Seven years after the privatisation of the Snowy River Hydroelectricity authority the Snowy River is in a worse state than ever with flows in the upper reaches of the river at four percent of their natural level instead of the 25 percent proposed in the privatisation bill. Pro-river group, the Snowy River Alliance, has sought legal advice about suing the stake holders in the Hydroelectricity company, but has been advised that the targets for environmental flows are not legally binding. Victorian MP for East Gippsland, Craig Ingram, said that the NSW government is to blame. “They have failed systematically failed to live up to the intent or the spirit of the agreement,” he said. The water is diverted to the Murrumbidgee irrigation district.
Author: admin
-
China sacrifices forests for food
Chinese Minister for Land and Resources, Lu Xinshe, has announced that the regime is struggling to maintain the 120million hectares of arable land required to feed China’s population because of urban and industrial sprawl. “We will not plan any new large scale projects to return farmland to its natural state, beyond those that have already been planned,” he said. China has bought vast tracts of arable land in poor nations. There are now estimated to be one million Chinese farmers in Africa, alone. -
US starts bulldozing suburbs
Fifty cities in the US have been earmarked for radical reconstruction as part of a plan to revitalise America’s rust belt. The plan involves the bulldozing of sprawling suburbs in economically depressed cities to revitalise community, reduce transport and infrastructure requirements and ensure food security. The plan was developed for Flint, sixty miles north of Detroit, which is one of the poorest cities in the US. It is expected that the target cities will be redesigned as a cluster of small cities surrounded by countryside. -
Why do we allow the US to act like a failed state on climate change?
The cuts it proposes are much lower than those being pursued in the UK or in most other developed nations. Like the UK’s climate change act (pdf) the US bill calls for an 80% cut by 2050, but in this case the baseline is 2005, not 1990. Between 1990 and 2005, US carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels rose from 5.8 to 7bn tonnes.
The cut proposed by 2020 is just 17%, which means that most of the reduction will take place towards the end of the period. What this means is much greater cumulative emissions, which is the only measure that counts. Worse still, it is riddled with so many loopholes and concessions that the bill’s measures might not offset the emissions from the paper it’s printed on. You can judge the effectiveness of a US bill by its length: the shorter it is, the more potent it will be. This one is some 1,200 pages long, which is what happens when lobbyists have been at work.
There are mind-boggling concessions to the biofuels industry, including a promise not to investigate its wider environmental impacts. There’s a provision to allow industry to use 2bn tonnes of carbon offsets a year, which include highly unstable carbon sinks like crop residues left in the soil (another concession won by the powerful farm lobby). These offsets are so generous that if all of them are used, US industry will have to make no carbon cuts at all until 2026.
Like the EU emissions trading scheme (ETS), Waxman-Markey would oblige companies to buy only a small proportion (15%) of their carbon permits. The rest will be given away. This means that a resource belonging to everyone (the right to pollute) is captured by industrial interests without public compensation. The more pollution companies have produced, the greater their free allocation will be – the polluter gets paid. It also means, if the ETS is anything to go by, that the big polluters will be able to make windfall profits by passing on the price of the permits they haven’t bought to their consumers.
In one respect the bill actually waters down current legislation, by preventing the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating coal-burning power stations. If the new coal plants planned in the US are built, it’s hard to see how even the feeble targets in this bill can be met, let alone any targets proposed by the science.
Even so, I would like to see the bill passed, as it at least provides a framework for future improvements. But why do we expect so little from the US? Why do we treat the world’s most powerful and innovative nation as if it were a failed state, rejoicing at even the faintest suggestion of common sense?
You have only to read the comments that follow this article to find out. Thanks to the lobbying work of the coal and oil companies, and the vast army of thinktanks, PR consultants and astroturfers they have sponsored, thanks too to the domination of the airwaves by loony right shock jocks, the debate over issues like this has become so mad that any progress at all is little short of a miracle. The ranking Republican on the House energy and commerce committee is Joe Barton, the man who in 2005 launched a congressional investigation of three US scientists whose work reveals the historical pattern of climate change. Like those of many of his peers, his political career is kept on life support by the fossil fuel and electricity companies. He returns the favour by vociferously denying that manmade climate change exists.
A combination of corporate money and an unregulated corporate media keeps America in the dark ages. This bill is the best we’re going to get for now because the corruption of public life in the United States has not been addressed. Whether he is seeking environmental reforms, health reforms or any other improvement in the life of the American people, this is Obama’s real challenge.