In Western Australia it’s the battler households taking up solar panels
Battler Households Driving Western Australia’s Solar Uptake http://www.energymatters.com.au/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=3550 by Energy Matters, 15 Jan 13, In Western Australia, like elsewhere in the nation, solar power uptake isn’t being driven by the rich, but by the mortgage belt. Western Australia now boasts over 100,000 rooftop solar panel arrays across Perth and the South West.
According to The West Australian, figures provided by Synergy show the southern suburb of Canning Vale had highest number of solar panel installations (2239) as of December 19, followed by Thornlie (1513), Baldivis (1376), Willetton (1299) and Ellenbrook (1198).
None of Perth’s affluent suburbs featured in Synergy’s top 20 list of solar panel installations in Western Australia.
The results again bust the myth that solar rebates and subsidies have primarily benefited the wealthy. Western Australia’s experience has been repeated throughout the country.
In an analysis of solar energy systems installed under the Renewable Energy Target carried out last year by REC Agents Association (RAA); the Association found suburbs with the highest solar uptake were typically in the outer metropolitan mortgage belt.
The Clean Energy Council’s Solar Power Australia 2011-12 report states over half of solar households have an annual income of less that $100,000 annually and more than a quarter earn less than $65,000 a year.
Solar panel uptake is being driven primarily by ongoing and substantial electricity price rises.
According to solar provider Energy Matters, a 3kW solar power system installed in Perth will generate more than 12kWh a day on average. Based on the price of a good quality system supplied and installed by the company; the electricity produced will work out to cost under 6c per kilowatt hour over the life of the system – far cheaper than retail rates.
Households in Western Australia can also benefit from the state’s feed in tariff that pays 8 – 50c per kilowatt hour for surplus electricity exported to the mains grid, depending on location. Solar feed in tariff incentives are also available in other states; but with the price of electricity so expensive now the focus is increasingly on self-consumption.
Climate predictions coming true: Australia should lobby UN for action
It’s happening – just like climate scientists said it would, January 14, 2013, The Age, Ian Lowe
We should use our UN position to press for urgent global action.
“…….Of course, it has always been hot in Adelaide in summer. There have been days over 40 degrees every year since we abandoned the old Fahrenheit scale that gave us more impressive readings of over 100 degrees. Tasmania is recovering from dreadful fires and the heatwave in New South Wales is producing bushfire conditions described as catastrophic. Again, there have been bad bushfire seasons in the past.
No one extreme event is by itself an indication of climate change. However, we should recognise that the overall pattern of more frequent and more severe extreme events is exactly what climate scientists have been warning about for 25 years.
When I wrote Living in the Hothouse in 2005, the publisher put a striking picture of the 2003 Canberra fires on the cover. He explained his thinking to me. The science is telling us that such events, historically happening once in 100 years, would now happen much more often. That is what global warming is doing. It is increasing the probability of extreme events such as the 2009 Victorian Black Saturday fires or the current conditions in NSW.
For decades now, the insurance industry has recognised the reality of climate change and its costs. As one executive told me at the 1997 Kyoto conference: ”We see the evidence in the red ink on our balance sheet, the result of rapidly increasing property insurance payouts.”
In 1997, most commercial sectors were in denial about climate change, as the fossil fuel industries and their political supporters still are. But those who collect hard data on the consequences of extreme events already knew what was happening.
As Australia recovers from the events of last week, we face a future of increasing average temperatures and more severe extreme events: heatwaves, bushfires, cyclones, floods. It is getting harder to accept the obfuscation and delaying tactics of the fossil fuel interests and their supporters. Some are still saying they doubt the science, even though it has been correctly predicting what would happen for 25 years.
It is a question of risk. Even if we thought there was still some doubt about the science, how much should we be prepared to gamble on the hope that it might be wrong? Nobody would get into a car if they knew there was a 90 per cent chance its brakes or steering would fail and risk their life. Few would be prepared to accept a 10 per cent chance. Even the prime minister warned people in Tasmania of the likely consequences of failing to take concerted action to slow climate change. But we don’t yet have a policy response that reflects the urgency of the situation.
We now have a modest price on releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, but it should be increased to a level that would drive investment into clean energy supply technologies. We have a target of getting 20 per cent of our electricity from renewables by 2020, but we could do much more with policies to support solar and wind energy. We aim to reduce our national greenhouse gas pollution by a totally inadequate 5 per cent by 2020, whereas we should have a target that reflects the urgency of the situation. We are still exporting hundreds of millions of tonnes of coal and planning to open new large export coal mines, as if we just didn’t know that the coal will be burnt and accelerate climate change. A visitor from another galaxy would conclude that we just did not understand the risks we are taking, as if we were all too stupid to have listened to our best atmospheric scientists.
We are now on the UN Security Council, an opportunity to influence global events. As well as getting our own house in order, we should be urging the world to respond. We face a bleak future otherwise
Military exercises will go ahead on Aboriginal land, if landowners can be bribed
the project had been frustrated by another
Aboriginal group, the Kokatha, who have objected to the land use under
heritage provisions.
It is understood the commonwealth will offer the Kokatha $2 million to
compensate them for their concerns over the land use, which if
accepted will allow the ILUA to proceed.
Warring remote clans delay expansion of military training area BY:
SARAH MARTIN : The Australian January 14, 2013
THE creation of one of Australia’s largest military training areas in
South Australia’s outback has been delayed by up to five years because
of a territorial war between two Aboriginal groups.
The Cultana training area near Port Augusta, 300km north of Adelaide,
was to be tripled in size to 1600sq km by 2009 to allow for live
firing exercises for a full battle group. The area, which resembles
the terrain of Afghan battlefields, was also intended to host training
exercises for the Army’s 7th Royal Australian Regiment Battle Group,
which relocated to the Edinburgh base in Adelaide’s north from Darwin
in 2011.
However, a delay in finalising the Indigenous Land Use Agreement for
the expansion has pushed the completion date to beyond next year. Continue reading
Recommendation to keep Australia’s Renewable Energy Target, including Small Scale Scheme
Small-scale Renewable Energy Scheme (SRES) to be retained and improved Whilst the CCA recognises that merging the LRET with the SRES may be cost-effective, the CCA recommends keeping the two schemes separate as it considers that there are less disruptive ways of addressing concerns over costs.
Australia: Renewable Energy Target to be maintained http://www.mondaq.com/australia/x/215886/Renewables/Renewable+Energy+Target+to+be+maintained13 January 2013Article by Elisa De Wit and Florence Riviere
Following the stakeholder consultation in October 2012, the Climate Change Authority (CCA) has recently released its final report (Report) on the Renewable Energy Target (RET).
The CCA has recommended that the key elements of the RET be retained. This recommendation is based on the CCA’s view that the RET has a continuing role to play in supporting investment in renewable generation in an uncertain policy environment. Instead of challenging the existence or the substance of the RET, the Report focuses on ways to improve the RET.
No changes to key elements Continue reading
Maralinga Aboriginals and veterans blocked in their quest for justice
No way forward for Maralinga victims ABC News Jan 11, 2013 Aboriginal
people exposed to British atomic tests in the South Australian outback
have been told by lawyers their fight for compensation is over because
it is impossible to prove radiation caused their illnesses.
Seven atomic bombs were detonated at Maralinga in the 1950s and ’60s
on land that has since between handed back to traditional owners.
The Aboriginal Legal Rights Movement employed legal firm Hickman and
Rose to pursue a class action in the British courts on behalf of
Aboriginal people from the area.
The movement’s director of legal services Christopher Charles says the
firm is unable to mount a case because it cannot prove ionising
radiation is dangerous to human health.
“Regrettably it’s been made very clear that they just cannot proceed
in the English courts,” he said.
“Modern medical science has to date not been able to find a way to
prove a causation link between ionising radiation and subsequent
illness and until such time that causative link is proven and able to
be proven, these cases won’t be able to proceed……
Aboriginal people were planning to join the class action if the case
was allowed to proceed…….
Mr Charles says Aboriginal people have been deeply disappointed by the
development……
Last year, Britain’s Supreme Court blocked an attempt by 1,000 British
Maralinga veterans to seek compensation over the tests.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-01-11/fight-over-for-maralinga-victims/4460542
“An Aboriginal Embassy event on 26th is not ours”
Coonamble, NSW, January 2013 – – Aboriginal sovereignty activist, Michael Ghillar Anderson, makes clear that an event being organised by the National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples (NCAFP ) for 26 January at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra, is NOT an Aboriginal Embassy initiative.
The spokesperson for the Sovereign Union of First Nations and Peoples in Australia emphasises that the NCAFP is a government funded organisation that has not gained the majority support of grassroots Aboriginal people.
“But Congress has chosen the Embassy for its discussion on ‘Sovereignty, the Constitution and Congress’,” Mr Anderson writes in a media release.
“This debate on continuing Aboriginal sovereignty and its relationship to the Constitution from Britain needs to be had and I recognise Congress’s efforts to have a national conversation.
“But there is still an odious stench of contradiction surrounding this, because Les Malezer and Congress are publically supportive of the token Constitutional reform.
“Their failings are paramount when we realise that Congress has no model; they promote themselves for any Constitutional inclusion that does not affect our sovereignty, our inalienable inherent right as First Nations Peoples.
“If Congress understands that sovereignty is an issue on the lips and minds of every Aboriginal person, Congress must put out their thoughts for scrutiny so that we are not dealing with slogans.”
Mr Anderson’s release in full: Continue reading
Sydney to cop very high UV radiation
Extreme UV radiation levels warning, Hills News, Jan. 11, 2013 NOT
only is Sydney suffering from a heatwave, the area is also
experiencing extreme ultraviolet (UV) radiation levels which can be
damaging to people’s skin.
UV levels for Friday, January 11 were recorded by the Bureau of
Meteorology at an extreme level of 13. While on Saturday, January
12, temperatures are said to reach 42 degrees Celsius with a UV rating
of 12.
Regional manager for western Sydney at the Cancer Council, Rory
Alcock, said UV levels past three could damage skin.
‘‘The UV Index starts from a low level of one to two,’’ Mr Alcock said.
‘‘A level of over three can be strong enough to damage your skin.
‘‘Australia has among the highest ratings of skin cancer. ‘‘Two in
three people will develop skin cancer before the age of 70.’’
For the best protection against UV rays, Mr Alcock recommends a
combination of sun protection
measures……http://www.hillsnews.com.au/story/1230027/extreme-uv-radiation-levels-warning/?cs=12
Old-time crusader for the nuclear lobby, Leslie Kemeny rides again
Noel Wauchope, 11 Jan 13 Make no mistake – the nuclear lobby is on the job in a big way in Australia. Leading the charge is that energetic nuclear promotion group in South Australia – Barry Brook and Ben Heard.
But they’re not alone – with many vested interests pushing the pro nuke message. For example, The Age’s recent song of praise for thorium reactors.
Now the Canberra Times gives that tireless old warrior Leslie Kemeny yet another platform for his pro nuke spruik.
Since the 1970s Kemeny has had well over 200 opinion pieces published.
I find it quite remarkable that Kemeny gets such coverage, as he trots out pretty much the same old arguments, and denigrates opponents in the same old ways. Kemeny consistently ignores the unsolved problem of nuclear wastes, the environmental effects of radiation, the huge costs of security and of protecting the wastes for hundreds, thousands of years.
In the Canberra Times, Kemeny quotes as evidence this statement by Sir Chris Llewellyn Smith – ”The nuclear accident in Japan has not killed anybody. There may be one or two people who will die of cancer, but we are talking of very small numbers, if any.”
Here Kemeny brings in that tired old argument style from the tobacco and asbestos lobbies – . cigarettes never killed anybody – maybe one or two will get lung cancer.
Kemeny goes on at length about global warming and the necessity for nuclear power. But to make nuclear power effective against global warming it will have to produce 16,000 Mtoe of energy per year – a 25-fold increase on its current level. Today the world has 440 operational nuclear reactors, so 25 times more means 11,000 reactors. To have these in 35 years means building, on average, about one a day. Or in an exponential growth scenario, the world would need to sustain an annual increase of 8% per year in the number of operational nuclear reactors for 35 years. Many of these would need to be located in failed states and countries currently beset by internal wars
As usual – Kemeny dismisses renewable energy policies of Kevin Rudd as “merely symbolic gestures and political spin”. He has no answer to the number of scholarly studies that show that Australia could power all its electricity by renewable means.
Twenty-five years ago, Kemeny had already published dozens and dozens of newspaper articles, and they were subjected to critical analysis by Professor Brian Martin, who was then teaching in the science faculty at the Australian National University.
Martin concluded his analysis: “In quite a number of ways, Kemeny in his public advocacy of nuclear power does not fit the image of the objective, trustworthy expert: he addresses only some of the issues and seldom replies to anti-nuclear arguments; he presents large amounts of irrelevant material; he is subject to inaccuracy, and on occasion fails to acknowledge his mistakes; he continually denigrates opponents; he speaks from a position representing a potential conflict of interest; and his expertise is mostly irrelevant to the issues, or of doubtful quality.”
Nothing changes, for this retired nuclear warrior. I guess it would be like expecting a Cardinal of the Catholic Church to consider the possibility of there being no God.
Australia’s Maralinga atomic test victims – soldiers and Aboriginals – deserve compensation
Government must do the right thing by Maralinga victims, 11 January 2013. The Greens have called on the Government to ensure victims of the atomic testing at Maralinga are properly compensated after a British court decision overnight shattered hopes for justice.
Greens spokesperson for nuclear policy, Senator for Western Australia Scott Ludlam, said the hopes of Australians exposed to nuclear testing in the 1950s were dealt a serious blow by another UK court ruling against compensation.
“In 2010 the British courts ruled British veterans who participated in nuclear tests in Australia could not sue the Defence Ministry because they could not prove their illnesses were caused by exposure to radiation. Now, Aboriginal people expose to the same toxic tests have been told their legal fight is over for the same reason.
“Foreign Minister Bob Carr should be on the phone urging the British Government to deal directly with the victims – outside of court – and compensate them appropriately with an act of grace payment.”
Senator Ludlam said the veterans have said the exposure caused cancer, birth defects amongst their children, and other disorders such as anaemia.
“There is no doubt these people were exposed to dangerously high levels of radiation and there is no doubt many of them have suffered greatly, but it is almost impossible to prove concretely that the testing more than 50 years ago caused their illnesses and the illnesses of their children.
“The British Government detonated atomic bombs in this country and should take responsibility for the consequences. People should need only to prove that they were exposed to high levels of radiation as a result of the weapons testing in order to get compensation,” he said.
Australia’s Opposition leaders not interested in global warming. Abbott too busy fighting fires
Blaming climate change for heatwave ‘simplistic’, The Age January 10,
2013 Judith Ireland ACTING Opposition Leader Warren Truss says it is
”too simplistic” to link the current heatwave and fires to climate
change……
Earlier this week, when touring fire-affected areas of
Tasmania, Prime Minister Julia Gillard linked extreme weather events
to climate change. She said: ”While you would not put any one event
down to climate change … we do know that over time as a result of
climate change we are going to see more extreme-weather events.”
As Fairfax Media reported on Wednesday, the Bureau of Meteorology says
this heatwave – in terms of its duration, intensity and extent – is
unprecedented in its records.
Mr Truss is acting Opposition Leader as Tony Abbott has been deployed
to Nowra, New South Wales, as a volunteer with his local fire brigade.
Mr Abbott has delayed his annual holiday by three days to help the
Davidson Rural Fire Brigade. :
http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/political-news/blaming-climate-change-for-heatwave-simplistic-20130109-2cgug.html#ixzz2HbICnoMZ
Scary facts on Australians, UV radiation, and skin cancer
“Forgetting to cover up is simply scary when you think about the 115
South Australians who die from melanoma skin cancer every year.”
but each time you burn, the UV
radiation causes damage to the DNA in your skin and as you get older
your body’s ability to kill those damaged cells is scaled back.”
Skin cancer message not getting through Health reporter Jordanna
Schriever Adelaide Now, The Advertiser January 09, 2013 SOUTH
Australians are being sloppy when it comes to avoiding sunburn.
SA Health latest figures to the end of November show 33 people were
treated in hospital for sunburn and 17 for sunstroke.
Of the total, 11 were children and, in all but one case, the children
were admitted because of sunburn.
Cancer Council SA chief executive Brenda Wilson said she was deeply
concerned by any sunburn-related hospital admissions because of the
avoidable, long-term health consequences. Continue reading
Aboriginal culture shows that there are alternate ways to live
the visionary realm of the Aborigines represents one of the great experiments in human thought
The World Until Yesterday by Jared Diamond – review Should we look to traditional societies to help us tweak our lives? Wade Davis takes issue with the whole idea The Guardian, 9 January 2013 “……The goal of the anthropologist is not just to decipher the exotic other, but also to embrace the wonder of distinct and novel cultural possibilities, that we might enrich our understanding of human nature and just possibly liberate ourselves from cultural myopia, the parochial tyranny that has haunted humanity since the birth of memory……
Studies of the human genome leave no doubt that the genetic endowment of humanity is a single continuum. Race is a fiction. We are all cut from the same genetic cloth, all descendants of a relatively small number of individuals who walked out of Africa some 60,000 years ago and then, on a journey that lasted 40,000 years, some 2,500 generations carried the human spirit to every corner of the habitable world.
It follows, as Boas believed, that all cultures share essentially the same mental acuity, the same raw genius. …..
The Victorian notion of the savage and the civilised, with European industrial society sitting proudly at the apex of a pyramid of advancement that widens at the base to the so-called primitives of the world, has been thoroughly discredited – indeed, scientifically ridiculed for the racial and colonial notion that it was, as relevant to our lives today as the belief of 19th-century clergymen that the Earth was but 6,000 years old….. Continue reading
Kimberley gas hub an election issue – Compulsory Acquisition pressure on Aboriginal people
The Barnett/Grylls government’s act of Compulsory Acquisition…is simply another episode in the dispossession of
Aboriginal people. Compulsory acquisition can never promote nor lead
to self-determination. By no measure was the James Price Point Native
Title Agreement made with ‘free, prior and informed consent’,
consistent with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of
Indigenous Peoples.
The Greens say that it is morally wrong to use Compulsory Acquisition
to pressure native title holders to trade their country for services
and benefits that are entitlements of citizenship…….
Greens Candidate Chris Maher says the proposed Kimberley gas hub is
the central election issue this year. Kimberley Page, 10 Jan 13,
“But the election will be about more than just the gas hub; it will be
about a vision for the future of the Kimberley,” Mr Maher said. Chris
Maher
The Greens Candidate for the Kimberley. 8 January 2013 The central
issue for the Kimberley in this year’s WA State Election is the
proposed LNG processing factory at James Price Point, just north of
Broome Continue reading
Australia’s new weather demands a new politics
Events have not been kind to the likes of Abbott, Bolt and Plimer. The current heatwave – so severe that the Bureau of Meteorology has been forced to add a new colour to its temperature maps – is just the latest event in a decade of extraordinary weather: weather of the kind that scientists have long warned is a likely consequence of man-made global warming.
Tony Abbott says he’s currently on standby with his local fire brigade but as his opposition to effective action on climate change is likely to contribute to even more extreme events in the future, this looks like the most cynical kind of stunt politics.
Australia’s new weather demands a new politics; a politics capable of responding to an existential threat.
Heatwave: Australia’s new weather demands a new politics http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/08/australia-heatwave-weather
Climate change clashes with the myth of a land where progress is limited only by the rate at which resources can be extracted George Monbiot
guardian.co.uk, 8 January 2013 I wonder what Tony Abbott will say about the record heatwave now ravaging his country. The Australian opposition leader has repeatedly questioned the science and impacts of climate change. He has insisted that “the science is highly contentious, to say the least” and asked – demonstrating what looks like a wilful ignorance – “If man-made CO2 was quite the villain that many of these people say it is, why hasn’t there just been a steady increase starting in 1750, and moving in a linear way up the graph?”He has argued against Australian participation in serious attempts to cut emissions.
Climate change denial is almost a national pastime in Australia. People such as Andrew Bolt and Ian Plimer have made a career out of it. The Australian – owned by Rupert Murdoch – takes such extreme anti-science positions that it sometimes makes the Sunday Telegraph look like the voice of reason. Continue reading
Hotter world climate is the background to Australia’s unprecedented heat wave
‘
‘Clearly, the climate system is responding to the background warming trend. Everything that happens in the climate system now is taking place on a planet which is a degree hotter than it used to be.’’As the warming trend increases over coming years, record-breaking heat will become more and more common, Dr Jones said.
While temperatures vary on a local and regional scale, globally it has
now been 27 years since the world experienced a month that was colder
than average
Get used to record-breaking heat: bureau,
http://www.theage.com.au/environment/climate-change/get-used-to-recordbreaking-heat-bureau-20130108-2cet5.html#ixzz2HXDV5Yj7
January 9, 2013 Ben Cubby Environment Editor Temperatures off the charts as Australia turns deep purple
US posts year of record high temperatures The heatwave that has scorched the nation since Christmas is a taste of things to come, with this week’s records set to tumble again and again in the coming years, climate scientists said.
The hottest average maximum temperature ever recorded across Australia – 40.33 degrees, set on Monday – may only stand for 24 hours and be eclipsed when all of Tuesday’s readings come in. Previously, thatrecord had stood since December 21, 1972.
‘The current heatwave – in terms of its duration, its intensity and its extent – is now unprecedented in our records,’’ the Bureau of Meteorology’s manager of climate monitoring and prediction, David Jones, said. Continue reading
1 This month.
20 September –National Day of Action in Melbourne on the International Day of Peace
Help Aunty Sue Protect Her Land and Sacred Sites From Destructive Rocket Testing.
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Australians deserve the truth
about
AUKUS – https://aukuspublicinquiry.com/
PETITION – To: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the Australian Labor Government
of the week – Australians for War Powers Reform (AWPR)
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity
Antinuclear 