Increasing energy efficiency has long been promoted as a realistic means of reducing consumption and so lowering carbon emissions and resource consumption. Only problem is, gee whiz, that it does not work. Figures of the last two decades of energy use indicate that given an increase in efficiency, the resultant price drop encourages additional use and so increases consumption. In other words, the tendency is for humans to consume as much as we can afford rather than as much as we need.
The battle then is not to simply create better technologies but to better manage our lifestyle expectations and our behaviour.
From The TYEE …
The more ‘efficient’ our technology, the more resources we consume in a downward spiral of catastrophe. Thanks to efficiency an airline ticket is one of the most environmentally damaging goods money can buy.
The transition from incandescent to LED lights won’t result in any lasting savings as more efficient lighting resulted in more light consumption and therefore higher overall energy spending; efficiencies in cooling technologies encouraged more air conditioning and refrigeration everywhere; although it takes about three times less energy to make a ton of paper than it did in 1965, we photocopy one billion documents with a 22% growth rate; each unit generated by non-fossil-fuel sources displaced less than one-tenth of a unit of fossil-fuel-generated electricity.
Summer in subtropical Australia can be a disheartening time in the suburban garden. European vegetables run to seed before maturing, go mouldy in the humidity or burn to a brown leathery crisp after a day in the sun. Tropical fruits, corn, eggplant and chillis are the exceptions that provide the abundance temperate gardeners associate with autumn.
Clean and seal the jars while the jam is hot
The problem with chillis, though, is that you can’t make a meal of them. They are just too strong.
Here is a chilli jam that is mild enough for most people to heap on a cheese sandwich. Those who like it stronger can simply leave the seeds in. (See the sidebar To Seed or Not to Seed)
The basic recipe was developed by combining the appropriate features from 15 different recipes at https://chasingchilli.com.au/chilli-jam-recipes-you-need-to-make/
Sweet peppers provide some bulk of the right colour (they were much, much cheaper than red capsicums at my local shop the day I made the jam) and carrots provide the pectin and body. I originally kept all the vegetable strips quite long in an attempt to create an interesting presentation but, when I saw how hard it was going to be to wrangle into the bottles, I smashed it up in the saucepan with the stick blender.
Remove the seeds to reduce the “heat” of the final jam
Ingredients:
500g of hot chillis
500g-1kg of sweet peppers (or capsicums – some people use tomatoes)
1kg of white sugar
1 litre of vinegar (I used kambucha vinegar that I had made accidentally by overbrewing my kambucha)
Method:
Find enough jars to hold the jam. Allow for a total of about 2 litres for the ingredients listed here.
Slice and seed the peppers and the chillis (Removing seeds as desired – see discussion below)
Grate the carrots
Put the vegetables, sugar and vinegar into a large saucepan
Put over low heat until it comes to the boil.
Chilli jam ingredients ready to cook
Turn the oven on low heat
While the jam is coming to the boil, wash the jars and place in the oven to warm and dry.
When the jam starts boiling, turn it down as low as possible to keep simmering and stir and test regularly.
Test by dribbling jam on cold plates and waiting until cool.
When the jam on the cold plate forms a skin and is sticky, turn off the jam, take the jars out of the oven and place on a clean cloth.
Ladle the hot jam into the hot jars
Clean the outside of the jars
Place lids (or seals) onto the jars while the jam is still hot.
Allow to cool for 24 hours before moving.
To Seed or Not to Seed?
The jam pictured here has the vast bulk of the chilli seeds removed. This makes it much much milder as the seed and the flesh surrounding the seeds contains most of the spice.
I posted the steps of the recipe on facebook as I prepared the jam and many people commented that they do not remove the seeds. “Leave them in!” “That’s where all the taste is” “My weapons grade sambal uleck retains everything but the stems”
Regardless of your preference in terms of spice, remember that handling the seeds and the flesh will cause your hands, and anything you touch, to feel like it is burning. I spent one night writhing in agony under a pillow pressed hard against my eyes convinced that I would never see again just because I washed my face with my hands while cleaning up after chopping chillis a couple of years ago.
One comment on facebook assures me that chilli does not actually burn but only creates the painful sensation of burning. That is good news but most people would prefer to take the precautions and avoid the pain. I do not use gloves, but I am very careful not to touch myself while handling chillis and to wash up regularly with soap and water and lots of rinsing. 18 hours after making the jam my hands still feel hot and swollen.
We have had quite a few stories about the role of money in the news recently. This week it was the Universal Basic Income in Finland. Last week it was the attempt to eliminate cash in Sweden and the tactical undermining of the US dollar by Russia and China. The premise of the Cross this morning is that the worship of money has replaced the worship of God. That the death of God has largely occurred because money is the new deity. One of my day jobs is grilling citizens about their financial position for a well known research company. We ask them everything from their attitude to legalizing marijuana to their marital and parental status, but more than a third of the questions are about finance. What I have learned from that experience is that most people understand that civilization is in trouble. They get climate change, they get environmental damage, they understand that global capitalism is amoral at best and more likely immoral. They know all this, but they head off to work every day, they borrow money from banks, they dance with debt, and they accept the incarceration and torturing of refugees because they are afraid. They know that the poor are going to suffer most when the shit hits the fan and they don’t want to end up at the bottom of the heap. The challenge for those of us who want progressive reform, who want to create a fairer world, based on community not corporation, built on purpose and not profit, funded by a steady state economy not the fairy tale of infinite economic growth … the challenge for you and me, dear listener, is that we have to somehow break the cycle of fear, the race to the finish line. They fear the angry, hungry hordes who have been exploited so we can enjoy cars, phones and plane trips while they work for $1 a day making our clothes, our cars, our household appliances. They worry that the injustice will be reversed, that the first will be last and it really is harder for a rich man to enter heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. That is the madness and the brilliance of the populist politician. That is the fundamental premise of capitalism. The old Monty Python joke “What did the Romans ever do for us,” goes to the heart of the problem. Unless there is a real alternative to the Cage people willingly lock themselves in, hoping they are safer in the Cage than they are in the wild. This is also the fundamental basis of law, policing and property. The state emerges to protect or expand itself. It alienates people from their natural relationships with the earth, and offers them the bounty of property, regular food and an easier life. And the act of creating boundaries, of creating property requires the policing of those boundaries, the regulation of that property and so policing emerges. The state evolved from tribalism to kingdom by the creation of agriculture to support a military caste. The evolution of empires required the invention of slavery and then taxation. Instead of simply destroying the neighbours in the quest for plunder, we learned to enslave them instead. The incorporation of religion into the apparatus of the state, elevates the ruler into the priest caste and places them above the military caste. It is a more effective way to subjugate the population than by violent oppression. Two weeks ago we discussed the rise of Christendom in Europe as a way of taming and thus harnessing the violence of the Norsemen, the Normans who had emerged from Scandinavia in Viking long boats and dominated England, France and Italy. By blessing them and turning their attention to Jerusalem under the banner of the Cross, the Abbots of Europe managed to preserve their wealth and dominance of Continental politics. The invention of a rule of contract law and double entry book keeping in Venice elevated secular society above the simple machinations of the church and Venice cynically stole a whole French army destined for Jerusalem and shipped them to Constantinople instead to smash the Christian Turks who threatened their trade. We will come back to that after this message from our deity
Leigh Storr talks to The Generator at his office in Woolloongabba
As predicted by The Generator in August 2014 a combination of domestic solar power and local storage has fallen below the price of grid power. South Australia will ramp up its incentives to owners of household solar power. While this price advantage makes it attractive to customers in all states to leave the grid, sonme governments and power companies are colluding to make that difficult. Indeed it may also be socially responsible as well as more secure to remain connected to the grid despite the commercial disadvantages forced on the homeowner by pricing policies and regulation. The Generator August 2014 article outlines a guerilla disconnection process that allows users to sidestep regulations preventing disconnection flagged in Queensland at the time of writing.
Tesla battery + solar now significantly cheaper than greed power.
Analysis has shown that households are better off installing 5 kW solar and a battery rather than relying on grid only supply. South Australia’s consumers bought 20% less electricity from the grid in 2017 than they did in 2010. I imagine that by 2025 the amount will be at least 20% less again.
Battery storage leaves fossil fuels and regulators in state of intertia
Ever since the opening of the Tesla big battery next to the Hornsdale wind farm in South Australia last month, it is as though a new era has dawned for the management of Australia’s electricity supply. This is not just about flexibility, smoothing out renewables, or responding to peak demand and speed of response – it is also about grid security and grid stability. And it is causing a massive re-think. Here’s why:
Greenpeace Philippines created this artwork to highlight the impact of plastics on the aceans
Life expectancy is falling in the US as the impact of pollutants on cancer in children, and untreatable diseases spread from industrially farrmed food into the population. As the impact of pollutants on childhood health is better understood experts warn that cancers, asthma and obesity have become normal characteristics of the population. Pollution is directly killing over 20 million people a year, wiping out the equivalent of a nation like Australia or a US state like Florida or New York, every year. The impact of industrial use of antibiotics in food production means that untreatable diseases are being transmitted into the population through the food chain.
A US-UK trade deal threatens to export the horrors of US corporate livestock production
Around 75% of the antibiotics used in the US are fed to farm animals. Our city is under siege, and we are knocking down our own defences. The EU and the UK are no paragons. The Guardian has revealed that both pork and chicken sold here are infected with resistant superbugs.
The Precautionary Principle Asks “How Much Harm Is Avoidable?” Rather Than “How Much Harm Is Acceptable?”
In 1980, breast milk in the US was so contaminated with DDT, PCBs and other industrial poisons. If it were cow’s milk, it would be banned. After two decades of failed “chemical regulation,” babies everywhere in the world are drinking industrial toxicants in breast milk. In 2005 umbilical cord blood from newborns showed that babies are now “pre-polluted” with 200 industrial compounds. In the US, children’s health is deteriorating. childhood cancers has risen 27% since 1974; childhood asthma, obesity, learning and behaviour problems doubled. Industrial poisons have spread worldwide because regulators have relied on a quantitative risk assessment to determine which chemical releases are “safe.” But “safe” amounts of 80,000 chemicals have contaminated the entire planet, so today noone is safe.
Junk Planet: Is Earth the Largest Garbage Dump in the Universe?
Approximately 19 million premature deaths occur annually as a result of the way societies use natural resources and impact the environment to support production and consumption. This will give you a reasonably comprehensive summary of the types of garbage being generated (focusing particularly on those that are less well known), the locations into which the garbage is being dumped and some indication of what is being done about it and what you can do too.
Desperate Need to Halt ‘World’s Largest Killer’ — Pollution
Analyses impacts on human health and ecosystems brought on by air, land, freshwater, marine, chemical and waste pollution. “None of us is now safe, so now all of us have to act. The health effects are stark, with air pollution alone killing some 6.5 million annually, affecting mostly poor and vulnerable people.”
Deposit schemes reduce drink containers in the ocean by 40%
Some eight million metric tonnes of plastic ends up in the ocean every year. There has been a push to get rid of plastic straws, and even Queen Elizabeth II has banned single use plastics from Royal Estates. How effective is a cash for containers program? While there is evidence that container deposits increase return rates and decrease litter, until now there has been no study asking whether they also reduce the sources of debris entering the oceans.
This article originally appeared on the ABC but was removed citing “editorial standards”. The fact was brought to the attention of the Generator News by News Daily The article itself was retrieved from the Web Archive
Tax-free billions: Australia’s largest companies haven’t paid corporate tax in three years
Exclusive by chief economics correspondent Emma Alberici
Qantas CEO Alan Joyce, one of the most prominent supporters of the Turnbull Government’s proposed big business tax cut, presides over a company that hasn’t paid corporate tax for close to 10 years.
The period roughly coincides with Mr Joyce’s tenure at the helm of Australia’s flag carrier.
Alan Joyce, the CEO of Qantas, is a major supporter of corporate tax cuts in Australia. (AAP: Joel Carrett)
Despite generating income of $106.4 billion, the flying kangaroo has avoided paying tax on that bounty since 2009, thanks to Australia’s generous tax concessions, depreciation provisions and the ability to offset company losses against past and future profits.
New analysis by the ABC reveals Qantas is not alone — its tax behaviour is consistent with about 380 of Australia’s largest companies. ATO corporate tax transparency data — confirmed in email exchanges with company representatives — reveals about one in five of the country’s biggest companies have paid no tax for at least the past three years.
Not one of Australia’s biggest airlines has paid corporate tax since at least 2013, including Virgin and its subsidiary Tigerair, Etihad, Emirates and Qatar.
Each one of those companies has sold billions of dollars worth of tickets in Australia.
When asked for an explanation, both Qantas and Virgin pointed the ABC to their historical losses and the entirely legitimate use of Australia’s tax laws that allow them to offset those losses against future profits indefinitely.
Both companies were at pains to point out that, notwithstanding their zero corporate tax liabilities, they had continued to collect and pay departure taxes, fuel and alcohol excises, payroll tax, GST and FBT.
Presumably that’s what the Etihad spokesman was alluding to in his statement to the ABC.
“Etihad is fully compliant with all Australian tax requirements, and has paid all the taxes it is obligated to do so under Australian law.”
EnergyAustralia’s tax-free decade
At a time when Australian households have seen their electricity prices soar, the country’s leading energy retailer, EnergyAustralia, hasn’t been paying corporate tax. EnergyAustralia paid no corporate tax for the decade to 2016.
For the three years to June 2016, EnergyAustralia’s 1.7 million electricity and gas customers across eastern Australia helped it record $24 billion worth of income on which no tax was paid.
An EnergyAustralia spokesperson said the company’s performance, “reflects how the power-generation sector is underpinned by assets that were built last century”.
“Since 2006, EnergyAustralia has written down the value of its assets by $1.9 billion.”
How much tax did the big banks pay?
Ten years after the global financial crisis — which they are largely responsible for creating — some of the world’s most prominent investment banks are collecting tidy sums of income in Australia and not paying corporate tax.
Among them is Malcolm Turnbull’s old employer, Goldman Sachs, which recently won a lucrative contract with the NSW Government.
Described by Rolling Stone Magazine as, “the great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money”, Goldman will be paid $16.5 million as the state’s financial adviser on the sale of the $16.8 billion WestConnex motorway in NSW.
The investment bank generated revenue of $1.84 billion over three years but paid zero corporate tax.
Ditto for JPMorgan Chase which raked in $2.2 billion and hasn’t paid corporate tax since at least 2013.
In one of the most audacious explanations advanced to the ABC for the non-payment of corporate tax, a spokesman for America’s biggest bank said JPMorgan was still suffering the aftershocks of the financial crisis which meant its Australian operations continued to operate at a loss.
But late last year, it emerged JPMorgan Chase agreed to pay a record $13 billion fine to US federal and state authorities in 2013.
The purpose of this fine was to settle claims it had misled investors in the years leading up to 2008.
Could the bank be writing that fine off against its Australian income? The spokesman didn’t care to elaborate.
Shifting profits overseas
88 per cent of people, polled by Reuters, think corporate tax avoidance leads to a culture which poses the question: “Can we get away with it?” (Supplied: Thomson Reuters)
Curiously, French bank BNP Paribas also appeared to have made some bad investments taxpayers were having to compensate it for.
It hasn’t paid corporate tax for at least three years – like Goldman, JPMorgan Chase, American Express, Barclays Bank and the Royal Bank of Scotland.
The oldest foreign bank in Australia (resident here since 1881) told the ABC that despite attracting close to $10 billion in income since 2013, BNP failed to make any profits.
BNP said its losses, “included the write off of bad debts from lending to certain Australian domiciled companies”.
As far as the local financial services sector goes, Babcock and Brown International stands out among the 2,000 company names in the Australian Taxation Office’s public records.
Babcock and Brown remains the country’s biggest corporate failure, having collapsed in 2009 with debts of more than $10 billion.
According to the ATO, Babcock and Brown International (a wholly owned subsidiary of the liquidated group, Babcock and Brown Ltd) reported $1.7 billion worth of income for the three years to 2016.
It paid no corporate tax.
CEO Michael Larkin, who has been with the Babcock group for 14 years, told the ABC the money was taxed elsewhere in the world where Babcock and Brown International engages in business.
He wouldn’t be drawn on what the company does overseas, where or how much tax has been paid in other jurisdictions.
Australian tax law has allowed foreign companies to shift profits to affiliates or parent groups offshore in the guise of payments for services.
They’ve also been entitled to lend money to their Australian operations at inflated prices to create excessive tax deductions in Australia.
This can all work to render the Australian business loss-making, therefore not required to pay corporate tax.
For local companies, the dividend imputation system is a unique tool that allows businesses to pass tax credits on to their investors.
Australia and New Zealand are now the only two OECD countries to offer imputation which results in around a third of corporate tax revenue in Australia being handed back to investors.
Put simply, it means a 30 per cent corporate tax rate with franked dividends raises roughly as much as a headline 20 per cent rate without them.
Over the past 30 years, a number of countries have abandoned dividend imputation, including the UK, Germany, Finland, Norway, Singapore and Malaysia.
Thanks to legislation passed in 2013, the Australian Tax Office now publishes an annual record of total income received, taxable income and tax payable for the roughly 2,000 Australian companies with annual turnovers of more than $100 million.
It’s called The Corporate Tax Transparency Data which is somewhat of a misnomer given the numbers say nothing about how businesses use deductions and concessions to reduce their taxable incomes.
All the focus on the tax shenanigans of foreign technology and media companies has diverted our gaze from the taxpaying habits of some of their home grown rivals.
The media colossus reported total income of $8.5 billion and even boasted a $71 million profit in 2014/15 but no corporate tax was paid.
The company’s corporate affairs boss, Liz Deegan, wrote to the ABC to clarify that: “News Corp Australia has deductible operating costs and certain tax incentives and allowable credits, like R&D and franking credits, that offset the revenue disclosed.”
Its partly owned pay-TV company, Foxtel, received a $30 million gift from the Federal Government in the last budget, ostensibly to provide better coverage of female sports.
In the three years prior, Foxtel had also not paid corporate tax. Fairfax, News Corp’s newspaper rival in Australia, paid $53.1 million in corporate tax over the same period.
The tax-free club
Software giant Atlassian also pointed to R&D tax concessions when explaining why it too hasn’t paid corporate tax for the past two years on accumulated income just shy of $1 billion.
A tally of the three years’ available data reveals some of this country’s most recognised names haven’t paid corporate tax since at least 2013.
They include Broadspectrum (formerly Transfield Services) which collected $8.6 billion in income over three years. An estimated 30 per cent of that income ($2.5 billion) was paid directly by the Federal Government for running Australia’s offshore detention facilities. Broadspectrum was taken over by Spanish conglomerate Ferrovial in 2016.
Among the others who’ve escaped paying any corporate tax for three years are Bluescope Steel, Ansell, Amcor, Billabong International and TransurbanHoldings.
The big property and construction companies Lend Lease, Grocon, Stockland and GPT are also part of the corporate tax-free club.
Mackay Sugar and CSR who’ve been lobbying against a sugar tax haven’t paid corporate tax for three years either.
Not going down without a fight
The Turnbull Government knows well that forensic tax audits are an expensive and resource-sapping exercise, especially when they involve the complex interpretation of other countries’ tax codes and their intersection with ours.
Federal Treasurer Scott Morrison has committed $679 million over four years to a new Tax Avoidance Taskforce.
New laws to combat complicated corporate structures whose core purpose is to avoid tax have also been passed.
But if Australia wants the likes of Apple, Google and Facebook to pay more tax on the phones and advertising it sells in Australia, some of our biggest taxpayers, BHP and Rio Tinto should arguably be paying more tax in China where they sell most of their iron ore.
Among all the murky detail of corporate tax arrangements, one thing is clear: companies with the financial firepower of BHP and Rio Tinto aren’t going to accept a negative assessment from the ATO without a fight.
Both of Australia’s biggest miners are currently in dispute over their Singaporean marketing operations (corporate tax rate of 17 per cent).
Convoluted corporate arrangements see BHP and Rio sell commodities they’ve mined in Australia to their Singapore businesses, which on-sell the iron ore et al in to export markets (predominantly China) often with a hefty mark-up.
The ATO rejects the legitimacy of the tax structure and is seeking $1 billion in tax, interest and penalties from BHP and about half that ($500 million) from Rio.
A BHP spokesman told the ABC, “The primary tax in dispute represents less than 2 per cent of the $66 billion in taxes and royalties paid in Australia over that 11-year period … BHP does not agree with the ATO’s position.
“Consequently, we have objected to all the amended assessments and intend to continue to defend our position, including by initiating court action if necessary.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, some of the country’s most trusted corporate advisers, including the Boston Consulting Group and MYOB, paid no tax for the three years to 2016.
Even the industry groups — Chartered Accountants (CAANZ) and the Certified Practising Accountants (CPA) have paid nothing, or next to nothing, in corporate tax over the that period on account of their “mutual” status which excludes membership fees from assessable income.
CPA Australia reeled in $493 million in income between 2013 and 2016.
Australia’s tax laws allowed them to pay just $1,967.00 in corporate tax.
Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand is a relatively new group.
In its two years as a registered entity for tax purposes it has paid zero corporate tax on $240 million in income.
Increasing energy efficiency has long been promoted as a realistic means of reducing consumption and so lowering carbon emissions and resource consumption. Only problem is, gee whiz, that it does not work. Figures of the last two decades of energy use indicate that given an increase in efficiency, the resultant price drop encourages additional use and so increases consumption. In other words, the tendency is for humans to consume as much as we can afford rather than as much as we need.
