tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11213488601237223922024-02-19T13:06:03.508+11:00The Wattwatcher's BlogSustainable living stuff covered by MURRAY HOGARTH ... cutting carbon, home food growing, green marketing, activist campaigns & wattwatching (i.e. making energy a controllable cost for household and business consumers)The Wattwatcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14863849436988294473noreply@blogger.comBlogger28125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1121348860123722392.post-53448075357373887012011-11-01T11:23:00.001+11:002011-11-01T22:03:00.164+11:00Wish I had a Melbourne Cup winner, but backing Sustainability Online<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><b>If we don’t have a virtual racing industry by 2050, are we backing the wrong horse? With ‘The Cup’ looming, Murray Hogarth has his money on long-shot Sustainability Online despite Carbon Uncertainty’s recent form. Read on (my latest column for BEN-global)</b><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The race that stops a nation</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">It's Melbourne Cup time again. Australasia’s most famous horse race, worth millions for the winner’s connections, features in a month-long extravaganza of punting for a betting mad nation. The $6 million, two-mile (3200m) classic is a magnet for international racing industry heavyweights too, especially with the Aussie dollar sky high, causing a boom in equine air miles as well as track ones.<br />
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So how can you segue from that to a sustainability story?<br />
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Perhaps you’re thinking this story is headed down the path of the huge gamble that greenhouse gas intensive Australian industries now face over a price on carbon pollution. Should industry punters believe the government of the day and get ready to start trading carbon from mid next year? Or should they heed the shrill, ‘blood pledge’, buyer-beware warnings of the wannabe government that it will repeal the carbon price legislation at the first opportunity, with no compensation!<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Carbon Uncertainty is the bolter!</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Sure, the real prospects of this Carbon Uncertainty bolter are hard to pick. Fortunately, however, this big race story actually starts with the heavy TV advertising for TomWaterhouse.com, the young pacesetter of the internet-based gaming sector, whose bloodlines incorporate some of Australia’s greatest racing and bookmaking families.<br />
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Tom’s ads boast he was born to bet. He’ll cover racing or any sport with legal gaming opportunities, and you’ll never have to go near a racetrack, sporting ground or even a betting shop. Your money, winnings and losses, goes digital, with every bit of the transaction action happening online – although the horses, dogs or people still have to run around a track or a field.<br />
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Now of its self, Tom Waterhouse’s business is pretty unremarkable. These days we can do lots of regular things online, like buy or rent movies on smart TVs or computers without every having to visit a video shop or even physically receive a DVD by parcel. When you add up all of the physical activity that no longer is required per view, that’s a lot of dematerialising without any loss of viewer satisfaction (and no bloody late fees either).<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">This industry has a big footprint</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Online gaming is a pretty modest saving, of course, especially when you consider how big the footprint of the racing industry is. All of those large herbivores, farms, feed, stables, racetracks, and all of the land and air transport that goes with them. After people, horses are the most frequent flyers among all of the world’s creatures, and a whole bunch of them have jetted down from Europe for the Melbourne Cup.<br />
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There’ll be no shortage of attention for the much-loved ‘race that stops the nation’ over the next few days. It even has a Hollywood movie, The Cup, running this year. So it’s no doubt a terrible time to advocate scrapping the whole horseracing industry, declaring its race has been run in a world that needs to go low-carbon fast.<br />
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While it’s easy to love the rich tradition of The Cup and the beauty of thoroughbreds at full gallop, you can imagine the carbon footprint of flying hay-burners around the world! So can that ever be sustainable? Especially if the whole thing can be replicated in computer-generated images, with randomised race results mimicking the sure bets and occasional dramatic upsets of the real thing?<br />
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And would the punters even care? Many gamblers rarely or ever go to the track, even less with the advent of online betting, and millions bet on the poker machines while knowing that computer chips control the outcomes, not pure luck, and that ultimately the house always wins.<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Get on Clean Energy Future</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">It’s important to focus public and political attention on replacing physical products including services with virtual ones in the quest for a clean-running future that is both ecologically sustainable and economically successful. Confronting the very future of horseracing in the build-up to Melbourne Cup week (the race is run later today - author note 01/11/2011) is one way to prompt that discussion.<br />
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By the way, there’s a racehorse in America called Carbon Footprint. That had to happen, I’ll wager. As far as I know it’s not headed down under anytime soon for a Melbourne Cup, but we should all keep an eye on its form in 2012 as the Clean Energy Future Stakes is run here, along with overseas feature events like the Kyoto Protocol Handicap, the White House Plate and the Rio+20 Cup.<br />
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</i></span>The Wattwatcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14863849436988294473noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1121348860123722392.post-59697421234710819172011-10-13T13:43:00.001+11:002011-10-16T00:30:16.559+11:00Sustainable food has a gender edge, in a very nice way<div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">I know it’s dangerous territory for men to presume to opine about what women like or want. So let’s just say I have a thesis to advance, backed by a few observations, and I’ll have to cop it sweet if I cause any offence.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Here goes with the thesis. If you want gender traction of the female variety for sustainability, then food is a killer app.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">For <a href="http://www.fao.org/getinvolved/worldfoodday/en/">UN World Food Day</a> (October 16<sup>th</sup>), I’ve pulled together some thoughts and proof points on why this might be so. Here’s what I’ve been observing:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><ul style="margin-top: 0cm;" type="disc"><li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">My partner, Natalie Isaacs, responds very positively when I work on developing a new home vegetable garden, and she’s pretty keen on her matching set of worm farms as well (one was an anniversary present, worms being truly romantic)<o:p></o:p></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Natalie’s organisation, the <a href="http://1millionwomen.com.au/">1 Million Women</a> climate action campaign, gets great responses whenever it posts on its <a href="http://www.facebook.com/1MillionWomen">Facebook</a> about food, and food has always been a strong performer for its website forums<o:p></o:p></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">The major humanitarian and disaster relief organisations, especially <a href="http://www.oxfam.org.au/">Oxfam Australia</a> and <a href="http://www.care.org.au/">CARE Australia</a> in my recent experience, place much emphasis on engaging women and directing aid towards women, with food and water related assistance paramount e.g. small-scale farming, village wells, low-polluting cooking stoves<o:p></o:p></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Women in the developed world make 70% or more of purchasing decisions that affect household environmental footprint, including food, and, using Africa as an example of the developing world, women there produce 80% of the food<o:p></o:p></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Now that I find myself engaging sustainability professionals with a corporate employee engagement model for organic home food gardening, its women who are responding most strongly, positively and intuitively. No disrespect guys, but it’s a standout difference.<o:p></o:p></span></li>
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</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">I’ll never forget a speaking panel gig I did a couple of years ago for a Living Green festival hosted by the City of Sydney, <a href="http://sydney2030.com.au/">a civic sustainability leader in Australia</a>. I was part of a serious sustainability debate on greenwashing, with a very modest audience (including a dog), while over at the Sustainable Food tent with celebrity chef <a href="http://www.kyliekwong.org/">Kylie Kwong</a> there were hundreds of people, the majority of them women, spilling out of the big marquee.</span><br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Moderately intellectual discourse is all very well, but the Living Green punters were feeling the traction of a greater attraction.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Why make this case? My thinking is that selling sustainability and especially behaviour change for sustainable living is hard enough, so why not find the paths of least resistance? Food is elemental sustainability and it engages everyone, though on my analysis women even more than men. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Food and beverage account for about a third of the carbon pollution in our daily lives. So food is a crucial pathway for mass-market sustainability, and women are a vital conduit for using the centrality of food in our lives to drive change in our households and communities.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Right now I’m helping a small business <a href="http://www.cityfoodgrowers.com.au/">Cityfood Growers</a> to spread the word about an innovative opportunity to combine successful home food growing with supporting <a href="http://cityfoodgrowers.com.au/media/World_Food_Day_Public_Announcement_for_Cityfood_Growers_FINAL_20111010.pdf">Oxfam Australia’s East Africa Food Crisis Appeal</a>, for World Food Day and Oxfam's Gather to GROW week (October 15-22, which is actually 8 days if you count them). I won’t be the least bit surprised if women find it most appealing, but guys I’d love to be proven gender deluded!<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">If I’ve offended anyone with these observations and analysis please be gentle. I mean well.<o:p></o:p></span></div>The Wattwatcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14863849436988294473noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1121348860123722392.post-84121005472034894822011-10-12T10:38:00.002+11:002011-10-12T15:58:15.452+11:00As Australia moves to price carbon, 3 things you need to know<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A carbon price scheme in Australia is close, at last, but shaky too. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Today marks the crucial vote (74 to 72) in the House of Representatives, the lower house in the bicameral Australian Parliament, with the way already prepared for passage through the upper house Senate too.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Barring not entirely unlikely political disaster befalling the ill-fated minority Labor Government, the <a href="http://cleanenergyfuture.gov.au/">Clean Energy Future</a> scheme with fixed $23 a tonne of CO2 pollution price attached will start on July 1, 2012. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There'll be the fixed price for three years, then real carbon trading with the market setting the price will begin in 2015.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Unfortunately, this is all inherently shaky still. The legislation is set to become law via an alliance of minority Labor Government, progressive Independents and Greens. It is opposed absolutely by the conservative Opposition, whose leader has 'sworn in blood' (his actual language was 'a pledge in blood' ) to repeal 'this toxic carbon tax' (also his language), and public opinion polling for the Government is dire.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Many words will be written about this in the minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and years ahead, but here are 3 things you need to know.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">1. Pricing pollution is the conservative way</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A market solution in any normal world is the climate solution political conservatives in a market-based democracy would support (unless they are really skeptics). Indeed, at the Kyoto Climate Summit in 1997 that's what was supported by the then conservative Australian Government of Prime MInister John Howard, which supported the US Government's advocacy of a carbon trading approach over howls of protest from the European Union bloc and green groups. Now Europe has a carbon trading scheme, most environmentalists and political Greens support it. Go figure.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">2. Uncertainty can still kill the value of carbon pricing</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Business champions of carbon trading have long feared the position we've now arrived at. This is because the certainty they are seeking from a carbon price - to allow them to make with confidence large long-term capital investments that are sensitive to carbon price and policy - is being denied to them by the vicious politics in Australia (and America too). It seems inevitable that there will now be a future election 'referendum' on the carbon scheme, and possibly a further Double Dissolution poll as well to force through repeal of the law. Business will be put on the spot: does Australia keep going with the Clean Energy Future scheme, perhaps with modifications, or does it plunge back into prolonged carbon indecision?</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">3. A price on carbon is not a magic cure for climate change</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For all the incredible effort and bitter public and political division that has gone into arriving at today's historic votes in Australia, including the destruction of the leadership of at least two Australian Prime Ministers and two Opposition Leaders in the past four years, carbon trading is only part of the solution. It's a good tool, harnessing market forces, but we need other market levers and lots of old-fashioned regulation too. You don't just set and forget a carbon scheme, somehow magically arriving at a clean energy future with a low-carbon economy in 2050. The next crucial thing to chase is a national energy efficiency scheme for Australia, which means this is no time to take the pressure off our political and business leaders.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">And what now?</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I reckon a new era of real action on climate change is now possible if not certain, and that everyone who has worked for this for so long should take a few moments to reflect on the years it has taken, indulge in modest self-congratulation, then brace for all of the hard work still to come. What do you think? </span><br />
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</span>The Wattwatcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14863849436988294473noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1121348860123722392.post-72195646998496947192011-09-20T18:27:00.000+10:002011-09-20T18:27:03.010+10:00Transforming big media’s performance on sustainability<!--StartFragment--> <br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">NOTE: This is my latest Blog for WME's Business Environment Network (see links below) and is reproduced here with an extra 'personal footnote'. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><b>Opinion polls are warning that a price on carbon pollution is political poison, renewable energy is under assault, life-saving environmental flows for the Murray-Darling are evaporating and biodiversity is disappearing. So are sustainability advocates losing the communications war, asks Murray Hogarth.</b><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Progress, or is it?</span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p><br />
</o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Big environmental sustainability issues for Australia and the world are getting unprecedented attention in the political and public discourse of the nation. Climate change, a price on carbon, water challenges, renewable energy, coal seam gas and coal industry expansion, a fair rate of tax on mining and other resource extraction, public transport deficiencies, species crises, and more are in the news most days.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">So isn’t that progress? Aren’t the issues that sustainability advocates care about now on the agenda, getting headlines, being debated, causing political mayhem, stirring public passions? Wasn’t that the whole idea of decades of activism to raise awareness about the awful reality of humans pursuing endless economic and population growth inside a finite ecological system?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Yes, but. There’s a problem. To borrow a football analogy, it looks like sustainability advocates are often dominating possession but failing to score. It’s not enough to elevate your issues, at least not if the media itself, and the business and political realms that still dominate in its coverage, haven’t themselves changed at a more fundamental level. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Sustainability 'meta-narrative'</span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In my view, media coverage of sustainability has barely progressed in over a decade. If that’s right, why does this paralysis persist in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence of the sustainability crisis ‘meta-narrative’ for people on the planet? Individual journalists aren’t to blame. However good they are, they can’t effect the change required here. It has to be systemic, and the media must accept a role to lead society not merely reflect its confusion.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Look at this from a corporate perspective. The emerging, logical approach for reporting by businesses is now to integrate all of the important information about an enterprise’s policies, plans and performance – across financial, governance, social and environmental dimensions – into a single annual report, quarterly updates, and also into continuous reporting via the Internet. The point is to make, and to communicate sustainability as being integral to the business, not a satellite concern held at the margins by more exotic, segregated reporting.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Change the business pages</span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">This structural evolution also is required from big media if sustainability is to win consistently in the communications war, as I for one believe it should and must. The business section of any newspaper is a great place to start the restructuring, with the first steps to include:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;"></div><ul><li><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Accepting overtly that the science of climate change is solid and has major economic and financial consequences that can be articulated, tracked, tested and reported on, including in terms of how they relate in value-at-stake terms to individual stocks and economies, and also sectors and markets as a whole.</span></li>
<li><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Innovating to produce and promote new metrics and indices that can track and compare performance on diverse relevant areas such as quality of life, happiness, ecological integrity and biodiversity protection, climate change impacts, major resource reserves and reliability, rural productivity and production trends, water resilience, employee participation, and much more.</span></li>
<li><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Adopting a relentless journalistic rigor in questioning and editorially challenging corporations, governments and oppositions, community organisations and all of the other players that make up our economy and our society to show what they are doing to identify, manage and reduce or eliminate any social, environmental and economic harm they are doing, and also to create positive outcomes through their processes, policies, products and people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></li>
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</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The real power to influence</span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">This is completely different territory than a media group like News Limited doing its credible 1 Degree program to achieve carbon neutrality, or Fairfax Media’s good internal sustainability focus and foundation support for Earth Hour with WWF Australia, or a greener ABC. It’s great that media organisations just like any other businesses run their operations more cleanly and efficiently, and also support good causes, but their real power to influence for good lies in what they report and how they report it. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The defining sustainability challenge for the whole sprawling mass communications sector is to help redefine how the economy and society are described, measured and reported on. That’s what real change looks like. And who knows, getting this right might make a difference to the financial sustainability challenges now confronting big media, especially our newspapers. Otherwise, a myriad of minor and social media will fill the void, as they are doing already.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">*Murray Hogarth is a business environmentalist, Principal of consultancy <a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_736702870">the 3</a><sup><a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_736702870">rd</a></sup><a href="http://www.the3rddegree.com.au/"> degree</a> and a former Environment Editor of </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">The Sydney Morning Herald<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">. He also is Senior Adviser to </i><i><a href="http://www.greencapital.org.au/">Green Capital</a></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">, the corporate sustainability arm of the</i><i><a href="http://www.tec.org.au/"> Total Environment Centre</a></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">, where he currently is working on a November event series, </i><a href="http://www.greencapital.org.au/events.html">Media, Marketing & the Green Message: Are we losing the sustainability communications war?</a><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> The opinions expressed here are Murray’s alone<span style="color: #ff6600;">. </span></i></span></b><!--EndFragment--> <br />
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: Times; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">My personal footnote</span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: Times; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial;"><b> <!--StartFragment--> </b></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial;"><b><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Recently I’ve been working on a book covering the first 25 years of the Environmental Defenders Office of NSW, often known simply as the EDO, Australia’s pioneering public interest environmental law centre. The book is not finished yet, but the emerging manuscript has some relevant touch points for this discussion. In the words of one of the EDO’s founding figures, Emeritus Professor Ben Boer of the University of Sydney, the mission is to achieve a future where the laws of man conform to the laws of nature. Another of the EDO’s founders, retired Federal Court Justice Murray Wilcox AO, makes a great point when he says legal battles alone will never deliver real transformation towards a truly sustainable society, where environmental protection can trump economic growth as a matter of common agreement: </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">‘In the end that is the only guarantee. If you get to the point where no government would dream of doing something that is your best hope.’</span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">A dozen years ago, as the then Environment Editor of </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">The Sydney Morning Herald</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">, I began a personally painful process of ending my 20-plus years career in print and TV. Convinced that old-style environmental journalism populated mainly with nature conservation and pollution outrage stories was approaching its use-by-date, I mounted a quixotic little campaign to have my paper break new ground by elevating sustainability to the reporting mainstream, especially in the business pages.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">I argued that market research showed that around 70 percent of the </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Herald’s</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> readership was environmentally aware and concerned. That just as the paper had led the way in Australian journalism with the appointment of the first designated environmental writer in the 1970s, the fondly remembered Joseph Glascott, it should do so again by establishing sustainability reporting as part of its business section. Less constructively, perhaps, I insisted that as a solo environment reporter I was pitted against a whole business section with dozens of people writing the development at any cost view of the world. And I asked, where was the journalistic balance in that?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">I got nowhere then, and left journalism for a whole bunch of reasons to find my way into sustainability consulting as a new career. Now, these 12 years later, the </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Herald</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> has a sustainability-focused column in its weekend business section, written by Ethical Investor magazine founder Paddy Manning, and it still has an Environment Editor, Ben Cubby. Paddy and Ben are both excellent, hardworking journalists who cover many important issues, as are many of their counterparts at other media outlets. Furthermore, over recent years other business and environmental journalists writing in the </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Herald</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> and its sister paper </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">The Age</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> in Melbourne have produced wonderful, awarding-winning reports on crucial issues ranging from climate impacts, to carbon trading chicanery, to greenwash, to toxic pollution.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">It’s none of their faults that media coverage of sustainability has barely progressed in over a decade. Along with the ABC (with the possible exception of still paying too much attention to climate deniers), the Fairfax Media stable is as good as we get from the mainstream media in Australia. Yet even there the same general structures continue, and there’s no real recognition of how profound the sustainability challenge really is, nor how urgent, nor how transformative it needs to be for everything. I see now that I was hopelessly naïve back in 1999 thinking a new business sustainability reporter’s position might make a real difference, because that’s just the start.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;"><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: Times; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial;"><b>Also see the BEN versions of this Post at:</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: Times; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial;"><b><br />
</b></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Blog link:</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-size: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-size: 16px;"><a href="http://www.ben-global.com/Business/Forum/50.aspx" style="color: #0000cc;" target="_blank"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">http://www.ben-global.com/<wbr></wbr>Business/Forum/50.aspx</span></a></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-size: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-size: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-size: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Channel highlight link:</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-size: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-size: 16px;"><a href="http://www.ben-global.com/Business/News/Transforming_big_medias_performance_on_sustainabil_8797.aspx" style="color: #0000cc;" target="_blank"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">http://www.ben-global.com/<wbr></wbr>Business/News/Transforming_<wbr></wbr>big_medias_performance_on_<wbr></wbr>sustainabil_8797.aspx</span></a></span></div></i></b>The Wattwatcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14863849436988294473noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1121348860123722392.post-54876448653801395502011-09-18T23:17:00.002+10:002011-09-26T13:56:33.180+10:00Food for thought … and a homegrown opportunity for sustainability action!<div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 24px;"><b><br />
</b></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial;">The most powerful and compelling sustainability issues are simultaneously hugely global and intensely local, geopolitically important and personally engaging. Energy is one, water another, and recently an old stalwart, food, has become a born-again bolter.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">This post is about a way to make organic home food gardening a sustainability leadership activity for staff and member programs, one that extends to home life, and which can stand alongside more established activities like recycling, energy and water saving, and carbon reduction and offsetting.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">First, however, let’s recap the centrality of food, a sustainable living fundamental for individuals, communities and whole nations. At the popular level, we’ve all seen the rise and rise of celebrity chefs with their books, blogs and TV shows, culminating (here in Australia) with the success of Master Chef as an entertainment and marketing phenomenon.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">We all know the critical importance of food and diet for our health and wellbeing, and we are increasingly aware of how the food and beverages that we consume are a major component of our environmental footprints, including big implications for carbon pollution linked to our lifestyles.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">At a political level, few things raise public concern like escalating food prices and food security fears, and these have the proven potential to fuel protest movements and destablise governments and regimes. On the humanitarian side, the current famine in the Horn of Africa is a terrible reminder of many famines, of a resource-challenged world that needs to feed 7 billion people rising to 9 billion by 2050, and also a warning of what the concept of catastrophic climate change actually means.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">For all of this, if you’d told me even a year ago that I’d be taking a frontline role promoting organic home food growing as a staff and community engagement program, I’d never have believed you. Given that I am now doing just that, what gives here? <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">The answer is multi-faceted. Like many people I’ve been assailed by news stories and social media discussions about food price rises and security fears, and their role in political instability, human misery and sustainability crises. In many ways these are not new stories, yet to me their intensity is escalating. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">On a happier note, I’ve also tuned into an international trend in the developed world for people wanting to re-engage with producing their own food at home or in their communities, or buying locally-produced food, or seeking healthier and more environmentally aware growing methods like organic and biodynamic, or lower-carbon food options, and sometimes all of the above.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Then I met <a href="http://www.ecosmagazine.com/?paper=EC11053">Peter Kearney</a>, the founder of <a href="http://www.cityfoodgrowers.com.au/">Cityfood Growers</a>, which is when entrepreneurial ingenuity and the power of the Internet were added into the mix. For the past three or so years I have been working on home energy management solutions that can be connected via the Internet, allowing householders to create their own ‘energy saving networks’ independent of traditional utilities and metering technologies.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">In meeting Peter, a Brisbane-based businessman who’s been growing food in the city since his childhood, it suddenly became clear that gardening knowledge and advice was something else that could be deployed online with some very clever functionality.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwGju__oBo-gHkvo5nWosae5n6CvNAFUFU7TsnJUeHBWa6UKo-cqRpz6Dw674AVEwgdUawP31yyNRUSeV2zv2BmTQuSsTTBmWa1r-iKRfCFEOPYHncMjgLazuzwPXghKKAary5WOYO400/s1600/Peter+Kearney+in+his+pumpkin+patch.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwGju__oBo-gHkvo5nWosae5n6CvNAFUFU7TsnJUeHBWa6UKo-cqRpz6Dw674AVEwgdUawP31yyNRUSeV2zv2BmTQuSsTTBmWa1r-iKRfCFEOPYHncMjgLazuzwPXghKKAary5WOYO400/s320/Peter+Kearney+in+his+pumpkin+patch.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"> </span></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"> Peter Kearney in his pumpkin patch (photo from CItyfood Growers website, courtesy of The Courier Mail)</span></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">The key success factor for home food gardening is working with your local climate conditions. Depending on where you are, getting information tailored to your specific locality is not always easy. What Peter Kearney has done with his fee-based subscription service is allow his members to filter all of the very detailed information on his website, covering 300-plus types of food crops, by matching it to their nearest local weather station.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">When I learned about this feature, I had my own food growing meets sustainability program ‘ah-hah moment’.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Cityfood Growers already has its model working for Australia, New Zealand and the US, and is looking further afield, wherever reliable local weather station data exists and is publicly available. It doesn’t matter if you live in Darwin in the Northern Territory of Australia, or Dunedin on the South Island of New Zealand, or even Miami in Florida in the US, you get essentially the same service adapted to where your food garden is, including your climate and your seasons. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">That means a company with staff spread across Australasia, or a large member-based organisation for that matter, can easily initiate and coordinate a network of home and community gardeners, tens or hundreds or even thousands of them, who are all getting consistent and comprehensive support to help them succeed.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Many enterprises are constantly looking for positive programs to engage their staff or members in socially, environmentally and ideally personally beneficial activities, which also are good for the organisation itself. I reckon it doesn’t get better or more sustainable than growing your own food and eating the outcomes. All done while building a greater appreciation of nature’s wonders, gaining empathy for those who struggle to feed themselves and their families everyday, and learning life skills to put food on the table from your own food garden always.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Cityfood Growers is already helping to build organic home food growing into the curricula for over 1000 early childhood learning centres around Australia, aiming to make the next generation gardening-savvy. Peter Kearney’s vision is people everywhere learning how to feed themselves, being successful in their own food gardens, and loving the process of doing it.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Taking similar content to the childhood centres into workplaces and major institutions is a new path for Cityfood Growers, and for me. <a href="mailto:murray@cityfoodgrowers.com.au">Let me know</a> if you have ideas on how home and community food growing can work for your business or other organisations?<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial;">See Peter Kearney's article in the CSIRO's ECOS magazine <a href="http://www.ecosmagazine.com/?paper=EC11053">CLICK HERE</a></span><br />
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</div>The Wattwatcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14863849436988294473noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1121348860123722392.post-84201532930777448392011-08-16T22:04:00.000+10:002011-08-16T22:04:03.466+10:002012 … CRUCIAL PITSTOP ON THE LONG WINDING ROAD TO A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE<!--StartFragment--> <br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial;"><i>This is the original longer version of a column published on August 15, 2011, by WME's new Business Environment Network.</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">The cause of global sustainability desperately needs to make the most of 2012 as a transformative year, writes Murray Hogarth, while taking a mini trip down a regional road to a low-carbon future. READ ON<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">On a narrow country road, winding through green hills between Mullumbimby and the hamlet of Federal in far northern New South Wales, the narrative for this story finally gelled. Next year, 2012, is a critical time for sustainability, in my view the most important year yet in the history of the planet. I’ll explain my reasoning for this grand assertion in a moment. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">First, however, as I drove through beautiful Byron Shire in my manual two-door Hyundai Getz, the smallest most fuel efficient and cost effective option I could find on the hire car menu, I drew a sliver of comfort for the future of people on the Australian continent and across planet Earth. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">It’s because there, in the coastal Byron Shire, I could see a transition in society under way. Albeit a tentative, often-disputed, and still totally inadequate set of changes, but the beginnings of a transition nonetheless – and the clues were everywhere, like a crumb trail to the hidden destination of a more sustainable future.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Those clues include things like solar PV arrays on rooftops, local farmers markets, roadside signs offering organic produce, feisty hand-made signs opposing coal seam methane projects, recycled furniture shops, a green mayor, committed young entrepreneurs pursuing solutions for householders, and an array of micro businesses like cafes and stores incorporating sustainability into their sales pitches.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">I was in Mullumbimby to speak at the launch of a new sustainable food business directory for the Byron Shire, which includes the famous, and famously arty and spiritual, tourism town of Byron Bay. A modest-sized positive initiative by the local council, which has a Greens politician at the helm in the shape of Mayor Jan Barham, the directory actually speaks to a much bigger agenda with global sustainability implications.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">This part of Australia, just south of sprawling Brisbane and the gross ‘theme park for over-development’ that is the Gold Coast, has lost much of its traditional agricultural base, with subdivisions replacing cow paddocks, motorways slicing through cane fields, and tree-changers moving in while farmers grow old and move out. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Stirred in part by the controversial arrival of a Woolworths supermarket in Mullumbimby in recent times, local food production and security, community resilience, and diverse opportunities to resurrect the agricultural potential of the region are now genuine public policy concerns in these environs; as they should be for the whole nation, especially with a federal review under way looking at National Food Policy (submissions close September 2).<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">At least there’s already action on the ground in the NSW Northern Rivers district, which includes Byron Shire. Through government-funded initiatives like the Northern Rivers Food Link Project, involving seven local councils plus a public water utility, the aim is to ‘mitigate climate change impacts associated with food production and distribution, and strengthen community resilience to climate change and peak oil impacts’.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">This is scarily practical, when you consider what’s really stake, such as the future of food and energy, and works well as a microcosm of a bigger Australia-wide scenario. While much of the national political debate in Australia still appears to revolve around whether climate change and natural resource constraints like declining oil reserves are real, and require serious policy responses such as a price on carbon pollution, up here in Byron Shire official programs are saying food security and fossil fuel energy supply need proper attention.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">That’s the segue back to the overwhelming importance of 2012, when the capacity of the whole of human civilisation to feed and power itself will be back at the top of the United Nations to-do list. These issues will be graphically illustrated by ongoing political disruption across the oil-rich Middle East, messing with fuel prices and market security, and the terrible toll on human lives of a global warming impacted drought in the Horn of Africa.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">For the sake of this story, I am going to assume that ancient Mayan calendar inspired fears that the world will end in 2012 won’t come to pass. Nonetheless, humanity is far from off the hook.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">The modern-day concept of sustainability will be 25-years-old next year, with its origins in the UN’s Brundtland Commission on Development and the Environment, which released its <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Our Common Future</i> report in 1987. It will also be 20 years since the Rio Earth Summit, in 1992, and 15 years since the Kyoto Climate Conference, in 1997. Year 2012 will include Rio+20, and will mark the end of the first and perhaps only Kyoto commitment period, which runs 2008-2012, highlighting the big unresolved question of what comes next? There will be a vital presidential election in the US, the rise of China will step up in its trade and geo-political potency, ongoing financial crises will be gnawing away at the very concept of traditional ‘economic growth’, and here in Australia we will most likely see the start of the Clean Energy Future policy package including, finally, its price on carbon pollution.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">When I look in the rear vision mirror at landmark yesteryears, I see 1990 for its international wave of environmental awareness, 1992 for the largest gathering of world leaders in the history of the planet in Rio, 1997 for the painful birth of the Kyoto Protocol, and perhaps crucially, 2000, when George W. Bush defeated Al Gore for the presidency of the United States of America.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">A 100-year history written towards the end of the 21<sup>st</sup> century on how the world moved to a low-carbon, sustainable economy, if it does manage a happy Hollywood ending of course, may well speculate on how differently the first decade could have played out under Gore instead of Bush. We can never know, yet it’s relevant to canvass this ‘what if’ in discussing why 2012 is now so pivotal. It will be a huge, epoch-shaping outcome if America casts out Democrat President Barack Obama in 2012, after one term, especially in favour of a climate-skeptical Tea Party Republican candidate. Demolishing the EPA will be but a first salvo from such a presidency, and hopes for serious climate action will be put off for a decade or more.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Over a billion people have been born since modern-day sustainability was ‘invented’ a quarter of a century ago. New generations have grown up, some in great wealth and others in deep poverty and deprivation. Species have gone extinct, global economic stability has deteriorated dramatically after a long boom, and the negative environmental footprint of humanity collectively has exceeded the sustainable carrying capacity of our one and only planet. The fossil fuel sector, the source of so much of the world’s climate troubles, has expanded massively, not only in traditional coal, oil and gas, but in major new areas like tar sands, shale gas, and coal seam methane too.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">If we have learned anything since Brundtland and Rio and Kyoto, it’s that governments and corporations will not deliver the transformation towards sustainability that our world needs. At least not at the speed and scale that is required, and certainly not through UN talk fests in isolation. Doubtless the failure to fundamentally change the path of our world away from unsustainable growth to a sustainable model will be much discussed and argued over in 2012. Yet the importance of the year will go unrealised unless whole nations and industries shift decisively from lip-service sustainability to transformational change.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">So where might real change come from? On the drive between Mullumbimby and Federal, it was suddenly clear to me the road ahead has to be bottom up and led from the community and small business levels. If we want to move once and for all from coal-fired power stations to renewable energy, then a critical mass of homes, small businesses and local communities have to make the transition themselves. The same goes for moving from vulnerable, wasteful, supermarket-dominated food supply chains, to resurgence in local food production and community resilience. And it’s up to individual farmers and environmentalists, networked using modern Internet communications and alliances like Lock the Gate, to force accountability on to powerful expanding industries like coal seam methane, with its tens of billons of dollars of investment just in Australia, from thousands of wells to giant new port facilities.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Governments and big business will follow when the will of the people is clear, but they won’t lead the transformation. Byron Shire is somewhere on the Australian coast where people are starting to populate a better future. When enough of us make that shift, then transformation becomes unstoppable reality. It may be more about symbolism than anything else, but 2012 must be a year for moving sustainability to a new level – the paradigm for successful human society in the 21<sup>st</sup> century, replacing the ideological battles over capitalism and socialism that so dominated the 20<sup>th</sup> century. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</b></span></div><!--EndFragment--> The Wattwatcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14863849436988294473noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1121348860123722392.post-67933403479673991282011-05-17T09:34:00.001+10:002011-10-04T22:46:52.511+11:00New Mindset Needed: Sustainability for Shoppers<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" height="800" style="font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; width: 456px;"><tbody>
<tr><td class="c2Heads" height="16" style="color: black; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-weight: bold; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;" valign="top">This is my column first published by Environmental Management News on Monday, 16 May 2011</td></tr>
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<div class="storyHead" style="color: black; display: inline; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; line-height: normal; text-decoration: none;"><b>Getting better environmental performance from ‘the stuff we buy’ is defined by the wrong things - Compulsion, Suspicion and Conflict - rather than getting the best outcomes for people and planet, while leaving business plenty of space for profits too. It’s little wonder that even green-savvy shoppers and householders can get confused, writes Murray Hogarth.<br />
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<div class="bodytext">I’m going to argue the case here for a national focus on what I’m calling ‘consumer environmental literacy’, or more pithily, sustainability for shoppers. It is years ago now that we started to pay serious attention to financial literacy for consumers. Just as the world of banking, insurance, superannuation, taxation and investment advice, and other ‘wealth management’ services simultaneously became more ubiquitous and more complex, so goes the fast expanding ‘green marketplace’.<br />
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In 2011, ‘environment’ is well down a similar path to financial products and services. Everyday punters are being called on to make purchasing decisions that are affected by all manner of label claims and purported certifications, that are governed by complex concepts like life cycle assessments and environmental foot-printing, and that require difficult calculations such as total cost of ownership, balancing purchase price with operating costs and sometimes disposal fees as well.<br />
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Whether it’s understanding the recycling information on a packet or container, or the energy bill implications of choosing particular appliances or vehicles, or the environmental consequences of the care instructions for clothing, what people buy and how they use it then dispose of it are critical issues for achieving a more sustainable economy.<br />
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There are also some nasty curved balls coming the way of industry and environmentalists alike. A prime example is waste collection, where decades of community engagement have created a cultural shift in Australia towards home sorting for recycling. Survey after survey shows Australians ranking their own recycling participation as top of the league table for environmental action. Now, however, global best practice is trending towards one or two bins at most – wet and dry waste if it is two – with industrial sorting at big centralised processing facilities. What are we going to tell all those happy home sorters?<br />
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That’s one of many tough challenges ahead. Firstly, however, let’s indulge ourselves in a pleasant little fiction. Let’s pretend we have the opportunity to build anew the key ‘sustainability’ interfaces between manufacturers and brand owners on one side, and consumers and their communities on the other, in regard to the stuff that people buy.<br />
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Our aim, in this delightful fantasy, is to maximise the sustainability outcomes around both packaging and the products themselves. Everyone involved, from industry through to environmental watchdogs, is broadly in agreement on the big issues, all wanting to minimise waste and maximise recycling, save energy and water, use less non renewable materials and more renewable energy, cut pollution, and do all of this in an efficient and cost-effective way. We just have to get consensus on how to do it!<br />
<br />
Then we get dragged back to current reality. Over several decades we’ve built up a nightmare mess of regulation and voluntary measures governing the way that ‘green’, ‘eco’, ‘ethical’ and ‘sustainable’ are integrated with products, and increasingly services too. The result is an emerging ‘green marketplace’ that is messily confusing, often poorly understood by the producers and the customers alike, and dysfunctional.<br />
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That’s not surprising, because our foundations for this new edifice are all wrong. Instead of three pillars of support representing Environment, Social and Economic best outcomes, we’ve ended up with Compulsion, Suspicion and Conflict:</div><ul><li>Compulsion, in that businesses, many of them reluctant at least in earlier times to act at all, have been compelled through an escalating series of regulatory, co-regulatory and arm-twisted self-regulatory measures to change their ways and clean up their act;</li>
<li>Suspicion, in that almost whatever industry has done, and however willing or otherwise they’ve been to do it, doubt will often be cast over both the motivations and actual performance of businesses. And while many allegations of greenwashing are well deserved, suspicion has been cast across everyone and everything;</li>
<li>Conflict, in that often change and action only comes about after serious head butting between brand owners and green watchdogs, such as environment and consumer advocacy groups. We’ve still got plenty of that going on, for example in regard to the green movement push for South Australian-style container deposits legislation to be spread nationally, which has been bitterly opposed for decades by most beverage makers and other industry players across manufacturing and retail.</li>
</ul>Recently, the Total Environment Centre’s (TEC) business sustainability program Green Capital teamed up with the 1 Million Women climate action campaign to conduct consumer research. This involved an online survey as part of the Buying Better initiative, a major Green Capital project focused on breaking down barriers to a more sustainable economy, including widespread confusion over labeling and certification schemes.<br />
<br />
The aim was to poll a target audience of environmentally engaged consumers, the all-female membership of the 1 Million Women campaign, with women making over 70% of purchasing decisions that affect household environmental footprint, and influencing up to 90% of such decisions.<br />
<br />
There were over 370 respondents to the survey. Key findings included:<br />
<ul><li>While over 9 out of 10 respondents said they looked out for environmental information on products, and nearly 8 out of 10 agreed they would pay more for ‘genuinely green’ products, nearly 7 out of 10 found environmental claims on labels difficult to understand;</li>
<li>Respondents tended to significantly underestimate how much of the negative environmental impact in the life cycle of key mainstream products – the survey looked at TVs, fresh fruit and vegetables, clothing, laundry detergent, washing machines and printer paper – arises while being used by them, the consumers;</li>
<li>A number of major ‘green, ‘eco’, ‘ethical’ or ‘sustainability’ labels had low recognition with the respondents, with the notable exceptions of ‘Fairtrade’ and ‘Energy Star’ enjoying high positive recognition;and</li>
<li>Respondents showed overwhelming support for supermarkets and other retailers to proactively stock and promote more sustainable products and de-stock the most unsustainable ones, but there was a pocket of concern about retailers creating their own ‘green labels’.</li>
</ul>To me, the debate indicates that even a moderately engaged and green-savvy sample of consumers struggled to weigh life cycle issues correctly, tended overall to underestimate the importance of their own purchasing decisions and how they use products, and in particular were heavily swayed by current or recent major environmental campaigns focused on issues such as:<br />
<ul><li>Clothing and textiles – ethical production, no ‘sweatshops’;</li>
<li>TVs – e-waste campaigns around disposal of electronics items; and</li>
<li>Fruit and vegetables – the ‘food miles’ concept.</li>
</ul>You can see from a chart, which can be viewed by clicking <a class="instorylinks" href="http://www.google.com.au/#sclient=psy&hl=en&source=hp&q=Buying+Better+Survey%2C+Green+Capital&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&pbx=1&fp=afc9845b4f85fa13" style="color: #666666; text-decoration: underline;" target="blank">here</a>, that such issues have dominated responses in the survey, even though other parts of the life cycle may be as important or more so for overall negative environmental footprint e.g. food wastage by consumers themselves, power consumption during the life of a TV and laundering of clothing.<br />
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The message is clear. Everyone with a stake in the greening of the mainstream economy needs to grow up a bit, get over old and increasingly irrelevant divisions, and get on with making effective consumer decision-making easier, regardless of the complexities that will always exist in the background. We need to rise above Compulsion, Suspicion and Conflict and get everyone on board – along the value chain, and across the life cycle of every product area - for real solutions that address the most material issues.<br />
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By framing this as a challenge to foster consumer environmental literacy as a national priority, we can then identify roles and assign responsibilities for all of the key players, be they government policymakers, official regulators, primary producers, manufacturers and brand owners, marketers, retailers, consumers themselves, NGO watchdogs, or post-consumer enterprises.<br />
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And rather than demanding environmental perfection to satisfy the deepest of lifelong deep green consumers, a niche market now and into the future, we need to choose the right buttons to press with mass consumers e.g. saving energy and reducing waste = saving money while you help the environment.<br />
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It is time to make sustainability easy for shoppers, achievable for brand owners, and acceptable to environmental and consumer advocates. Everyone has a part to play. Done right, the pay-off will span the three pillars of Environment, Social and Economic, condemning Compulsion, Suspicion and Conflict to exit stage left, fading to greener and smarter.<br />
<br />
<i>Murray Hogarth is a business environmentalist, advising corporate and community clients on sustainability strategy through his consultancy The 3rd Degree. He is Senior Adviser to Green Capital, the business sustainability arm of the TEC in Sydney, and is a regular writer and commentator on sustainability issues and trends. His views in this column are his own.</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>The Wattwatcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14863849436988294473noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1121348860123722392.post-66824981127027264052011-04-22T14:12:00.000+10:002011-04-22T14:12:22.852+10:00Self indulgence? I've been revisiting my 2007 book The 3rd Degree<div style="font: 13.0px Times; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">Is it just me being assailed by such an overwhelming sense of deja vu? </div><div style="font: 13.0px Times; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 13.0px Times; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">Once again the Australian and American political classes are struggling to come to terms with real action on our climate challenge. Action that is commensurate with both the scale and urgency of the threat to human society in the 21st century. In 2007, I'd been optimistic, foolishly as it turns out, that we were moving into a post-climate debate era, that the time for action had arrived. Then the end of 2009 punctured that, and 2010 and 2011 thus far have failed to restore any real semblance of progress.</div><div style="font: 13.0px Times; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 13.0px Times; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">From an Australian perspective, this is what I was thinking in 2007 in my book<i> The 3rd Degree: Frontline in Australia's Climate War</i>. Tell me, was I just dreaming?</div><div style="font: 13.0px Times; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 13.0px Times; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">EXTRACT*: The fact is, there are lots of important and sensible things we can do, and the climate-aware know about them. They just can’t agree on which ones, when, and who’ll pay, as incumbents in all camps try to protect their positions. In a democracy, we the people have to prod them into action, deploying our wallets, votes and voices to challenge the old order and outdated thinking. I offer this set of guiding principles from <i>The 3rd Degree</i> war room:</div><div style="font: 13.0px Times; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 13.0px Times; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><b>We have to go beyond ideology.</b> Neither capitalism nor socialism nor outright communism or totalitarianism, nor any of the shades in between ever showed any real respect for the environment. Now, in the 21st century, what could be more important than sustainability for people in harmony with the planet and its thin, fragile atmosphere? This is not a new ideology, it’s survival instinct!</div><div style="font: 13.0px Times; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 13.0px Times; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><b>Everything has to be on the table.</b> Likening our challenge to a war is very deliberate, and we have to consider all of the weaponry available, while observing the climate equivalent of the Geneva Convention. Our options should include nuclear and coal, along with wind and solar, though all things won’t make sense for every scenario. We need transition options like gas and clean diesel, and some end-game possibilities like hydrogen and fuel cells for a zero-carbon-emission future. We need guerilla tactics on the streets of every<span style="font: 8.0px Helvetica;"> </span>nation with mass-distributed small-scale solutions as</div><div style="font: 13.0px Times; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">well as large-scale centralised ones.</div><div style="font: 13.0px Times; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 13.0px Times; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><b>Nothing will be as it was.</b> Accepted wisdom is set to fail. When paradigms are shifting, orthodoxies become irrelevant. If the question is ‘what is required to save human society?’ versus protecting the environment, a new set of answers and price equations will emerge. One piece of accepted wisdom is there’s no ‘silver- bullet’ solution – Al Gore jokes it’s more like ‘silver-buckshot’ – though there actually is one thing worth trying above all others. It’s a carbon market.</div><div style="font: 13.0px Times; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 13.0px Times; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><b>Markets work and can help us trade out of trouble</b>. While markets are not perfect, do fail and should never be free from regulation, it’s no mystery that flexible, market-based democracy won the 20th century over undemocratic and command-and-control options. Over time markets are self-correcting, which is what we’re seeing in regard to climate and the environment right now, given the market has failed spectacularly. While many people find trading in pollution counter-intuitive or even fraudulent, it’s been proven to work on problems ranging from acid rain to salinity, and a vast global carbon market trading in emissions worth tril- lions of dollars a year is inevitable and essential. </div><div style="font: 13.0px Times; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 13.0px Times; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><b>Markets won’t work automatically for everyone.</b> A strong argument for ethics and equity arises where economic rationalism won’t work, a key case in point being Africa, already the hardest hit of all continents by climate change but responsible across all of its nations for only 3 percent of global greenhouse pollution. Carbon markets won’t direct much investment in pollution reduction to Africa, because it hasn’t got that much to reduce.</div><div style="font: 13.0px Times; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 13.0px Times; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><b>Government intervention in the right places.</b> Precisely because markets and commercial rivalry don’t always work in the broader interests of society, govern- ments will need to intervene strategically to foster new industries, not just protect incumbents. Stand-out opportunities for Australia include capturing the carbon from coal and gas energy generation and sequestering it underground in naturally occurring storage formations; large-scale solar thermal plants, both stand-alone and augmenting traditional coal-fired power stations to heat water for the steam to drive turbines; and a massive orchestrated shift of the vehicle fleet to ultra-clean diesel-hybrid technology for both bio and synthetic fuel, produced in coal-to-liquid plants with carbon capture and storage, and via similar processes using metropolitan waste, sewage and other biomass as the feedstock.</div><div style="font: 13.0px Times; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 13.0px Times; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><b>Just slowing pollution isn’t enough.</b> We’ll also need to suck carbon out of the atmosphere, and capture it through industrial and natural processes on a massive scale, which means finding somewhere to store it, whether in biomass including trees or new genetically enhanced crops, in the oceans, in the soil, or deep underground. Just not where it can end up in the atmosphere.</div><div style="font: 13.0px Times; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 13.0px Times; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><b>Energy security is also vital.</b> With the exception of declining oil stocks, Australia is remarkably immunised from the energy security panic sweeping most of the world. By contrast with the nation’s small population and industrial base, on a per capita basis we are an energy superpower, punching well above our weight with a lot of coal, uranium and natural gas, and huge potential for wind, solar, tidal, geo-thermal and ‘hot- rock’ generation. For most countries – and this will impact on us too – there’s little prospect of solutions to global warming if they are not also solutions for energy security.</div><div style="font: 13.0px Times; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 13.0px Times; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><b>What we think and do is only part of the equation.</b> A lot of our climate and energy debate is conducted as though Australia operates in isolation from the world and can do what it likes. <i>Our politicians play shamelessly to a parochial domestic audience, our media often let them do it, and we frequently operate blind to international reality.</i> In truth, we’re a small, trade-dependent economy at the bottom of the world that can’t just give the finger to its far more powerful trading partners in Asia, Europe and the Americas. If the world acts on climate, we won’t be allowed to maintain dirt-cheap electricity prices while we keep on polluting at the same time. The world doesn’t work that way.</div><div style="font: 13.0px Times; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 13.0px Times; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">*Extract from <i>The 3rd Degree: Frontline in Australia's Climate War,</i> published by Pluto Australia in its NOW Australia series, April 2007. (This book was very 'in the political moment' of 2006-7, so a lot has changed. But it's depressing how much hasn't changed, or has actually regressed. I have a box-full under the house, somewhere, and will happily send a copy gratis if anyone is interested in a little trip down memory lane. Just ask me, that's the least I can do to avoid waste!)</div>The Wattwatcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14863849436988294473noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1121348860123722392.post-42476625992007127152011-04-04T15:10:00.000+10:002011-04-04T15:10:19.852+10:00The Great Disruption: My Review of Paul Gilding's Book<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px;"></span><br />
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<div class="bodytext" style="font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">Knowledge and timber, it’s said, shouldn’t be much used until they are seasoned. So Paul Gilding waited over half a century to write his first book. I’ve had a front row chance to see his profoundly challenging thesis on the future of our world evolve over the past decade or more, from pub chats, to self-published polemics, to wannabe international bestseller. From what I can tell, just about every significant thought and experience Paul’s ever had is in <i>The Great <a class="instorylinks" href="http://paulgilding.com/the-great-disruption" style="color: #666666; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Disruption</a></i>. For lesser intellects, that might be a very short book - not for Paul!<br />
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Now embarked on a two-month, multi-continent book tour, Paul is confirming his growing status as a global sustainability thought leader. His story is pitched way beyond today’s public controversy and petty political skirmishing over the science of climate change and the cost of putting a price on carbon. It envisages a time, not far off, when argument about our planet’s interconnected environmental, social and economic mega-challenges will be over and the case for extraordinary action will be compelling.<br />
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With characteristic lack of modesty, Paul describes his book as ‘a bracing assessment of the planetary crisis that we can no longer avoid and the once-in-an-epoch chance it offers to build a better world’. To his mind the great disruption of his book’s title has already begun, we just don’t know it yet.<br />
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For the record, I’m clearly biased as a reviewer. I’ve known Paul for nearly 15 years, and for over a decade our lives and thinking have been very closely entwined as colleagues, friends and creative collaborators. I’ve shared some of his most powerful formative experiences, his highs and lows in life, and I’ve seen firsthand his intellectual evolution from fiery activist, to intuitive business sustainability adviser, to emerging visionary statesman for Gaia. Having emotionally buffered himself, and prepared his arguments with great precision, Paul is now setting out to engage a mass global audience with his thesis. I hope many will want to listen, not cover their ears, because this is an important and excellent book.<br />
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As it happens, Paul also has a great sense of timing, or is just plain lucky, because in 2011 few would argue that we’re living in times of other than great disruption. Ongoing post-GFC financial instability in Europe, regime change in the Middle East, extreme natural and then nuclear disaster in Japan, Tea Party anger in America, oil and food prices trending dangerously higher, and the limits to traditional economic growth appearing in many places as sustainability challenges mount. Oh, and then there’s climate change! For Paul Gilding, this is all highly relevant, yet only a taste of what is to come.<br />
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I’m not going to précis Paul’s book in full. My hope is everyone will read every last work of it, because we all need to. What I want to focus on is the core of the core, his central thesis of a great disruption leading to great chaos, and out of it a great awakening setting humanity up for ultimately a great future.<br />
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As he recounts, Paul has already shed his tears and done his grieving for our world, as we know it, coming to terms personally with his evaluation that we now can’t avoid the traumatic end of economic growth, nor the loss of much of our planet’s current amazing biodiversity, nor massive human suffering. Never a man excessively attached to wealth, possessions or prestige as ends in themselves, I know he’s also downsized his own life very significantly. Getting rid of debt, putting experiences over shopping for stuff, and moving with his family to a rural lifestyle where self-sustaining subsistence is plausible – an element of survivalist preparation if worst comes to worst!<br />
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The great disruption of his book’s title has already begun, he writes, with 2008 the kick-off year. Humanity has overshot the carrying capacity of the planet, and a climate crisis enveloping us is only the blitzkrieg ahead of a much bigger, comprehensive sustainability crisis. With brutal pragmatism, based on hardheaded mathematics and immutable physics, Paul lays out why we now can’t avoid the consequences of the overshoot, however much we may wish it were otherwise. As Paul is fond of saying, ‘it is what it is’, and many of us who have immersed ourselves in sustainability over many years will find his logic, his factual base and his interpretations inescapable. Distressing, yet compelling.<br />
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So the question that becomes crucial, if like me you accept his ultra-bleak analysis and framing of the end of current-style economic growth as a foregone conclusion, is what happens next? The planet goes on, of course, changed but ever changing, magnificently resilient over evolutionary and geological timescales. What, however, about people, about us and our immediate descendants and the future generations we hope will follow? Will human civilisation collapse rapidly into barbarism with billions of lives lost and no hope of recovery in any meaningful timeframe, as some noteworthy commentators project? Or do we collectively suck up the pain, adapt at speed and rise again with a clean, sustainable, dramatically better economy and society?<br />
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Paul’s relentless ‘it’s too late to avoid terrible consequences’ message is balanced by surprising optimism; that we are ‘slow, but not stupid’, and when humanity’s response comes it will be awesome. His hope isn’t an almost afterthought, as I argue was the case with Al Gore’s original film and book <i>An Inconvenient Truth</i>, nor a glib add-on as we see from the likes of <i>The Skeptical Environmentalist</i> by Bjorn Lomborg. Paul deliberately reaches and flags the emotional low point of his book before the halfway mark, and then speaks at least as powerfully and passionately to the rise of a new, better world as he does to the demise of the old, very flawed one.<br />
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Over the past few weeks I’ve been zeroing in on the key question of when the great disruption gets really bad, does humanity plunge into the abyss or fight its way back to a better place? I’ve also been exchanging story references with Paul, because his book is tapping into a wider conversation already bubbling up around our troubled world. We’ve been very taken by two pieces, both published by the online US newspaper <i>The Huffington Post</i>, which canvass how badly humanity may react to unfolding disaster, and also how inspiringly good the collective may turn out to be in the face of calamity, even climate change and sustainability calamity lasting for many decades before real improvement can be hoped for.<br />
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From Paul’s perspective, the two writers Keith Harrington and Johann Hari reflect a serendipitous outbreak of universal consciousness, meshing very closely with his own contemplations of what may lie ahead. I believe their views also reflect a reality we’re seeing in Australia right now, in how the vexed politics of getting to real climate action is playing out, yet also in how Australians have recently responded to major natural disaster in the shape of the early 2011 floods, especially in the Brisbane region, and also Cyclone Yasi in far north Queensland. On a bigger stage, the heroic so-called ‘nuclear samurai’ at the stricken Fukushima reactor complex in Japan, and the post-tsunami stoicism of the Japanese people, speak to humanity’s better angels.<br />
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Keith <a class="instorylinks" href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/keith-harrington/the-clean-energy-revoluti_b_841082.html" style="color: #666666; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Harrington</a>: ‘ … when people start rioting about climate-induced food shortages - the first thing on their mind won't be "I demand the government do something about climate change," but, "I demand the government figure out a way to provide us with food security again." Of course, policies to facilitate a rapid switch away from fossil fuels and reduce other climate-change drivers will be part of the government response, but they'll hardly be the main focus.<br />
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When people are starving they won't be placated by legislation to cap or tax carbon emissions. Such measures might even take a back seat to more immediate solutions. … In short, when things fall apart, what the public will demand first and foremost are answers from leaders and experts about how to create an economy that will solve the problems that the old one brought on. If left-wing political leaders don't have clear answers for how to build a new economy that provides for human needs, people will do what they've always done: Put their faith in right-wing demagogues ¬- men who will prey on public fears and misery, and channel them into persecution of the Other - i.e. of some imagined internal or external scapegoat. Without a credible systemic alternative we'll revert to fascism, tribalism and violence.’<br />
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Johann <a class="instorylinks" href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/the-myth-of-the-panicking_b_837440.html?ref=email_share" style="color: #666666; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Hari</a>: ‘The evidence gathered over centuries of disasters, natural and man-made, is overwhelming. The vast majority of people, when a disaster hits, behave in the aftermath as altruists. They organize spontaneously to save their fellow human beings, to share what they have, and to show kindness. They reveal themselves to be better people than they ever expected. When the social scientist Enrico Quarantelli tried to write a thesis how people descend into chaos and panic after disasters, he concluded: "My God! I can't find any instances of it."<br />
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On the contrary, he wrote, in disasters "the social order does not break down ... Co-operative rather than selfish behavior predominates." The Blitz Spirit wasn't unique to London: it is universal. … This is likely to be a century of escalating ecological disasters, since each year we destabilize our climate more, in the face of plain scientific warnings. It's hard to extract any hope from the picture this fact presents us with. But there is some. Alongside this impulse to denial and self-destruction, there is something fundamentally good in us. We are humans. We care about each other. We will - at the most crucial and final moment - sacrifice for each other, like the technicians who are trying to prevent the nuclear plant melting down, knowing this is probably personal suicide. That's something to hold onto.’<br />
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I like a lot about our planet, and have four children, Paul has five, so at one level I still cling to hope that he’s overstating the great disruption part, and underestimating the great awakening. Yet I can’t find any gaping holes in his analysis of the problem, supported as it is by logic, science and real unfolding evidence. I am heartened, though far from totally reassured, by his well-argued solutions and ultimately uplifting conclusion. One thing I am sure of, however, is the whole world and every constituency in it needs to be having the conversation that Paul Gilding is setting up in <i>The Great Disruption</i>.<br />
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If a great awakening is to be expedited, and the worst consequences of our human mistakes are to be somehow reduced, if not avoided, the sooner we get started the better. We are being slow, as Paul contends, and now we’ll have to prove we’re not stupid!<br />
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<i>Vantage Point columnist: Murray Hogarth is an independent sustainability strategy and communications consultant through his firm the 3rd degree, a senior adviser to the Green Capital corporate sustainability program and director of energy saving technology group Wattwatchers. The views expressed here are personal ones.<br />
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The Great Disruption was released by Bloomsbury in Australia on March 29.</i></div>The Wattwatcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14863849436988294473noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1121348860123722392.post-28195956527973423252011-03-10T10:09:00.000+11:002011-03-10T10:16:44.500+11:00Paul Gilding's book The Great Disruption ... it comethI am reading an advance copy of my friend and longtime colleague Paul Gilding's book The Great Disruption, due for for public release in Australia, US and UK in April. It's very good, but a more comprehensive review will come later.<br />
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I believe this will be an important and very thoughtful contribution to the often shallow and scarily short-term climate and sustainability debates running in Australia, the US and elsewhere.<br />
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What follows is the UK press release for Paul's book (see cover pic at bottom):<br />
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<tr> <td><div class="shape" style="padding: 3.6pt 7.2pt 3.6pt 7.2pt; text-align: left;" v:shape="_x0000_s1027"><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow'; font-size: 36pt; font-variant: small-caps;">The Great Disruption<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow'; font-size: 36pt; font-variant: small-caps;">By Paul Gilding<o:p></o:p></span></b><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 16.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow'; font-size: 11pt;">This Great Disruption started in 2008, with spiking food and oil prices and dramatic ecological change. We’re at it again in 2011, with weather extremes driving record food prices and political tension fueling peak oil driven price spikes. It’s time to face reality – we have come to the end of Economic Growth, Version 1.0, a world economy based on consumption and waste, where we lived beyond the means of our planet's ecosystems and resources. The earth is full – and it’s time to brace for impact. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 16.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow'; font-size: 11pt;">The</span></i><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow'; font-size: 11pt;"> </span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow'; font-size: 11pt;">Great Disruption</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow'; font-size: 11pt;"> offers a stark and unflinching look at the economic challenge facing humanity - yet contains a deeply optimistic message. The coming decades will see loss, suffering, and conflict with </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow'; font-size: 11pt;">a synchronised, related crash of the economy and the ecosystem leading to food shortages, massive economic change and geopolitical instability.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow'; font-size: 11pt;"> However, they will also bring humanity’s best: compassion, innovation, resilience and adaptability; and more good news - there <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">is</i> life after shopping!<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow'; font-size: 11pt;">It is true, as some advocates argue, we <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">could</i> choose to let a dog-eat-dog response to the crisis drive us into ever smaller conflicting groups of regions, nations and communities – of defensive and scared people fighting over what’s left, fighting for physical survival. In that scenario, we would lose millennia of human development and have to effectively start again, just hoping the cycle wouldn’t repeat itself.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow'; font-size: 11pt;">Or, we can choose to consciously overcome that tendency, as we have in the past. We can draw on what is great about being human and dig deep to express our highest potential – the potential that can take us through the coming crisis and out the other side to a stronger, safer and more advanced civilisation. </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow'; font-size: 11pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow'; font-size: 11pt;">PAUL GILDING is an Australian advocate for sustainability and climate change who has spent 35 years campaigning for a balanced use of Earth’s resources. His experience has ranged from being the global head of Greenpeace to advisor many Fortune 100 corporations. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow'; font-size: 11pt;">'One of those who has been warning me of [a coming crisis] for a long time is Paul Gilding, the Australian environmental business expert. He has a name for this moment--when both Mother Nature and Father Greed have hit the wall at once--"The Great Disruption."' <o:p></o:p></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow'; font-size: 11pt;">Thomas Friedman in the New York Times<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow'; font-size: 11pt;"><br />
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</tbody></table>The Wattwatcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14863849436988294473noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1121348860123722392.post-17198088473349562532011-03-09T11:43:00.000+11:002011-03-09T11:43:23.249+11:00Can any government spend our tax money well on climate ad campaigns?Information from the ad world is that right now the Federal Government IS seeking an agency for a 'first quarter' climate change awareness campaign. It is reasonable to assume this means Q1 of financial year 2011-12 (i.e. July-September), given that we are already in March and word of this filtered out late last month.<br />
<br />
The 'client' would be the <a href="http://www.climatechange.gov.au/">Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency</a> in Canberra, and the dollars being quoted are '$11.5 million with an annual allocation of $29 million'.<br />
<br />
That's some big bucks, so major agencies are sure to be getting their creative caps on! Although in quality terms the recent record in this territory is not great and climate awareness is something of a poisoned chalice.<br />
<br />
This call to the market fits neatly with the $30 million allocated by Treasurer Wayne Swan in the<a href="http://bit.ly/hpvVGX"> May 2010 Federal Budget</a> for a climate change awareness campaign. Seen as a likely pre-election splurge at the time, the money went unspent as the Rudd Government disintegrated on climate change (and then altogether), and an early election on August 21 2010 ruled out a rush job climate ad campaign. You can imagine how that would have gone down at the time!<br />
<br />
In recent days travelling Prime Minister Julia Gillard has refused to rule an ad campaign <a href="http://bit.ly/hE3lAD">'in or out'</a>, while hard-attacking Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has predicted that the Government will spend big on an ad campaign.<br />
<br />
Before the Opposition gets too self-righteously angry about this, it is worth recalling its estimated $25 million <a href="http://bit.ly/hYV1Oa">'Be Climate Clever'</a> run in September 2007, just two months before the election the long-serving Howard Coalition Government lost to a resurgent Labor under Kevin (Kevin '07) Rudd. Malcolm Turnbull was Environment Minister in charge then, and the government baulked at the 11th hour on its plan to send a booklet to every home in Australia and just went with a website.<br />
<br />
Then in 2008 we had the Rudd Government's estimated $13.9 million '<a href="http://bit.ly/fuwnh8">Think Climate. Think Change'</a> climate awareness campaign. Frankly, this was not a great step forward on 'Be Climate Clever', and neither of them exactly live on in the Australian psyche like a climate version of the 'Grim Reaper' or 'Slip Slop Slap'.<br />
<br />
Looking forward to hearing a lot of views on this matter, but to this correspondent's mind it is not of necessity a bad thing to run a substantial public awareness campaign on the most important public policy issue of the 21st century.<br />
<br />
What is bad is a Government that can't sell the action we need and an Opposition that does lots of opposing and next to nothing about responding to the great climate challenge.<br />
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We don't need the 2011 version of 'Be Climate Clever' or 'Think Climate. Think Change' to slot in neatly with the Greens gaining the balance of power in the Senate and a vote coming on for a price on carbon, be it tax, ETS, or hybrid.<br />
<br />
What we could use is a campaign that may be better described as an 'energy awareness campaign', confronting head on the escalating price of electricity, gas and fuel and the energy security challenges that the world and by extension Australia faces.<br />
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The Government has the makings of a real strategy for the future here and can sell it ... if it has the will and finds the smarts to do so! It can engage people in the solution as well as the big end of the town.<br />
<br />
Here are some key elements to think about:<br />
<br />
1. A price on carbon pollution that polluters pay and the $ go to help householders, badly exposed businesses and R&D<br />
2. Scale back/phase out subsidies that tilt energy playing field towards fossil fuels<br />
3. Maintain and ideally accelerate the 20% by 2020 renewable energy target and beef it up politically as an integrated clean energy and energy resilience strategy for the nation in a troubled world<br />
4. Set a national energy efficiency target of at least 30% by 2020 and push it hard<br />
5. Get aggressive about the 'smart grid' - and by that take it to mean a lot more than utility-controlled smart meters - including making this objective a critical component of the National Broadband Network<br />
6. In transport, move to a user pays road pricing model while also promoting plug-in electric vehicles as a key part of the long-term solution (which in turn will require more electricity, an even even smarter grid, and more clean energy in the system). Australia needs an answer to how we rapidly wean our nation off costly foreign oil as reserves decline and the geo-political instability rises, especially in the crucial Middle East region.<br />
<br />
Big business and government investment have to be a major part of the solution. But the people have a vital role to play too, especially in the early years, when energy efficiency including through behaviour change across 8 million plus households and hundreds of thousands of small businesses can save the consumers themselves money, take pressure off the grid, and avert the need for more traditional polluting power stations to be built at huge expense.<br />
<br />
There's an amazing opportunity here for the taxpayers' $30 million to be spent well. Although past performance by both sides of politics still suggests it will be spent badly.<br />
<br />
The energy opportunity outlined above is one view of what the future can be. This needs to be a vibrant discussion. Let's make sure that happens whatever path the next ad campaign takes.The Wattwatcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14863849436988294473noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1121348860123722392.post-43008032027816973312011-02-28T13:58:00.000+11:002011-02-28T13:58:02.460+11:00Too much time in shops, hoping to 'buy better'<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px;"></span><br />
<div class="storyHead" style="color: black; display: inline; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; line-height: normal; text-decoration: none;"><b>(Reposting of my post for Environmental Management News, 28/02/2011)</b></div><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px;"></span><br />
<div class="storyHead" style="color: black; display: inline; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; line-height: normal; text-decoration: none;"><b><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px;"></span><br />
<div class="storyHead" style="color: black; display: inline; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; line-height: normal; text-decoration: none;"><b>I’ve been spending too much time in the shops lately. Actually, I’ve been checking out online buying opportunities too. Not that I’ve actually bought anything. Rather, I’ve been investigating the state of retailer buy-in to all things ‘green’, ‘ethical’ and ‘sustainable’ in Australia. </b></div><br />
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<div class="storyHead" style="color: black; display: inline; font-style: normal; line-height: normal; text-decoration: none;"></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; font-weight: 800;"><br />
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<div class="bodytext" style="font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">It’s an important question because veterans in the field of sustainability labels and certification schemes, and pioneers in the creation of a greener marketplace, are clear on one thing at least. The big retailers have great power and can be either immensely frustrating barriers to change for the better, or wonderful allies!<br />
<br />
To better understand how sustainability, broadly defined, is faring in the retail landscape, I’ve been stalking the aisles and checking out the shelves of stores like Woolworths, Coles, Harvey Norman, Bunnings, JB Hi-Fi, Mitre 10, Kmart and others. I’ve been perusing online retail offerings too, and researching what overseas retailers like Tesco, Marks & Spencer, Walmart and its UK subsidiary ASDA are up to.<br />
<br />
So, what is the verdict from my own early in-store investigations? Performance Down Under is less than inspiring. Patchy at best, ad hoc and reactive, and so far away from world’s best practice that it’s sometimes hard to make meaningful comparisons. Far from making sustainability a strategy and a theme to engage consumers, retailers in the main have been responding case by case to a series of external regulatory, commercial and community pressures or other ‘stimuli’.<br />
<br />
Examples of this set of rolling responses include, in their own ways, plastic bags, free range eggs and now pork too, container deposits, problems with palm oil and paper-based products, the disappearance of incandescent light globes and the prominence of energy star stickers on white goods and TVs.<br />
<br />
When challenged to be more strategic, for example on carbon labeling, the standard major retailer position in Australia is that mainstream consumers aren’t yet asking loudly for environmental, ethical and carbon benefits per se; at least outside of traditional hot button items like animal cruelty, wasteful packaging and the health concerns that drive awareness of and interest in ‘free range’, ‘organic’ and the Mobius recycling symbol among other things.<br />
<br />
But what if consumers are always going to be a lagging indicator, a likelihood being voiced in other parts of the world? What if business leadership is the key ingredient for advancing to a more sustainable economy instead of scanning the retail horizons for customer demand to justify action?<br />
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And if so, who will break the Mexican stand-off between retailers who aren’t ready to lead on their shelves, and consumers who aren’t ready to demand change at the check out?<br />
<br />
I know Australian retailers will argue they are doing good work now in reducing the environmental footprint of their own operations, especially transport logistics, storage and the stores themselves across headline indicators like energy, carbon, water and waste. That’s great, in some cases even admirable, and they’ll doubtless have to do a lot more of it in the years ahead.<br />
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Retailers also may feel they are but a way station in the life cycle of many products, sitting between the footprint intensive production stage and the often even more footprint intensive consumer use and post-consumer disposal stages.<br />
<br />
Any such excuses and the current performance by retailers, however, are just not good enough given the stakes involved. In our giant consumption value chain, retailers are the crucial interface between production and end use, and a vital intervention point to influence both suppliers and consumers.<br />
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Government, for example, can require energy ratings stickers on white goods and TVs, and fuel efficiency ones for motor vehicles. But those stickers become more powerful if prospective purchasers deal with sales people who are knowledgeable about the ratings and actively promote the operating cost benefits on offer.<br />
<br />
Retailers also are morphing into major producers and brand owners in their own right, with a rising tide of house brand products. In Australia, too, the biggest retailers like the Woolworths and Wesfarmers groups have extraordinary dominance of the marketplace based on international comparisons, with Woolies and Coles tying up an estimated 70% of grocery retailing for example.<br />
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Beyond being big grocers, they are big in others areas too like petrol, alcohol, pubs and gaming, clothing, general merchandise, hardware and office supplies. They are far more than stores, for example playing critical roles in food supply distribution across the nation, in good times and also in times of emergencies.<br />
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Putting aside whether consumers are green, leaning that way, still needing to learn more or even intransigent brown bombers, there are some very practical reasons for retailers to get more engaged in the consumer-focused end of sustainability. Cost of living increases in key areas like fuel, electricity, food and even waste disposal are top of mind for many people now and they will drive new products, services and business models, including more and more online alternatives to traditional retailing.<br />
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Australian retailers are not generally regarded as being among the world’s great innovators, but we need them to move past tentative baby steps and at least be faster followers.<br />
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This is an opportunity for retailers to step up and exert positive influence in the marketplace commensurate with their power. If the established retailers miss the boat on this, others will sail in and seize the advantage.<br />
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No doubt we’ll all have lots of ideas about what the retailers should do. I know I do. But in the end what we want is for them to be engaged and innovating for solutions that can work for their businesses and society.<br />
Overseas examples include:</div><ul style="font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px;"><li>the ‘Greener Tesco’ <a class="instorylinks" href="http://www.tesco.com/greenerliving/" style="color: #666666; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">initiative</a> and their special ‘green points’ on the chain’s Clubcard loyalty system;</li>
<li>Marks & Spencer’s far-reaching ‘<a class="instorylinks" href="http://plana.marksandspencer.com/" style="color: #666666; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Plan A</a> - Doing the right thing’;</li>
<li>the giant Walmart’s Sustainable Product <a class="instorylinks" href="http://walmartstores.com/pressroom/news/9277.aspx" style="color: #666666; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Index</a>, with its ultimate aim to provide customers with an ‘easy to understand rating system so they can make choices and consume in a more sustainable way’; and</li>
<li>ASDA, the Walmart subsidiary in the UK, with its focus in three key areas – products, energy and waste. <a class="instorylinks" href="http://your.asda.com/sustainability" style="color: #666666; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">ASDA</a> is polling its customers and followers on what should be highest priority, and currently stocking ‘sustainable products’ is in first place, well clear of ‘zero waste’ then ‘renewable energy’.</li>
</ul><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">In Australia we need more sustainable products on the shelves, properly validated through independent certification and other assessment schemes and labels. We need the most blatantly unsustainable products to be ‘choice edited’ off the shelves.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">And we actually need to get rid of some of the shelves altogether, replacing shops with online options, and substituting experiences and services for physical ‘stuff’. I’m going back to the shops soon. I hope to see change!</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px;"><br />
</span>The Wattwatcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14863849436988294473noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1121348860123722392.post-90593269295089957982011-02-03T00:26:00.000+11:002011-02-03T00:44:37.289+11:00'This is a huge cyclone, the likes of which really have not been seen in living memory'The quote in the heading above is from Police Deputy Commissioner Ian Stewart, as Tropical Cyclone Yasi gets close to crossing the Far North Queensland coastline very soon.<br />
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Perhaps the greatest fear is that the sheer force of the cyclone will drive a storm surge of seawater, with the ocean literally invading the land.<br />
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This correspondent's thoughts are with everyone in the firing line in my birth state of Queensland, but especially with my brother-in-law <a href="http:/www.cyberdiver.com.au/">Ross Isaacs</a>, the wonderful underwater cinematographer, and his fiancee Katie.<br />
<br />
On better days Ross can be found diving the amazing depths of the Coral Sea. Today, that sea threatens his home in Port Douglas, north of Cairns.<br />
<br />
Stay safe Ross and Katie. Stay safe everyone.<br />
<br />
See NASA images of the massive Cyclone Yasi as it headed in <a href="http://yfrog.com/h3qmxxzyj">here</a>The Wattwatcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14863849436988294473noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1121348860123722392.post-66447166408721599712011-01-31T00:04:00.000+11:002011-01-31T00:06:45.828+11:00Overweight and Planetary Overload - two sides of one coinWhen we talk about the unsustainable nature of the current global economy, the over-consumption and the waste, the 7 billion people and rising, I think many people have been struck by a simple comparison.<br />
<br />
People are constantly destroying their own health, in defiance of well known health warnings and doctor's advice, by over-eating, eating the wrong things and so on. Many of us wolf down burgers, and some smoke and many drink and so on too.<br />
<br />
What we are doing to the planet as collective humanity is little different to what we do to ourselves. Nor are problems of recognising the evidence much different.<br />
<br />
Like eco-systems, our bodies can be amazing resilient to abuse for a long time until the final straw is loaded. Then multi-systemic breakdown switches in and nothing can stave off ultimate collapse.<br />
<br />
This thought bubble is going somewhere.<br />
<br />
An eminent former Australian Health Minister Dr Neal Blewett has just finished a report on food labelling in Australia. You can see the whole report or summaries here:<br />
<br />
http://www.foodlabellingreview.gov.au/internet/foodlabelling/publishing.nsf/content/labelling-logic<br />
<br />
Just throwing this out there, but this report is pretty sensible about health issues while largely ignoring the environment, with the exception being new technologies such as GM, irradiation and possibly ones in the pipeline like nanotechnology.<br />
<br />
So how do we apply its thinking, risk hierarchy approach, front of label and front of counter (for fast food outlets) solutions to environmental sustainability more explicitly? Lots to mull over. Thoughts?The Wattwatcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14863849436988294473noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1121348860123722392.post-57824659233146803222011-01-30T18:11:00.000+11:002011-01-30T18:24:51.666+11:00Permanent Natural Disaster Fund idea is taking root ... now let's see some political courageSometimes a journalist can get ahead of the news, which is what's been happening to your correspondent as the Queensland and wider Australian floods crisis unfolded this month.<br />
<br />
My antenna are up again today because one and most likely two cyclones are bearing down on Queensland and the prospect of more flooding in the already sodden state is very real.<br />
<br />
The position I first put about three weeks ago (see January 10th post below), before the Brisbane flood crisis even began, is that more and more destructive extreme weather events are the new normal in a climate change world. Therefore, I argued, Australia needs to make the likely impacts part of mainstream economic planning including creating a 'natural disaster levy' to support a permanent fund.<br />
<br />
Fast forward to now and the Australian Government has promised a short-term levy to fund part of the flood recovery, mainly in Queensland, but ironically also is shaving climate action programs to save more dollars to help out. Some of these programs are really just further subsidising of the fossil fuel industry, like carbon capture and storage research, and may well be expendable; others like the solar hot water rebate are important to engaging people in solutions and should be saved.<br />
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The minority Gillard Labor Government is now copping it from every direction:<br />
<br />
<ul><li>The Opposition wants no levy - it calls it a tax anyhow - and thinks Australia should be cutting more programs like water buy-backs (short-term thinking based on a wet year after 10 of drought)</li>
<li>Key Independents want a proper, lasting Natural Disaster Fund</li>
<li>The Greens, also wielding significant minority political influence, want climate programs protected and business - especially big polluters - to pay for any levy rather than the public</li>
<li>The hopeless NSW Labor Government, facing its own wipe-out at the polls in March, is bleating on about western Sydney folk not being able to afford the levy and wanting them exempted</li>
<li>Progressive social change group Get Up is running a lightning campaign calling for a Climate Disaster Fund paid for by stripping all subsidies away from the fossil fuel sectors (<a href="http://www.getup.org.au/campaign/ClimateDisasterFund?dc=1518,698514,2">http://www.getup.org.au/campaign/ClimateDisasterFund</a>)</li>
</ul><br />
All of this reflects the dysfunction of Australia and most of the world on climate change. The science is clear, we are living out the predicted rising chaos form weather-related extreme events, and yet our political leaders continue on a business as usual approach that is seeing our fossil fuel sector grow dramatically.<br />
<br />
So what needs to happen now?<br />
<br />
It's really this simple, albeit politically terrifying:<br />
1. We have to put the polluter pays screws on the most polluting sectors to generate $ for climate action<br />
2. Some of that money will have to go to a Natural Disaster Fund because more and more expensive disasters are inevitable and we need to budget for them, not just pass the hat around when they hit<br />
3. A big slab of $ also needs to go to accelerating a clean energy future, driving renewable generation, distributed generation and energy efficiency as part of a 'smart and clean grid' future<br />
4. Australia needs to chart a real transition plan to achieve a low-carbon, sustainable economic future much faster than anyone in power seems to be contemplating (there are lots of good ideas around for how to achieve this, so let's have a powerful expert Commission of Inquiry to get real answers)<br />
<br />
This year 2011 is the year for action. The disasters are happening, a price on carbon is on the national agenda, and a Natural Disaster Fund is a political horse-trading headache the minority Gillard Government cannot avoid.The Wattwatcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14863849436988294473noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1121348860123722392.post-45407427325756924012011-01-28T10:42:00.000+11:002011-01-28T10:42:24.607+11:00Token levy is no financial levee for fraught climate future<div id="storyText" style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><div style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1em; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 5px;">UPDATE: Below is piece run by @ABCEnvironment drawing on my earlier posts about the Queensland floods and need for a national disaster fund in Australia (you can see it on ABC Environment at <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">http://www.abc.net.au/environment/articles/2011/01/28/3123767.htm)</span></div><div style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1em; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 5px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"><br />
</span></div><div style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1em; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 5px;">The PM's new flood levy shows thinking which is short-term, cowardly and doesn't understand climate change.</div><div class="first" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 1.05em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 5px;">IN THE MIDST of this month's ruinous and deadly floods in Queensland and other states too,<a href="http://thewattwatcher.blogspot.com/2011/01/if-weather-related-disasters-are-new.html" style="color: #01abdf; text-decoration: none;"> I posed the question</a>: If weather-related disasters are the new normal, how do we pay for rescue, recovery and rebuilding?</div><div style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 1.05em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 5px;">The question flows from the scientifically well-established proposition that more people and more property will be exposed to more severe natural disasters more frequently under the main climate change scenarios - and actual experience is bearing this out here in Australia.</div><div style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 1.05em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 5px;">Whether it's the recent floods, Victoria's terrible bushfires nearly two years ago, or the long drought just passed, the facts reflect the best science. The impact of nearly one degree Celcius of warming over the past century - with more to come - means that higher average temperatures can make already dangerous weather-related events even more extreme.</div><div style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 1.05em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 5px;">Yesterday, Australia's Prime Minister Julia Gillard came up with superficially the same answer to the 'how do we pay' question that I did - a natural disaster levy!</div><div style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 1.05em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 5px;">Unfortunately, PM Gillard's levy version is short term, politically cautious if not cowardly, and one-off trivial in the context of the forces at work in a climate change world. In fact, the Gillard Government's response has morphed into an economic adjustment strategy, more than a disaster recovery one <em>per se</em>, using the $1.8 billion in levy proceeds plus spending cuts to help dampen excessive growth in the economy, perhaps easing pressure for more politically unpalatable Reserve Bank interest rate rises.</div><div style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 1.05em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 5px;">My levy prescription, by contrast, is long term, politically confrontational and aimed right at the heart of the threat posed by human-induced global warming. Australia needs to get serious about planning for climate change adaptation, precisely because along with most of the world we are proving to be hopeless at timely mitigation.</div><div style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 1.05em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 5px;">A natural disaster levy should now be part of prudent national budgeting. Such disasters are economic mainstream, not 'oh, shit happens'. We can't rely on a cocktail of sporadic insurance cover, post-crisis charity (inspiring as it is to see people give their money and sweat to help others) and ad hoc and politically expedient levies to pay for them.</div><div style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 1.05em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 5px;">Up front, I hasten to add, I don't mind paying my five dollars or so a week for a year if it helps Queensland to recover faster. A Queenslander by birth, I take a certain perverse state of origin pride in my home state's capacity for spectacular weather-related disasters.</div><div style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 1.05em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 5px;">Nor do I particularly mind the Government's planned spending cuts, even though they fall mainly on climate change and environmental programs. By reports, the programs to be scrapped or deferred include the cash for clunkers scheme, the Green Car Innovation Fund, carbon capture flagship programs, the Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute, the Green Start program, and the Solar Hot Water Rebate scheme.</div><div style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 1.05em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 5px;">Most of these programs represent fiddling at the green fringe at best, and at worst they further prop up the already overly subsidised coal industry, carbon polluter numero uno. If they fade away while the Government delivers a credible price on carbon by 2012, and hopefully a robust national energy efficiency scheme as well, then I reckon the trade off is fine.</div><div style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 1.05em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 5px;">Of course, while PM Gillard has a levy plan, now it all comes down to political numbers in a fragile minority government scenario. Already it's becoming clear that the Abbott Opposition will oppose pretty much anything the government proposes, the Greens will want business and especially big polluters to pay rather than the public, and the Independents - led on this topic by the eminently sensible Tony Windsor - will seek a longer term solution along the lines of a permanent national disaster fund.</div><div style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 1.05em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 5px;">So how can the government's levy plan rise above the inadequate, even tokenistic offering put up yesterday?</div><div style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 1.05em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 5px;">1. Make the burden of weather-related disasters falling on Australians through fire, floods, drought and more part of the official narrative in support of climate action. Even if this represents human-caused climate change influences overlaid on natural weather cycles, for example hotter average weather conditions on top of a normal drought cycle, the end result is more devastation. The same goes for more violent or rain-filled storms on top of a classic wet season. All of this gets much worse if cyclone or bushfire wind speeds increase, as is expected to be the case, making already lethal events even worse. Nobody should be shielded from this likelihood, least of all because climate change has become part of the nation's culture wars in recent years.</div><div style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 1.05em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 5px;">2. Elevate these disasters to be overtly part of the national economic discussion, rather than putting them in the 'shit happens' category, or believing that a blend of insurance, government aid and corporate and community charity will always pay the way.</div><div style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 1.05em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 5px;">3. Establish a national natural disaster cost index, including a segment specifically for weather-related events, so we can plan for the cost and compare outcomes year on year. Droughts, cyclones, bushfires, hail, floods and drought all go into the mix, as do rogue cold snaps, and away from the weather don't rule out earthquakes, tsunamis and the like.</div><div style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 1.05em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 5px;">4. Recognise that as a developed nation, Australia will always want to respond and recover from these natural disasters in a timely, compassionate and economically effective way. So that will mean a big budget because the days in which we could rely on volunteers to deal with every disaster will soon be behind us, if they aren't already, and even training and equipping volunteers doesn't come cheap.</div><div style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 1.05em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 5px;">5. Make the big question of where the money should come from integral to the climate action agenda, including the question of a price on carbon and the calculations of how high it should be and what it should pay for.</div><div style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 1.05em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 5px;">One source for the money seems obvious. With the mining industry having fought off a 'super profits' tax so viciously, and now having second thoughts about a more modest rent tax; with the fossil fuel sector having so effectively undermined a price on carbon, at least until now; with commodity prices still so high; with their own vital infrastructure and value chains so vulnerable to extreme weather events - isn't the answer clear? How about the miners and drillers pay! If not all, then a hefty share, and while they are sure to howl all over again, they can claim for support from the multi-billion dollar fund when disasters strike them too.</div><div style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 1.05em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 5px;">It's ironic that the PM's levy will be collected in connection with the Medicare levy. No one would suggest that health funding should be done on an ad hoc basis, when and if a new disease or rash of injuries arises. Disasters are now a regular part of the economy. Their type and seriousness varies, but then the stockmarket fluctuates, interest rates rise and fall, and unemployment can be extremely bad or wonderfully benign or anywhere in between.</div><div style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 1.05em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 5px;">If we want to regularise the reality of the climate change threat with Australians, or people anywhere, we need to move disasters from being bad stuff that just happens to some unfortunates to be part of the economic mainstream. That's how we get everyone engaged, isn't it?</div><div style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 1.05em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 5px;"><em>Murray Hogarth is a sustainability commentator and adviser who tweets as <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/the_wattwatcher" style="color: #01abdf; text-decoration: none;">@The_Wattwatcher </a>and blogs at<a href="http://thewattwatcher.blogspot.com/" style="color: #01abdf; text-decoration: none;">thewattwatcher.blogspot.com</a></em></div></div><div class="articleControls functions" id="storytools" style="color: #333333; display: block; font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; height: 40px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 20px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><div class="comment" style="display: block; float: left; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 15px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"></div></div>The Wattwatcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14863849436988294473noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1121348860123722392.post-33005547284716671192011-01-18T23:39:00.000+11:002011-01-18T23:39:50.463+11:00Mall Dreaming - Shopping Centres for a Sustainable FutureWhat are we going to do with giant shopping centres and their sprawling car parks?<br />
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From an Australian perspective, and down here we have some whopper malls with mega space rental rates for retailers, the future of shopping is currently a hot topic.<br />
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One reason is the rise of internet shopping, with Aussies spending their hard-earned high-value dollars on buying goods from overseas, saving on the 10% Goods and Services Tax (GST) into the bargain.<br />
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Billionaire retail barons are spitting mad about it. But there are limits to the retail categories which can be sold effectively online, and governments are unlikely to pass new laws to stop consumers picking up a few good deals over the internet.<br />
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Besides, I reckon there are bigger issues for the future of all that valuable mall infrastructure. So what might the future hold?<br />
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Here's my top-of-mind transformation for our big shopping centres:<br />
1. Car park space will be far too valuable to use it all for parking<br />
2. As efficient community hubs, shopping centres will have their own 'catchment areas' and will run transport systems to bring in the customers and deliver them home with their purchases and happy memories (experiences will be at least as big a part of the transaction base as physical stuff)<br />
3. Modest parking areas with recharging facilities can be maintained for customers coming in from further afield in their EVs, although they may need to book in well ahead<br />
4. Shopping centre roofs will need to include major solar PV and solar furnace arrays, and park garden retreats for shoppers, while lower levels that were once car parking will become urban market gardens with renewable powered growing lights, water captured on site and waste recycled into fertiliser<br />
5. Centre-grown produce will be sold on-site along with home-grown produce coming in from customers' gardens and local community production<br />
6. The shopping centre will be a local area energy services centre as well, offering community members energy supply and management packages, energy saving training and support and much more<br />
7. Efficient centralised services including laundry and food preparation also will be based in the shopping centre hub, along with multi-purpose government service offices<br />
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There's no doubt many more ideas for this transformation of the mall. What are you thinking?The Wattwatcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14863849436988294473noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1121348860123722392.post-1110922522150567712011-01-17T00:34:00.000+11:002011-01-17T00:34:01.189+11:00Energy efficiency can be good and even very good, but is it 'sustainable'?We're going to be hearing a lot more about the difference between good things to do like being more energy efficient and actually being 'green' or 'sustainable'.<br />
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The environment movement may be heartened to see more businesses offering more environmentally preferable products. Because we all want a sustainable economy, right?<br />
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But green watchdogs know deep down that the real struggle has just begun. The problem is that being a bit greener off a low base of bad-old business-as-usual performance is not going to get the planet and people out of environmental crisis, rather just postponing the inevitable.<br />
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A well-established case in point is the catalytic converters that made vehicles less air-polluting and helped to ease the shocking smog problems of two and three decades ago in major developed world cities.<br />
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Yet in many cases pollution is rising to dangerous levels again in places like my home city of Sydney as many more vehicles travel many more kilometres, with the compounding factor of higher temperatures due to global warming.<br />
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Business, as we know, works best with nice simple concepts.<br />
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So if using energy wastefully is bad and brown, then surely using it more efficiently is good and green?<br />
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Well, only to a point! If gains in energy efficiency in a key sector - let's take data centres as an example - are accompanied by massive expansion in the number of data centres powered by electricity generated with fossil fuels, we can still end up with a more negative environmental footprint.<br />
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The bar for making the jump to sustainability has to be set much higher, and that's a warning environmental champions will make more and more loudly as fears of corporate greenwashing become a core watchdog focus.<br />
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To follow the data centres example, to have pretensions to be be delivering real progress towards sustainability their industry will need to deliver on at least three main fronts:<br />
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<ul><li>Energy efficiency</li>
<li>Renewable energy</li>
<li>Replacing the work of more environmentally damaging processes</li>
</ul><div>Of course serious businesses with real sustainability aspirations already appreciate this. Unfortunately, however, there are always many who remain ignorant, or get carried away with their own PR and delusions of corporate social responsibility, or even mislead deliberately.</div><div><br />
</div><div>There also are many in business and government who are simply not being honest and realistic about the scale of the challenge to move to a low-carbon, sustainable economy, nor about the speed with which we have to make that journey.</div><div><br />
</div><div>The new big thing of electric vehicles comes to mind. Their potential is alluring, especially for a nation like Australia which is running out of domestic oil for traditional liquid transport fuels. But if rapid uptake means Australia has to burn more coal to accommodate EVs, do we really gain?</div><div><br />
</div><div>Again, in this example, we'll need efficiency, renewable energy options and replacement of less preferable alternatives to round out the 'sustainability case'. We'll also need a lot more and faster investment in a genuinely 'smart grid'.</div><div><br />
</div><div>Don't get me wrong. We want energy efficiency whatever. To my way of seeing it, no business or country for that matter can claim to be serious about pursuing sustainability if it isn't maximising its energy efficiency. </div><div><br />
</div><div>Yet the reverse is not necessarily true at all. Being very energy efficient of itself is no guarantee of being sustainable. How, I'm wondering, do we make this challenge resonate beyond the ranks of the sustainability literate?</div>The Wattwatcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14863849436988294473noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1121348860123722392.post-14745542736411118112011-01-15T02:05:00.000+11:002011-01-15T18:48:56.282+11:00Have the smart meter champions been too smart by half?<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><span style="font-family: Arial;">It’s always dangerous to play the public as suckers. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Around the world the evidence is mounting that the champions of smart meters have been doing just that, and now they are paying the price. Right when they need the people on their side!</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Take <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Australia</place></country-region>. Until several days ago, <state w:st="on">Victoria</state> was the only state in <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Australia</place></country-region> committed to a full smart meter roll-out, after what seems like nearly a decade of ongoing agonising, and suddenly that’s under renewed doubt too.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">All it has taken is a change of government, with the arrival of a new Coalition Energy Minister who made political capital in Opposition bagging the then Brumby Labor Government’s smart metering execution.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">The core allegation is that ‘consumer benefits have been overstated’ (*see further information on this and links below). It’s an allegation oft-repeated in <country-region w:st="on">Australia</country-region>, North America, the <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">UK</place></country-region> and I imagine outside of the English-speaking world as well.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Here are some thoughts – 10 of them, in fact:</span></div><ol style="margin-top: 0cm;" type="1"><li class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">We are going to end up with ‘smart meters’, sooner or later, whatever. In the digital age, I don’t think we’ll be staying with ‘dumb’ old-style electro-magnetic meters that have to be read manually.</span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">But a lot has changed in both current technology and future vision terms since we first started talking about the (now not-so) new wonder, smart meters. And is a heavily-regulated mass rollout of smart meters at mass consumer expense still the answer? </span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Well, not actually. The main game is now the smart grid and even more ambitiously the ‘intergrid’ and the ‘internet of things’ – billions of appliances of all kinds bound together in a technology network (shades of The Terminator and SkyNet?). In this scenario, smart meters are a good workhorse in the scheme of things but not the cutting edge.</span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">It seems the original plan for smart meters in Australia, and elsewhere, was to perpetuate the utility models of the 19<sup>th</sup> and 20<sup>th</sup> centuries with some 21<sup>st</sup> century tweaks, like time-of-use charging, remote meter reading and that little ripper, remote service connection and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">disconnection</i>.</span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">At first the consumer wasn’t really in the picture. The behind-the-scenes plan was for a dedicated broadband network to carry all of the energy data and any other communications back and forth between the utilities (supply) and the homes and businesses (demand). At what cost in <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Australia</place></country-region>, no one was quite sure, but figures like $11B have been bandied around.</span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Strangely, everyone inside the smart meter tent was largely ignoring the rising existence of the internet on the consumer side of the equation. Oh no, they had too much data to handle, although it’s more reasonable to think they simply wanted to control the data and the control functions if new-fangled ‘energy services’ and ‘demand management’ ever really caught on!</span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">But now the $40B-plus National Broadband Network is on its way in Australia, massive capacity for data management has moved into the ‘cloud’, new consumer-side technologies are emerging and the old-school smart meter plan is unraveling at pace.</span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">At the same time energy efficiency has finally become fashionable, fuelled by rising electricity prices and carbon reduction imperatives. So traditional utility models now will be challenged in ways not dissimilar to how traditional media, especially newspapers, is being confronted by social media and new communications.</span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">In all of this the new mantra of late 2010 and 2011 is that engaging the consumer is everything. That will mean sharing the data and control functions in real (and real time) and useful ways with the consumers who want that level of engagement, and providing effective energy services for those who want benefits with minimum personal effort. System benefits will flow if the consumer is successfully engaged <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">en masse</i>.</span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">The ‘smart’ meter will be a useful player on a very big stage. Yet Australian smart meter champions have already invested much time to achieve relatively little. So we should assume the smart meter die-hards will struggle to come to terms with how both communications and energy technologies are transforming around them, perhaps leaving them behind? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></li>
</ol><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">The journey that began with smart meters was like trying to get to the upper atmosphere and test the beginning of sub-space. The far more expansive smart grid journey, powered by internet protocols, is more akin to using the moon as a jump off point for inter-stellar travel. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Love the view, who’s looking forward to the trip?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">*On January 4<sup>th</sup>, just days into 2011, <place w:st="on"><city w:st="on">Melbourne</city></place>’s popular <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Herald Sun</i> newspaper reported that the new Coalition State Government, in its first two months in office, may ‘</span><strong><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial; font-weight: normal; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">suspend the installation of electricity smart meters while it reviews the embattled major project’. </span></strong></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;">It continued that: ‘Energy Minister Michael O'Brien will this month seek details on the cost and legal implications of delaying the rollout ahead of an audit of the $2 billion system. A full review of potential improvements and whether it is worth dumping the scheme for an alternative will be commissioned <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">amid concerns that consumer benefits have been overstated</i> </b>(my emphasis). Every household and small business is paying to replace old meters with the digital technology, even before their installation.’</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">From Opposition, last year, the now Minister O’Brien had quoted an <span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Auditor-General’s report in November 2009 as identifying cost-benefit analysis that found <i>‘the business case for AMI</i> (smart meters) <i>in Victoria is likely to be negative’</i> … with rollout costs blowing out from $800 million to at best $1.6 billion and potentially up to $2.25 billion.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 72pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list 72.0pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;">ABC - </span><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: Arial; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/01/04/3105828.htm?site=news" title="blocked::http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/01/04/3105828.htm?site=news">http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/01/04/3105828.htm?site=news</a></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 72pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list 72.0pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;">Herald Sun - <u><span style="color: blue;"><a href="http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/electricity-smart-meters-may-be-suspended/story-e6frf7kx-1225981280934"><span style="color: purple;">http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/electricity-smart-meters-may-be-suspended/story-e6frf7kx-1225981280934</span></a></span></u></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 72pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list 72.0pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;">Opposition statement my Michael O’Brien MP (now Energy Minister) -<u><span style="color: blue;"><a href="http://www.michaelobrien.com.au/MediaCentre/PortfolioMedia/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/52/BRUMBYS-SMART-METER-DEFENCE-IGNORES-HIS-OWN-POLICY.aspx"><span style="color: purple;">http://www.michaelobrien.com.au/MediaCentre/PortfolioMedia/tabid/74/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/52/BRUMBYS-SMART-METER-DEFENCE-IGNORES-HIS-OWN-POLICY.aspx</span></a></span></u></span></div>The Wattwatcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14863849436988294473noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1121348860123722392.post-91477451857172724442011-01-10T23:13:00.000+11:002011-01-10T23:19:22.755+11:00If weather-related disasters are the new normal, how do we pay for rescue, recovery and rebuilding? A natural disaster levy?I posted yesterday on the killer floods in the Australian state of Queensland, which have worsened in the 24 hours since. Nearly every news item I am hearing is talking about new flood levels threatening the records, and this afternoon came news of a wall of water hitting the mid-sized regional city of Toowoomba, west of Brisbane.<br />
<br />
The formula I'm focusing on is the scientifically well-established proposition that more people and more property will be exposed to more severe natural disasters more frequently under the main climate change scenarios - and actual experience is bearing this out.<br />
<br />
Even if this represents human-caused climate change influences overlaid on natural weather cycles, for example hotter average weather conditions on top of a normal drought cycle, the end result is more devastation. The same goes for more violent or rain-filled storms on top of a classic wet season. All of this gets much worse if cyclone or bushfire wind speeds increase, as is expected to be the case, making already lethal events even worse.<br />
<br />
Climate change overlaid on Australia's long-established weather patterns of 'droughts and flooding rains' will mean more extreme weather-related disasters which in time will unambiguously become climate-related disasters as well. For example, rising sea levels combined with more intense floods will mean more inundation, and cyclonic storm surges will penetrate deeper onshore if the winds driving them are more powerful.<br />
<br />
Nobody should be shielded from this likelihood, least of all because climate change has become part of the nation's culture wars in recent years. <br />
<br />
I've been well mentored in business, I believe, not to raise problems unless you want to profer solutions as well. So here goes.<br />
<br />
We need to make disasters part of the overt national economic discussion, rather than putting them in the 'shit happens' category, or believing that a blend of insurance, government aid and corporate and community charity will always pay the way. <br />
<br />
1. Let's have a national natural disaster cost index, including a segment specifically for weather-related events, so we can plan for the cost and compare outcomes year on year. Droughts, cyclones, bushfires, hail, floods and drought all go into the mix, as do rogue cold snaps, and away from the weather don't rule out earthquakes, tsunamis, land slides and the like.<br />
<br />
2. As a developed nation, Australia will want to respond and recover from these natural disasters in a timely, compassionate and economically effective way. So that will mean a big budget because the days in which we could rely on volunteers to deal with every disaster will soon be behind us, if they aren't already, and even training and equipping volunteers doesn't come cheap.<br />
<br />
3. So where does the money come from, because we all know government coffers are not exactly overflowing with spare cash at the moment. Well, the source is obvious. With the mining industry having fought off a 'super profits' tax so viciously, and now having second thoughts about a more modest rent tax; with the fossil fuel sector having so effectively underminded a price on carbon, at least until now; with commodity prices still so high; with their own vital infrastructure and value chains so vulnerable to extreme weather events - isn't the answer clear? How about the miners and drillers pay!<br />
<br />
4. Thus, while time is taken to develop an effective price on carbon through either an emissions trading scheme or a carbon tax, let's move straight away on a carbon-pollution related natural disaster levy on the mining, minerals processing and fossil fuel industries that sit behind much of the human-induced global warming that is driving adverse climate impacts. Sure they will howl, but they can claim for support from the multi-billion dollar fund when disasters strike them too.<br />
<br />
This is not all in jest, or a try-on, although I recognise that economists will have all sorts of reasons why managing the risk of catastrophic losses should be left to the private enterprise experts - the insurance industry. Unfortunately, at the point where underwriting disasters ceases to be capable of being profitable, the insurance industry won't be there to do its job.<br />
<br />
I reckon kick off at $10 a tonne of CO2 whether it goes into the atmosphere from Australia or overseas, because the effect on disasters in Australia will be the same. If that's not enough to keep up with the cost of disasters, then bump it up in $5 a tonne increments year on year. If that's still failing to keep up, then the point will be well made.<br />
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Disasters are now a regular part of the economy. Their type and seriousness vary, but then the stockmarket fluctuates, interest rates rise and fall, and unemployment can be extremely bad or wonderfully benign or anywhere in between.<br />
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If we want to regularise the reality of the climate change threat with Australians, or people anywhere, we need to move disasters from being bad stuff that just happens to some unfortunates to be part of the economic mainstream. That's how we get everyone engaged, isn't it?The Wattwatcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14863849436988294473noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1121348860123722392.post-73833803652704900052011-01-10T00:25:00.000+11:002011-01-10T15:17:55.777+11:00Australia’s summer deluge is a Christmas parable for our climate-troubled times<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Massive floods besetting the north-eastern Australian state of <place w:st="on"><state w:st="on">Queensland</state></place> over the long, languid Christmas-New Year holiday season of a summer Down Under are a parable for our climate troubled times. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The morality story here is all about how we’ll live in a world too full of people when climatic stability – never something to be taken for granted given natural variability over years and decades – is threatening to break down badly this century.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">You'll find great up-to-date coverage of these floods by Australia's national broadcaster the ABC at <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/">http://www.abc.net.au/news/</a></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It is understandable that all the attention now is focused on the misery of flood victims, and getting them safeguarded or rescued, aided by governments and supported by community charity. This blog post, however, anticipates the difficult, mature post-flood conversation that Queenslanders, Australians and the world need to have.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If more and more people and property are exposed to more and more extreme weather events - in a world where average temperatures are hotter, sea levels are rising and disaster recovery times are being reduced – there will be very serious implications. What should responsible governments be doing? How might businesses respond? When will the pressures of catastrophic destruction becoming more common start to tear communities, even whole nations apart?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Recent dinner guests, even hardened journalists, have accused me of being uncharitable to the flood victims. My Christmas seasonally-inappropriate argument is that if people build their homes and commercial premises on river floodplains or low-lying coastal zones or in bushfire-prone areas, or if they choose to farm on the driest inhabited continent on the planet with a long history of weather extremes, then they will experience disasters like floods, fires, storm surges and drought.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is not a risk. It is a certainty waiting for a ‘when’. Insurance companies know this, which is why flood insurance for example normally is either not available or is ruinously expensive for properties in known flood zones. Modern developed economies rely hugely on the availability of insurance to spread the risk of catastrophic loss. Without it, banks won’t lend, people won’t invest and economic growth as we know it stalls or never starts.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I don’t make these arguments lightly or from ignorance of the ‘reality’ in which the affected people live. While I’ve been living in <city w:st="on">Sydney</city> for over two decades, my roots are in ground zero for the <state w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Queensland</place></state> floods. My childhood memories of a cattle property west of Bundaberg are of the brutal 1967 drought, when grasslands became bare dirt and we tried to save stock by feeding them sawdust and cane trash sprayed with molasses; of the wet 1970s when we seemed to spend more time flooded-in than dry for a whole decade; and of swollen rivers rolling huge dead tree trunks end-over-end like they were kindling wood.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If climate change means more extreme weather events – and on this both the scientific modeling and observable evidence are clear, with previously 1-in-100-year flood and storm and fire events becoming more common – then logic says insurance will either be unavailable or unaffordable. That is an unpalatable (and inconvenient) truth.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If insurance isn’t available, then people and businesses either bear the weight of catastrophic loss themselves, or they get bailed out by government aid and community charity. And there’s no guarantee that the disaster, whatever it is, won’t repeat itself; because while lightning may not strike twice, floods for example can and do - as some stricken <state w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Queensland</place></state> communities are learning right now.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At some point too many disasters mean whole areas become uninhabitable, at least in the context of a modern developed economy, because with the best will in the world there has to be an end to individual resilience, government aid and community charity. This is the pointy end of the parable in the <state w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Queensland</place></state> floods. We might be able to save a house or even a whole street or suburb from flooding with sandbags, but we can’t sandbag our entire civilisation.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On recent days and weeks, the visually impressive <state w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Queensland</place></state> floods have been seen around the world, on the news and via social media. Scientists are being ultra correct in not blaming climate change <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">per se</i> for this spectacular version of what we’ve always known as the ‘wet season’, even if the monsoons had gone AWOL for a couple of decades.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Now that Spanish-named girl La Niña has brought them back. Gidday chica bonita, we like you more than that sinister drought-bearing El Niño bloke.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">These floods are a potent reminder of what science has been telling us for well over a decade now, that inexorable global warming almost certainly caused by human activities will lead to more extreme weather events.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For Australia, mere business as usual means a steady menu of droughts, floods, bushfires, cyclones and hail storms, although we’re generally spared northern hemisphere specials like blizzards and tornadoes. We don’t muck around with weather-related disasters down here! Along with the world’s deadliest snakes and creepy crawlies galore, when the weather goes bad things often get extremely nasty. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As poet Dorothea Mackellar wrote so evocatively, <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Australia</place></country-region> is a land of ‘droughts and flooding rains’ filled with ‘beauty and terror’. For the past decade we’ve had the drought, a severe one for nature and farmers alike, and now the heavens have opened up to deliver the remedy. There’s terror in the floods, but beauty in the amazing greening of Mackellar’s much-loved ‘wide brown land’, the filling of its streams and lakes and inland sea, and the resurgence of animal life and farm prosperity that comes after the deluge.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We humans, however, live more in the agony of the moment than the benefit for the longer term (I know, I just couldn’t work ecstasy in to the line). With the latest floods, nature’s capacity for violence is on show. People are suffering everything from minor inconvenience - capsicum prices are tipped to double or worse - to devastating financial and emotional loss, and already the conservative political lobby is trumpeting the need to fight back against the elements: dam more rivers, build more bridges and tame this terrible environment.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Also on show is the wonderful generosity of spirit of Australians as they, like many peoples around the world, rally together in times of hardship for their fellow citizens and donate to the flood appeals popping up like the green shoots after the rains. Some months ago it was the <place w:st="on"><country-region w:st="on">Pakistan</country-region></place> floods, although Australians were not always so charitable there. Less than two years ago it was bushfire appeals after the terrible blazes that killed hundreds of people.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Appeals and government payouts are great. The media love them. But how sustainable are they if the disasters at home and abroad keep on getting worse and more frequent? At what point do we move to the centre of the political policy debates with our questions about when we should act decisively on climate change, how much we should be prepared to spend, and what the cost will be if we fail to act? </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Australians won’t suffer alone in a world where dangerous climate change becomes irreversible through our own inaction. But it will suffer terribly. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sigh (read long sigh) … my holidays are over and I have to go back to work this morning. In Aussie media terms, this is still ‘the silly season’, and a good old rapid-action extreme weather event is a godsend. The deluge is something to fill up the news bulletins and newspapers, and blogs too, especially when the cricket is going against <place w:st="on"><country-region w:st="on">Australia</country-region></place> and the beach conditions are less than sun-filled days of surfing and tanning.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Is it really too much to hope that we could start to ask and try to answer the big questions for our nation and the world? </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As I get close to finishing this post the midnight news on my Australian Broadcasting Corporation local news channel leads with a story of Queensland bracing itself for more flooding, with new heavy rains in the heavily-populated south-east of the state, including the capital city of Brisbane. I was at boarding school in <city w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Brisbane</place></city> the last time it flooded badly in 1974 and got to miss a whole week at the start of term. My sister’s flat in the suburb of Auchenflower was inundated and my wife’s family home in riverside <city w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Fairfield</place></city> was destroyed with all of their belongings.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I don’t think building more dams will fix the real problems we face in 2011 and beyond, and I’m damn sure that more coal mines and coal-fired power stations aren’t the solution. When these floods recede, as they always do, I hope we’ll have the real conversation. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I love a sunburnt country,<br />
A land of sweeping plains,<br />
Of ragged mountain ranges,<br />
Of droughts and flooding rains.<br />
I love her far horizons,<br />
I love her jewel-sea,<br />
Her beauty and her terror -<br />
The wide brown land for me!</span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">- Extract from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">My Country</i> by Dorothea Mackellar</span></span></b></div>The Wattwatcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14863849436988294473noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1121348860123722392.post-87776327633232885212011-01-08T01:52:00.000+11:002011-01-08T01:52:50.530+11:00Epic greenwash or corporate-led salvation? Contrasting Vale and Dupont ad splurges in latest National Geographic<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">The latest National Geographic hit my mail box today. The central theme of this issue is <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">‘Population 7 Billion: How Your World Will Change’.</i></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Great magazine, as millions of readers agree, and as ever the infographics are terrific. To my mind a brief scan provides magnificently convincing evidence that the world as we know it is in deep trouble:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 36pt; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;">Too many people;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 36pt; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;">Too many species being lost;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 36pt; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;">Too little idea of what we are losing as we destroy the greatest reservoirs of biodiversity, tropical forests and coral reefs.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">It’s all laid out in visually-pleasing detail by Nat Geo.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">What struck me as the most interesting content of this edition of this great publishing institution, however, were the two major advertising components.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 36pt; mso-list: l2 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;">Exhibit A is a 12-page insert headed ‘Biodiversity: The web of life that supports us all’, sponsored and branded in large part by the Brasil-based international mining giant Vale;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 36pt; mso-list: l2 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;">Exhibit B is a 3-page inside front cover fold-out advertisement sponsored by Dupont, the life sciences company now in its 3<sup>rd</sup> century of existence having started as a gunpowder manufacturer in <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">America</place></country-region> in 1802.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">It is not unreasonable to ask if the venerable Nat Geo has lost its marbles in its commercial decision to embrace these sponsors? But that’s not my path of inquiry, or at least not entirely.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">The Vale advertorial ends with this line: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Vale. There is no future without mining. And there can be no mining without caring about the future.’</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 36pt; text-indent: -36pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">That’s as vacuous as it is inaccurate. There could well be a future without mining, and reducing or even eliminating mining may be critical to unlocking the sustainable future we need. Sure mining won’t end tomorrow, but it could end. For example, with enough renewable energy we wouldn’t need to mine thermal coal and drill for oil. And with less consumption, recycling could carry us through for many commodities we currently still mine.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Dupont is a company I am more familiar with, having consulted to them with Ecos Corporation a decade ago. It is a genuine ‘built to last’ company that has transformed itself repeatedly over 200-plus years through gunpowder, armaments, chemicals, synthetic materials, crop technologies and much more.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Its ad welcomes readers to the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">‘Global Collaboratory’</i> (apparently you can see more at dupont.com/collaboratory) and carries the inclusive main headline <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">‘There are almost 7 billion reasons why we should work together’</i>; going on to say:</span></div><ul style="margin-top: 0cm;" type="disc"><li class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-list: l3 level1 lfo3; tab-stops: list 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Together, we can feed the world;</span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-list: l3 level1 lfo3; tab-stops: list 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Together, we can decrease dependence in fossil fuels;</span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-list: l3 level1 lfo3; tab-stops: list 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Together, we can protect what matters most (a reference to human safety).</span></li>
</ul><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Now, these are big claims too. But unlike those of Vale, they are backed by specific mainstream products and services that Dupont has developed or co-developed in the decade or so that it has made sustainability core to its business platform in its 3<sup>rd</sup> century.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Whenever I see giant corporations with huge environmental footprints and vast legacy problems advertising their sustainability commitments in glossy magazines I think … well, I think Shell, and that fails to fill me with confidence.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">But in my final analysis I am far happier to accept a science company like Dupont that has survived so long by finding new solutions for new centuries over a relative upstart dirt shifter like Vale. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Vale’s advertorial trumpeted its three core pillars to qualify for such prominence in Nat Geo, albeit paid for. They were:</span></div><ul style="margin-top: 0cm;" type="disc"><li class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo4; tab-stops: list 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Being a sustainable operator;</span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo4; tab-stops: list 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Acting as a catalyst for local development;</span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo4; tab-stops: list 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Being a global agent for sustainability.</span></li>
</ul><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">They are fine sentiments, and Vale obviously does some good stuff in its field, yet in my humble opinion it’s more feel-good corporate social responsibility than transformative sustainability.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Dupont by comparison – though far from perfect - is in the game to find solutions that could change the world and give it a profitable place in its 3<sup>rd</sup> century and beyond. I’d love to see Nat Geo’s own analysis before it went ahead with carrying the Vale insert and the Dupont fold-out. What’s the bet there was significant internal debate?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">I’m keen to know how other Nat Geo readers respond to the January 2011 edition of the magazine, and what they make of these oh-so prominent advertising sponsors? Love to hear from Nat Geo and the companies too!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>The Wattwatcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14863849436988294473noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1121348860123722392.post-34460037226320707552011-01-07T18:18:00.000+11:002011-01-07T18:18:17.087+11:00Key sustainability trends for 2011 …with reflections on 2010, the year that was<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">A statement of the obvious: 2011 is going to be a big year for climate change, the environment and sustainability. In many ways it can be a pivotal year, at the start of a decade where the world has to act decisively. Of course, the burning question is still the same: Will it?</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">Last January I published my tips on 10 key sustainability trends for the 2010 year under the banner of my consulting business <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">the 3<sup>rd</sup> degree</b>. This year, as <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The Wattwatcher</b>, this sustainability trends review both reflects on what happened in 2010 and offers updated installments for 2011. My views on these trends are weighted towards an Australian perspective while offering a more global view where relevant.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">My introduction last year began: ‘Global recession and the </span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">CPRS* and <city w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Copenhagen</place></city> failures were serious setbacks for sustainability, leaving many players discouraged and frustrated. Yet the pressure on governments and businesses to act on climate will keep rising.’ On reflection, I was both right and wrong. The pressure to act is rising in terms of the scientific justification, observable negative impacts, and also the business case for early action. But political will has been sapped by economic recovery priorities and a conservative ideological backlash, the latter most apparent in the <country-region w:st="on">US</country-region> and also <place w:st="on"><country-region w:st="on">Australia</country-region></place>.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">For 2011, I am more optimistic that we will see stronger evidence of the world moving towards an era of more sustainable consumption and less damaging exploitation of natural resources. This will include a heightened, though still inadequate focus on preserving biodiversity and greater recognition of the eco-system services that underpin the global economy and human civilisation. </span></div><ul style="margin-top: 0cm;" type="disc"><li class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">At a macro level, the UN climate summits of 2011 and 2012, plus the potent symbolism of <place w:st="on">Rio</place>+20 in 2012, will provide crucial forums to engage leaders across government, business and the community sectors</span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">At a micro level, the transformative agendas of individual cities, corporations and even individuals will build understanding of both the need for change and the ways in which it can be delivered while enhancing the economy and improving quality of life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></li>
</ul><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">(*For non-Australian followers the CPRS was the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, the Australian Government’s 2009 plan for a cap-and-trade scheme, which fell over badly in extraordinary political circumstances in 2009-10.)</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">The trends - in no particular order - are:</span><span style="color: black;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><br />
<table border="1" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="MsoTableGrid" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-collapse: collapse; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-insideh: .5pt solid windowtext; mso-border-insidev: .5pt solid windowtext; mso-padding-alt: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-yfti-tbllook: 480;"><tbody>
<tr style="mso-yfti-firstrow: yes; mso-yfti-irow: 0;"><td style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; border-left: windowtext 1pt solid; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-top: windowtext 1pt solid; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding-bottom: 0cm; padding-left: 5.4pt; padding-right: 5.4pt; padding-top: 0cm; width: 72.15pt;" valign="top" width="96"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">TRENDS</span></b></div></td><td style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; border-left: #ece9d8; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-top: windowtext 1pt solid; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding-bottom: 0cm; padding-left: 5.4pt; padding-right: 5.4pt; padding-top: 0cm; width: 122.55pt;" valign="top" width="163"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">2010 FORECAST</span></b></div></td><td style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; border-left: #ece9d8; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-top: windowtext 1pt solid; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding-bottom: 0cm; padding-left: 5.4pt; padding-right: 5.4pt; padding-top: 0cm; width: 124.05pt;" valign="top" width="165"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">2010 REFLECTION</span></b></div></td><td style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; border-left: #ece9d8; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-top: windowtext 1pt solid; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding-bottom: 0cm; padding-left: 5.4pt; padding-right: 5.4pt; padding-top: 0cm; width: 124.05pt;" valign="top" width="165"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">2011 UPDATE</span></b></div></td></tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 1;"><td style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; border-left: windowtext 1pt solid; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-top: #ece9d8; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding-bottom: 0cm; padding-left: 5.4pt; padding-right: 5.4pt; padding-top: 0cm; width: 72.15pt;" valign="top" width="96"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">Carbon Strategy</span></b></div></td><td style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; border-left: #ece9d8; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-top: #ece9d8; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding-bottom: 0cm; padding-left: 5.4pt; padding-right: 5.4pt; padding-top: 0cm; width: 122.55pt;" valign="top" width="163"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Carbon strategy is going shorter<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><u>and</u><span class="apple-converted-space"> l</span>onger.<b> </b></span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">With the CPRS and<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><place w:st="on"><city w:st="on">Copenhagen</city></place><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>summit opportunities in apparent disarray,<span class="apple-converted-space"><b> </b></span>pressure will build for both short-term interim solutions and bigger and bolder long-term strategies.</span></div></td><td style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; border-left: #ece9d8; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-top: #ece9d8; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding-bottom: 0cm; padding-left: 5.4pt; padding-right: 5.4pt; padding-top: 0cm; width: 124.05pt;" valign="top" width="165"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">International cap-and-trade is still the elegant longer-term tool we need to engineer an orderly transition to a low-carbon global economy. But it now seems clear we will need to demonstrate how messy and/or ineffective the main shorter-term alternatives are before we adopt cap-and-trade properly. Vested interests in fossil fuels had temporary wins, and continuing uncertainty over the post-Kyoto period is undermining political will to act and also investment decision-making.</span></div></td><td style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; border-left: #ece9d8; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-top: #ece9d8; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding-bottom: 0cm; padding-left: 5.4pt; padding-right: 5.4pt; padding-top: 0cm; width: 124.05pt;" valign="top" width="165"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">The US EPA push to regulate carbon emissions and renewed Australian interest in an interim carbon tax are good indicators of how short-term pressure points will be targeted to force due consideration of realistic, long-term solutions (i.e. cap-and-trade). Encouraging strategies to deliver low carbon cities and companies are emerging.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">There will be further growth in scale and diversity of civil society organisations committed to building a broad base of consumer and citizen awareness and action on climate change. </span></div></td></tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 2;"><td style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; border-left: windowtext 1pt solid; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-top: #ece9d8; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding-bottom: 0cm; padding-left: 5.4pt; padding-right: 5.4pt; padding-top: 0cm; width: 72.15pt;" valign="top" width="96"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">New Activism </span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">(now including social media)</span></b></div></td><td style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; border-left: #ece9d8; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-top: #ece9d8; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding-bottom: 0cm; padding-left: 5.4pt; padding-right: 5.4pt; padding-top: 0cm; width: 122.55pt;" valign="top" width="163"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Polluters will pay.<span class="apple-converted-space"><b> </b></span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">It’s the carbon version of the ‘Sea Shepherd effect’ i.e. where failure to stop Japan killing whales in the Antarctic each summer has spawned more radical protest</span><span style="color: navy; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">ing</span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">than that of Greenpeace.</span></div></td><td style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; border-left: #ece9d8; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-top: #ece9d8; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding-bottom: 0cm; padding-left: 5.4pt; padding-right: 5.4pt; padding-top: 0cm; width: 124.05pt;" valign="top" width="165"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">This trend tip was on the right track, but I didn’t see how powerful social media would become in magnifying activist power and community outrage e.g. the huge pressure BP faced over the Gulf oil spill disaster & Greenpeace v Nestle over palm oil in KitKats. Twitter, Facebook and You Tube are important new tools of choice for activism in the 2010s. </span></div></td><td style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; border-left: #ece9d8; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-top: #ece9d8; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding-bottom: 0cm; padding-left: 5.4pt; padding-right: 5.4pt; padding-top: 0cm; width: 124.05pt;" valign="top" width="165"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">By combining traditional protests and stunts with more use of social media campaigning, activist groups can bypass the mainstream media and outflank traditional corporate spin-doctoring. Activists will gain more skills in 2011 in using social networks for their communications and also for ‘crowd-sourcing’ of funds. However, it is a crowded battlefield and business also is learning how to operate better in a networked world. </span></div></td></tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 3;"><td style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; border-left: windowtext 1pt solid; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-top: #ece9d8; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding-bottom: 0cm; padding-left: 5.4pt; padding-right: 5.4pt; padding-top: 0cm; width: 72.15pt;" valign="top" width="96"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">Policy Fatigue & Investor Alarm</span></b></div></td><td style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; border-left: #ece9d8; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-top: #ece9d8; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding-bottom: 0cm; padding-left: 5.4pt; padding-right: 5.4pt; padding-top: 0cm; width: 122.55pt;" valign="top" width="163"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">The energy has been sucked out of the would-be carbon trading and services sector again, leaving business plans smashed</span><span style="color: navy; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">early movers hurting and investors cautious or retreating all over again.</span></div></td><td style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; border-left: #ece9d8; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-top: #ece9d8; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding-bottom: 0cm; padding-left: 5.4pt; padding-right: 5.4pt; padding-top: 0cm; width: 124.05pt;" valign="top" width="165"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">Now any hope of an early <country-region w:st="on">US</country-region> federal cap-and-trade scheme has faded, and with <place w:st="on">Europe</place> so financially embattled, the rout of the carbon trading wannabe sector is a serious setback for early movers. But there are still some ‘real jobs’ in actually saving energy and waste, and clean tech and clean energy investment survived the global recession in good shape v. old alternatives. </span></div></td><td style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; border-left: #ece9d8; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-top: #ece9d8; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding-bottom: 0cm; padding-left: 5.4pt; padding-right: 5.4pt; padding-top: 0cm; width: 124.05pt;" valign="top" width="165"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">With the pain of ‘false starts’ on the much anticipated shift to a global carbon market worth many billions or even trillions of dollars a year so fresh, the focus will be away from trading and will concentrate on saving energy, generating clean energy, the smart grid and waste and water technologies. This is a healthy trend to deliver real solutions rather than speculation. It will be very hard to finance any more traditional coal-fired power stations in the developed world at least.</span></div></td></tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 4;"><td style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; border-left: windowtext 1pt solid; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-top: #ece9d8; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding-bottom: 0cm; padding-left: 5.4pt; padding-right: 5.4pt; padding-top: 0cm; width: 72.15pt;" valign="top" width="96"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">CSR Under Pressure</span></b></div></td><td style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; border-left: #ece9d8; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-top: #ece9d8; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding-bottom: 0cm; padding-left: 5.4pt; padding-right: 5.4pt; padding-top: 0cm; width: 122.55pt;" valign="top" width="163"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">Rising<span class="apple-converted-space"><b> </b></span>disenchantment over perceived corporate spin and backsliding will drive an ‘acid test’ approach to business claims and initiatives, and real results will be crucial rather than soft social responsibility</span></div></td><td style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; border-left: #ece9d8; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-top: #ece9d8; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding-bottom: 0cm; padding-left: 5.4pt; padding-right: 5.4pt; padding-top: 0cm; width: 124.05pt;" valign="top" width="165"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">The year brought an upward spike in scrutiny on corporate ‘social responsibility’ claims, especially with the dramatic events surrounding one-time CSR darling BP. </span></div></td><td style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; border-left: #ece9d8; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-top: #ece9d8; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding-bottom: 0cm; padding-left: 5.4pt; padding-right: 5.4pt; padding-top: 0cm; width: 124.05pt;" valign="top" width="165"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">From 2011 onwards we will see more focus on differentiating between corporations that ‘do CSR’ (like many big banks and mining companies) and those that make sustainability solutions core to their business models (GE, Dupont and Unilever are some that spring to mind).</span></div></td></tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 5;"><td style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; border-left: windowtext 1pt solid; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-top: #ece9d8; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding-bottom: 0cm; padding-left: 5.4pt; padding-right: 5.4pt; padding-top: 0cm; width: 72.15pt;" valign="top" width="96"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">Elections & Politicking</span></b></div></td><td style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; border-left: #ece9d8; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-top: #ece9d8; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding-bottom: 0cm; padding-left: 5.4pt; padding-right: 5.4pt; padding-top: 0cm; width: 122.55pt;" valign="top" width="163"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">With elections in<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><state w:st="on">South Australia</state>,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><place w:st="on"><state w:st="on">Tasmania</state></place>, Victoria, Australia-wide and NSW over the next year and a bit, the usual political horse-trading over green preferences will be back in business. It’s a scenario where the green vote can be golden at the critical margins!</span><span style="color: black; font-size: 10pt;"> </span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;"></span></div></td><td style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; border-left: #ece9d8; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-top: #ece9d8; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding-bottom: 0cm; padding-left: 5.4pt; padding-right: 5.4pt; padding-top: 0cm; width: 124.05pt;" valign="top" width="165"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">What a mixed bag! In <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Australia</place></country-region> doing power-sharing deals with Greens and/or socially progressive Independents saved the Federal Labor Government and at least one state counterpart. Close to home, there are early hopes that an incoming conservative Coalition Government in NSW, <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Australia</place></country-region>’s largest state, will be stronger on sustainability than its federal equivalent. In the <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">UK</place></country-region> the Tory Party, encouragingly green in its own right, has to govern in coalition with Liberal Democrats. But in the <place w:st="on"><country-region w:st="on">US</country-region></place> the Republicans romped back in mid-term elections and the Tea Party is on the loose.</span></div></td><td style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; border-left: #ece9d8; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-top: #ece9d8; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding-bottom: 0cm; padding-left: 5.4pt; padding-right: 5.4pt; padding-top: 0cm; width: 124.05pt;" valign="top" width="165"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">On a parochial note, there is no plausible scenario for Green preferences to save the Labor Government in my now home state of NSW in the March 2011 poll. More broadly, I am concerned that fear-mongering over the huge changes required to achieve a sustainable future will strengthen reactionary conservatism in the short term, and this will be apparent in 2011. We will have to wait a while longer for green/sustainable to be the political mainstream. I expect a growing discussion about a new Centre Left force in Australian politics as Labor seeks to rediscover itself in the 21<sup>st</sup> C to deliver socially and environmentally progressive policies in tandem with sound economic management. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div></td></tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 6;"><td style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; border-left: windowtext 1pt solid; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-top: #ece9d8; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding-bottom: 0cm; padding-left: 5.4pt; padding-right: 5.4pt; padding-top: 0cm; width: 72.15pt;" valign="top" width="96"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">Consumer</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">Behaviour Focus</span></b></div></td><td style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; border-left: #ece9d8; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-top: #ece9d8; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding-bottom: 0cm; padding-left: 5.4pt; padding-right: 5.4pt; padding-top: 0cm; width: 122.55pt;" valign="top" width="163"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Consumers Do Rule?<b> </b></span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">There’s a rising focus on consumer behaviour change among governments, businesses and community organisations</span><span style="color: black; font-size: 10pt;"> </span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;"></span></div></td><td style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; border-left: #ece9d8; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-top: #ece9d8; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding-bottom: 0cm; padding-left: 5.4pt; padding-right: 5.4pt; padding-top: 0cm; width: 124.05pt;" valign="top" width="165"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">The proliferation of ‘green’, ‘ethical’ and ‘sustainable’ labels came on to the radar strongly over the past year, with mixed results for engaging consumers. Greenwashing is putting good offerings in peril. Failure to engage the consumer in key areas such as rolling out smart meters for the smart grid provoked community backlash (see more below).</span></div></td><td style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; border-left: #ece9d8; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-top: #ece9d8; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding-bottom: 0cm; padding-left: 5.4pt; padding-right: 5.4pt; padding-top: 0cm; width: 124.05pt;" valign="top" width="165"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Expect concerted efforts at regional, national and international levels to bring some order to the sustainability labels arena in 2011. This will be a growing challenge for major retailers and brand owners. There will be more pressure on energy utilities to become energy service providers and more investment in engaging consumers in the ‘smart and clean’ grid of the future (see more below). User pays road charging will get more attention and has to be ‘sold’ to consumers.</span></div></td></tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 7;"><td style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; border-left: windowtext 1pt solid; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-top: #ece9d8; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding-bottom: 0cm; padding-left: 5.4pt; padding-right: 5.4pt; padding-top: 0cm; width: 72.15pt;" valign="top" width="96"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">Technology Steps Up</span></b></div></td><td style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; border-left: #ece9d8; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-top: #ece9d8; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding-bottom: 0cm; padding-left: 5.4pt; padding-right: 5.4pt; padding-top: 0cm; width: 122.55pt;" valign="top" width="163"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">The Grid is meeting Internet Protocols. </span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">Information and Communications Technology (ICT) is gaining momentum for demand-side energy use and management solutions</span></div></td><td style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; border-left: #ece9d8; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-top: #ece9d8; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding-bottom: 0cm; padding-left: 5.4pt; padding-right: 5.4pt; padding-top: 0cm; width: 124.05pt;" valign="top" width="165"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Although still poorly understood by the consuming public, the smart grid made real progress in 2010 and will accelerate in spite of community concern about cost, privacy and other issues surrounding smart meters. At an elite level, 2010 brought greater understanding that the smart grid has a lot more to it than rolling out smart meters. This includes meeting the need for more flexible energy demand to match more variable supply e.g. from wind, solar etc & the integration challenge for electric vehicles. </span></div></td><td style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; border-left: #ece9d8; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-top: #ece9d8; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding-bottom: 0cm; padding-left: 5.4pt; padding-right: 5.4pt; padding-top: 0cm; width: 124.05pt;" valign="top" width="165"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Fast-rising energy prices, the advent of electric vehicles and the need to integrate clean energy generation into the system are key drivers for smart grid investment in 2011 and beyond. There will be a lot more work done on making the economic and environmental cases to both business and domestic consumers. There will be greater linking of renewable and distributed energy, energy efficiency and new transport alternatives as key pillars for carbon reduction. </span></div></td></tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 8;"><td style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; border-left: windowtext 1pt solid; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-top: #ece9d8; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding-bottom: 0cm; padding-left: 5.4pt; padding-right: 5.4pt; padding-top: 0cm; width: 72.15pt;" valign="top" width="96"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">Energy Costs Stay in Play</span></b></div></td><td style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; border-left: #ece9d8; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-top: #ece9d8; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding-bottom: 0cm; padding-left: 5.4pt; padding-right: 5.4pt; padding-top: 0cm; width: 122.55pt;" valign="top" width="163"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">Even without a price on carbon, energy prices have been going up rapidly and this is likely to continue</span><span style="color: navy; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;"> boosting the case for the neglected motherhood solution of energy efficiency</span><span style="color: navy; font-size: 10pt;"> </span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;"></span></div></td><td style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; border-left: #ece9d8; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-top: #ece9d8; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding-bottom: 0cm; padding-left: 5.4pt; padding-right: 5.4pt; padding-top: 0cm; width: 124.05pt;" valign="top" width="165"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">In 2010, the cost of electricity bills became the hot topic for water cooler and BBQ conversations, certainly in <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Australia</place></country-region>. Energy efficiency gained the attention of a prime ministerial task force and became a Ministry in <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Australia</place></country-region>. Energy saving is a major focus in many major economies including the <country-region w:st="on">US</country-region> and <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">China</place></country-region>. A doubling or tripling of electricity prices by 2020 is now expected in <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Australia</place></country-region>.</span></div></td><td style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; border-left: #ece9d8; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-top: #ece9d8; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding-bottom: 0cm; padding-left: 5.4pt; padding-right: 5.4pt; padding-top: 0cm; width: 124.05pt;" valign="top" width="165"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">For 2011 in <place w:st="on"><country-region w:st="on">Australia</country-region></place>, the scene is set for more confusion. Creating a robust national energy efficiency scheme is held back whenever carbon trading is ‘on the table’ - and it is again! This is partly because of a lack of political and bureaucratic headspace to address both together. More positively, however, the fact that electricity prices are starting to get noticed like petrol (gasoline) prices means that politicians are feeling pressure to act. Watch!</span></div></td></tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 9;"><td style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; border-left: windowtext 1pt solid; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-top: #ece9d8; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding-bottom: 0cm; padding-left: 5.4pt; padding-right: 5.4pt; padding-top: 0cm; width: 72.15pt;" valign="top" width="96"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">Science to Rebound</span></b></div></td><td style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; border-left: #ece9d8; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-top: #ece9d8; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding-bottom: 0cm; padding-left: 5.4pt; padding-right: 5.4pt; padding-top: 0cm; width: 122.55pt;" valign="top" width="163"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">Climate scientists are warning that 2010 may well set new temperature records in<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Australia</place></country-region><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>and globally</span><span style="color: navy; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">with the likelihood that the latest bounce-back by climate deniers will fade under the weight of heat and science.</span></div></td><td style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; border-left: #ece9d8; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-top: #ece9d8; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding-bottom: 0cm; padding-left: 5.4pt; padding-right: 5.4pt; padding-top: 0cm; width: 124.05pt;" valign="top" width="165"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">Even though a La Nina year, 2010 has been one of the hottest years on record, with plenty of severe weather-related natural disasters. The ferocious attack of the climate skeptics late in 2009 and early 2010 has subsided, and their claims and attacks have since fallen flat i.e. the eventual outcome of the ‘Climategate’ scandal.</span></div></td><td style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; border-left: #ece9d8; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-top: #ece9d8; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding-bottom: 0cm; padding-left: 5.4pt; padding-right: 5.4pt; padding-top: 0cm; width: 124.05pt;" valign="top" width="165"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">For 2011, there are signs that scientists around the world are getting better positioned to present and argue the case for climate action now. The next COP in <country-region w:st="on">South Africa</country-region> in December 2011 and <place w:st="on">Rio</place>+20 in 2012 provide the major set piece opportunities to sweep aside denial and doubt. But watch out for people believing ‘the climate has fixed itself’, especially in post-drought <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Australia</place></country-region>.</span></div></td></tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 10; mso-yfti-lastrow: yes;"><td style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; border-left: windowtext 1pt solid; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-top: #ece9d8; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding-bottom: 0cm; padding-left: 5.4pt; padding-right: 5.4pt; padding-top: 0cm; width: 72.15pt;" valign="top" width="96"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">More</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">Renewables</span></b></div></td><td style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; border-left: #ece9d8; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-top: #ece9d8; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding-bottom: 0cm; padding-left: 5.4pt; padding-right: 5.4pt; padding-top: 0cm; width: 122.55pt;" valign="top" width="163"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">People like clean energy and </span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">governments are supporting it more and more as a popular aspiration for householders and businesses.</span></div></td><td style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; border-left: #ece9d8; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-top: #ece9d8; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding-bottom: 0cm; padding-left: 5.4pt; padding-right: 5.4pt; padding-top: 0cm; width: 124.05pt;" valign="top" width="165"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Wherever governments offered householders and businesses rebates and other incentives (e.g. feed-in tariffs) to take up solar installations and energy audits, they were rapidly swamped by eager applicants. People do love clean energy! On the negative side, 2010 was politically disastrous for national schemes in <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Australia</place></country-region> to encourage greener and more efficient homes while stimulating the overall economy. Home insulation, home energy audits and green loans all had big problems. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div></td><td style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; border-left: #ece9d8; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-top: #ece9d8; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding-bottom: 0cm; padding-left: 5.4pt; padding-right: 5.4pt; padding-top: 0cm; width: 124.05pt;" valign="top" width="165"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">For 2011, there will be a build-up of pressure on governments to move from short-term ‘band-aid’ incentives for clean energy solutions to sustained action that will deliver long-term progress on distributed energy and renewable solutions. Government programs of the past few years have created a boom-bust cycle for business in areas like energy efficiency and renewable energy, and some (if not most) have failed politically as well. The policy focus has to shift to more sustainable sustainability!</span></div></td></tr>
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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">If you’ve made it this far you’ll know my sustainability trends for 2011 are an amalgam of personal experience, observations and beliefs, leavened with a bit of hope. How do you feel about 2011 and the years beyond? And do you think we can exert positive influence on the future we’ll get by promoting informed discussion of what it can and needs to be?</span></div>The Wattwatcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14863849436988294473noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1121348860123722392.post-29024976655940591332011-01-03T22:49:00.000+11:002011-01-03T22:49:21.238+11:00How smart meter roll-out advocates are failing to learn the lessons of GM crops from a decade agoScience and engineering cultures tend to have a powerful belief in themselves and the products of their endeavours. This confidence leads them into trouble, time and again. <br />
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It happened a decade ago when the Monsanto-led push to prescribe genetically-modified crops for the world, hailing them as a sustainability solution to feed the masses and restore the environment, blew up spectacularly.<br />
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A community backlash against GM crops that took hold in Europe and spread globally nearly took down Monsanto in a multi-billion dollar stock value crash and put a large hole in the expansion plans of the whole GM sector. <br />
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When I see stories like these - <a href="http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/12/biggest-smart-grid-challenge-facing-utilities-consumer-education.php">http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/12/biggest-smart-grid-challenge-facing-utilities-consumer-education.php</a> & <a href="http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/12/biggest-smart-grid-challenge-facing-utilities-consumer-education.php">http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/12/biggest-smart-grid-challenge-facing-utilities-consumer-education.php</a> - about the growing backlash against the smart meter roll-out in the US I'm thinking it is a bit like GM crops all over again.<br />
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First the proponents push ahead with their 'solution' without engaging the community adequately, often using spurious, inadequate or disingenuous claims to justify their actions.<br />
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Then, when the inevitable (though seemingly unanticipated by them) backlash comes, the cry goes up that the community and consumers need to be 'educated' so they will 'understand' the rightness of the solution and will support it.<br />
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By 'educating' consumers, the intransigently over-confident science and engineering culture types generally mean spending lots of taypayer or shareholder dollars on PR and marketing to sway people their way.<br />
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But what's really needed is a compelling case that people will accept and support because it delivers value for them and not just the proponents, like Monsanto with unconvincing GM crops and energy utilities with remotely-read smart meters.<br />
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In the case of smart meters over-hyped claims that they will slash greenhouse gas pollution haven't been very convincing, and have failed to inspire consumer-side confidence that the real benefits will do other than accrue to the energy industry players rather than the punters.<br />
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Consumer concerns include paying more for their electricity service and supply, privacy issues, remote disconnection, and potential inaccuracy of metering. <br />
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Education is no answer unless there is a strong case to make. For GM crops, modifications that made plants resistant to chemical sprays like Monsanto's own Round Up brand simply didn't pass the consumer smell test. Nor did sticking fish genes in tomatoes.<br />
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Smart meter proponents are still to get their pitch right. It hasn't helped that they've tried to keep consumers out of the discussion instead of making them central to the solution.<br />
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In the end smart meters are just a component of a far bigger 'solution', the smart grid. Yet smart meter proponents are putting it all at significant risk by failing to learn mistakes of the past in other industries, including biotechnology and GM crops.<br />
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As consumers we need to see and believe that smart meters and the smart grid will deliver better energy services for us first, with superior value-for-money outcomes including environmental benefits, and that any utility benefits are secondary.<br />
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I fear that fostering and fuelling community angst about the smart grid via botched smart metering roll-outs is risky business. Can this be fixed to ensure the timely delivery of the smarter energy future we all need? <br />
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The Wattwatcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14863849436988294473noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1121348860123722392.post-72532213497966655292010-12-26T15:12:00.000+11:002010-12-26T15:50:30.154+11:00Think about the whole sustainability picture before trashing energy efficiency in isolation<span style="font-family: Arial;">In recent days and weeks some of the well-known ‘intellects’ of environmentalism, both celebrated and somewhat infamous ones, have immersed themselves in discourse on what’s being billed as the great paradox of energy efficiency.</span> <br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">The nub of what’s also being called ‘the efficiency illusion’ is that making energy use more efficient encourages more use of that energy as the productivity gain achieved leads to overall economic growth. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">I don’t want to re-canvass the whole argument, and you can find some key perspectives at sources including:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 54pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 54.0pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial;">Breakthrough Institute - The Efficiency Illusion <em><span style="font-family: Arial;">by Michael Shellenberger, Ted Nordhaus, and Jesse Jenkins (Shellenberger and Nordhaus were the authors of a challenging essay ‘The Death of Environmentalism’ in 2004) </span></em></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"><a href="http://thebreakthrough.org/blog/2010/12/the_efficiency_illusion.shtml"><span style="color: purple;">http://thebreakthrough.org/blog/2010/12/the_efficiency_illusion.shtml</span></a> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 54pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 54.0pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;">Bjorn Lomborg – <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">No, you can’t help efforts to reduce global warming</i> <a href="http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/7136777.cms"><span style="color: purple;">http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/7136777.cms</span></a> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt -18pt; text-indent: 3pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">What I immediately see, however, is the muddle-headed thinking you get when to try to solve any great sustainability challenge in isolation.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Energy efficiency skeptics, who in recent times have included such business luminaries as Bill Gates, make simple points by ignoring the interconnected complexities shared by both natural and human systems.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">If the unrestricted aim was to stop pollution from the consumption of fossil fuels we’d just do something economically brutal like ban them, or make them so expensive that few could afford them whether efficient or not. Of course, the widely accepted downside is that this would collapse modern society as we know it and be politically impossible.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Further complication comes if you accept that sustainability has to integrate environmental, social and economic factors to achieve overall societal and ecological well-being in tandem. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">That includes the imperative to raise billions out of poverty to give them a good standard of living, while dealing with a still-rising global population and a planet that already is exceeding its sustainable carrying capacity, while being faced with diabolical challenges such as climate change, water crises and species extinctions.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">The real illusion is not efficiency, but the notion you can make all of that inconvenient truth go away while you contemplate perfect scenario solutions.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">This wider sustainability reality forces us to look for more complex, hopefully achievable solutions instead of simple but unachievable ones. That’s where energy efficiency comes in, not in isolation, but together with other factors, most especially renewable energy, distributed generation, smart grids and rising energy prices.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Globally we are not in the privileged position of being able to easily trigger an orderly transition to a low-carbon economy. To avoid chaos we have to simultaneously lift up the massive populations of <country-region w:st="on">China</country-region> and <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">India</place></country-region> and other less powerful developing world nations, giving their people a cleaner and less resource-intensive version of the developed world’s unsustainable lifestyles.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Unfortunately, and that’s a mild word for a challenge of the scale the world faces, we have to do more for more people as well as do more with less. More efficient delivery of services that underpin a modern economy, most of which in turn are underpinned by energy consumption, is a vital part of the solution equation. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Energy efficiency is most important as a tool for change, rather than as an end game. If by some miracle of 21<sup>st</sup> Century re-engineering of human civilization we arrive at a low or zero carbon economy with unlimited, inexpensive, 100% renewable energy generation then presumably we could abandon efficiency altogether and suck up electrons with unrestrained abandon. Imagine the power of our global economy then!</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">That sounds pretty illusionary to me, at least any time soon, so a safer bet seems to be to use efficiency gains to cut per capita emissions intensity in the current energy economy while accelerating renewable energy and other measures. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">In <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Australia</place></country-region>, as an example, a national assault on our relatively inefficient performance on energy efficiency can do much good immediately, especially when coupled with the market reality of rising energy prices and the likelihood of an added price on carbon in the next few years. Benefits I can see include:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 54pt; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list 54.0pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;">Averting construction of any more large traditional coal-fired power stations</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 54pt; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list 54.0pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;">Helping to manage the short to medium term drought in investment in power generation capacity caused by uncertainty over a price on carbon</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 54pt; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list 54.0pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;">Accelerating the shift to the smart grid, with efficiency gains and demand management assisting in underpinning the business case</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 54pt; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list 54.0pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;">Creating space on the grid for a rapid rise of electric vehicles</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 54pt; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list 54.0pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;">Supporting the development of energy-efficient appliances and technologies that can be replicated everywhere</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 54pt; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list 54.0pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;">Engaging consumers in solutions in a sophisticated version of what has been achieved with recycling – it’s not perfect, but if you want people to demand action on sustainability at the cash register and the ballot box you have to make them part of the equation.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Meanwhile, whatever western environmental intellectuals opine, I bet the Chinese will be paying plenty of attention to efficiency alongside everything else they are doing to meet their great 21<sup>st</sup> Century energy challenge. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">I am keen to know how others see this debate?</span></div>The Wattwatcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14863849436988294473noreply@blogger.com0