GreensBlog - the official blog of the Australian Greens Senators

It’s great that feed-in laws, regarded globally as one of the most effective mechanisms for boosting renewable energy and long-time Greens policy, are finally getting somewhere in Australia.

But it is deeply troubling that, in Victoria, they are being perverted in such a way as to make them greenwash rather than real, effective emissions reduction policies. Continue Reading »

Catching up on videos that I have meant to post here for some time, putting firmly the Greens’ position on Tibet.

Two are of Bob Brown speaking at the rally coinciding with the Olympic torch relay here in Canberra, and the third is Christine Milne’s speech to the Senate on the question of suspending standing orders to even allow discussion of the issue.

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It has been obvious for a while that there are some serious flaws with the NT Intervention and some alarming unintended consequences of the emergency response - but now it is becoming increasingly so.

It has become particularly apparent what a mistake the new Government made in Opposition, when they unreservedly and enthusiastically signed up to the Intervention without knowing the detail.

It’s a little old now, but I thought you’d all enjoy this short video about our planet’s energy supply.

Those of you who might still read The Australian would have seen that they splashed on their opinions page and in the news pages today the claims of Phil Chapman, Australia’s first astronaut, that climate change is bunkum and an ice age cometh.

Apparently global warming has stopped, we are now cooling, and it’s all down to sunspot activity.

The story might be worthy of consideration were it not for the fact that it is based on a completely inexcusable misuse of scientific data.

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I’m sure most people by now have seen An Inconvenient Truth. Well, you might not have seen Al Gore’s new talk on the global climate crisis, given in March 2008 at TED.com.

A friend just forwarded me this awesome video by the wonderful Blue Man Group. I remember it from a couple of years ago, but was inspired to post it here.

Love the expressions on the faces!

UPDATE: added another great vid below the fold.

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An edited version of this piece ran in today’s Crikey email. See also articles in today’s SMH, Financial Review and Age.

The environment movement has been united since 1972 on the fundamental issue of the polluter pays principle, stating that polluters must pay to clean up the damage they have created. It is the principle which underpins emissions trading schemes, and which drives the campaign in recent months to cut the massive subsidies to fossil fuels from the upcoming Budget.

By abandoning the polluter pays principle, WWF and the Climate Institute should be seen to have abandoned any remaining pretence of being part of the mainstream environment movement. But is this a split, or confirmation that these groups are not truly part of the movement? Continue Reading »

After some extraordinary work involving sticky-taping together a shredded document, the Tasmanian Greens have claimed the scalp of another senior Minister in the irredeemably awful Lennon Government -this time Deputy Premier and former Attorney-General, Steve Kons.

Observers of Tas politics might recall that Kons replaced Bryan Green as Deputy Premier when Green was forced out after being charged over the Tasmanian Compliance Corporation affair. Two Deputy Premiers forced out within 2 years. Do you think we could go a step higher next time?

For an excellent discussion of just how unpleasant Tasmanian Labor politics is, have a read of this post at New Matilda.

And for those who are interested in digging a bit further, Christine has compiled this Who’s Who of the Tasmanian Forest industry and Labor and Liberal Governments. Makes for a fascinating trawl.

For some time, we’ve been hearing persistent reports of deeper and deeper gloom pervading meetings and conferences around Australia and the world on geosequestration - so-called ‘clean coal’ technology, or carbon capture and storage. The research, which receives the lions share of government energy funding, just hasn’t been making progress. Years down the track, we are no closer to being able to demonstrate that geosequestration is a viable option.

This message was hammered home a few weeks ago when the world pin-up project, FutureGen in Illinois, collapsed thanks to the Bush Administration pulling out because the project was blowing its budget and timeline.

Now, just days after Australia’s first carbon storage research project opened in the Otways (Christine’s release here), the industry here is beginning to express real doubts about the prospects. Continue Reading »