Green Groups Back Tax Plan; Green Loan Assessors Still Waiting

Key green groups, who have long endorsed the stalled trading scheme, joined a broad coalition yesterday of green groups, unions and welfare bodies that is calling on the government to adopt the tax proposed by the Greens. Meanwhile the Rudd government’s green loans scheme remains dysfunctional with hundreds of home sustainability assessors reporting that they are battling to survive due to delays in being paid.

Tom Arup reports for The Land (14 April 2010):

KEY supporters of the government’s climate-change policies are backing an alternative proposal for a two-year carbon tax to break a deadlock on the emissions trading scheme.

Key green groups, who have long endorsed the stalled trading scheme, joined a broad coalition yesterday of green groups, unions and welfare bodies that is calling on the government to adopt the tax proposed by the Greens.

The proposal, which has been lifted from the government’s Garnaut review into climate change, would tax greenhouse gases at $23 a tonne for two years and would use part of the money raised to compensate households and trade-exposed industries for cost increases.

The tax would be a precursor to an emissions trading scheme which caps the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by industry and requires companies to buy permits for each tonne of carbon that they want to emit.

In a letter to the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, the coalition called on the government to act on climate change before the next federal election.

Source: www.theland.farmonline.com.au

Adam Morton in The Age (16 April 2010):

April 16, 2010

THE Rudd government’s green loans scheme remains dysfunctional with hundreds of home sustainability assessors reporting that they are battling to survive due to delays in being paid.

Despite assurances that extra staff would ensure deadlines were met, an industry survey this month found 93 per cent of assessors were waiting more than the promised month to be paid. A third said it took more than two months; nearly one in 10 more than three months.

The Association of Building Sustainability Assessors said it got daily complaints about unpaid invoices and an unresponsive federal bureaucracy. Many of its members were battling debt, having taken out loans to set up green businesses.

Paul Barbieri, an assessor based in Cockatoo in Melbourne’s outer south-east, said he had been living on credit while waiting for the government to honour invoices worth $12,000. A former earth-mover, he said he had not been paid for work since Christmas.

”When I pull up the bowser to fill my truck with diesel, it costs a couple of hundred dollars and I’m hoping there is enough in the bankcard to cover it,” he said. ”I believe in the program and the things it will achieve, but I wouldn’t be part of it if I had my time over again.”

ABSA chairman Wayne Floyd said acute financial stress was common. ”Reading the member reports, we’ve advised some people to seek help from [depression support service] beyondblue,” he said.

Mr Floyd said there was no sign the green loans program had been run more effectively since responsibility for it was stripped from Environment Minister Peter Garrett and handed to Climate Change Minister Penny Wong in February.

Promised before the 2007 election, the scheme offered households a free environmental assessment and interest-free loans up to $10,000 to improve energy and water efficiency.

An ABSA submission to a Senate inquiry into the program said many faults had not been resolved since its introduction last July.

Some changes in February were welcome, but others had created new issues. An estimated 10,000 people have taken approved training programs, but the government limited the number of contracts to 5000 and introduced a personal cap of five assessments a week. It means the best-paid assessors can earn only $1000 a week.

The government also abolished the $10,000 loans and announced 600,000 extra sustainability assessments.

The association survey found 75 per cent of assessors believed the five-job weekly limit meant it was no longer viable to set up a sustainability business.

A Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency spokeswoman acknowledged some payments had not been fast enough, but said others had been held up due to incorrect invoices being submitted.

Acting Greens leader Christine Milne said an excellent scheme would crash if the rate of payment was not fixed.

Opposition climate action spokesman Greg Hunt said there had been no progress in fixing the program.

Source: www.theage.com.au

Severe Energy Crunch Looming as Oil Supplies Run Down

Peak Oil is not some myth. It is a very simple equation based on supply and demand related to a very finite resource. And it could arrive sooner rather than later. The US Military says: “By 2012, surplus oil production capacity could entirely disappear, and as early as 2015, the shortfall in output could reach nearly 10 million barrels a day.”

Paul Syvret in the Courier-Mail (16 April 2010):

RISING oil prices pose a grave threat to global economic recovery, according to some economists.

Thus it was sobering this week to read that the US military has warned the world faces a “severe energy crunch” and looming oil shortages.

According to a Joint Operating Environment report from the US Joint Forces Command, “a severe energy crunch is inevitable without a massive expansion of production and refining capacity”.

The report says the central problem for the coming decade “will not be a lack of petroleum reserves, but rather a shortage of drilling platforms, engineers and refining capacity”.

And it warns: “Even were a concerted effort begun today to repair that shortage, it would be 10 years before production could catch up with expected demand.”

More ominously, the military predicts a “Peak Oil” scenario – where demand outstrips the world’s supply capacity – as soon as 2012.

“By 2012, surplus oil production capacity could entirely disappear, and as early as 2015, the shortfall in output could reach nearly 10 million barrels a day.”

Current oil demand is about 86 million barrels a day.

The repercussions of Peak Oil have potentially grave consequences both economically and militarily.

On the military front the USFC notes that already Chinese “civilians” are in the Sudan guarding oil pipelines to protect supply, and that this “could portend a future in which other states intervene in Africa to protect scarce resources”.

“The implications for future conflict are ominous, if energy supplies cannot keep up with demand and should states see the need to militarily secure dwindling energy resources,” the report says.

“While it is difficult to predict precisely what economic, political and strategic effects such a shortfall might produce, it surely would reduce the prospects for growth in the developing and developed worlds.

“Such an economic slowdown would exacerbate other unresolved tensions, push fragile and failing states further down the path toward collapse, and perhaps have serious economic impact on both China and India. At best, it would lead to periods of harsh economic adjustment.”

Energy will be king in the coming decades, and we must exploit our (bountiful) resources wisely, while preparing ourselves for much higher prices and potentially lower domestic economic activity (aside from coal and LNG exports).

Peak Oil is not some myth. It is a very simple equation based on supply and demand related to a very finite resource.

And it could arrive sooner rather than later.

Source: www.news.com.au

Lucky Last – In the footprints of immigrants

What is a sustainable population for Australia?  Where are our people coming from? Once here, migrants add to the nation’s population – and to the economy – which, inescapably increases the burden on Australia’s environment. Graham Readfearn reports on the question of population on the ABC Environment portal (15 April 2010):

How many more migrants can Australia handle?

Migration contributes massively to Australia’s population, but the environmental impacts aren’t as simple as they seem.

WHEN migrants arrive in Australia they bring with them hopes for a new life which for some might even stretch to a four-burner barbecue and backyard pool. For others the hope might be for a steady income, a life free from repression or simply better weather.

Whatever their motivation, once here migrants add to the nation’s population which, inescapably increases the burden on Australia’s environment.

Latest figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show that between September 2008 and 2009, 450,000 new people called Australia home, tipping the country’s population over the 22 million mark.

Some 66 per cent of those new people came via boats and planes. But will these migrants bring with them habits that are any better for Australia’s environment or the nation’s contribution to global emissions of greenhouse gases?

“It’s a very complicated issue,” says Charles Berger, director of strategic ideas at the Australian Conservation Foundation which wants population growth to be acknowledged as an official “threatening process” by the Federal Government.

“The profile of individuals that might be coming to Australia isn’t the same as the average profile of the country they’re coming from. It might not be the rural Indian villager coming to Australia, but the accountant from New Delhi who is already leading a more carbon intensive life. But once folks do come here, they are immediately plugged into our electricity system which for the most part is using coal-fired power unless they choose renewable energy.”

Official United Nations estimates say by late next year the world’s population will reach seven billion. By 2050, it is predicted to be above nine billion.

Almost all of the globe’s population increase will be seen in poorer countries where people have ecological and carbon footprints far smaller than in Australia.

One detailed study from WWF suggested that each person on the planet needs an average of 2.7 hectares of good land to produce what we consume and absorb our waste.

In 2005, this demand on the planet’s resources was outstripping supply by 30 per cent as the planet only had 2.1 hectares of productive land available per person.

Migrants to Australia will become part of an average ecological footprint which stands at 7.8 global hectares, one of the highest in the world.

And the UN points out that by 2050 there will be 2.4 million people each year migrating from a poorer country to join those consumption-driven lifestyles in developed countries.

How full is full?

Barney Foran, a research fellow at Charles Sturt University, has a long history of studying the connections between populations, the environment and the economy.

“We should be aiming to stabilise our population,” he says. “Even at 30 million we could feed and water those people but with current systems of farming, city infrastructure, waste management, transport and increasing greenhouse gas emissions, we are back in the 1950s in terms of the technical standards of much of our infrastructure.”

He says that even if Australia reached 30 million, this would still be “grossly unsustainable” given current patterns of consumption and lifestyles.

So where are the migrants, the driving force for Australia’s current population boom, coming from? While the most visible arrivals to Australia are no doubt those arriving by boat seeking refugee status, they’re a tiny proportion of arrivals.

ABS analysis last year showed only 13,000 of the 206,000 permanent visas granted to migrants were given for humanitarian reasons, the rest came mainly as skilled workers or to join family members.

The contribution of natural births is also minimal. Women of child-bearing age in Australia are having an average of 1.97 babies each – a rate just below the 2.1 level required to keep the equilibrium between births and deaths.

According to projections from the Australian Treasury, even if migration levels dropped, as they are expected to, there will be 35.9 million in the lucky country by 2050.

The country contributing most to Australia’s net migration is China, which added 28,700 people to Australia’s population in 2007/08. New Zealand lost 27,400 to Australia, followed by 24,000 souls from the United Kingdom and 23,900 from India.

All these imports would leave behind a country with much lower carbon footprints than Australia’s which, according to the International Energy Agency, stands at 18.75 tonnes just from burning fossil fuels for energy and transport.

When 28,700 migrants arrive from China, they swap their average ecological footprint of 2.1 hectares per person for a far more damaging scenario.

According to analysis from Dr Bob Birrell, of Monash University’s Centre for Population and Urban Research, rising population will be responsible for 83 per cent of the total growth of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2020.

Dr Birrell was a member of the Hawke Government’s National Population Council which disbanded in the mid-1990s after recommending, among other things, that the Government should establish a ministerial portfolio for population.

He says: “The stated environmental aspirations of our Government are totally in conflict with its economic and population aspirations.

“It is not so much a question of how many people Australia could carry, but rather what is a sensible number in terms of balancing people and nature.”

Dr Birrell believes Australia should aim for a stable population of around 26 million which is “still too high” but given current trends, “is the best we could hope for”.

Yet there is research to suggest that the global impact of people migrating from a low-carbon lifestyle to one of high consumption is further compounded with each generation.

In the journal Global Environmental Change, a study last year found a child born in the United States (a country with near identical per capita emissions to Australia) would be responsible for 9441 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions when you also take into account that child’s expected descendants.

However, under the same rules, a child born in India would be responsible for 171 tonnes or 1384 tonnes for a child born in China.

Barney Foran points out that as the world’s environmental resources are now interconnected through world trade, “all affluent people have to radically change their footprints, whether or not they’re in Mumbai or Sydney”.

Environmental refugees

Environmental degradation and worsening climate change isn’t just a potential effect of population growth, it could also be a cause of mass migrations around the globe.

Former Australian Government climate change advisor Professor Ross Garnaut warned in his report that Australia would “not be immune from the consequences of climate-induced migration” in the Asia-Pacific region.

Low-lying Pacific nations such as Kiribati, Tuvalu and PNG’s Carteret Islands are among those who fear that rising sea-levels are putting their future in doubt.

Other more populated countries, in particular Bangladesh, Egypt, China and India, could generate millions of climate refugees.

Two new documentary films, Climate Refugees and Sun Come Up are highlighting the concerns of many campaigners and communities.

http://www.abc.net.au/environment/articles/2010/04/15/2874088.htm