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Nationalised oil to fund climate change effort

This morning a spoof of the NY Times newspaper was handed out at various train stations around the city. Dated 4 July 2009, the paper opens with the Iraq conflict ending. But may favourite headline is "Nationalised Oil to Fund Climate Change Efforts". What a lovely thought - if the US can nationalise the banks and insurers, why not the oil companies?

cyclin' stylin'

I was intrigued to read a story in the SMH today about the Danish ambassador's attendance at a bike exhibition. The ambassador said that in Denmark cycling is a way of life, cyclist have their own lanes, lights and end-of-ride facilities.

After loving cycling all this week (no rain! hooray!) I felt a little jealous of the Danes for whom cycling is a viable form of transport for everyone. I would love to see Australia's love affair with the car end and our bikes take more priority.

Green washing coal

Today Greenpeace released its report on an energy revolution, saying the Australia's largest contribution to greenhouse gases is through the use of coal-fired power stations. It also says that 'clean coal' is a total furphy, it can't be produced in the timeframe necessary. Revnewable energy is our only alternative.

I really thought that this government would be in favour of renewable energy, but in fact its policies, on photo-voltaic panels at least, are backward. Under the guise of 'fairness' they have in fact just made the subsidy pointless for everyone.

Hopefully enough people will read the Greenpeace report to realise that electing a Labour government who ratified Kyoto really hasn't made one iota of difference to the real climate change problem.

Petrol prices - adding insult to injury

The whole hoo-haa about petrol prices is an argument Australia shouldn't be having. Our petrol prices are already lower than many OECD countries. As the SMH reported in its front-page scare mongering story on petrol prices last Thursday, Australians will have to institute lifestyle changes to deal with the rising cost of fuel. This was reported as a bad thing but actually it's going to do us a lot of good in the long run.

The thing that Australians need to realise is that the days of cheap fuel are over. This surge in the price of oil is not being caused by some temporary problem like the Gulf War, it's because China and India have an insatiable apetite for fuel. Petrol is going to be this expensive from now on and cutting fuel excise or GST on fuel is going to be a bandaid measure at best.

The other point is that higher fuel prices will force people to make lifestyle changes. And higher prices now mean we will make changes now. If we use less fuel (because, say, the prices of petrol is so high we collectivley stop buying so much) that can only be a good thing. Maybe motorists will become public transport users, maybe they'll become cyclists. Maybe people will start shopping at local markets or think about buying cheaper produce that is grown locally.Who knows?

But I can only see that rising fuel prices, if they do kick along social change instead of political panic, could be a very good thing.

Solar panel subsidies - why the government has got it wrong

While the new Labor government has been priding itself on its environmental credentials (and with groups like Get Up! giving a helping hand to their campaign you should hope that they have some credentials) I have been very disappointed by the decision to place a $100,000 income cap on the subsidy for installing solar panels.

Solar panels are expensive. The cost saving on energy bills (assuming that prices stay at or around current levels) are not enough to justify spending the money. Unless you have enough money to meet your basic food, shelter and transport needs and a little to spare making your carbon footprint smaller. Those people are likely to live in households earning more than $100,000.

Those higher income earners are the only households who really have anychance of paying the $5,000 odd it costs to install solar panels after the subsidy, but even those households will struggle to find $13,000 (quite possibly more than 10% of their income) in any one year. You can absolutely bet that households below $100,000 will probably have used most of that income just to support themselves, without leaving $5,000 over to pay for panels so they are not going to be using the subsidy anyhow.

Under the previous system of uncapped subsidies really the only people able to afford solar panels were the wealthier families earning over say $150,000 per year. Now no one other than the very, very wealthy will be able to afford panels.

The ultimate environmental outcome is that very many fewer solar panels will be installed (indeed businesses installing panels reported huge cancellations in recent weeks). So our carbon emissions remain high and probably grow as more people demand electricity.

Subsidies are not welfare. I agree that welfare should not be going to the already well-off, but subsidies are designed to do something entirely different: they are designed to encourage people to do something. In this case to adopt solar technology. By capping the subsidy the government is heavily diluting the effect of the tool. In an effort to keep up the appearance of not helping rich people, this government is throwing out the environmental baby with the bath water.

Cycle bonus or petrol excise?

I was pretty bored by the whole budget week. There were no surprises from the government and Brendan Nelson's attempt to paint the opposition as responsible on climate change is a joke. But I was horrified when Nelson advocated cutting the petrol excise so that the price of fuel would fall by 5 cents a litre. What is he thinking? It's only rising petrol prices that are making people seriously consider the alternatives to fossil fuels.

This article from Reuters just highlights the point. Although it has some rather depressing news about the drop in cycling habits in the US, it does say that in some cities cycle infrastructure has led to increasing levels of bike use.

Instead of cutting the fuel excise, I suggest we increase it, and use that money to fund cycle infrastructure in our major cities. And then pay people a subsidy to buy a bike and helmet.

setting targets

I have been avidly reading the coverage of the Bali talks and wondering how this is going to impact on us. As the various big guns (including Australia) bicker over wording and exactly what they are agreeing to, it seems clear that a 25 - 40% reduction in emissions by 2020 is essential.

In the spirit of this blog being about what we can do as a household, I have set a target that we reduce our household carbon emissions by 40% in the next year.

My first step in doing this was to track down my electricity and gas bills and the log book from our car. I went outside and checked how big our bins are (240 litres for recycling and 120 litres for garbage). Then I sat down for 5 minutes at www.1degree.net.au and worked out our carbon footprint by filling in all the nicely interractive pages.

Our footprint in the year just gone was 17.3 tonnes of CO2. That's more than 3 tonnes over the average in Australia which, as we know, is the highest average in the world.

I just sat there a little flabbergasted for a bit.

The two big factors in that footprint are: household electricity and flights.

Electricity: A few weeks ago I discovered that my new 'green energy' contract was only generating 10% of my power by green means, the rest by conventional coal powered methods. I only worked this out when I got the bill from my new provider, Jack Green, and saw the 10% figure.

I was pretty disappointed that it took me 3 months to work this out, after having signed up with Jack Green believing I was getting green power. Jack Green's door-to-door guy who signed me up explained that I could 'do my bit for the environment' without spending any more money. What he didn't explain to me was that my 'bit' would only be 10% green energy instead of the 100% I was after.

A couple of weeks ago I made the switch to 100% green power, so I plugged that figure into the www.1degree.net.au calculator and our carbon footprint for next year should be down to 7.47 tonnes. We've made a 50% reduction with one phone call!

But here's the tricky bit, the green power will cost us $60 per quarter but we don't have any extra to spend on power. So I have decided we will reduce our consumption accordingly so that our bill remains at the same level even though we are paying more per unit. So that's one target.

Flights:

Simon has done a lot of flying this year for work. He's been to Vietnam, all around Australia and to New Zealand. So I plugged all those flights into the calculator and the figure, for flights alone was over 4 tonnes.

I must say that I am a little bit sceptical of paying money to offset emissions from flights. I'm just not sure where that money goes and who keeps track of exactly how many tonnes of CO2 are being saved. It seems like a bit of a cop out really - how can sending money to someone offset the very real CO2 that is pumped out of the plane and into the atmosphere when I fly tomorrow?

So that is my next task. I am going to research carbon offset schemes and see exactly how they are supposed to work and whether they really have an impact, or whether they are just a way to salve the conscience of well-meaning but ultimately lazy consumers.

So those are my targets: keep the electricity bills at the same $$ level, despite the switch to green power and research and implement carbon offsets for our flights. I will post on the ways we have achieved those things, assuming, of course, that we do.