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What is in this issue
- In a carbon trading world, who or what should be subsidised?
- Featured article – why bother about climate change? What about the sceptics?
- What the ACCC says about carbon claims
- Asking for help please
- Links to articles
In a carbon trading world, who or what should be subsidised?
From yesterday (1 July), businesses emitting large amounts of greenhouse gases will be required to monitor and measure the emissions ahead of reporting them to the Government by October next year. Carbon Trading is on its way!
OK with carbon trading all energy costs will go up and this poses a dilemma for government in how to balance the future needs of society with the voter backlash. This is especially hard for a Labour Government who has made promised about helping “battlers” and working families. It is to be hoped that the impacts on small business are not forgotten as this sector is responsible for a very large proportion of Australia’s employment.
My serious suggestion is to subsidise more efficient heating, cooling and lighting appliances plus insulation so that people’s to reduce energy consumption. It would be relatively easy to subsidise insulating state owned public housing but I believe they need to bite the bullet and take this on for all low income rental housing, even if some of it is privately owned because this step will result in less energy use while paying low income power bills will not result in the needed behaviour change and so not reduce the energy use.
Perhaps they should actually subsidise insulation across the board and also simple technologies like most power turning off when people leave the building or section of the building, as happens in some hotels now when you take the card out of the slot by the door.
Similarly we need more public transport and car and bike parking near bus stops so as petrol goes up there are viable alternatives to reduce costs of commuting to work, school, shops etc.
Subsidising existing energy wasting behaviour is completely counter productive. We should be looking at how to most simply reduce energy waste.
Featured article – why bother about climate change? What about the sceptics?
We hear a lot of debate about scientific certainty and global warming and this is increasing as the political pressure mount with the introduction of carbon trading. This weekend’s news featured several interviews with climate change sceptics.
As someone who is both a scientist and a business person I can see the dilemmas.
As business people we want certainty. We need to know that we are basing our business decisions on fact. This is an investment – right! In fact business decisions are always based on best available evidence plus cash flow and other economic issues. Seldom on certainty so we need to get over it and accept the need for action.
As a scientist I have been trained to accept uncertainty. Nothing is ever proved it just becomes more likely with increasing evidence. We do have increasing evidence of a severe problem.
As a grandparent I cannot think of any situation where I would put my beloved grandchildren at a 99% chance of harm and ignoring global warming comes into this category!
This weekend I listened to four interviews with scientific sceptics. One even pointed out that the big freeze during Napoleon’s Russian campaign even disproved that summer temperatures were always warmer that winter because that year was an exception – except that he forgot to mention that the summer involved coincided with a huge volcanic explosion in Indonesia that blanketed the world’s atmosphere in ash and dropped global temperatures because of the shading. I also listened to a description of the North Pole ice melt and the prediction that the North Pole may be sailable water this summer with NO ice. It is true that as there is less ice over the pole the dark water absorbs more heat from the sun and melts the remaining ice faster whereas the ice is white and reflects the heat.
There are two unarguable facts.
- One is that the natural processes that have caused climate and sea level change over the millennia will continue, we do not understand these fully. and we have no control over them
- The other is that we now have a man made layer of atmospheric pollution, mainly carbon dioxide, methane and nitrogen oxides and this acts as an insulating blanket keeping an unnatural amount of reflected heat inside this layer of greenhouse gasses and this is causing warming that is additional to any natural changes that may occur.
It is this rapidly increasing atmospheric pollution that the carbon trading schemes are aimed at reducing. That will affect us all and the sooner we all take action to reduce our carbon and carbon equivalent footprint, the better.
What the ACCC says about carbon claims
The ACCC have released a new paper about greenwash and false and missleading carbon claims. WE all neeed to read it because there are large potential flow on impacts. Overall, the flow on paperwork is laible to be much greater than the introduction of the GST was.
Asking for help please
I would really appreciate it if any of you could tell me what search words you would put into Google or other search engines if you were looking for services like mine? Could you Contact Me and let me know?
I do offer help to individuals and businesses wanting to reduce their carbon footprint.
- I have a very low cost book “Reduce Your Carbon Footprint” for $11.95 digital or $3 extra for postage if printed) that has lots of suggestions to help save greenhouse emissions AND money both at home and at work.
- My environmental management system training helps you to systematically identify your carbon and greater environmental footprint, to manage this and as a result, save money.
- Home study courses, these include separate modules and mini modules and also "Green Your Business; the Do-IT-Yourself" home study course. The home study courses are the same training but without the support and coaching. If you decide you want to upgrade to the coached courses you can easily do this and I will discount what you have already spent off the comparable group training course.
- Group training courses and the next group training course starts shortly so don’t miss out.
It is a new financial year and if you start now you can be certified by Christmas and use your Christmas mailouts as an opportunity to let people know about your new green certification.
My Guarantee
“If you implement the training provided you will reduce your risks, increase your efficiency and this greater efficiency will lead to increased profits! If an unavoidable problem causes you to drop out, I will fit you in to the next available training vacancy so you can complete and in the unlikely event you have a problem at initial audit I will work with you online at no extra charge to help you achieve a successful certification.”
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Regardless of what you believe about climate change it is crazy to continue to pollute the atmosphere. It is crazy to put our children's future at risk if there is strong evidence of harm.
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Here are the links to the latest articles on the Enviro Jean Blog
What was interesting is that they Greens were supported by some of the Nationals who asked “Why on earth are we going to give a tax deduction to coal companies, who are receiving record prices and record returns, Read more..
Many big companies are now pushing triple bottom line and corporate social responsibility requirements deep down into their supply chains. This means that the small suppliers at the bottom of the chain need to start taking notice. Read more...
Goodyear Tyres is the latest company caught out making exaggerated green claims. Read more,,
I chose to move to an apartment about two and a half years ago. It has a smaller footprint, is very well insulated both for temperature and sound, is close to the centre of the city and on a regularly serviced bus route. Read more..
There is increasing “green” information on news channels. The following collection caught my fancy tonight.
- One third of the water use in the Murray Darling system is used by the dairy and cattle industry. This was followed...
- Whether carbon trading is a tax grab by Government or a legitimate.....
- 10,000 farming families off the land. We do need farmers ....
- Problem in disposing of compact Fluorescent lights....
- Sense and training vs engineering solutions...Read more...
Kindest regards
Jean Cannon
Customer information is never supplied to any other list or provider. We retain your information only so we can serve you better and supply you with bonuses and additional information as it becomes available in the future. Your information is kept using our strict in-house confidentiality procedures.
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