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  • Australia’s Projected Population Problems

    1   The current population is approaching 22 Million.

    2   The projected annual population increase is 398.000 (ABS Site    Figures)

    3   The doubling time for this increase in population is 40 years. Should the population continue to increase at the same rate the population would be 44 million by year 2049

    4    The current infrastructure is not adequate for the existing population.

          Areas of concern which will be adversely affected by increased population.

    1    Health- Hospitals- aged care facilities. (Currently not coping with existing

          population)

    2    Housing. (Current shortage will  be exacerbated by increasing populations)

    3    Transport Rail – Road. How will people and freight be conveyed when oil

           supplies fail, due to the Peak-Oil Crisis?

    4    Education- schools- colleges. (Currently in crisis mode)

    5    The Food Chain  Agriculture will be affected both in farm production and

           transfer of produce to the marketplace. Also will be subject to clauses 6 and 7.

           Reports show that only 6 % of Australia is considered to be arable.

           How will we provide food in sufficient quantities to cater for future

           population rises?

    6     Drought (existing and future) due to the affects of climate change.

    7     Shortage of Water due to diminished rainfall ( See clause 6)

    8     Economic situation leading to high unemployment. (Already evident.)

    The reasons shown in clauses 1 to 8 clearly show that population Growth needs

    to be controlled or sustainability will be impossible.

    Capital Cities are at saturation point . Overpopulated and infrastructure not coping.

    There are people deserting country areas because of lack of employment and

    moving to coastal areas where they will be similarly disadvantaged.

    The coastal areas where over 90 % of the population is situated are threatened by Sea Level Rise and Tidal flooding due to the advent of Climate Change.

     Extract from discussion paper

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  • International seabed claims flood into UN

    In the past two weeks Ghana, Pakistan, Norway, South Africa, Iceland, Denmark, France, Vietnam, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Kenya and others have delivered boxes of documents to the commission’s premises in New York.

    The hefty files of detailed paperwork – one Australian submission ran to 80 volumes – are the culmination of years of underwater exploration by each state, plotting submarine contours that mark the outer edges of the continental shelf.

    The complex rules of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea permit states to extend their control and exploitation of the seabed beyond the traditional 200 nautical mile limit and up to 350 nautical miles offshore.

    The precise extent of each claim frequently involves establishing the foot of an underwater continental slope, thousands of feet down in the chilly, dark oceans – and then measuring 60 miles outward.

    Some claims, usually the legacies of unresolved international conflicts, are mutually exclusive, generating fresh diplomatic unease along the fissure lines of ancient boundary disputes. Before Wednesday, the UK will present its claim for the seabed surrounding the Falklands, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands in the South Atlantic.

    The submission is bound to overlap with the Argentinian claim sent in last month which insisted that the waters and extended continental shelf around all those islands belonged to the government in Buenos Aires. The French have raised hackles by claiming the seabed near their Pacific island territories.

    The 13 May deadline applies only to those states that were signatories of the original treaty ten years ago. Other states, which signed at a later date, have more time left to submit their claims.

    The United States has still not ratified the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea, but the prospect of neighbouring countries such as Canada and Russia carving up the seabed for exploration is rapidly shifting opinion in Washington.

    Greenpeace and other marine environmental groups have derided the process as a series of colonial land grabs. Britain will have submitted several major claims, all in the Atlantic, by the end of this week: around Ascension Island, the Falkland Islands and in the Hatton-Rockall Basin to the west of Scotland.

    The UK has signalled its interest in the continental shelf that slopes away from the British Antarctic Territory. All territorial claims at the South Pole are, however, formally frozen by the Antarctic Treaty to which the UK is a signatory.

    Britain, France, Spain and Ireland have also lodged a shared submission for a 31,000 square mile tract of the ocean floor on the edge of the Bay of Biscay.

  • Carbon trading won’t stop climate change

    This is the partly the result of the economic downturn.  As heavy industries mothball factories, energy use drops and demand for permits goes down.  At the same time businesses try to raise cash by selling their unused permits, flooding the market and further depressing prices.  French energy company EDF recently complained that carbon markets were failing just like the market for subprime mortgages.  As a result, all kinds of green energy schemes are grinding to a halt.
    So how do you set a meaningful price for carbon?  The reality is more complicated than the ETS might suggest, which is a problem for those who advocate using market forces to reduce emissions.  As NASA climate scientist James Hansen points out, getting it right or wrong could determine whether or not we can avert irreversible climate change.
    Apart from the ETS, there are many ways to put a value on carbon.  You can, for example, work out what it costs per tonne to reduce emissions.  But calculating this “marginal abatement cost” is complicated by doubts over the effectiveness of carbon offsetting and the true impact of some supposedly green technologies.
    Another method is the “social cost of carbon”, which estimates the cost of the damage from emitting a tonne of carbon over its whole lifetime in the atmosphere.  This has been used by the UK treasury, and the Dutch government and the World Bank have experimented with it.  But with so many variables to account for, estimates range from £35 to £140 per tonne.  The UK has now dropped it for a new “shadow price of carbon”, an approach supported by the French government and some members of the European Commission.
    The shadow price is similar to the social cost but includes “other factors that may affect willingness to pay for reductions”, to use the UK government’s own words.  It is “a more versatile concept”.  In other words, it gives politicians some scope to rig the price.  Although well intentioned, it is vulnerable to abuse.
    Each of these methods has its advantages and disadvantages, but there is one problem that none can solve.  I’ll call it the paradox of environmental economics, in which worthy attempts to value natural resources hit a wall.
    The paradox is this.  All these methods of pricing carbon permit the creation of a carbon market that will allow us to pollute beyond a catastrophic tipping point.  In other words, they require us to put a price on the final “killing” tonne of CO2 which, once emitted, tips the balance and triggers runaway global warming.  How can we set such a price?  It’s like saying, how much is civilisation worth?  Or, if you needed a camel to cross a desert alive, what is a fair value for the straw that breaks its back?
    If you needed a camel to cross a desert, what is a fair value for the straw that breaks its back?
    The paradox reveals the fatal shortcoming of market solutions to environmental problems.  Unless the parameters for carbon markets are set tightly in line with what science tells us is necessary to preventing runaway warming, they cannot work.  That palpably did not happen with the ETS, which initially issued more permits to pollute than there were emissions and now, in the recession, is trading emissions that don’t exist – so-called hot air.
    Carbon markets cannot save us unless they operate within a global carbon cap sufficient to prevent a rise of more than 2 °C above pre-industrial temperatures.
    Governments are there to compensate for market failure but seem to have a blind spot about carbon markets.  They could counteract the impact of low carbon prices by spending on renewable energy as part of their economic stimulus packages, yet they have not done so.  The UK, for example, has spent nearly 20 per cent of its GDP to prop up the financial sector, but just 0.0083 per cent in new money on green economic stimulus.
    Price mechanisms alone are unable to do the vital job of reducing carbon emissions.  They are too vague, imperfect, and frequently socially unjust.  To prevent over-consumption of key resources such as fuel during the second world war, the UK government rejected taxation in favour of rationing because taxation unfairly hit the poor and was too slow to change behaviour.  Rationing was the quicker, more equitable option.  Carbon rations calculated in line with a safe cap on overall emissions provide a more certain way of hitting emissions targets.
    Is there an answer to the paradox of environmental economics that could make the market approach workable?  I can’t imagine one, but am open to suggestions.  Even if you could price the killing tonne, it is a transaction that should never be allowed.  Economics becomes redundant if it can rationalise an exchange that sells the future of humankind.
    Andrew Simms is author of Ecological Debt: Global warming and the wealth of nations (Pluto Press), and policy director and head of the climate change programme at nef (the New Economics Foundation)

  • The bullish outlook for lithium

    For tin, it was three days up in a row: on Wednesday, a 7.2 per cent gain (or $US905/tonne), then another $US495 on Thursday followed on Friday by a more modest $US100, ending at $US14,000/tonne.

    How is this working out in the equity markets?

    Firstly, traders are getting excited once again by promising news out of the junior end. But if there’s another rout – and you cannot rule out the possibility of another dreadful shoe yet to fall – then investors will drop the market like a stone. They came back after last year’s shock; it is doubtful if they will bounce back so quickly after a second.

    Shocking though the suggestion may be some of those with a speculative, buy-today-and-sell-tomorrow approach to the market, this may be the time for little long term thinking.

    What is going to be in short supply in the next few years? Well, some say lithium could be such a metal (although there are those who discount this).

    The bullish theory is that lithium, which is so far used mainly in glass and in batteries for laptops and mobile phones, is going to be a supply deficit once the hybrid and electric car business really hits its straps.

    Just look at the battle royal going on over who gets to develop the Uyuni salt flat in Bolivia, which reputedly contains half the world’s known lithium reserves. The government in La Paz will decide between France’s Bollore Group, Mitsubishi or South Korea’s LG Group.

    There have been developments at two of the Australian-listed lithium plays. Orocobre has done a scoping study on its Argentinian project which shows the potential to produce 15,000 tonnes a year of lithium carbonate (along with 36,000 tonnes of potash). A bankable feasibility study (BFS) should be completed mid-2010.

    The financing deal for that was released this morning. First, US-based Lithium Investors will take a $2.6 million placement, and shareholders will be offered a rights issue with a target of another $2.8 million with Patersons Securities to be the underwriter. This means Orocobre has covered the cost of its BFS — and further supports confidence in the lithium story.

    And Galaxy Resources has appointed a Shanghai-based company to do the study on building a lithium carbonate plant in China to process the output of the company’s planned lithium mine near Ravensthorpe, Western Australia.

    This morning Galaxy announced the site of the plant would be at Zhangjiagang, a deep water port on the Yangtze River and the location of a free trade zone.

    One last point: if you go back two years and re-read all the forecasts for demand for various metals (not to mention their prices), chances are that 90 per cent of them have been proved wrong. Keep that in mind when you read any projection into the future – even for lithium.

    The writer implies no investment recommendation and this report contains material that is speculative in nature. Investors should seek professional investment advice.

  • Parrot ‘ putting hundreds of job’s at risk

    “The Commonwealth has surprised everyone with this initiative in calling the matter in which effectively would end logging down in the Riverina for some time and the jobs would be lost,” he said.
    The NSW Government’s position is that we want to defend these jobs. The Riverina has been devastated by drought and it cannot afford to lost another 800 jobs.”
    Deniliquin Mayor Lindsay Renwick says the logging ban would devastate the community.
    “It would be the nail in the coffin that would concern us here in Deniliquin,” he said.
    “Peter Garrett should think of the people that he is putting out of jobs in ruining the inland of Australia … he and his government at the moment are working on a witchhunt to try and cruel the central parts of NSW.”
    Mr Garrett says he would be happy to discuss the matter with the State Government.
    “It’s really important that we make sure that we resolve this issue as quickly as possible and I certainly have asked my department to ensure that intensive discussions continue over the coming period,” he said.
    And Georgina Woods from the National Parks Association says she is glad the Federal Government has stepped in.
    “The logging undertaken by Forests NSW in the RAMSAR-listed wetlands of the central Murray is illegal under the Environment Protection Bio-diversity Conservation Act,” she said.
    “What’s really needed is a structural readjustment for the industry so that we can have exit packages and we can have redundancy packages for workers, because the forests down there are running out of timber and continuing to log them at the rate that New South Wales is doing is not going to be able to be sustained in the long term.”