I came across this great video of Peter Cundall (if you live in Oz you won’t need to be told who he is!) at Green Gavin’s site.
Rather than attempt to embed the video here (which I’ve never done before and would probably blow up the whole of WordPress if I tried), I’ll just refer you to Gavin’s site. If you haven’t met Gavin before, you’ll be amazed at what this guy is doing to reduce his impact on the planet. Go take a look.
While I’m here I may as well put forth my own views on the whole issue of climate change and that you-know-what tax!
I’m pretty disappointed that so many people have come out against the tax. I don’t just mean dummies like the scientifically-illiterate Leader of the Federal Opposition. Are ordinary people so dumb too that they really want themselves and their children to suffer the effects of climate change? It’s going to be pretty nasty when it really starts to kick in.
Peter Cundall points out that it’s really a pollution penalty tax. Which it is. Human activities (burning fossil fuels) are increasing the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. I expect lots of people don’t care, one way or the other about the effects of this. Maybe they just don’t understand the effects or maybe they’re just wilfully blind. The rest of us, who are doing our best to reduce our CO2 emissions have a right to be angry at those who aren’t doing anything to reduce theirs. We’ve gotta live on this planet, too.
Personally, I don’t agree with compensating people for the tax, even though it looks like I’ll come out of it ahead. The whole idea of the tax is to force people to reduce their CO2 footprint. The tax should be a penalty for what is essentially pollution of the atmosphere which maintains the earth in a state conducive to life.
Giving people extra money means they’ll just spend it on more consumption, which means more CO2.
But then, nobody ever listens to me! <sigh> Back to the veggie garden!
Foodnstuff 
July 4, 2012 at 11:16 am |
I agree with you and think that those people being rewarded, should be those that are attempting to live more sustainably. Give people interest free loans for installing solar panels, a wind turbine or to grow their own food! Give people an incentive to change, not a placebo sticking plaster for the inevitable price rises. None of us can afford to stick our heads in the sand any more and its time that the governments of the world stopped pussy footing around the populace and told it like it really is…”We DON’T HAVE A CHOICE PEOPLE”. That’s it…That’s ALL!
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July 5, 2012 at 7:03 am |
Interest free loans for installing solar panels? Now there’s an idea!
But you’re right, narf, we don’t have a choice. It’s ‘start to prepare’, or suffer the consequences. We’ve gone too far to go back, or maintain our current lifestyles.
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July 4, 2012 at 11:22 am |
I was TRYING to reduce my rss feed reader and now I have another blog added!…sigh…I guess Gavin is worth getting up 10 minutes earlier for…
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July 6, 2012 at 7:45 am |
Of course, you both know that blogging and downloading anything from the internet, yes even emailing, is all adding to the general problem, don’t you?????? 🙂 And it may only be a little bit, (0.02g of carbon dioxide is created) but multiply that by all the times each of us does that, then multiply that total by all the millions of people doing it all over the world!! (Something like one billion Google searches made each day!) It was actually worked out in the ‘States in 2006, that the energy needed to power it, is the same as the energy used in 5.8 million American households! Wow! It needs 10 power plants simply just to run the internet capacity in the ‘States now and projected emissions from data centres will exceed those of the airline industry by 2020.
In Australia, it is estimated that 80% of the population uses the internet, and 85% of them search the internet on a daily basis.
I’ll get off my soap box now!……she says, adding to the problem by answering this blog!!! 🙂
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July 7, 2012 at 2:36 am |
Yes, I know, my greener than green friend. If anyone could see this, it would be you. Hats off to you and an elephant sticker.
I kid myself that a blog that educates people about the crises on the horizon and which gives them the information to help them prepare, is better than a load of mindless tweets (don’t you think Twitter is well-named….i.e. just for twits?).
One day, grids around the world will go down and all this internet stuff will come to a dead stop.
Woe betide the twits who didn’t use it wisely to gather information when they had the chance!
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July 9, 2012 at 7:28 am |
Hi, it’s Chris from Gully Grove. I am now able to comment without my WordPress account. I will have to do an update on my blog as to how I changed it.
Back to the CT though, carbon is actually a pre-requisite to plants generating oxygen. It’s also part of the natural cycle, so it’s been happening long before civilisation invented a taxing system for it. Every generation we raise now however, will associate carbon with bad for the environment. It seems highly ironic, to label what’s good for the environment as bad and still allow pollution not to be called what it is.
That makes our intelligence as a nation look rather shoddy, when we call a pollution tax, a naturally occuring element in the environment. Does it really matter as long as the pollution is still being taxed? That’s the foot in the door though isn’t it? If the leaders of our country can get this past in the name of the environment, what else can they misconstrue as a problem (I mean a solution)?
We fail the test if we don’t notice. 😉 And if we don’t notice, we deserve to be led down another disappointing round of solutions to a problem that has nothing to do with natural elements.
The problem has always been ripping out the plants that can turn carbon into oxygen. We’ve been doing that at a phenominal rate since the industrial revolution. And the further our industrial society heads in the direction of technological solutions (aka solar, wind and other alternative energies) it will be at the expense of plants. Because that’s the trade off no-one seems to be noticing.
If we’re still building stuff and taxing people, while not replacing the trees that turn carbon into oxygen, we’re still going to end up with climate change. I take no solace from the CT, although I know a lot of people are pinning their hopes on it.
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July 10, 2012 at 6:52 am |
Hi Chris, glad you solved your WordPress problem.
I realise, too, that we are creating problems at both ends of the system. Putting more carbon into the atmosphere and removing the very plants that would soak it up. I doubt many people could or would be able to make the connection.
I’m not pinning my hopes on the carbon tax, either.
If we change the system to the point where it won’t support us any more, then, so be it. It’s all part of life on this planet.
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July 12, 2012 at 4:39 pm |
Hey, I like that – it’s all part of life on this planet. 🙂
We are just another species in line for “pruning”. The more we don’t recognise plants are the planet’s lifeline, the more we will get pruned back in return. It’s balance rather than malice on the behalf of nature.
I’m not entirely sure how it will play out, but I keep planting plants and looking for ways to invite new species into the landscape. Where there’s diversity there’s naturally more resilience with extremes.
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