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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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  • Once in century heat wave continues

    All indications are for SA to be just as hot until the weekend, when a weak cooler change arrives, according to weatherzone.com.au.

    If Adelaide also reaches 40 degrees on Thursday and Friday, it will equal the longest such hot spell in 101 years.

    In January 2006 there were also four consecutive days of 40 or hotter.

    In Victoria, emergency services remained on high alert as temperatures climbed into the 40s, too.

    Melbourne reached a peak of 43.4deg – the hottest day in three years.

    Victorian temperatures are forecast to reach similar maximums over the next four days.

    It’s that run of extreme temperatures which has weather forecasters talking about the heatwave being among the worst in 100 years in Victoria, too.

    Laverton’s temperature was sitting on 41 at midday and still climbing, with many Victorian temperatures recorded in the mid 40s farther north across the state.

    “Nhill, for instance, hit 41 degrees by midday,” weatherzone.com.au meteorologist Matt Pearce said.

    “Northerly winds carried extremely hot air down from the interior of the continent towards Victoria.

    “These northerlies are the result of a persistent and slow-moving high pressure system out in the Tasman Sea.

    “This high looks like remaining in place for the next week.

    “So we are expecting this extremely hot weather to persist right through into the weekend.”

    In addition to the high temperatures, the dry northerly winds are also sending fire dangers to extreme levels in many districts.

    As a result, a total fire ban is in force for the North Eastern, Central, North Western and South Western Total Fire Ban Districts.

    “The bad news is that there is no rain in sight for the parched state,” Pearce said.

    “Coming hot on the heels of one of the driest springs in years, the lack of rainfall through January and now heading into February is a cause for some concern.”

  • World treaty leaves Australia behind

    “Australia cannot hope to transform into a renewable energy powerhouse while neither the Government nor the industry are interested in making it happen,” Australian Greens Deputy Leader and Climate Change Spokesperson, Senator Christine Milne, said.

    “Renewable energy technologies are already capable of replacing coal if governments and industry come together to make it happen.

    “But the Rudd Government refuses to do anything to challenge coal’s dominance, and the domestic renewable energy industry seems unable to effectively promote itself.

    “The establishment of IRENA shows that Australia’s renewable energy reticence is not shared by the rest of the world.

    “If the Rudd Government signs and ratifies the IRENA founding treaty, its hypocrisy will be on global show. If it fails to sign, it will only be the Australian people who will come face to face with the hypocrisy of the Government they so recently elected on a platform of climate action.”

    IRENA aims to drive “a rapid transition towards the widespread and sustainable use of renewable energy on a global scale” by providing technical and policy advice to industrialised and developing countries, as well as promoting renewable energy on the global stage.

    “The Australian renewable energy industry needs to take inspiration from the establishment of IRENA and start to speak up for itself instead of accepting scraps from the table,” Senator Milne concluded.

    All information about IRENA can be found at http://www.irena.org/

  • Warming gets cold shoulder from Rudd

    And when coal flows from two new export infrastructure projects announced in 2008, in the Hunter Valley of NSW and at Gladstone, Queensland, the addition to global emissions from burning that coal will be an amount each year greater than Australia’s total greenhouse gas emissions, cancelling out the planned reduction by 2020 many times over.

    How did it come to this, when there was optimism after its election that the Government would take a lead in climate policy in 2008, not jog on the spot at the rear of the field? Was a mistake made in taking the political pressure off in 2008 as the large climate groups switched from mobilising people power to advocating policy detail, assuming the Government was predisposed to listen? Did the Government decide to give real access only to those climate advocates who were prepared to support its “clean coal” policy, narrowing and conservatising the range of voices to which it listened? Was the Government always going to put the views of big business and the fossil fuel lobby first?

    It is not unreasonable to answer yes in each case.

    The climate action movement’s message is big and unsettling, so it is easier for government not to want to listen. Many of the policy players — business, unions, welfare groups — are sending mixed messages about supporting action as long as it does not hurt their constituencies in the short term, which quickly reduces to sectoral self-interest and political equivocation.

    It is also clear that the Government does not understand how big the scientific imperatives are. If it did, its failure to act in accord with the size and urgency of the problem could justifiably be characterised as a failure to carry out its duty of care.

    But the evidence points to another possibility. In a Rumsfeldian manner, it seemingly does not know it does not know; it is ignorant about the most recent climate science knowledge.

    Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Europe’s leading climate scientist and adviser to the German Government and the EU, says that “we are on our way to a destabilisation of the world climate that has advanced much further than most people or their governments realise”. Schellnhuber says only concentrations of greenhouse gases close to the pre-industrial levels may be safe, around 280 to 320 parts per million, compared to the present level of close to 390 parts per million.

    One sign of this problem in Australia is the way the Prime Minister and Climate Minister have adopted a traditional Labor approach to climate: something for the environment lobby and something for business. But solving the climate crisis cannot be treated like a wage deal. It is not possible to negotiate with the laws of physics and chemistry, and believing that it can reflects only an ignorance of the task at hand.

    The planet cannot be traded off. There are absolute limits that should not be crossed, and doing something, but not enough, will still lead to disaster. This the Government appears not to understand at all.

    Serious climate-change impacts are already happening, both more rapidly and at lower global temperature increases than projected. We have passed the tipping point for complete loss of the Arctic’s sea-ice in summer.

    “The Arctic is often cited as the canary in the coalmine for climate warming, and now, as a sign of climate warming, the canary has died,” says Dr Jay Zwally, a NASA glaciologist.

    The Arctic sea-ice is the first domino and it is falling fast. Other dominoes, including catastrophic levels of carbon release from warming permafrost in Siberia, are likely to fall unless we stop emitting greenhouse gases and cool the planet to get the Arctic sea-ice back.

    When transformative national and global leadership on climate is now necessary, the many thousands of Australians who work diligently in their local climate action groups see a spectacular failure of political imagination in Canberra.

    And the conclusion to their four-day meeting in the national capital? It will be back to doorknocking the neighbourhood, talking in local churches and workplaces, engaging with local MPs and building an enormous grassroots movement that aims to make our politicians energetic advocates for transformative action on global warming, but a movement also capable of inflicting political pain on those who continue to taken them and the planet’s health for granted.

    David Spratt is co-author of Climate Code Red.

  • Garrett reviews Tillegra Dam

    Wetlands of international importance are one of seven matters of national environmental significance that must be assessed under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.

    The Lower Hunter’s 3000-hectare wetland area was declared a site of world significance on the Ramsar register in 1984. It includes the Kooragang nature reserve and the Shortland wetlands centre.

    The Commonwealth’s assessment, which will be done via a bilateral agreement between the state and Commonwealth governments, will examine the likely effect of the dam on the region’s wetlands.

    Mr Garrett will then make a determination on the project.

    Newcastle Wilderness Society campaigner Vanessa Culliford said the dam would have a major impact on Lower Hunter wetlands.

    “The Williams River has the most diverse and intact aquatic biotic communities in the Hunter Valley and runs into Ramsar wetlands; why would we want to allow that to be destroyed,” she said.

    Greens MP John Kaye said Mr Garrett’s intervention represented a significant setback for the State Government that recently used its controversial 3A planning powers to declare the dam critical infrastructure.

    “While the NSW Government is trying to fast-track approval, Peter Garrett has thrown up a massive speed hump,” he said.

    “This is bad news for Premier Nathan Rees and his Water Minister Phil Costa. They now have two fights on their hands, defending both the environmental impacts and need for the water.”

    Ms Holmes said Hunter Water welcomed the Commonwealth’s involvement.

    “We believed that referring the project for consideration by the Commonwealth was a prudent approach for a major infrastructure project,” she said.

    “We welcome the Commonwealth’s involvement in the process, we look forward to working with them.”

    No Tillegra Action Group spokeswoman Sally Corbett said more than 100 public submissions had been sent to Mr Garrett’s office opposing the dam.

  • Nearly a billion people go hungry every day – can GM crops help feed them?

    As part of the exhibition, the museum organised a debate at the Dana Centre to give the public a chance to debate GM crops and the food crisis with some key scientists. I chaired the event and picked up on a few issues I thought might be worth sharing.

    The panel of experts included Bob Watson, the chief scientist at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), who in previous incarnations has been a Nasa scientist, an adviser to the White House and chief scientist at the World Bank. He was joined by Tim Lang, professor of food policy at City University in London. Tim used to be director of the London Food Commission, director of Parents for Safe Food, and has also spent time as a hill farmer in Lancashire. Rodomiro Ortiz, director of resource mobilisation at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre in Mexico, completed the panel.

    I’ve been at GM debates before, sometimes on a panel and sometimes in the audience, and I’ve always been disheartened by the deeply polarised views I hear. There are those who overstate how useful GM crops could be, while others write off the entire technique, claiming it is inherently dangerous. It’s hard not to feel the truth is somewhere in between.

    Tim Lang spoke first and stressed that our way of producing food has to change from the post-1940s push for quantity. Yes, of course quantity is still important, he said, but water usage, environmental impact and nutritional content have to be considered now more than ever. Tim doesn’t see GM as a technical fix that will put food in the mouths of the hungry, especially while it is in the hands of multinationals. He called for public ownership of GM technology, with the transparency and distribution of benefits that comes with it.

    Rodomiro spoke next, describing the work his organisation is doing to genetically modify wheat to grow under drought conditions. The crops are in trials at the moment and if they are a success, similar strains of rice, maize and barley could be next.

    Bob Watson spoke last. He began by explaining that today the amount of food available per capita has never been higher, how costs are still low, and yet still around 900m people go to bed hungry every night.

    The major problem, said Watson, is not one that GM crops will solve. He stressed the need for good roads to get crops to markets, and simple technologies that will help reduce post-harvest losses in Africa, which currently stand at between 30 and 40%. “GM is a totally oversold technique,” he said.

    The debate that followed covered some interesting ground, but it seemed easier to identify the problems than the solutions. How can we ensure GM foods are safe when some countries do not have sufficient procedures for testing and evaluating any health issues, let alone the impact of novel crops on the environment? How do you ensure that farmers in the developing world can plant higher-yielding GM crops without becoming dangerously reliant upon a company that has the power to hike prices or withdraw seeds without notice? The problems are recognised, but I’m not sure anyone at the meeting had concrete ideas about how to solve them.

    Though GM crops are common in many parts of the world now, they are still absent from the UK and resistance to them is strong in many parts of Europe. Sir David King, the government’s former chief scientist, said last year that Africa’s ills are largely down to Western do-gooders who oppose GM in favour of organic food. He argued that organic food is a luxury Africa cannot afford and that modern agricultural technology is needed urgently.

    It’s striking that the views of King and Watson are so diametrically opposed. If these two have such differing positions, is it any wonder that the public is confused?

  • New York employs electric car fleet

    New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently announced that BMW’s hotly anticipated Mini-E will soon be hitting the streets of NYC! This April BMW will loan the city ten fully-electric Mini Coopers to participate in New York’s “Street Condition Observation Unit” (SCOUT), which scours city streets for road damage, graffiti, and other instances where infrastructure repair is needed. The zippy zero-emission vehicles will lend the program their lightweight carbon footprint in exchange for an extensive round of road testing.

    New York’s shiny new set of Mini-E’s are part a 500 vehicle pilot program rolled out by BMW to test the vehicles’ viability in the United States. Since SCOUT vehicles log nearly 100 miles each day, they’re sure to be put to the test, and the electric vehicles will significantly reduce the program’s emissions in the process.

    The Mini-E is powered by a 150Kw electric motor and is capable of traveling more than 150 miles on a single charge. Their small size and agile handling make them ideal inner-city vehicles, and we’re eagerly anticipating their official release in the states. With new plug-in vehicles popping up left and right and charging grids rising up to support them, the future of electric vehicles is looking brighter than ever.

    Jim McDowell, Vice President of MINI USA stated: “We are delighted to work with New York City in developing this new form of sustainable transportation . . . Mayor Bloomberg’s PlaNYC initiative has demonstrated a keen understanding of the importance of sustainability and we fully share the same vision and enthusiasm for developing new ideas, technologies and forms of transportation to make it a reality. This MINI E zero-emission vehicle is only our company’s first step.”