Archive for the ‘Environment’ Category

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Whither a comprehensive green product rating system?

Monday, November 15th, 2010

Being “green” is not always completely straightforward. I was reminded of this recently upon reading the following message, thoughtfully printed on the outside of my polystyrene foam coffee cup:


Carbon footprint fact: an average weight paper hot cup with a cardboard sleeve requires 47% more energy to produce than a comparable foam cup. www.dart.biz

Apart from inspiring guilt pangs about the rather excellent hookTURN reusable coffee silicone cup I really need to start using again, this little message exemplifies a rather common modern dilemma. Sometimes, in that instant of decision, it’s hard to be as informed as we would like to be about the particular production and energy characteristics of everyday products, services and activities. Just been to a public bathroom? Is it more environmentally friendly to dry your hands using an electric dryer or to use a paper towel? Is recycling that heavy duty plastic container really going to be “greener” than consigning it to landfill, or finding a way to re-use it? In the coffee cup example, conventional wisdom implies that “styrofoam” is one of those ugly, ubiquitous, mass-produced products that is difficult to dispose of and bad for the environment. Clearly in some respects, however, it still may be “greener” than other more fashionable materials.

This problem is particularly apparent in the supermarket, where one is confronted with an often bewildering array of options for even the simplest of product purchases. The three strongest purchase decision determinants for the average supermarket shopper are probably price, branding and for food, the nutritional information printed on the packaging – but I am sure a lot of modern shoppers also consider “green” metrics like the amount and type of product packaging, where the product came from, and the amount of energy they think was used to produce the product. The reckoning process can quite obviously end up being maniacally complex. Even assuming the perceived quality of the actual products are the same (which it often isn’t), our poor average shopper is inevitably forced into making a “least worst” decision. Should we buy the cheap tin of tuna from fish farmed in the other side of the world, the expensive one farmed locally and sustainably, or a mid-range option that just happens to be excessively packaged or produced by a company renowned for dubious ecological practices?

Here in the United Kingdom a rather handy “stoplight” nutritional label tends to be printed on food packaging, indicating what proportion of an adult’s recommended intake of calories, fat, salt, sugar and saturates the product has.


Each pudding contains calories (315, 16%), sugar (40g, 44%), fat (6.1g, 9%), saturates (1.7g, 9%), salt (0.3g, 5%).

I don’t see why an analogous “ecological” label system shouldn’t be developed, indicating (for example) the estimated amount of carbon used to produce the product, a packaging rating indicating the type and amount of packaging the product has, and a sustainability rating indicating to what extent sustainable practices were used in production. One could argue that this would create a bureaucratic nightmare for businesses, especially small and boutique producers. On the other hand, it would also place more power in the hands of consumers, and create a natural market incentive for businesses to keep searching for ways to produce their goods and services in an ultimately “greener” way. And wouldn’t that be a good thing?

Posted in Environment | No Comments »

The great moral challenge of our generation – junked

Wednesday, April 28th, 2010

The behaviour of the Rudd Government during the last couple of weeks has been, simply put, erratic. There’s been a whole lotta junking going on. The election promise to build 260 new childcare centres in schools has been junked. The Prime Minister’s commitment to hold three, independently regulated debates during the election campaign has been junked. Any further talk from the government regarding a possible federal bill of rights has been – that’s right – junked. And to cap it all off, the policy that Federal Labor framed as its response to the “great moral challenge of our generation”, its carbon pollution reduction scheme or ETS, has been rather ingraciously junked, until 2013 at least.

There are a number of plausible political reasons as to why we are seeing this pattern of behaviour. The first is the fact that this is all happening relatively early in the election year. There is undoubtedly a push from strategists close to the Federal Cabinet to get any bad news the government has out the door now, presumably a good six months from any federal election. Secondly – we are very much in pre-budget territory. It is highly likely that pressure from Treasury and Lindsay Tanner’s Department of Finance and Deregulation has driven the government’s decisions in relation to childcare centres and emissions trading. For various reasons, neither proposal appeared to be going anywhere fast in terms of implementation. This being the case, it obviously didn’t make a great deal of sense for the funding for these proposals to be incorporated into this year’s Budget, which is already comfortably in the red due to the government’s stimulus measures. Thirdly, these announcements have been made during a period when the Rudd Government was finalising the central plank of its re-election strategy for later this year: health reform. Despite the intrastringence of Western Australia’s Barnett Government, Federal Labor came out of the negotiations with the states looking like it has achieved something quite worthwhile. One would imagine that some advisors would be of the view that the good news on health had the capacity to “absorb” a bit of bad news from other quarters, at least as far as the news cycle was concerned.

The government’s decision to delay its emissions trading scheme further may prove to have been a scuttle too far. It looks set to alienate some of its base. I don’t always agree with Paul Kelly, often finding him too dogmatic once he has made up his mind, but I find myself agreeing with a lot of his combative column in today’s Australian:

In truth, Rudd has lost his nerve. This is a political and policy retreat. He says the ETS remains “the most effective and least expensive” means of combating greenhouse gas emissions. His tacticians will call this smart and they may be right. But it betrays a government weak to its core. Understand what this is about: it is giving Rudd a political strategy to maximise his re-election by removing the only mechanism he had to deliver his ETS policy. He has chosen safe politics over policy delivery. Any voter who believed Rudd was genuine about climate change needs to reassess.

The rhetoric from the government – in particular the Prime Minister – has been just too big on this issue for it to be credibly delayed for three years. A good government does not delay its response to the “great moral challenge of our generation” merely because it can not get its legislation through parliament. A good government fights for such a cause using all the legitimate tools of persuasion and negotiation at its disposal, including mechanisms like double dissolution triggers should they prove necessary.

Truthfully, I can abide the other disappointing announcements mentioned above, but on climate change, the Prime Minister has effectively asked its supporters to defend the indefensible. This transcends the question of whether the government has the courage of its convictions – does the Rudd Government really even have the conviction to decisively act on climate change?

Is climate change a burning issue and a call to action, or is it merely a launchpad for rhetorical flourishes?

ELSEWHERE: Even Dennis Shanahan is making sense.

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Posted in Environment, Rudd Labor Government | 6 Comments »

A somewhat belated caveat emptor to you too

Thursday, April 22nd, 2010

Dr Allan Hawke completed his Review of the Administration of the Home Insulation Program on 6th April 2010, and his final report [PDF] was just released to the public, coinciding with the Rudd Government’s decision to terminate its insulation rebate scheme. What is clear from Dr Hawke’s report is that the overriding imperative for a speedy implementation of the program undermined its integrity.

From page 28:

The Early Installation Guidelines required that homeowners arrange a minimum of two quotes and pay their installer upfront. These requirements were intended to generate householder ownership over installer selection and potentially to drive competitive pricing. However, they were dispensed with at the full program launch in July 2009 as they were thought to slow the program and were inconsistent with the stimulus imperative.

And on the following page:

… the lack of an upfront payment and no requirement for quotes (between June and November 2009) meant there was little incentive for householders to take the normal level of responsibility for the quality and performance of the installers.

It certainly sounds as though the Rudd Government’s drive to stimulate the economy actively encouraged the suspension of common sense by homeowners. “Buyer beware”, indeed.

ELSEWHERE: Robert Merkel laments a decent idea gone awry at Larvatus Prodeo.

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Posted in Environment, Rudd Labor Government | No Comments »

Tanner on the Greens

Friday, March 26th, 2010

Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner authored quite an interesting column in The Age yesterday, dredging up one of the most excruciating and ultimately inconclusive debates in Australian leftist politics. What does a vote for the Greens actually achieve? If the Australian Labor Party fails to deliver on the progressive policies hoped for by the broader left, is a vote for the Greens the most sensible option for the modern progressive voter?

Arguably, Tanner’s contribution to the debate is prejudiced; he obviously has some concerns about what an upsurge in support for the Greens would mean for his own federal electorate of Melbourne. If the recent state election results in Tasmania are anything to go by, traditionally Labor-held seats in the inner-city like Melbourne, Sydney and Grayndler may be under increased threat at the next federal election due to the increasing support that the Greens stand to attract, particularly in affluent, inner-city areas. He nevertheless raises some fair points. Would it have been better for the environment, overall, if the Greens provided the support necessary to pass the government’s ETS? Even if it is true that the Rudd Government’s scheme as it currently stands is inadequate for reducing emissions to the extent necessary, surely it would have been better to get some well-meaning scheme over the line and then lobby to improve it, than to have no scheme at all?

While I think that Tanner over-eggs his point of view in his article, I think my own point of view, exemplified by membership of the Labor Party, speaks for itself. As Gough Whitlam once intoned, only the impotent are pure. It will be interesting to observe what happens in Tasmania over the coming weeks, but I can only hope for the sake of the environment that the Greens come to their senses and actively seek an alliance with one of the major parties. It is well past time that the Greens started engaging more with its opponents with the aim of producing the best possible compromise result for its supporters, rather than holding out for some impossible, uber-green solution that will never, ever, ever come about.

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Posted in Environment, Greens, Labor Party | 2 Comments »

Just what is Malcolm Turnbull playing at?

Monday, December 7th, 2009

As a Labor supporter, perhaps not entirely surprisingly, I prefer Malcolm Turnbull to Tony Abbott as the leader of the Federal Opposition. This is not just because Turnbull agrees with the Labor Party on climate change, and it’s certainly not because Malcolm Turnbull laid bare the ideological chasm between the liberal and conservative wings of his party – a divided and ineffective opposition is in nobody’s interests. However Turnbull, at least on some issues (e.g. climate change, the republic), offered the electorate a glimmer of hope that concrete bipartisan progress was not impossible, and that the nation is capable of moving beyond the one-eyed partisan bickering that characterises our political system, even if just for a moment or two. Turnbull showed promising signs of understanding that the job of an Opposition is not always to oppose; it is to present an alternative vision for the nation and to back that vision up with policy. Sometimes it is better to be constructive. This is a lesson that Kevin Rudd adopted in Opposition to mighty effect, cherry-picking policy from the government whilst magnifying points of differentiation in other areas. Abbott, in contrast, appears to be set on the “oppose for opposition’s sake” approach. Perhaps he should have a bit of a chat to his mate Peter Debnam on that topic.

Despite all this, I am still a bit shocked at how Malcolm Turnbull has behaved since he was defeated in the leadership ballot last week. Immediately after the ballot, Turnbull asserted the following, as Ben Packham reports in the Herald Sun:

“I am not going to run a commentary on Tony Abbott. Lots of people ran commentaries on me when I was leader but I’m going to be more measured in my backbench remarks,” Mr Turnbull said yesterday.

I guess it all depends on what one considers “more measured” to mean, but a week has been proven once again to be a very long time in politics. Today, less than a week after those remarks, Turnbull posted a strident attack on his leader’s position on climate change on his blog, which quite frankly has to be read to be believed:

While a shadow minister, Tony Abbott was never afraid of speaking bluntly in a manner that was at odds with Coalition policy.

So as I am a humble backbencher I am sure he won’t complain if I tell a few home truths about the farce that the Coalition’s policy, or lack of policy, on climate change has descended into.

First, let’s get this straight. You cannot cut emissions without a cost. To replace dirty coal fired power stations with cleaner gas fired ones, or renewables like wind let alone nuclear power or even coal fired power with carbon capture and storage is all going to cost money.

To get farmers to change the way they manage their land, or plant trees and vegetation all costs money.
Somebody has to pay.
So any suggestion that you can dramatically cut emissions without any cost is, to use a favourite term of Mr Abbott, “bullshit.” Moreover he knows it.

If Turnbull continues to undermine Abbott’s position in this way, it will lay waste to the Liberal Party. This is, make no mistake, a running commentary on Tony Abbott’s leadership qualities, and it is a commentary that promises to continue well into the New Year. Abbott is already going to find it frightfully difficult to produce a policy on climate change that reduces emissions without significant costs. Even if a so-called “magic pudding” policy is found, it’s hard to imagine it being a dessert that the divided Coalition caucus is going to be happy to eat (insert “just desserts” pun here).

Seriously, how is the Coalition going to be a competitive force if its spurned leader – a media darling – feels able to fearlessly criticise his party’s policies in this way? It is, simply put, unsustainable.

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Posted in Abbott Opposition, Environment, Turnbull Opposition | 4 Comments »

On the Liberal Party, schisms, and curious steampunk machines

Tuesday, December 1st, 2009

In considering how events have played out with respect to the leadership of the Liberal Party, a certain image springs to mind for me. For just a moment, picture the federal party-room of the Liberal Party in your mind’s eye as an elaborate, archaic, steampunk-ish contraption giving off heat and billowing steam, emitting all manner of clanking and wheezing sounds. There’s brass, there’s rust, there’s lint, there’s probably even some asbestos in there somewhere. It is an engine that has survived beyond its time and in some dubious way evolved, with strange, artificial improvements bolted higgledy-piggledy around the exterior. If you squint you might just make out what appears suspiciously to be microchips “growing” under a moist alcove, or what could well be a miniature LED screen replaying the tumultuous events of the last week or so over and over again, on silent repeat. Needless to say, despite the odd snatch of modern bling, this is a machine that doesn’t hum like your new home computer; it sounds kinda like a Datsun that hasn’t been serviced since 1982.

This curious machine has taken all the ingredients generated by the ructions of the last week and spat out a response to the leadership question, but it is the wrong response. A 42-41 decision is hardly a decision, particularly given that three likely Hockey/Turnbull supporters could not vote (Kelly O’Dwyer, Paul Fletcher, Fran Bailey). It doesn’t seem to be the response a majority of the party-room actually wanted. It doesn’t seem to be the response the eventual victor expected. It is, practically speaking, an non-sensical result. I am not sure that it really matters if the Liberal Party primarily blames Turnbull’s virtuoso but unconsultative approach to the CPRS for what they have now, or Hockey’s bizarrely principled vacillation on the precipice of his triumph. Oddly enough, both men proved their mettle and that they were worthy leaders since late last week, but still failed. What matters in the wash-up is that the moderate, liberal arm of the Liberal Party was holding all the cards over the conservatives and indeed had done so for most of the period since November 2007, but in a collective brainfart of truly epic proportions, they’ve managed to trade in all their aces for zippo, in one fell swoop.

The climate change issue has proven to be the most sublime wedge issue imaginable for the Rudd Government. Numbers-wise, the Coalition has been riven effectively right down the centre by the government’s CPRS, with the liberals and conservatives who played so nicely together during the Howard years now at each other’s throats. The marriage of convenience that holds the Coalition together has been ruthlessly exposed by the government as the shemozzle it really is. There is no effective consensus position for the Liberal Party on climate change, and no successful leader to call the shots first and sticky-tape the party together later, like there was during the Howard Government years. Dennis Glover does a fine job in today’s The Australian of spelling out why this issue so lethal for the Coalition, and why the Abbott Opposition needs to work out a credible position on climate change, and fast:

The evening news reports of the retreat of Greenland’s ice caps and the advance of solar power projects across the deserts of California will have far greater electoral effect than any theories Nick Minchin or Andrew Bolt try to sell on Lateline or Insiders.

Even cautious politicians such as Kevin Rudd are helping voters join the dots when the temperature gets above 40C.

For the coming months, a few predictions. I am extremely doubtful that we will see a double dissolution election. The Prime Minister, already sensing he has been gifted the upper hand by the Coalition’s bungling and the public’s goodwill, will not risk the ire of the electorate by pushing for an early climate change election. The Nationals and the Minchinites, having surprisingly emerged victorious with their candidate, are now perhaps just a little unsettled. Their “Anybody But Turnbull” approach has yielded the cut-through candidate that most gels with their own political philosophy, but has arguably as much capacity to polarise the electorate as anyone in the party. I sincerely doubt the Liberal Party pollsters are thrilled by the collected wisdom of the party-room. The first “post-spill” polls that emerge will be very interesting.

The moderates within the Liberal Party, having fielded two not unpopular candidates in the spill but still managed to lose, are now too enfeebled to challenge the leadership result or pursue the matter further. They will not speak up in support of the government’s CPRS. They will have to grit their teeth and mumble the Howard-era lines that they don’t actually believe in until the leadership changes again. Some may even decide to walk away from the party at the 2011 election. The rest of them will be hoping, of course, that their junk-tech party-room machine can, with a hiss and a puff of brackish smoke, spit out the right candidate for a modern Liberal Party the next time that the opportunity presents.

Which, in all likelihood, will be after Tony Abbott loses the next election.

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Posted in Abbott Opposition, Environment, Turnbull Opposition | 3 Comments »

Problem gambler

Tuesday, September 8th, 2009

In my local Cafenatics branch I could not help but notice this excellent cartoon by Joel Tarling, on a free Avant Card:

problem-gambler_joel_cartoon.jpg



From the collection of symbols available on the machine to the name of the machine, I think it’s a very clever piece of work no matter which way you look at it. Personally, I don’t begrudge Peter Garrett his foray into mainstream politics, and despite some recent decisions emerging from his office, I still have faith that he is pushing his point of view at every party room meeting that he can. It goes without saying that if enough people of Garrett’s stripes joined the ALP, the ALP would be a very different beast.

Would he have had a greater impact on Australian politics if he had joined the Greens? Time will tell, and I really don’t think we can say for sure one way or the other just yet.

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Posted in Environment, Labor Party | 4 Comments »

Is the emissions trading scheme doomed?

Monday, May 4th, 2009

After months of earnest assertions to the contrary, the Rudd Government has finally caved in to the pressure and postponed its emissions trading scheme. Although the nation’s worsening economic situation no doubt accounted for a substantial component of that pressure, its certainly fair to say that the government’s backdown represents a political victory for the Opposition. For some time now Malcolm Turnbull has been promoting the postponement cause, and despite the fact that his party has engineered yet another schizophrenic change of mind on the issue, refusing to back the government’s revised approach to emissions-trading even though it owes much to its own, it would appear that he has won this little stoush with the Prime Minister.

Personally, I think there are credible cases that can be made for either side of the debate. It goes without saying that while the economy was getting a pummeling, introducing a new, somewhat risky mechanism that threatened to impact profitability and therefore jobs for thousands of Australians was a politically dubious step to take. While I accept the fact that the climate change science demands swift and effective action, most people (myself included) instinctively feel that a delay of a year or two is probably not going to end life on Earth as we know it. In ideal conditions I would love to see action now, but we are living in far from ideal conditions. The government has already spent billions of dollars during the past nine months, stimulating the economy and sending the country into a significant amount of debt in the process. It must have a serious concern that it commands neither the requisite economic or political capital to launch the emissions-trading scheme during this time of crisis.

On the flip side of the coin, one really does have to question the Rudd Government’s commitment to climate change. The science calls for bold steps, not delays or a pragmatic watering down. I frankly don’t understand why the government has only now decided to cave in to the Opposition on this issue. If it really is the case that the economic situation is so dire that implementing the ETS would be unsustainable, the government should have known this six months ago. When economists the world over were saying six months ago that it is likely going to take over a year to get out of this slump, the government should have been paying attention and started sounding the alarm bells then. Instead, it continued to glibly peddle the line that the ETS would be implemented as scheduled, despite the fact that the global financial system was crumbling all around it. Putting the science aside completely for just a second, we would have to conclude that this exemplifies poor judgement.

While we have an Opposition full of climate change sceptics and opportunists and a government with such a wavering commitment to the issue, it’s hard to be very confident that we are eventually going to get an outcome. At this rate, I would certainly not be putting money on a functioning emissions-trading scheme being implemented in Australia any time soon – whether 2010, 2011 or 2012.

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Posted in Environment, Labor Party, Rudd Labor Government, Turnbull Opposition | 6 Comments »

Senator Penny Wong – unfashionable but right?

Monday, February 23rd, 2009

Senator Penny Wong has an exceptionally erudite column in today’s Sydney Morning Herald that – I think – does a remarkable job of cutting through the crap on both sides of the climate change issue. With all the hubbub in recent weeks about a mooted further government review of the proposed emissions trading scheme, and the Coalition amusingly promising a stronger scheme but declining to outline what that scheme might amount to, one could be forgiven for being confused about what the hell is happening on climate change.

Wong’s column goes some way towards dispelling this. On one front, she mounts a defense of the government’s scheme and the much-publicised low targets:

By starting to reduce our emissions from next year, Australia will be putting a cost on carbon pollution before some competitor economies. We are doing this because we know it is in our interest to take action now and encourage the rest of the world to do the same. But there is no point in putting a cost on carbon pollution in Australia if it simply results in jobs and emissions being exported to countries that do not yet face a carbon price.

And whatever people think about these so-called “big polluters”, the fact remains that many Australians are employed in these industries.

We are embarking on an economic transformation to create the low pollution jobs of the future, but it is a transformation that will take time.

Wong then goes on to reiterate the case for action:

We can do nothing – and lock in more emissions growth. Current projections show emissions would be 20 per cent higher by 2020 than they were in 2000 if we choose not to act.

Alternatively, we can initiate the scheme to ensure we are 5-15 per cent below where we were in 2000 by 2020. The scheme will result in emissions being up to 30 per cent lower in 2020 than if the scheme is rejected. The scale of this transformation cannot be brushed aside.

Make no mistake – Senator Wong has to sail the government’s emissions trading boat on a profoundly tempestuous sea. She and the Rudd Government are facing formidable attacks from the left; the government’s targets certainly seem on first consideration to be pathetically low. The government is also under considerable pressure from conservatives and indeed polluting industries to water down the plan, or to scupper it altogether given the economic crisis that the world still finds itself in. If the nation emerges from all of this political and economic turmoil with a functioning apparatus to reduce emissions – even if it is a little weak to start with – Wong will have done an amazing job.

The first cut is be the deepest. Yeah sure, there was Rod Stewart, but before him, just remember it was Cat Stevens.

ELSEWHERE: Harry Clarke also thinks Penny Wong is on the right track.

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Posted in Environment, Federal Labor, Rudd Labor Government | No Comments »

Hell’s inferno, thirty minutes away?

Monday, February 9th, 2009

Like just about everyone I suspect, I am shocked and disturbed by the bushfires that have wreaked havoc across Victoria over the last few days. The truly apocalyptic pictures that are coming out the worst hit areas beggar belief, as do the heartwrenching stories of those who have survived the tragedy, but lost so much. I also can not help but be dumbstruck by the incongruity of it all, as Armagnac observes:

Melbourne squirms, wringing its wrists, not knowing what to do or how to help, as all around us firestorms are razing houses, removing historical towns from the map and burning people to death.

Sitting in my apartment in Melbourne as the sun slowly sets on a rather crisp, pleasant day in the city, it is hard to believe that all that chaos and destruction is just thirty minutes away. It does not seem fair that this metropolised little world, geographically so close to the chaos, has been spared the terrors or our regional friends and neighbours. Most of us, no doubt, toddled off to our places of work and study today just as any other day, our thoughts drifting, but our immediate concerns still squarely focused on the humdrum of everyday life. If only we could all somehow share out the misery and pain amongst us and lift the burden from those who have completely unfairly borne the brunt.

All we can do is ponder how we can all do our little bit to help. For this camper, that means looking into donating both money and blood.

You can donate money online here at the Red Cross website. I have had some issues getting my payment through today for some reason, but you may have better luck.

Reportedly urgent demand for blood in Victoria has been met following a wonderfully massive public response in the aftermath of the tragedy, but you might also want to consider donating blood.

Channel Nine are also reportedly hosting a fundraising telethon on Thursday night.

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Posted in Environment, Personal | 5 Comments »

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