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  • Pollution scheme promotes driving

    Related story in The Land

    MOTORISTS will get a windfall of at least $150 million a year at the petrol pump under the “cent-for-cent” reduction of fuel taxes in the Government’s emissions trading scheme.

    But the annual petrol subsidy has angered green groups and industry, which say it will encourage motorists to drive more and increase emissions until at least 2025.

    In economic work done by the Australian Conservation Foundation, the environmental group found that by using price increases in diesel, which emits more carbon, as the baseline for cutting taxes on petrol, the Government will reduce the price of petrol more than it would normally cost without emissions trading.

    The ACF’s modelling shows that the subsidy to motorists using petrol will be $150 million a year based on a $20-a-tonne carbon price. That subsidy will increase as the price of carbon rises under a trading scheme.

    ACF economic adviser Simon O’Connor said yesterday the measure removed the price incentive for motorists to use their cars less and reduce emissions.

    A spokesman for Assistant Treasurer Chris Bowen said the additional funding would be paid for with cash raised from the sale carbon permits in the emissions trading scheme and would not add to the budget deficit.

    The Government has also committed to making cuts to fuel taxes permanent, meaning if the cost of carbon later falls — making fuel cheaper to refine — it will not increase the tax to original levels.

    The ACF found an ally for its complaints yesterday in petrol company Caltex, which called for the fuel tax cut to be scrapped.

    Caltex also wants the transport sector to be removed from emissions trading altogether and replaced with voluntary “complementary measures”.

    Caltex’s government relations manager, Frank Topham, told a Senate committee hearing on climate change in Sydney that, by Caltex’s calculation, the fuel tax reduction measures meant emissions from cars would rise in the first 15 years of a trading scheme, rather than fall.

    “The price of petrol goes down so emissions will go up for the next few years,” the manager of government affairs for Caltex, Frank Topham, told a Senate committee investigating the scheme.

    Mr Topham called for private motorists and small vehicle users to be permanently excluded from the scheme.

    Caltex estimates emissions will continue to rise until 2025.

    But Caltex wants a delay to the scheme, scheduled to begin in July 2010, until the end of the global economic crisis and 100 per cent free permits until an international agreement of carbon is reached.

  • Plagues follow drought, fire and flood

    From The Land

    AS IF drought wasn’t enough, farmers are now struggling with burgeoning plagues – everything from mice and locusts to rabbits and feral pigs.

    But at least a shortage of mouse bait experienced in several Central West areas last week is now over.

    “We’re back on deck with bait,” said Central West Livestock Health and Pest Authority senior ranger, Lisa Thomas, Dubbo.

    Central, western and north-western areas from Dubbo to the Queensland border are experiencing pest problems, some in near plague proportions.

    Ms Thomas said mice populations were high right across the Central West and western regions.

    “They’re all the way up to Coonamble and north, and Nyngan people are having problems as well.”

  • Barnaby puts land rights ahead of land

    He also congratuled the landholders at Monday’s meeting in Rockhampton in forming an alliance to tackle the issue head-on and make all Queenslanders aware of what was at stake.

    “It’s extremely important that people understand what this is – it’s yet another incursion by the government into the private asset held by the individual, without payment,” Senator Joyce said.

    “People across Queensland, whether they’re from an urban environment or rural enviroment, must stop seeing this as some sort of environmental crusade and call it for what it is.

    “It is the government putting their hands on your asset and taking away the value of your asset without ever paying you for it.

    “If the State Government feels so strongly about regrowth then they’re welcome to put out a tender and see how much they can buy.

    “But if they don’t want to buy it, then it doesn’t mean that much to them, so stay away from it, because it’s called theft otherwise.

    “Freehold title is the storage of wealth – it is where people store the efforts and labours of not only their generation but most likely of the generations that went before them.

    “And when you take away the capacity for wealth to be stored in land, you completely undermine all the effort that went into the creation of that wealth as personified by the land.

    “Therefore you have taken away the fundamental building block of commerce – that is, what is the point of going to work if someone can steal the asset off you.

    “It’s not only a slap in the face for the person who owns the land, it’s a slap in the face for those who managed it before them.

    “It is the skin cancers on your face, it’s the callouses on your hands, it’s the marriage break-ups, and restless nights, not only of your generation but the generations who went before you.”

    Senator Joyce said rural Queensland shouldn’t waste its time trying to attract green preference, but agreed talking to Queensland’s rational urban constituents and engaging in a “philosophical battle” was a better move.

    “The Greens will always support the Labor Party – they proved at the last election that they’re quite happy to build Traveston Dam in their path of supporting the Labor party. They’re fraudulent in their own desires,” Senator Joyce said.

    “Rural Queensland needs to say to urban areas, ‘how would you feel, if by edict of the government, they said from now on you’re not allowed to use your second bedroom, and you can only use your kitchen with one eye closed’ or to say ‘as of tomorrow you can’t mow your lawn’.

    “People would say that’s outrageous because it takes away the intrinsic value that’s represented in your house, and so paying off that mortgatge is kind of pointless.

    “The State Government is putting incumberance after incumberance after caveat that waters down the meaning of what that asset is.”

  • Farmers freak as rural seats disappear

    As the commission begins eyeing off the next seat to go, The Nationals are urging rural voters, regardless of their politics, to voice their concerns about any possible reduction to the number of country MPs.

    The Nationals federal director, Brad Henderson, said the party’s executive in Canberra is finalising its own submission, due next Thursday, but will be making the case to retain regional seats which already cover huge expanses.

    “We don’t want to see the abolition of another rural seat,” Mr Henderson said.

    “If a seat must go, it should be from one of the metropolitan areas of Newcastle, Sydney or Wollongong.

    “There are many seats in those areas well under their quota, and they are also areas already well represented in parliament.

    “Country people deserve to be able to access a local member with some relative ease.

    “The bigger these electorates come, the more difficult it becomes for rural MPs to service their regions and for regional people to access their MPs.”

    The Nationals have been particularly critical of the current voting formula for some time, with policy debates on this issue at most annual conferences.

    Nationals MP for the newly defined seat of Parkes, Mark Coulton, represents much of the old Gwydir electorate which he fought hard to try and retain.

    He said it sounds as though his electorate will be getting bigger under the redistribution.

    He is nervous about the prospect of one less voice in country areas – “forget about the party it belongs to” – if the commission looks to scrap another rural seat.

    “Western NSW took the pain last time,” Mr Coulton said.

    “Country MPs are prepared to cover a fair bit of territory, but I already spend 30 to 40 hours a week just travelling to and from towns in my electorate along the Newell Highway.

    “We don’t need another situation where half of NSW is lumped into one seat, as was proposed last time.”

    * Written submissions must be lodged with the redistribution committee by 6pm next Friday to be considered.

    Mail to PO Box K406, Haymarket, NSW 1240 or email nsw.redistribution@aec.gov.au

  • Water limiist solar power in California

    Power companies are facing challenges in setting up solar thermal power generation plants in California’s Mojave desert. The limited supply of water and the delicate ecosystem of the region have both contributed to a scaling back of plans to build more than 150 solar powered electricity generators across the region. Solar thermal power generation which superheats an oil or saline solution to drive traditional steam powered turbines have been the hardest hit, because of the volume of water they use. Some companies have proposed to switch over to concentrated photovoltaic systems, others are exploring air cooled turbines, which are less efficient. As well as the shortage of water, the impact of the development on wildlife has become an issue.

     

    Related story in the Boston Globe

     

  • Damaged Barrier Reef coral makes ‘spectacular recovery’

    From the UK Guardian

    Sections of coral reef in Australia‘s Great Barrier Reef have made a “spectacular” recovery from a devastating bleaching event three years ago, marine scientists say.

    In 2006, high sea temperatures caused severe coral bleaching in the Keppell Islands, in the southern part of the reef — the largest coral reef system in the world. The damaged reefs were then covered by a single species of seaweed which threatened to suffocate the coral and cause further loss.

    A “lucky combination” of rare circumstances has meant the reef has been able to make a recovery. Abundant corals have reestablished themselves in a single year, say the researchers from the University of Queensland’s Centre for Marine Studies and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (CoECRS).

    “Three factors were critical,” said Dr Guillermo Diaz-Pulido. “The first was exceptionally high regrowth of fragments of surviving coral tissue. The second was an unusual seasonal dieback in the seaweeds, and the third was the presence of a highly competitive coral species, which was able to outgrow the seaweed.”

    Coral bleaching occurs in higher sea temperatures when the coral lose the symbiotic algae they need to survive. The reefs then lose their colour and become more susceptible to death from starvation or disease.

    The findings are important as it is extremely rare to see reports of reefs that bounce back from mass coral bleaching or other human impacts in less than a decade or two, the scientists said. The study is published in the online journal PLoS one.

    “The exceptional aspect was that corals recovered by rapidly regrowing from surviving tissue,” said Dr Sophie Dove, also from CoECRS and The University of Queensland.

    “Recovery of corals is usually thought to depend on sexual reproduction and the settlement and growth of new corals arriving from other reefs. This study demonstrates that for fast-growing coral species asexual reproduction is a vital component of reef resilience.”

    Last year, a major global study found that coral reefs did have the ability to recover after major bleaching events, such as the one caused by the El Niño in 1998.

    David Obura, the chairman of the International Union for Conservation of Nature climate change and coral reefs working group involved with the report, said: “Ten years after the world’s biggest coral bleaching event, we know that reefs can recover – given the chance. Unfortunately, impacts on the scale of 1998 will reoccur in the near future, and there’s no time to lose if we want to give reefs and people a chance to suffer as little as possible.”

    Coral reefs are crucial to the livelihoods of millions of coastal dwellers around the world and contain a huge range of biodiversity. The UN’s Millennium Ecosystem Assessment says reefs are worth about $30bn annually to the global economy through tourism, fisheries and coastal protection.

    But the ecosystems are under threat worldwide from overfishing, coastal development and runoff from the land, and in some areas, tourism impacts. Natural disasters such as the earthquake that triggered the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 have also caused reef loss.

    Climate change poses the biggest threat to reefs however, as emissions of carbon dioxide make seawater increasingly acidic.

    Last year a study showed that one-fifth of the world’s coral reefs have died or been destroyed and the remainder are increasingly vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

    The Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network says many surviving reefs could be lost over the coming decades as CO2 emissions continue to increase.