Australia’s climate denialist government meets the reality of climate change
Australia’s extreme budget meets extreme climate, Guardian, Alex White 22 May 14, The Abbott government’s first budget was the least popular and most extreme in forty years, and was handed down during an almost unprecedented May heatwave.……On the climate and environment front, it is genuinely difficult to narrow down the most extreme elements of this deeply and widely disliked budget.
Firstly, the fact is that this is a deeply unpopular budget, and it has been presented to the Australian people by a government that is neither liked nor trusted……..
A particularly egregious cut is the abolition of ARENA, the renewable energy agency. This action is a loud declaration that the Abbott government is addicted to carbon-intensive energy.
Tied to this, although not a budget initiative, is the review of the previously bi-partisan Renewable Energy Target, with climate denier Dick Warburton appointed as review head. Before the election, there were clear statements made that an Abbott government would continue to support the renewable energy target. Greg Hunt, the environment minister, said before the election that the Coalition “does agree on the renewable energy target” and “support the RET, the 20 per cent”.
The cut to ARENA and the review of Australia’s renewable energy target is a breathtaking assault on the $18 billion renewable energy sector, and introduces substantial elements of sovereign risk for companies and people considering investing in this area in Australia. Before last year’s election, the Coalition repeatedly promised to keep ARENA. In opposition, the Coalition supported ARENA.
The Clean Energy Council has also expressed major concerns, a rare event for a body that has to keep governments on side. In a statement, the CEC deputy CEO said: “A global race for renewable energy is on, and the removal of ARENA will see potential Australian and international investors now look to countries with much stronger support for renewable energy innovation, meaning we may well miss out on billions of dollars of investment and highly-skilled jobs.”
(The Coalition had previously promised to remove funding for the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, an ideologically motivated decision based on Abbott’s view that it was “socialism masquerading as environmentalism”.)
Other renewable and clean energy programs have also been scrapped, such as the One Million Solar Roofs program, research into carbon capture and storage technology, the Clean Technology Program, the Cleaner Fuels grant scheme, and more.
There is a real risk that the result of the RET review will see the end of the renewable energy target, once a bi-partisan policy. Removing or reducing the renewable energy target, currently 20 percent by 2020, would effectively lock Australia to a carbon-intensive, fossil fuel addicted future.
Climate change remains a serious and present threat to Australia’s society and economy. Major global economic forces are moving to clean energy and low carbon technologies. China for example is planning to triple its solar capacity by 2017, and other major economies including US states and nations in the EU are heading in that direction also.
To do nothing about climate change, as the Australian government now appears committed to, is immoral and amounts to abandoning both current and future generations……..http://www.theguardian.com/environment/southern-crossroads/2014/may/21/may-heatwave-budget-2014-abbott-renewable-energy-cuts
Glut of uranium drops spot price to US$28 a pound!
Uranium supply cuts needed as spot price continues to tumble, Financial Post, Peter Koven | May 21, 2014 |Last week was another bad one in the uranium market, as the spot price dropped yet another dollar to US$28 a pound, the lowest level since 2005. By comparison, the price was US$66.50 prior to the Fukushima disaster in 2011, and topped out at more than US$135 in 2007.
Uranium miners maintain they are optimistic about prices in the coming years, as demand is expected to increase and outstrip supply. But that doesn’t help anyone in the short term, while Fukushima still looms large over the market. Scotiabank analyst Ben Isaacson said demand upside is “unlikely to stabilize” the uranium market this year, even with some Japanese reactor restarts, an acceleration of reactor starts in China and inventory building.
Instead, he said there has to be a response on the supply side, both from existing and planned mines.
“The challenge will be to figure out when/where the next supply cuts will come from,” he said in a note.
Mr. Isaacson noted that a lot of global production is inelastic to price moves, either because it is low cost, locked into contracts or politically important. He did not speculate on where the cuts will come from.
Another complication is that uranium enrichment capacity continues to expand globally. He said a glut of enriched supply could cause marginal demand for uranium to slow down…….http://business.financialpost.com/2014/05/21/uranium-supply-cuts-needed-as-spot-price-continues-to-tumble/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+FP_TopStories+%28Financial+Post+-+Top+Stories%29
Weipa solar project brings cheap energy to remote Queensland community
AUDIO: Cheaper electricity from Weipa solar project final act of axed renewable energy agencyhttp://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-05-22/cheaper-electricity-from-weipa-solar-project-final/5469770?section=qld Many remote communities around Australia are totally reliant on costly diesel fuel to provide the electricity that most take for granted. But the far north Queensland mining town of Weipa is adding solar energy to the mix in what’s being called an Australian first. It could be the final act for an agency that’s facing the axe after last week’s savage federal budget.
Documents reveal Japan’s deception on the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe
Credibility Questions on Fukushima http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/22/opinion/credibility-questions-on-fukushima.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=0 NYT 21 May 14, At the most dire moment of the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant three years ago, nine-tenths of the employees, including executives, panicked and fled the plant following an explosion.
So reports one of Japan’s most prestigious newspapers, The Asahi Shimbun. This report, based on previously undisclosed testimony by the plant manager, Masao Yoshida, is in direct conflict with the official account of that fateful day provided by the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company, or Tepco. It calls into question the truthfulness of both the company and, indeed, the government, which even now is trying to persuade the public to go along with the reopening of 48 nuclear reactors shut down after the accident, which traumatized the country.
The official version of events is that workers left the plant in a disciplined manner and retreated to another facility a few miles away — leaving behind a small band of intrepid workers who risked their lives to prevent the crisis from getting worse. According to the newspaper, Mr. Yoshida told investigators that he and 68 other employees had remained behind but that the flight of the others had been anything but orderly, contrary to company propaganda. Tepco’s official report states that Mr. Yoshida had ordered an evacuation to the undamaged Fukushima Daini plant about 6 miles away, but the newly revealed testimony indicated that he gave no such order and that the workers fled on their own. Mr. Yoshida died of cancer last year.
Japan’s nuclear industry has always acted under a veil of secrecy. One obvious imperative after the Fukushima disaster was for the government and the nuclear industry to be more transparent. But, even now, transparency seems to be elusive. And without it, ordinary citizens can hardly be expected to support the government’s plans. This latest revelation should jolt the Japanese public out of its creeping complacency about nuclear safety and demand proof from the government that it is proceeding with the utmost caution.
Sophisticated Farmers and Land Managers – Australian Aborigines across the continent
“Most other civilisations had various levels of dissent from time to time but here it seems there was a consensus on how to manage the land and the people.”
Mr Pascoe says he has received many calls from Aboriginal people recalling cultivation activities and stories. He expects further research will substantiate his claims.
Australian Aborigines Were Sophisticated Farmers and Land Managers ‘Hunter and gatherer’ label is a misnomer, say academics By Shar Adams, Epoch Times | May 21, 2014 SYDNEY–Australian Aborigines, among the oldest continual inhabitants of their land in the world, have long been depicted as hunters and gatherers. Mounting evidence, however, suggests they were not primitives but sophisticated cultivators and land managers.
Researcher and author Bruce Pascoe, a Bunurong man from south eastern Australia, searched the accounts of early explorers and settlers for evidence of cultivation and was astounded at what he found.
“I came across repeated references to people building dams and wells, planting, irrigating and harvesting seed, and manipulating the landscape,” he said.
One of the most vivid accounts was from explorer Charles Sturt, who was the first European to penetrate the interior and see the Simpson Desert. Continue reading
Australia’s energy utilities fight to stop rooftop solar
Solar Industry Battle — Australian Energy Utilities Pushing For End To Rooftop Solar Subsidies, Clean Technica 21 May 14 Australia’s major energy utilities are now united in pushing for an end to rooftop solar subsidies – pitching the incumbent utilities into a major battle with the solar industry and consumer groups over the treatment of household solar.
AGL Energy became the last of the major utilities to throw its hat into the anti-solar ring, declaring on Friday in its submission to the renewable energy target review that rooftop solar subsidies were no longer needed.
AGL Energy also said the large scale renewable energy target would be impossible to meet – earning an extraordinary rebuke from PowerShop, the Australian offshoot of New Zealand energy giant Meridian Energy, its joint venture partner in Australia’s largest renewable energy project, the 420MW Macarthur wind farm – of joining other utilities on the “dark side”.
The issue around support for solar, however, is now the major flash point for the industry. Given the stoppage in large scale developments because of uncertainty around the LRET, rooftop solar is currently accounting for the bulk of renewable energy investment in the country. It supports an industry that provides more than 11,000 jobs, and nearly $3 billion in investment in 2013, as well as supporting ongoing world-leading research.
Those jobs and investment are now under threat. Continue reading
220 years on, Australia’s Land War against the Aborigines still goes on
This is The Great Divide, this is the illness that sits on the nation’s psychological and social landscape. Despite all achievements in the past 220 years since the arrival of Captain Cook, it is still a Land War.
Australia is still fighting a land war and it’s the country’s great divide The Conversation, Ali Cobby Eckermann 22 May 14, In Australia there are many different views about the historical and current role of Aboriginal people in the national landscape.
This view fluctuates. ……..The diversity of Aboriginal people is an achievement we could all be proud of. From the traditional ways to the modern we now boast doctors and lawyers, nurses and teachers, builders and designers, and actors, authors, film makers, musicians of world class standards. We can even celebrate opera singers!
Most Aboriginal people work to give back to our community. We work to improve all aspects of life for our children and grandchildren, and to promote a better understanding of our cultural values. We work endlessly to cross the divide. And for us, culture is the key.
Of course there are some people who are not community focused, as in any society. From my personal experience, I can only calculate that this minority comprises those who have rejected culture. This is as confusing for Aboriginal people as it is for mainstream. But I reiterate, this is a minority of our mob.
However, the less enticing stories such as racism in sport, educational failures, and the refusal to include the Aboriginal historical wars in the Australian War Memorial quickly show a divide between black and white Australia. This is The Great Divide we need to address. This is “closing the gap” on a national psychological and social agenda………
The lack of proper consultations with Aboriginal people is a national shame. And even in my later years, when I am less able to travel for work, I will probably have to regress back to a system that does not value me, to die.
The Intervention is one example of all of the above. This was a Federal Government initiative that was conceived in 2007 with little consultation with Aboriginal people, and no regard to our psychological or social welfare. Continue reading
Australia should be a regional, even world, winner in renewable energy
Renewables race is one Australia should win, SMH, May 21, 2014 Elizabeth Farrelly “……The $2.3 billion defunding of ARENA, Australia’s renewable energy agency, may be less colourful than some other budget cuts. But in global embarrassment terms (excepting the camps, of which we should all be profoundly ashamed), abandoning renewables takes the cake.
And frankly, if we don’t have a planet, it isn’t going to matter what your GP costs. Right?
The renewables race is one Australia should win. Ours is the sunniest continent on earth. Every year, we are gifted 58 million petajoules of free energy: ten thousand times our total use. We’re young, wealthy, stable and more-or-less civilised. We also have wind, hot rocks and a massive coastline of potential wave power, to even out the bumps.
Sun, as solar gas, can be exported – like coal, only clean and free. But North Africa and the Middle East are also sun-rich. As Alan Jones MBE, who was until recently the City of Sydney’s trigeneration guru, warned: ”Whoever corners the market first will obliterate fossil fuels.”
It should be us. But since 1992 Australia’s share of the world photovoltaic market has plummeted, from 7 per cent to 1 per cent. This is why ARENA was established. And why the Abbott-Hockey shrinkage of it to one-thousandth full-size ends all hope……….
Australians (a recent CSIRO report showed) love solar energy. Yet at present it accounts for about 0.1 per cent of our consumption. And since our governments insist on seeing renewables as a cost, not an opportunity, it’s clear they won’t be taking us there any time soon.
The federal government is locked into its mining and fossil fuel mindset. The states, meanwhile, are so massively invested in coal-fired infrastructure – particularly that mass of poles and wires known as ”the grid” – they cannot encourage renewables or even level the field. Only about 10 per cent of your power bill, Jones says, is for retail energy. The rest pays the state grid monopoly. As people withdraw, these grid costs increase.
So we’ll have to do it ourselves. Germany’s renewables record is the more amazing because 65 per cent of its renewable energy is customer-owned. In January Hamburg bought back its grid from Swedish giant Vattenfall, ploughing half the profit into energy-bill reduction, the rest into renewables. Berlin has done the same. Since 2007, more than 200 German power-grids and water-systems have been bought by towns and cities.
The scale – the localism – can go smaller still. Lithium-ion storage for domestic solar is now the size of a small cupboard. This is being trialled in Victoria as we speak by SunPower, the world’s second-largest solar company.
Distributed energy is the energy of dissent. Government may disapprove, as Hockey does of wind farms, but that’s the beauty of microgeneration. It doesn’t need government. We can do it ourselves.
But sooner would be better than later. Now that Barack Obama has SPVs on the White House, will Abbott put $4.5 million worth on the Lodge? : http://www.smh.com.au/comment/renewables-race-is-one-australia-should-win-20140521-zrjp7.html#ixzz32Vfvsd6N
Climate change is a direct threat to Australia’s future prosperity and safety.
Australia’s extreme budget meets extreme climate, Guardian, Alex White 22 May 14,“……….The trashing of Australia’s renewable energy sector removes the last pretense that this government would take climate change seriously. No one who accepts the dangers of global warming would destroy their nation’s renewable energy capacity, or the fossil fuel industry’s incentives to develop carbon capture technology. (The bitter pill is that the Abbott government plans to keep billions of dollars worth ofcorporate fossil fuel subsidies with the diesel rebate, while increasing the excise for individual motorists.)
There are many other instances in the budget – too many to name – that should leave the Australian public, and the global community, under no doubt that the government is run by climate deniers.
It is clear now that the carbon price introduced by the former Labor government must be ferociously defended, and the government’sdiscredited “direct action” policy opposed. As an economic reform, the combination of the trading scheme and a steadily reducing cap on emissions is essential to both reduce Australia’s carbon emissions, and to ensure Australia remains a constructive player in global efforts.
It remains to be seen how the new Senate, where coal magnate Clive Palmer holds the balance of power, will act, but it is clear that both Labor and the Greens will block the repeal of the carbon price under the current senate. To its credit, Labor has remained firm in its support for an emissions trading scheme with a cap.
Australia sweltered through one of the hottest summers on record, and the winter of 2014 is preparing to match or break heat records. For people who do take global warming seriously, efforts to halt the Australian government’s reckless agenda now rests on the Senate.
The unseasonably hot May demonstrates yet again the pressing moral urgency of climate action; the assault on the renewable energy sector is yet another symptom of the moral failures of Abbott’s government.http://www.theguardian.com/environment/southern-crossroads/2014/may/21/may-heatwave-budget-2014-abbott-renewable-energy-cuts
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 