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  • Gillard urged to spell out plan to tackle climate change

     

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    “It is as disappointing to me as it is to millions of Australians that we do not have a price on carbon,” she said.

    “If elected as Prime Minister I will re-prosecute the case for a carbon price at home and abroad.”

    Opposition environment spokesman Greg Hunt told The Australian Online today that the only option open to Ms Gillard was to adopt a form of the Coalition’s policy.

    “I think we are set for the government to adopt significant elements of the Coalition’s policy, but in standard practice, to deny that they’ve done it,” he said.

    He also accused Ms Gillard of engaging in a “deliberate deception”.

    “On the first day she clearly indicated to the Australian people that she intended to proceed with an ETS and carbon pricing. And that was a deliberate deception and she’s been forced to back down within two weeks.”

    Mr Hunt concluded that if the Prime Minister wouldn’t consider proceeding with an ETS until 2012 it would not be implemented until at least 2014.

    Senator Brown has also reacted angrily to the postponement of a carbon price.

    “Australians are going to be thoroughly disappointed,” he said.

    “This is really a failure of action by a future Gillard government and it’s being dragged to the electorate before the election.”

    A paper released yesterday at the Lowy Institute that charting an alternate path to address global climate change also appeared to be dismissed by the government yesterday.

    The paper – co-authored by economist and Reserve Bank board member Professor Warwick McKibbin – recommends that the Major Economies Forum instead of the UN should move to implement a carbon price because its 17 members were responsible for 80 per cent of carbon emissions world-wide.

    It would see heavy-polluting countries like Australia, the US and China agree to set a similar carbon price, to rise over time, while the UN could continue with its own efforts.

    But the office of Climate Change Minister Penny Wong was dismissive of the proposal.

    “Our efforts are best focused on implementing the pledges already made through the Copenhagen Accord, rather than spending valuable time re-negotiating the whole global framework for tackling climate change,” a spokeswoman told The Australian Online.
     

  • Giant solar-powered plane begins pioneering flight

     

    Mr Piccard, 52, and Mr Borschberg, a businessman and former military pilot, aim to build a second prototype that will fly the Atlantic and then, in 2013, around the world.

    That flight will be conducted with five-day hops because of the limits of endurance for human pilots.

    Borschberg and Piccard, who were the two main pilots for the single seater plane, trained to stay alert with only micro-naps for up to five days at a time.

    To save weight and keep the pilot active, the aircraft has no automatic pilot.

    The plane takes off at just over 32 kilometers per hour  and cruises at about 56 kph, making it vulnerable to turbulence and headwinds.

  • Switzerland Brings Electric Cars to Alpine Tourism

    Switzerland Brings Electric Car to Alpine Tourism

    July 02, 2010

    A Swiss green tourism project dubbed Alpmobil promotes the use of battery driven vehicles and leaves them available for tourists to use

     

    A pair of sturdy goats led 10 cows with regional and national flags tied to horns and bridles up towards the mountains this week at the launch of a new Swiss eco-project. Behind the animals came a silent line of 60 brightly coloured small cars, which then sped off – equally silently – towards the nearest Alpine pass.

     

    “I think just one of those cows made more noise than all of us put together,” said bemused Swiss tourism official Federico Somarruga, at the wheel of one of the two-seater automobiles.

     

    The occasion was the launch in central Switzerland of a green tourism project, dubbed Alpmobil, to promote the use of battery-driven electric vehicles by summer visitors to the area some 100 km (63 miles) southeast of the Swiss capital Bern.

     

    The area’s plentiful electricity supplies, created by harnessing the power of mountain waters through reservoirs and dams, have been tapped to provide over 20 battery charge-points serving up, Alpmobil says, totally green energy.

     

    Alpmobil, whose sponsors include the regional hydropower giant KWO and cantonal governments and climate research authorities, has acquired the 60 “Think” cars from the pioneering Norwegian EV company of the same name.

     

    They will be on hire between July and September at hotels, garages and railway stations for 60 Swiss francs (US$54) a day across the area’s Goms and Haslital regions and Alpmobil offers booking on its so-far only German language website — www.alpmobil.ch.

     

    The “Think”, built in Finland by speciality manufacturer Valmet Automotive, was conceived – like most electric vehicles – as a town car, but Alpmobil’s spokesman Dionys Hallenbarter says it is also ideal for leisurely mountain touring. A smooth 20-km (12.5 mile) drive up from Meiringen round hairpin bends to the 2,165-metre (6,800 foot) Grimsell Pass and back suggests he is right.

     

  • New PM, same disregard for the disadvantaged

    New PM, same disregard for the disadvantaged.

    Senator Rachel Siewert, Greens spokesperson for Community Services has
    today expressed great disappointment with the Prime Minister’s decision
    to continue punitive income management measures in the Northern
    Territory.

    “Despite a change in leader, the Government is persisting with this
    draconian approach to the most marginalised people in our society,”
    Senator Rachel Siewert said today.

    “It is disappointing to hear the Prime Minister repeating the rhetoric
    of Minister Jenny Macklin, making claims about income management that
    are not supported by the evidence.

    “Rather than simply rubber stamping the bad decisions made under Kevin
    Rudd, the PM should be taking ownership of this issue herself. She needs
    to apply close scrutiny to the income management claims made by Minister
    Macklin.

    “The Prime Minister should thoroughly review the so called evidence and
    reflect on the huge amount of money that will be wasted with this flawed
    approach. This money would be better invested in approaches that really
    work.

     “Minister Macklin’s claim that the introduction of indiscriminate
    mandatory income management is ‘all about human dignity’ is nothing
    short of hypocrisy, a look at the on-the-ground impacts of the policies
    on Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory show that this is
    anything but the case.

    “The Prime Minister may be different, but the Government’s attitude to
    marginalised and disadvantaged people around the country hasn’t
    changed,” Senator Siewert concluded.

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    GreensMPs Media mailing list
    Media@greensmps.org.au

  • Wilderness Society suspends Marr

    Wilderness Society suspends Marr

    Updated 2 hours 27 minutes ago

    Wilderness Society campaign director Alec Marr

    Mr Marr has been asked to respond to several claims. (AAP: Alan Porritt, file photo)

    The Wilderness Society’s executive director Alec Marr has been suspended by the organisation’s new management.

    Mr Marr was involved in a leadership stoush which has caused months of unrest in the conservation group.

    A break away group, Save the Wilderness Society, passed a resolution to dissolve the existing committee earlier this year saying members had lost faith.

    At the time Mr Marr maintained his committee was still in control.

    Last week, the annual general meeting elected to replace the entire board with eight new members.

    A Wilderness Society spokeswoman says the new management group had asked Mr Marr to step down but he has now been suspended for two weeks.

    Mr Marr has been asked to respond to several claims and is expected to meet the new management again next week.

    He has been suspended on full pay and has declined to comment.

    Tags: environment, activism-and-lobbying, australia, tas, hobart-7000

    First posted 2 hours 54 minutes ago

  • Global emissions targets will lead to 4C temperature rise, say studies.

     

    “We’re looking at a level which is much more extreme and profoundly dangerous,” said Ruth Davis, chief policy adviser for Greenpeace. “It’s arguable the UN process has become dangerously cut adrift from the science of climate change.”

    The Department of Energy and Climate Change said that, based on national offers of emissions reductions made in Copenhagen, the United Nations Environment Programme (Unep) and other bodies had calculated that it was possible to meet the 2C target, although this would depend on the targets set beyond 2020.

    “There’s more work to do if we’re going to avoid a 2C temperature rise which is why we’re pushing the EU to cut its emissions by 30%,” said a DECC spokesman. “Keeping below 2C is still possible from the high end Copenhagen accord offers, but will require steeper action after 2020.”

    However, many experts said the much higher temperature-rise estimates were a cause for serious concern that emissions cuts proposed for Cancún were too low and not enough was being done to prepare for further cuts beyond 2020, even though there are still nearly six months of negotiations before the talks.

    “We’ve made progress but we’re clearly not headed where we need to be,” said Andrew Jones, co-director of Climate Interactive, which is backed by several universities including MIT. “No one is talking about changing any of the 2020 proposals, so we should be worried.” Climate Interactive’s model is also backed by a panel of experts including Prof Bob Watson, chief scientific advisor to the UK’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), and a former head of the IPCC.

    The Climate Interactive Scoreboard, for which researchers check daily for updates in emissions or other targets which would reduce pollution such as reductions in energy intensity or increases in renewable energy, makes a medium-range prediction of a 3.9C increase in temperatures, with a range of 2.3-6.2C (4.2-11.1F), based on committed targets, and a more encouraging 2.9C (5.2F) average, with a range of 1.7-4.6C (3.1-8.5F) based on “potential” commitments suggested but not enacted by many nations.

    One of the major barriers to setting higher emissions cuts was a great many countries, including Canada and the EU, have said they do not want to increase their targets until the US sets significant reductions, which is proving hard for President Obama to achieve, said Davis.

    Climate Analytics and Ecofys, under the banner of Climate Action Tracker, estimate a range of 2.8-4.3C.

    The principal differences between the two calculations are that they use different models, and made different assumptions about what countries will do after their current targets expire, said Jones.

    In both cases, there has been no improvement to the forecast outcome since the experts assessed the prospects immediately after the Copenhagen conference.

    The predictions will be particularly worrying for many watchers because the 2C target was based on research which suggested that at that level there was only a low to medium risk of key changes to the conditions in which humans survive; however an update of the “burning embers diagram” by the authors, published last year by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in the US, suggested that at 2C there greater risk in all categories, including a significant to high risk to unique and threatened ecosystems, of extreme weather events and a global distribution of the worst threats.16 Dec 2009

    Study forecasts 9m sea-level rise if temperatures meet 2C threshold

     

     

     

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