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  • Having Children Brings High Carbon Impact

    August 7, 2009, 10:32 am

    Having Children Brings High Carbon Impact


    By Kate Galbraith


    PregnantReuters Her carbon footprint is getting bigger, too, a new study suggests.

    Having children is the surest way to send your carbon footprint soaring, according to a new study from statisticians at Oregon State University.


     


    The study found that having a child has an impact that far outweighs that of other energy-saving behaviors.


    Take, for example, a hypothetical American woman who switches to a more fuel-efficient car, drives less, recycles, installs more efficient light bulbs, and replaces her refrigerator and windows with energy-saving models. If she had two children, the researchers found, her carbon legacy would eventually rise to nearly 40 times what she had saved by those actions.


    “Clearly, the potential savings from reduced reproduction are huge compared to the savings that can be achieved by changes in lifestyle,” the report states.


    The impact of children varies dramatically depending on geography: An American woman who has a baby will generate nearly seven times the carbon footprint of that of a Chinese woman who has a child, the study found.



    The calculations take account of the fact that each child is, in turn, likely to have more children. And because the calculations derive from the fertility rate — the expected number of children per woman in various countries — the findings focus on women, although clearly men participate in the decision to have children.


    “In discussions about climate change, we tend to focus on the carbon emissions of an individual over his or her lifetime,” said Paul Murtaugh, a professor of statistics at O.S.U., in a statement accompanying the study’s release. “Those are important issues and it’s essential that they should be considered. But an added challenge facing us is continuing population growth and increasing global consumption of resources.”


    The full report is published in the February 2009 edition of the journal Global Environmental Change: Human and Policy Dimensions.

  • Life’s a bleach fot Barrier Reef as climate changes

    Life’s a bleach for Barrier Reef as climate changes








     




    Jamie Walker | August 10, 2009


    Article from:  The Australian


    THE Great Barrier Reef’s gilt-edged importance to the Australian economy has been highlighted by new research into the potential financial cost of climate change to the world heritage-listed wonder.


    British consultant Oxford Economics puts the present value of the reef at $51.4 billion – approaching $2500 for every Australian alive today – but warns that nearly four-fifths of its worth would be destroyed if the coral was totally and permanently bleached.


     


    The study goes beyond placing a dollar figure on tourism, fishing and other commercial activities involving the reef, valuing “indirect” benefits such as its role in protecting coastal communities from storms and cyclones.


    The research was commissioned by the not-for-profit Great Barrier Reef Foundation. Its chairman, John Schubert, warned yesterday that the reef was at a “crossroads” because of climate change.


    “We are basically at a point where we need to take action to ensure that as much of the reef as possible can be preserved,” Dr Schubert said in releasing the Oxford Economics study.


    The $51.4bn figure for the reef’s net worth is calculated over a century, at a preferred discount rate of 2.65 per cent to price in the opportunity cost of tying up that capital.


    Oxford Economics valued the net economic benefit and profit generated by tourism on the reef at $20.2bn, with recreational fishing worth $2.8bn. Profit from commercial fishing is $1.4bn, while the so-called indirect-use value of the reef as a coastal defence absorbing up to 90per cent of the destructive force of storm-driven waves was $10bn in present value terms.


    Dr Schubert said the British firm’s estimate of the reef’s economic worth was broadly in line with that of Australian forecaster Access Economics, though each used a different form of economic modelling.


    Oxford Economics also factored in a “non-use” worth of the reef of $15.2bn, representing the potential value to Australians of, say, a future visit to the reef or of its capacity to yield breakthroughs in biomedicine and other forms of research.


    In costing these economic benefits, Oxford Economics said it had been able to value the potentially catastrophic effects of coral bleaching from higher ocean temperature and levels caused by climate change.


    The report found that the reef had been affected by heat-related coral bleaching six times over the past 25 years, most severely in 2002, when 60per cent of reefs within the vast marine park were hit, destroying up to a tenth of the coral.


    Total and permanent bleaching of the reef would cost $37.7bn, or 73 per cent of its assessed value to the economy, presently accounting for nearly 5 per cent of Australia’s gross domestic product. Tourism would be devastated, with up to half of the million or so people who visit the reef annually likely to stay away.


    The Cairns region would lose 90per cent of the $17.9bn reef-related activity boosting the local economy.


    “This report provides a wake-up call about the threat to one of Australia’s greatest natural assets and the potential cost to Australia,” Dr Schubert said.


    “It also establishes for the first time the extent to which the Cairns region would be affected by a major bleaching event.”

  • New Poll says Australians don’t want Pulp Mill

    New Poll says Australians don’t want Pulp Mill





    Media Release | Spokesperson Christine Milne, Bob Brown

    Friday 7th August 2009, 2:52pm

    in



    A Galaxy poll commissioned by the Australian Greens shows massive opposition to the proposed Bell Bay pulp mill.


    The poll conducted on 24-26 July of 1100 Australians reveals 74 percent of Australians oppose the building of a mill in the Tamar Valley. The figures see an even greater opposition to the mill if the 12% without an opinion are excluded. This brings the figure to 84% in opposition.


     


    Australian Greens Leader Senator Bob Brown said the poll was solid evidence that mill proponent Gunns Ltd and the Rudd Government should end their support for the project.


    “This shows a clear decision by Australians that a pulp mill in the Tamar is a very bad idea.”


    “Prime Minister Rudd and Premier Bartlett are offside with the majority of Australians who can see that building this forest-hungry, polluting pulp mill is the wrong way to go.”


    Deputy Greens Leader Senator Christine Milne said the poll would give any international investor cause to rethink involvement.


    “What international company could even entertain the notion of partnering with Gunns when only 3% of the Australian population strongly support the development, compared to 42% standing in strong opposition – that is 14 to 1, an overwhelming opposition.”


    “The current interested partner – Södra of Sweden – should note the results of this poll because a partnership with Gunns will clearly harm its global reputation.”


    The Galaxy Poll:[Copy attached]
    Question: The logging company Gunns proposes to build a pulp mill in Tasmania’s Tamar Valley. A substantial amount of woodchips being used in the mill would be sourced from Tasmania’s native forests. Do you personally support or oppose the building of the pulp mill?


    Sample: 1100 Australians, 24-26 July, 2009
    Strongly Support: 3%
    Support: 11%
    Total Support: 14%
    Strongly Oppose: 42%
    Oppose: 32%
    Total Oppose: 74%
    Don’t Know/Refused: 12%

  • ETS disillusion and dissolution

    ETS disillusion and dissolution




     



    ETS disillusionand dissolutionClerk of the Senate Harry Evans’ conclusion that a double dissolution cannot deliver the Rudd government’s Emissions Trading Scheme has the potential to send the administration back to the drawing board and to recast the entire ETS debate.


    The precedent for Evans’ belief is the Australia Card double dissolution election of 1987. The parallels are eerie.


    Back then, Prime Minister Bob Hawke too was being frustrated by a hostile Senate. But his real political agenda was to go to an early election in order to capitalise on the weakness of then Opposition leader John Howard.


     


    Howard, languishing in the polls, was being dogged on his own side by the federal ambitions of then Queensland premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen.


    Those ambitions culminated in the Joh for Canberra campaign, putting paid to Howard’s chances of becoming prime minister that year and, some felt, forever.


    The issue Hawke chose for his double dissolution trigger was the Australia Card _ in effect a national identity card.


    Hawke argued it was necessary to crack down on welfare fraud and streamline the social security and banking systems. He also argued that having just one form of identification would make life easier for Australians.


    With the Opposition focused on its own leadership problems and incapable of mounting an effective political argument, the idea proved popular.


    With the Senate having rejected the Australia Card legislation twice, Hawke used it as a trigger for a double dissolution election on July 11, 1987.


    Prime Minister Rudd finds himself in a similar situation today, faced by a weak Opposition, with a leader in Malcolm Turnbull dredging the depths of opinion poll popularity, and the Coalition divided and incapable of mounting an effective argument against the ETS.


    An early double dissolution election is an almost irresistible temptation.


    While the issue is substantive – after all, the ETS is the most fundamental reform to the economy since the 1998 introduction of the GST – the subtext of destroying Turnbull and consigning the Opposition to the wilderness for at least another two terms must also loom large in Rudd’s mind.


    So Rudd’s situation is similar to  that of Hawke in 1987, but it’s the similarity of their positions that Senate Clerk Evans – the ultimate arbiter of Upper House power – believes could also prove to be Rudd’s undoing, as it was Hawke’s.


    After his election win Hawke prepared to call a joint sitting of both houses of Parliament to pass the Australia Card legislation – which by the end of the election campaign had become much more unpopular as civil libertarians pored over its implications.


    The same may well end up being the fate of the ETS legislation as voters in the hothouse of an election begin to focus on its implications for jobs rather than feel-good flushes over global warming.


    In a dramatic day in the Parliament that stunned Hawke and his senior ministers, John Howard revealed the Australia Card legislation had a fatal flaw, declaring it “dead _ stone dead”.


    Howard’s charge rested on the fact that the ID card legislation required the start-up date for the card to be set by “regulation”. Regardless of any joint sitting of Parliament passing the legislation, this meant the anti-Labor Senate still had the power to strike down the regulation that would be needed to bring the card into law.


    Hawke abandoned it.


    According to Harry Evans, Rudd is now in the same position.


    Although his ETS framework is based in law, its real mechanics – what makes it actually work – are based on a myriad of regulation, particularly the most contentious aspects regarding protections for export and job-exposed sectors such as the coal industry.


    So even if Rudd won an election and, like Hawke, held a double dissolution to have his ETS legislation passed, the Senate could still strike down the regulations that, in effect, make the system work. It would be “dead _ stone dead”.


    And by its very nature a double dissolution election is more likely to guarantee Rudd faces a hostile Senate because of the lower quotas required for such an election, which benefit the minor parties.


    For minor parties, read Greens, who are utterly opposed to Rudd’s ETS in its present form; they want it to be tougher.


    If Evans is right, this means if Rudd goes to a double dissolution election he faces having to increase emissions targets at the risk of threatening even more jobs at precisely the post-election moment when the ETS may just be proving as unpopular as did the Australia Card.


    As for Turnbull, again if Evans is right, he has no need to fear double dissolution and can take a much-needed breather.


    By the way, the fatal flaw in the Australia Card legislation was discovered by retired federal legislative draftsman Ewart Smith, who said the thunderbolt came to him when he was awakened in the Canberra pre-dawn by magpies.


    This time the “discovery” was made by Liberal MP Wilson Tuckey – whose public attack on Turnbull led me to suggest in a recent column he be taken out the back and, well, you know the rest.


    On the basis of this lightning bolt on the ETS, Tuckey deserves a political reprieve.
     

  • Carbon trading: a burning issue for Tiwi Islands

    Carbon trading: a burning issue for Tiwi Islands


    By Laetitia Lemke for AM


                        Tiwi Islands




    Traditionally about half of the Tiwi Islands is set alight every year. (ABC TV)




    Plans for a national carbon trading scheme will be debated in Federal Parliament next week, but on the Tiwi Islands north of Darwin, Indigenous people are already preparing to do their own carbon bargaining.


    Traditionally about half of the Tiwi Islands is set alight every year.


    The CSIRO’s Alan Anderson is leading research here which aims to help locals create jobs and money from the burn-off.


    “Savannah burning contributes to 3 per cent of Australia’s national greenhouse gas emissions, which is quite a lot,” he said.


     


    “We’ve calculated that it could be worth up to $100 million a year right across northern Australia, maybe up to $1 million dollars in the Tiwi.”


    But Dr Alan Anderson says to capitalise on that opportunity, greenhouse gas emissions from fires have to be measured.


    He has joined forces with Tiwi Island students and local rangers to do just that.


    They are not only measuring gases like methane and nitrous oxide that are released during burning off, but also how fire affects the long term storage of carbon in the bush.


    “There’s an enormous amount of uncertainty in the science,” he said.


    “We just don’t understand well enough what effects fire is having on tree growth, tree survival, the ability of these ecosystems to store carbon in the trees and in the soil.


    “We just have to know exactly if we’re going to be able to position Tiwi people to take an economic advantage out of the carbon opportunities.”


    This research is not just focused on the economic benefits.


    Tiwi ranger Willy Rioli is teaching students from the Tiwi College about the benefits of cool burning, a technique where smaller areas of land are burned off earlier in the season.


    This method reduces smoke from fires and limits the impact on biodiversity.


    “We’re doing light burning and we’ve still got grass… a little bit of patchy grass here,” he said. “We’ll leave a bit there, those animals they can go and hide there, see.”


    Smaller fires do not burn as high or as hot, so animals have a better chance of escaping up trees or deeper into bushland, and that protects bush tucker stocks.


    “Obviously when I was growing up we didn’t have this sort of education,” he said.


    “With this sort of education, hopefully it can help the younger generation of kids that are growing up. How to look after own country, more or less.”


    Tags: business-economics-and-finance, community-and-society, indigenous, environment, climate-change, government-and-politics, emissions-trading, australia, nt, nguiu-0822

  • Greens ready to vote with Opposition on emission laws

    Greens ready to vote with Opposition on emissions laws


    Posted 1 hour 25 minutes ago
    Updated 4 minutes ago



    Wind turbines near Edithburgh SA

    Renewable targets: The Greens are prepared to work with the Opposition to get the legislation passed. (Bob Watson)




    The Greens are prepared to vote with the Federal Opposition to force the Government to split its renewable energy target legislation from its emissions trading scheme.


     


    The Government joined the two pieces of legislation, saying they were closely linked in policy and industry support.


    But the Coalition says the Government linked the bills in an effort to force the Senate to support both schemes, because the Coalition and the Greens both oppose the emissions trading legislation.


    Deputy Greens leader Christine Milne has told Channel 10 her party will work with the Opposition to ensure legislation for the renewable energy target can be passed.


    “We’ll do whatever it takes to get the renewable energy target through the Senate,” he said.


    “The Government was absolutely cynical in linking the two and has cost thousands of jobs in renewable energy because of their failure to do so.


    “So, we’ll deal with the whole Senate to make sure, by the end of this sitting, we have a renewable energy target.”


    But the Federal Government is resisting the pressure.


    Climate Change Minister Penny Wong has told ABC TV’s Insiders program that legislation for the renewable energy target will not be effective on its own.


    “Even with the increase in renewable energy, Australia’s emissions will continue to rise, our carbon pollution will continue to rise,” she said.


    “So you need the CPRS, the Carbon Poluution Reduction Scheme, if you actually eant to turn emissions around, if you wan to turn Australia’s carbon pollution around.


    “We need both pieces of legislation.”


    Double dissolution threat


     


    The Greens say the Federal Government should not expect to gain public support if it calls an early election on climate change.


    If the Government’s emisisons trading scheme rejected twice, it would give the Government a trigger for a double dissolution election to push its legislation through Parliament.


    Senator Milne say her party would not mind an early election because she believes the public will back the Greens’ push for a tougher emissions trading scheme.


    “If the Government chose to go to an election on climate change, I think the Australian community would surprise the Government by electing more Greens to have a stronger position on climate change,” he said.


    “Every day the news gets worse … What we’ve got is a world going into ecological collapse and the community knows it.”


    Senator Wong says the Greens are playing politics with a critical issue.


    “Today we see Senator Milne on television basically talking up the Greens prospects of a success if there were to be a double dissolution,” she said.


    “So if we want to talk about people playing politics, [are] we seriously suggesting it’s a good thing for the planet, to vote to ensure that Australia’s emissions continue to rise, but then talk up your electoral prospects?”


    Tags: business-economics-and-finance, environment, government-and-politics, federal-government, environmentally-sustainable-business, australia