behavior, but it tells us where things are headed. You have to think not just in financial terms, but in carbon terms.”

  • Farmers look to recycled water

    However, he warns there are risks to be managed and the AGWR sets down guidelines to assure safety based on implementation and monitoring of appropriate treatment processes and on-site controls.

    “The AGWR includes a focus on developing and implementing risk management plans to assure water quality prior to use.

    “The principal hazards for humans from recycled water are microbial, with enteric viruses generally representing the greatest risk,” Dr Cunliffe says in the paper.

    “Microbial hazards are also the greatest risk for livestock, although there are significant points of difference.

    “A typical scheme for irrigation of pasture includes secondary treatment, lagoon detention exceeding 25 days, chlorination, exclusion of lactating dairy cattle for 4 hours after irrigation or until pasture is dry or drying/ensiling of fodder.”

    Dr David Cunliffe presents his paper at the AVA national conference on Thursday at the Perth Convention Centre.

     

     

  • WA wheat crop on knife edge

    The potential for a record cropping season in WA this year is on a knife edge, with rain now needed urgently to realise the optimistic ProFarmer crop forecast released this week.

    While most of WA’s South West districts benefitted from heavy rain last weekend, to set up record canola and wheat plantings, the major broadacre grain-growing areas in the north of WA’s wheatbelt, central and southeast Wheatbelt are still in need of more rain.

    Hopes are high that a forecast frontal system will deliver substantial rains to the areas on Friday this week.

    Between 15-25mm is needed to kick crops up and away and set up yield potential.

    Rain also is needed to freshen up drying pastures for livestock.

    Broomehill, WA, farmers Craig and Brant Dennis however, will finish their cropping program this week after a timely 32mm of rain.

    “It was getting a bit dry and we’re still hand feeding sheep,” Craig said.

    “But we’ve been going 24 hours a day for the last four weeks to get the crop in and last weekend’s rain was very timely.

    “During the dry period we stuck to sowing into the stubbles and we’re finishing up on the pastures this week.

    “Hopefully we’ll get more rain soon to push the crop germinations and get a good go at the remaining weeds.”