Category: News

In an attempt to clean up Brisbane’s waterways, the Brisbane City Council has introduced a water filtration system called ‘Daylighting’.Under the system, urban space is redeveloped and restored to its natural origins by means of ripping up streets, footpaths and stormwater drains. Daylighting uses natural barriers such as rocks and vegetation to block pollutants from entering the water system.

Brisbane lord mayor Graham Quirk said daylighting systems have been installed at Greenslopes, Holland Park and Ferny Grove as part it’s $2 million dollar creek filtration program. Quirk expects the initiative to decrease pollution by up to 80 per cent.

“These systems act much like a kidney for the waterways and having them within local parks and green spaces are all part of our plan to be proactive in maintaining clean waterways,” he said.

BZE’s plan to cut emissions and power bills in ten years.

Making a difference to cutting energy use and greenhouse impacts at the individual or family level can often seem daunting and out of reach for many of us.  As a home owner, I have wondered what exactly I could do to make a difference, and whether the long term savings will cover my investment.

Now the Beyond Zero Emissions (BZE) think-tank, in partnership with The University of Melbourne Energy Institute claims to be able to provide the answers.

On an unseasonably warm evening last Monday (12 August) an audience of approximately 300 gathered for the launch in South Brisbane of the BZE Building Plan. The Zero Carbon Australia Buildings Plan is according to BZE, ‘the first comprehensive, nationwide plan to retrofit Australia’s buildings’.

Lead author and Project Director Trent Hawkins was assisted by 100 volunteer engineers, architects, data analysts, and students over three years to develop the plan. The project also attracted partners and company sponsors that add weight to the academic rigour and practical utility of the plan.

The aim is to halve energy consumption in Australia by retro-fitting family homes and high rise office spaces using existing off-the-shelf technologies. Through its modelling work, Mr Hawkins said BZE is able to conclude that across Australia reductions of 53% in residential demand and 44% in non-residential energy use are feasible.

For the family home, the authors claim these reductions can be accomplished by a move away from gas, and investment in such measures as roof and wall insulation, double glazing windows, roof-top solar power collection, LED lighting, air-sourced heat pumps for hot water, and real time monitoring of in-home energy use.

While many of you may be familiar with these options, BZE has done the research to show how these technologies can be integrated with, or replace older technologies. The plan provides the costs and benefits, not only in economic terms, but in terms of the reduced reliance on non-renewable energy sources.

Participating in the launch were Science & Engineering Adj. Professor David Hood AM from QUT, Mark Thomson, Architect  & Corporate Sustainability Principal at Schiavello, and Queensland Greens Senator, Larissa Waters.

David Hood told the audience that climate change ‘will bring about near collapse of much of the world’s economic systems’, and yet it was the missing topic at the first Sunday night leaders’ debates. ‘Neither of the leaders raised it’, he said, “so with the main political parties not taking any notice, and not doing anything, it’s up to us’. He commended the research underpinning of the BZE plan which he said provides a practical guideline on how we can get energy efficiency into our homes and in the process, save money.

Senator Waters reminded the audience that governments subsidise the fossil fuel industry by up to $12 billion, and asked us to imagine the impact if this money was invested instead in renewal energy sources. She said the BZE report proves that change can be achieved and ‘we can just get on with it’. ‘There are no logistical barriers, no engineering constraints, often no economic constraints compared to business as usual, but there is a ‘political will’ constraint.’ She encouraged audience members to remind their local political candidates that ‘we have an environmental emergency … and that we have ways for addressing that emergency’.  As the mother of a four year old, she said it is inconceivable to her that we can stand back and allow this looming catastrophe to happen.

Mark Thomson concluded the speeches by saying the challenge for those who want to take action, ‘is to make sure the change is well-informed’. The BZE he said has produced more than just a vision: it is a 10 year ‘practical, simple and implementable’ plan, based on current technology.

The plan can be obtained from the BZE Website or for a hard copy, by emailing the BZE Woolloongabba Office at  qld@bze.org.au

It’s great for Queensland that there happens to be so many songwriters and bands in the music line-up this year, Deadly Awards Executive Maryann Weston said yesterday.

The 19^th annual Deadly Awards feature two Queensland nominations in four of the seven musical categories  including, Female Artist of the Year (Christine Anu and Simone Stacy), Band of the Year (Dubmarine and The Medics) and Single Release of the Year (Simone Stacy and Thelma Plum).

Voting closes this Sunday 18^th August for the Deadlys’ national Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander excellence awards, and the ceremony will be held on 10^th September at the Sydney Opera House.

“Queenslanders should jump on to the Deadlys’ site and vote for their favourites at www.deadlys.com.au,” Ms Weston said.

Former Westender Sue Ray, who is performing this Saturday night at The Joynt, is nominated for ‘Most Promising New Talent in Music’ alongside fellow Queensland band Slip-on Stereo.

“It doesn’t surprise me that there is a strong Queensland presence at this year’s Deadlys; Brisbane has a great music network,” Ms Ray said.

Ms Ray will fly from Brisbane to Sydney for the Deadlys, then straight to Los Angeles and on to Nashville to work on her next album.

Slip-on Stereo has performed in West End and nearby at the Performing Arts Complex.

“We have been involved [in] a few indigenous contemporary showcases in Brisbane including the Queensland Music festival, QMusic’s Indigenous showcase and the Clancestry Indigenous festival,” Slip-on Stereo Manager Mark Bretherton said.

“We are proud to be nominated and it’s great to see so many Queenslanders up for awards this year,” Mr Bretherton said.

QMusic’s Executive Officer Denise Foley said “QMusic has been supporting the development and identification of early career artists for some time.”

“Whilst we can’t take any credit for these artists as their talent is purely their own, we are very proud to know that all of the artists currently being recognised in the Deadlys have connections to QMusic,” Ms Foley said. 

The Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant is now in state of emergency, leaking 300 tons of radioactive water into the ocean daily

By Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor

http://www.naturalnews.com/041610_Fukushima_radioactive_leak_state_of_emergency.html

(NaturalNews) Japan’s nuclear watchdog has now declared the leak of radioactive water from Fukushima a “state of emergency.” Each day, 300 tons of radioactive water seeps into the ocean, and it’s now clear that TEPCO has engage in a two-and-a-half-year cover-up of immense magnitude.

“I believe it’s been leaking into the ocean from the start of the crisis two-and-a-half years ago,” disclosed a 12-year TEPCO veteran named Suzuki-san.

“There are still reactor buildings we haven’t gotten into yet,” said another worker named Fujimoto-san. “So there’s always the possibility of another explosion…”

TEPCO workers sprayed with wildly radioactive water while waiting for a bus

Just how out of control is the situation at Fukushima? It’s so out of control that TEPCO recently had to admit 10 of its workers were somehow — yeah, see if you can figure this out — sprayed with highly radioactive water while waiting for a bus.

“The workers’ exposure above the neck was found to be as much as 10 becquerels per square centimeter,” reports Bloomberg.com

How exactly did highly radioactive water manage to find its way to a bus stop in the first place? TEPCO isn’t sure. It’s confusing with all those radiation alarms going off all the time. In order to concentrate, the company has found it’s easier to just disable all the alarms and pretend nothing’s wrong.

The TEPCO cover-up

To fully grasp the extent of the TEPCO denial, realize that only recently did the company finally admit that radioactive groundwater has been leaking into the ocean. This follows years of stark denials from the company, whose executes have exhibited a remarkable ability to deny reality even when their own workers are dying in droves from cancer.

It’s no exaggeration to say that TEPCO’s downplaying of the full extent of the Fukushima disaster has put tens of millions of lives at risk — people who should have been warned about radiation but were denied that information due to the TEPCO cover-up.

“At this current time in July of 2013, Fukushima is 80 to 100x more expansive and more intense — letting out about 100x more of the radiation of Chernobyl,” reports Dr. Simon Atkins Phoenix Rising Radio on a BlogTalkRadio interview.

“The problem with Fukushima is that it’s not only continuing for 865 days… I mean, let’s wrap our minds around that for a second — it has been leaking out radiation in increasing volumes for 865 days.”

Japan is a society that shuns whistleblowers

Why has TEPCO been able to cover up the truth about Fukushima for so long? Because Japan is a society of mass conformity. The idea of keeping your head down and not “rocking the boat” is deeply embedded in Japanese culture.

Japan is not a nation of “rugged individualism” but of conformist acquiescence.

As a result, whistleblowers are shunned, and there is immense peer pressure to defend the status quo… even when it’s a terrible lie. This culture of conformity at all costs is precisely what allows companies like TEPCO to continue operating extremely dangerous nuclear power plants with virtually no accountability.

While Japan has entire museums dedicated to the horrifying history of two Japanese cities being bombed by the United States at the end of World War II, when Japan’s own power company is involved in a radiological disaster of similar magnitude, the entire incident gets swept under the rug. Radiation? What radiation? If the government says there’s no radiation, then there’s no radiation! After all, it’s invisible!

Why the U.S. government plays along with the cover-up

The U.S. government, of course, plays along with the charade because its own top weapons manufacturer — General Electric — designed and built the Fukushima Daiichi power plant in the first place. And the design decisions made by GE, such as storing spent fuel rods in large pools high above the ground, now look not just incompetent but downright idiotic. It turns out there was never any long-term plan to dispose of the spent fuel rods. The idea was to just let them build up over time until someone else inherited the problem.

So while Japan and the USA play this game of “let’s all pretend nothing happened,” citizens of both countries continue to be exposed to a relentless wave of deadly radiation that now dwarfs the total radiation release of Chernobyl (which the U.S. media played up in a huge way because the disaster made the Russians look incompetent).

The only reason TEPCO is finally getting around to admitting the truth in all this is because you can’t rig all the Geiger counters forever. Radiation follows the laws of physics and atomic decay, not the whims of lying politicians and bureaucrats. As a result, the real story eventually comes out as we’re starting to see right now.

The Fukushima disaster is likely to get far worse, if you can believe that

The upshot is that the Fukushima disaster is not only far worse than you’ve been told; it’s very likely going to be worse than you could ever imagine. The radiation leak isn’t plugged, in other words, and another explosion — which many experts believe might be imminent — would release thousands of times more nuclear material into the open environment.

Ultimately, the entire Northern hemisphere has been placed at risk by a bunch of corporate bureaucrats who thought building a nuclear facility in the path of a sure-to-happen tidal wave was a fantastic idea. Instead of acknowledging the problem and working to fix it like a responsible person would, our world’s top politicians and ass-coverers have decided it is in their best short-term interests to play along with the TEPCO fairy tale which ridiculously pretends that radioactive leaks can be controlled by wishful thinking.

Remember: Governments can lie about the national debt, health care costs, inflation and unemployment, but they cannot lie about radiation for very long. Sooner or later the physics of it all simply cannot be denied.

References:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-08-12/fukushima-plant-workers-raise-safety-concerns/4879960

http://birthofanewearth.blogspot.se/2013/07/americans-are-in-grave-danger-due-to.html?m=1

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-12/fukushima-workers-exposed-to-radiation-from-spray.html

Some recent comment: http://www.collapsingintoconsciousness.com/at-the-very-least-your-days-of-eating-pacific-ocean-fish-are-over/

 

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are warned that this article contains references to people who have passed on.

Local not-for-profit organisation Micah Projects officially launched their Reconciliation Action Plan last week at Kuril Dhagan Indigenous Knowledge Centre at the State Library of Queensland.

In 2011 Micah Projects started working on their Micah Projects Reconciliation Action Plan and their book Kurilpa: A learning resource, so the organisation can continue the ongoing journey towards reconciliation and equip their employees with tools to better help Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people when they contact Micah Projects.

Micah Projects chairperson Michael Kelly introduced the Micah Projects Reconciliation Action Plan and Kurilpa: A learning resource at Kuril Dhagan Indigenous Knowledge Centre, saying it will let the organisation to better respond to their needs in a positive way.

“To be more mindful of how we connect with them,” Mr Kelly said.

Uncle Stan Smith of the Brisbane Council of Elders said in his speech that it is important that we all learn from each other, to have a better understanding of the cultural background of everyone that lives within Australia.

“Education is the key,” Uncle Stan said.

Kurilpa: A learning resource is a great book that covers the history of Indigenous Australian from the arrival of Captain Arthur Phillip up till now, with a focus on Kurilpa (West End) in Jaggara country. On the cover is the painting Coming Together by Luke Roma, Rocky Boy, Jagalungi man from Rockhampton region.

The painting represents all Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Australians coming together without malice or discrimination. The four circles in each corner represent the North, South, East and West of this amazing country. The middle circle represents the Elders directing the young ones both black and white to sit and talk together at the watering hole. The figures along the outside edge are the members of the Micah Projects RAP Committee reaching out and bringing the people in.

Mr Kelly said there is consideration to publish the book if the organisation notice there is an interest for it from the public.

Micah Projects: www.micahprojects.org.au

ACOSS’ Fernando de Freitos says that more than 100,000 Australians are homeless each night.

In 2008 the Federal government under Prime Minister Rudd committed to halve this number. Federal and state governments’ have agreed fund a Partnership Agreement on Housing and Homelessness, until 30 June next year.

“A long-term approach is critical if we are to truly tackle homelessness and provide safe and secure homes for all Australians,” Mr de Freitos says.