Tony Abbott keen to sell uranium to India, but Kevin Rudd is not
Australia and the great Indian uranium sale debate By Geoff Hiscock, CNN August 20, 2013 “…….Both the Labor and Liberal parties have a policy that they will sell Australian uranium to energy-starved India. So on paper, it looks like a bipartisan position.
But Rudd is a reluctant helmsman for his party’s policy, believing India must accept stringent conditions before it gets Australian uranium for its power plants. In his first stint as prime minister in 2007-2010, he was adamant that because India was not a signatory to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, uranium sales to it were precluded.
He said this was not a policy directed against India, but one that applied globally.
When Julia Gillard, the deputy prime minister who overthrew Rudd for the leadership in June 2010 (before herself being ousted in June this year by Rudd), decided to push through a Labor Party policy change on the uranium issue in late 2011, Rudd was not consulted.
Rudd has said that India does not need to source uranium from Australia. It gets most of its supply now from Russia, France and Kazakhstan.
Abbott’s Indian ambitions
In contrast, Abbott is happy to see Australian uranium shipped to Indian nuclear power plants. At the India Australia Friendship Fair in Sydney last year, he said: “Yes, we will sell uranium to India because we know that India is one of the world’s great democracies.”……
If Abbott wins office on September 7, expect Australia to give even more priority to India. If Rudd retains office, it will be a case of “steady as she goes.”
Ahead of his last visit to India in 2009, Rudd noted that like most of Australia’s relationships, the one with India “has some bumps in the road” occasionally. “But we can work our way through them,” he said. Uranium likely will continue to be one of those bumps. http://edition.cnn.com/2013/08/19/business/australia-election-india-uranium/
Under Abbott’s “Direct Action” climate policy, the tax-payer pays the polluters
The Coalition’s climate change policy: it’s the public, not polluters, who pay The shortcomings of the Direct Action Plan are striking. If the Coalition is serious about tackling climate change, then it must offer voters a credible alternative to the carbon price The Guardian, Lisa Caripis 19 Aug 13
You don’t have to be a policy expert to realise that if the Coalition is serious about climate change, it will have to take its Direct Action Planback to the drawing board.
Having spent time analysing the parties’ climate change policies for the University of Melbourne’s Election Watch, I’m disappointed that yet another speech by Greg Hunt, the shadow minister for climate action, failed to answer key questions about the Coalition’s climate policy. As it stands, the Direct Action Plan falls short as a policy model for climate action: it’s questionable whether it will enable us to control and reduce our emissions at all, let alone to do so in a way that’s cost effective and fair.
The Coalition has said it accepts the climate science and is committed to Australia’s internationally binding target to cut emissions by 5-25% by 2020. The climate science makes it clear that without good policy intervention, the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will continue to rise far above safe levels.
The first move of a Coalition government would be to repeal the laws establishing the current carbon price policy and replace them – by the middle of next year at the earliest – with a policy called Direct Action……..
The Coalition’s policies also jeopardise investment in renewable energy. It has promised to scrap the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, the $10bn body set up to stimulate private investment in renewable and clean energy technologies, and to review the Renewable Energy Target (RET) in 2014. According to the chair of the peak body for the clean energy sector, the uncertainty created by the prospect of a second review of the RET in two years is deterring investment in renewable energy. Coupled with abolition of the carbon price, this uncertainty will make it more expensive to meet the RET.
Some have pointed out that at best Direct Action is a short-term model that is not viable in the long run. Yet the shortcomings of the Direct Action Plan as it stands are striking. If the Coalition is serious about tackling climate change, then it must offer voters a credible alternative to the carbon price. The various iterations of Direct Action the Coalition has presented to us so far simply don’t cut it. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/20/coalition-climate-change-direct-action
Australia’s unbalanced election debate – the environment is left out
One of the Australian economy’s strongest comparative advantages has been the wealth of the nation’s natural environment. Weak laws allow state governments and industry to further undermine this increasingly vulnerable natural resource base. Northern Australia is being targeted for a new era of dam building and agricultural industrialisation. But state water management regimes across the north are a shambles.
Australia’s environment and economy are bound together. Good economic management will protect and replenish our natural wealth. Bad economic management will destroy it.
When the federal election zoo closes down on September 7 the environment and economy will still be bound together. Question is, will the next federal government have noticed?
Environment lost in election zoo http://www.smh.com.au/comment/environment-lost-in-election-zoo-20130819-2s6du.html August 19, 2013 Paul Sinclair Australia’s environment is being held captive in a viewing cage in the federal election zoo.
The environment policy enclosure is located in a dilapidated, hard-to-find part of the zoo.
(At left, false economic thinking – environment is last consideration )The “economy” is the zoo’s premiere exhibit. The economy spends all day pacing a little square of synthetic grass in a deep, concrete-lined enclosure.
The poor thing is disconnected from every other living thing that has shaped what it is and could be. (At right – true economic thinking, with environment as the resource base)
By putting the economy and environment in separate cages Australia fails to properly manage either. Continue reading
USA: a solar system is installed every 4 minutes
A Solar System Is Installed in the US Every 4 Minutes http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/america-installs-a-solar-system-every-four-minutes The industry will soon install one solar system every minute and a half. STEPHEN LACEY: AUGUST 19, 2013
A lot happens in America every four minutes. During that short time period, 30 babies areborn, 4,080 McDonald’s Big Macs are consumed, and 48,000 tons of CO2 are emitted.
And as it turns out, the U.S. is now installing one solar photovoltaic (PV) system every four minutes as well. If market growth continues at its current pace, the American solar industry could be installing a system every minute and twenty seconds by 2016. That’s a dramatic difference from 2006, when installers were only putting up one system every 80 minutes. Shayle Kann, vice president of GTM Research, documents the accelerating speed of solar deployment in the chart below:
It may not quite match Big Mac sales yet, but solar is on an extraordinarily fast growth trajectory. According to figures from GTM Research, two-thirds of all distributed solar in the U.S. has been installed over the last 2 1/2 years. And by 2016, cumulative installations of distributed PV will double.
That means the U.S. will hit 1 million cumulative residential solar installations by then — making the market in 2016 ten times larger than it was in 2010. For more information on American solar trends, check out the U.S. Solar Market Insight Report from GTM Research and SEIA.
What an Abbott government would do to Renewable Energy
Election could leave Australia with AUS$4 billion clean energy funding gap http://www.pv-tech.org/news/election_could_leave_australia_with_aus4_billion_clean_energy_funding_gap 20 Aug 13 Liberal Leader Tony Abbott’s climate approach could cut funding and policy incentives for renewable energy. Image: Flickr/TonyAbbott
If the Coalition defeats the current Labor government in Australia’s general election on 7 September, it could create an AUS$4 billion (US$3.7 billion) gap in funding for the renewable energy sector and other carbon cutting measures, research claims.
The centre-right Coalition, which currently leads opinion polls, would repeal the AUS$10 billion (US$9.2 billion) Clean Energy Finance Corporation, a state-backed financing vehicle, but supports the AUS$3 billion (US$2.7 billion) research focussed Australian Renewable Energy Agency, according to a report by the Climate Institute think-tank. Continue reading
Coalition election win would mean $4 billion in private funding sucked away from Australia’s renewable energy industry
Climate of uncertainty August 19, 2013 SMH, Ben Cubby, Tom Arup About $4 billion in private funding would be sucked away from Australia’s solar power and renewable energy industries over the next three years if the Coalition wins government, confidential data obtained from banks and financial analysts shows. Continue reading
Abbott and Rudd’s rush to Northern Territory – destructive to Aboriginal culture
Rudd and Abbott charge the north Eureka Street Dean Ashenden | 19 August 2013 Kevin Rudd has now joined Tony Abbott in a charge to the North. The common idea is that a substantial fraction of Australia’s population and economic activity can be pushed up and across the northern half of the continent. The assumption is that northern Australia is ours to do as we like with. In fact, it’s not.
Much of Australia’s Aboriginal population lives in northern Australia, and Aboriginal people make up a far higher proportion of the population there than anywhere else. They own or co-own, in both Western legal terms and in customary law, vast tracts of land, many of which are open to non-Aboriginal people only with Aboriginal permission. In northern Australia, Aboriginal people have constructed a distinctively Aboriginal way of life, as different from the mainstream as it is from ‘traditional’ Aboriginal society.
What the major parties are proposing is not necessarily a bad thing from Aboriginal points of view. What is bad is the assumption about our prerogatives. Official Australia has long looked at the north as a tabula rasa awaiting ‘development’, an unmissable opportunity and an infuriating failure. And apparently it still does………
Comment: Nearly forty years ago our family witnessed the process of European take over Aboriginal lands for mining and national parks. This was top end NT – where ‘consultation’ was a token one way talk in condescendingly broken English (‘leaders’ were largely identified by the Europeans as those closest to European culture) and trinkets were offered in the form of land tenure ‘privileges’ and co investments in mining, tourism amongst others along with employment opportunities and western education. I say ‘trinkets’ because most of this was as meaningless as the shiny mirror of eighteenth century. Today, little has changed except perhaps a few more Europeanised Aboriginal people are accepting opportunities on western terms and that makes the statistics look good for those who need them. Definitive statements on health and education policies and employment prospects are announced – ultimate solutions to persistent commitment to Country and cultural bewilderment leading to too many profound personal tragedies. How familiar these ‘new’ solutions are – nothing new, nothing new. The Top End has a very tough climate: towns are airconditioned refuges more often than not, surrounded by comforting gardens of southern or British plants. It is inhospitable to agriculture (we are to be the next ‘food bowl’ – check out the amount of sprays and fertilisers used to grown western foods). And it is only truly understood as an environment and as a living entity in its own right. – Jane .http://www.eurekastreet.com.au/article.aspx?aeid=37087#.UhP0g9Jwo6I
.http://www.eurekastreet.com.au/article.aspx?aeid=37087#.UhP0g9Jwo6I
Over 6 million pounds radiation contaminated fish found since 3/11 – S Korea.
TV: Public concern over Japan fish imports “looks to be justified” — Contaminated seafood recently on sale in Korea adding to fears — Over 6 million pounds found since 3/11 — Strong backlash against gov’t http://enenews.com/tv-publics-concerns-over-japan-fish-imports-look-to-be-justified-contaminated-seafood-recently-on-sale-in-korea-over-6-million-pounds-found-since-311
Arirang News,, Aug 19, 2013: Consumer concerns about the safety of Japanese fish imports into Korea since the Fukushima nuclear disaster look to be justified as authorities here say over 3-thousand tonnes of fish from Japan have been found to contain levels of radioactive cesium since 2011. Korea’s Ministry of Food and Drug Safety on Sunday said there were 131 different cases in which fish containing traces of cesium were detected since March 2011. […] Cases peaked in 2012, but the amount has dropped sharply this year.
The Korea Herald, Aug 18, 2013: Government slammed over monitoring of Japanese seafood […] Seafood contaminated by radiation leaks from the Fukushima nuclear plant has been found in the local market recently, adding to public fears […] However, the food ministry was found not to have carried out additional inspections nor tightened return procedures […] While most products had below 10 becquerels of radiocesium (134Cs and 137Cs) per kilogram, some products showed up to 98 becquerels ― just two becquerels less than the level considered unsafe. […] The government’s stance has sparked strong public backlash. [Tepco] has recently confirmed long-held suspicions that the sea had been contaminated […]
What exactly IS the Coalition’s “Direct Action” climate policy?
The Coalition’s climate change policy: it’s the public, not polluters, who pay The Guardian, Lisa Caripis 19 Aug 13 “….. Essentially, Direct Action is a scheme that rewards entities that voluntarily reduce their emissions. So, if you’re an emitter you can propose an emissions reduction project to the government − it might be to improve your energy efficiency, store carbon in the soil or plant trees. The government compares your proposal to other project proposals, and picks the ones that will be the cheapest to implement. If it picks yours, you enter into an agreement to cut your emissions and are paid once you’ve delivered the emissions cuts.
You don’t have to be a policy expert to see where major cracks could form in this policy model. First and foremost, if the cash reward is to be the driving incentive, how large would the pool of funds need to be to drive the level of emissions reductions necessary to meet our 5-25% target? A report published last week estimates that, depending on the level of Australia’s 2020 target, it would cost $4-15bn more than the Coalition has currently budgeted. In fact, the report claims that the funding the Coalition has pledged is so inadequate that emissions would rise by 8-10% by 2020.
Under Direct Action it is the public, not polluters who pay. Is that fair? Unlike under a carbon price, there’s no cost, no disincentive, to keep polluting at the same rate. Indeed, Hunt recently suggested that the Coalition no longer even intends to penalise polluters that increase their emissions. So, Direct Action (ie taxpayer) funded projects would need to cut enough emissions to offset the emissions of non-participants.
Predicting and controlling the trajectory of Australia’s emissions under Direct Action would be quite a challenge. Without an annual cap on emissions or price per tonne of emissions as is in place under carbon price models, how would a Coalition government ensure that we are on track to meet our international obligations and reduce emissions to safe levels? What happens if projects fail to deliver the cuts as promised? Can we afford a policy that could leave our health, communities and property exposed to the substantial risks posed by climate change? …. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/20/coalition-climate-change-direct-action
Australian renewable energy jobs at risk, due to political uncertainty
Climate of uncertainty August 19, 2013 SMH, Ben Cubby, Tom Arup “………The renewables sector, which now employs more people than Australia’s car industry, is nervously awaiting the election result.
”Australia’s significant clean energy potential is being held back by seemingly endless rounds of review and, like the rest of the energy industry, our main need is for policy stability to drive investment in major projects,” said the chief executive of industry group the Clean Energy Council, David Green.
It comes as a survey of businesses found uncertainty about the future of the carbon price has had a negative impact on more than half the responding firms. The survey by consultants AECOM covered 180 leading companies, firms having to pay the carbon price and members of the group Business for a Clean Economy.
It found 65 per cent of businesses supported an emissions trading scheme, while 29 per cent supported a carbon tax. Just 7 per cent of businesses supported the Coalition’s direct action policy.The Business for a Clean Economy group – which was set up to endorse carbon pricing – includes energy giant AGL, furniture retailer IKEA, Westpac and multi-national Unilever.
A spokesman for the group, Andrew Petersen, said: ”While businesses across all sectors are getting on with the job of transitioning to a clean economy, substantial investment is being delayed due to the uncertainty around retention of the carbon price.” : http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2013/climate-of-uncertainty-20130818-2s55k.html#ixzz2cYRJLlFn
Expected effects of climate change on Australia: sea level rise is one
Revealed: 80cm sea rise warning August 20, 2013, SMH, Ben Cubby, Peter Hannam, 20 Aug 13, The world is on track to become up to five degrees hotter, and sea levels could rise more than 80 centimetres this century, according to a leaked draft of a landmark climate change report prepared for the UN.
There is now a 95 per cent likelihood human greenhouse gas emissions are driving changes being observed globally, which in recent weeks have included extraordinary heatwaves in Asia and Alaska.
That degree of certainty has been revised up from 90 per cent in the last report in 2007, 66 per cent in 2001, and just over 50 in 1995. A sea level rise of up to 82 centimetres, which would have serious impacts on coastal cities everywhere, is now ”unequivocal”, Reuters reported.
The final version of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, which will cover the expected effects of climate on Australia in coming decades, is scheduled for release in September.
About 200 countries, including Australia, have pledged to hold temperature rises to two degrees by cutting emissions, though few nations are on track to meet that goal……
The Climate Change Minister, Mark Butler, said the Labor policy was producing results, including a 7 per cent cut in emissions from the National Electricity Market and a 25 per cent increase in renewable energy generation in the past year. ”The Coalition’s climate change policy is an expensive dud,” he said. http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/revealed-80cm-sea-rise-warning-20130819-2s7dt.html#ixzz2cYUs6TeK
Australian Capital Territory’s two new large scale solar energy projects
More Solar Farms For The ACT http://www.energymatters.com.au/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=3896 Two new solar projects for the ACT combined with the 20 MW Royalla Solar Farm will generate enough power to supply 10,000 homes. 20 aug 13,
The two new projects are Zhenfa Solar’s 13-megawatt Mugga Lane Solar Park near the Mugga Lane Resource Management Centre, and Elementus’ 7-megawatt OneSun Capital Solar Farm in Coree.
Large-scale projects are chosen via the ACT’s auction process; which is operated under a tender-like process where companies compete for the right to a feed-in tariff and proposals are evaluated in terms of their overall value-for-money.
“The ACT Solar Auction is delivering large scale renewable energy at an affordable price,” said the Territory’s Minister for the Environment and Sustainable Development, Simon Corbell. Continue reading
Exploding the myths, the disinformation, about renewable energy
press coverage is important because it can influence not only “what people perceive and believe” but also “what politicians think they believe.” Actually, Germany gets only about as much annual sun as Seattle or Alaska; its sunniest region gets less sun than almost anywhere in the lower 48 states. This underscores an important point: solar power works and competes not only in the sunniest places, but in some pretty cloudy places, too.
A pervasive pattern
The Fox Business example is not a singular incident. Some mainstream media around the world have a tendency to publish misinformed or, worse, systematically and falsely negative stories about renewable energy. Some of those stories’ misinformation looks innocent, due to careless reporting, sloppy fact checking, and perpetuation of old myths. But other coverage walks, or crosses, the dangerous line of a disinformation campaign—a persistent pattern of coverage meant to undermine renewables’ strong market reality. This has become common enough in mainstream media that some researchers have focused their attention on this balance of accurate and positive coverage vs. inaccurate and negative coverage. Continue reading
AUDIO: In Nimbin, NSW, environment and renewable energy are election issues
Nimbin community leader says environment, renewable energy high on local agenda http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-08-20/nimbin-community-leader-says-environment-renewable/4898840?section=nsw Radio ABC News AM 20 Aug 13 We’re in Nimbin, a northern New South Wales village that was revitalised decades ago when people moved here from the cities, way before tree and sea change became a byword for frustrated and disaffected urban and city folk. People in Nimbin lay claim to old, green credentials, and they’re wondering what happened to those halcyon days when the environment was way up there on the political agenda.
Confusion in the Liberal camp over climate policy
Liberal candidate unable to explain Coalition’s climate change policy http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-08-19/liberal-candidate-unable-to-explain-coalition27s-climate-chang/4896078 20 Aug 13,
A Liberal candidate in the northern Adelaide seat of Wakefield has admitted he does not know anything about the Coalition’s climate change policy.
In a debate between Liberal candidate Tom Zorich and Labor member Nick Champion, mediator Peter van Onselen asked Mr Zorich to explain how the Coalition’s Direct Action plan would work.
Mr Zorich told the audience he was not across the issue and did not have an answer.
“I will say to you as the candidate, as a candidate, as a candidate and a businessman I’m not across everything. My opponent has already acknowledged that. I’m sorry Pete, I haven’t got much to tell you about that,” he said.
Mr Zorich’s response was met with jeers from the crowd. Continue reading
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 