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  • Outdoor diners need smoke-free protection.

     

     

     

    “Premier Keneally and her ministers will need to sort through the same arguments that their predecessors went through a decade ago when indoor diners were finally protected from side stream smoke.

     

    “Local governments have led the way with bans within a number of  municipalities. The NSW government must now come to the table and ban all smoking in outdoor dining areas.

     

    “The Keneally government must be strong enough to stand up to those elements of the restaurant industry who will argue that it will damage their business.

     

    “Just as the indoor dining ban increased the number of customers, an outdoor ban will help boost summer patronage.

     

    “The total cost of smoking to NSW is $6.6 billion a year, including health services expenses of $476 million.

     

    “Without a ban on smoking in outdoor eating areas, enjoyment of al fresco dining on a warm summers evening is often limited by other people’s cigarette smoke.

     

    “The Greens join with the Cancer Council in calling for a ban across a wide range of outdoor venues including sporting stadia and grounds, children’s playgrounds, outdoor entertainment areas and venues, crowded beach locations, taxi stands, bus stops and within seven metres of public building entrances,” Dr Kaye said.

     

    For more information:       John Kaye 0407 195 455

     
     
    ———————————-
    John Kaye
    Greens member of the NSW Parliament
    phone: (02) 9230 2668
    fax: (02) 9230 2586
    mobile: 0407 195 455
     

  • 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.

  • California bags the plastic bag ban but makes solar leap

     

    Commissioner Timothy Simon noted at Thursday’s energy commission meeting in San Francisco that the price for that electricity is lower than previous solar contracts, another sign that photovoltaic power is edging ever closer to edging out fossil fuels. The price also speaks to the ability of First Solar, an Arizona-based thin-film solar company, to win and begin to execute big projects.

    The commission also greenlighted San Diego Gas & Electric’s proposal for 100-megawatt’s worth of small-scale photovoltaic projects.

    Most installations will be 1 or 2 megawatts and built in parking lots or other open spaces where they can be plugged into the grid without expensive transmission upgrades. The move comes on top of 1,000 megawatts of distributed solar generation that the utilities commission previously approved for California’s two other big utilities.

    Michael R. Peevey, the president of the utilities commission, said despite the failure of the state legislature to institutionalize the 33 percent renewable portfolio standard — currently subject to reversal by the next governor — California was on a solar streak.

    “With approval of this project we’ll have added 1,100 megawatts of photovoltaic electricity by the three utilities,” said Peevey, noting separately that the California Solar Initiative will add another 3,000 megawatts and that by year’s end, regulators are poised to approve big solar farms that will generate 4,700 megawatts of electricity.

    “These are big, big numbers,” Peevey added. “Independent of the legislature, we’re moving to a RPS (Renewable Portfolio Standard) economy.”

  • 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