You are right to discuss some of the shortcomings with the way the Index is constructed. I think it's so flawed the ACF should hang its head in shame and embarrassment. This critique discusses some other flaws:

http://melbourneurbanist.wordpress.com/2010/06/16/is-darwin-really-australias-most-sustainable-city/

What are we to do?

Once upon a time, we had the Domocrat's fairy commune down at the bottom of the garden, where we could consign this type of beetlejuice. Now we have nowhere.

Come back girls, we miss you.

Bob,
we had a PM who was deeply committed to doing something about emissions.
You and your party would not work with him and voted down the ETS.

Why, when you had the chance to do something positive, even if you thought it was not enough, did you act so negatively.

The Greens and the Liberal about face cost us a PM that was prepared to do something. JG urged the dropping of the ETS because of the political BS that the greens and Libs carried on with.

I think you missed an opportunity to work with someone who is committed to climate change, Kevin Rudd, and now are prepared to do a deal with a PM who will act on it only if it is ok by the polls and the backroom boys. Of course Tony Abbott thinks the whole lot is crap, so you have really contributed to Australia moving back about 15years on action against climate change.

I lost a lot of confidence in the greens over this. To me this is similar to the actions of Meg Lees of the Democrats, whose support of the GST saw the demise of the party in subsequent elections.

Oops, I posted in the wrong thread. This was meant for the Bob Brown article. Perhaps it has a certain relevance here too as little is being done to encourage the soft city dwellers into being more considerate of the environment.

<< This would be a good time for sustainability to enter the nation’s political debates. >>

That's got to be the understatement of the century Peter and John.

It is gravely, dismally and pathetically unfortunate that genuine sustainability is being bypassed in this election lead-up, let alone not being treated as one of the highest priorities, especially after Gillard's initial comments on a sustainable Australia.

Whatever shortcomings there might be in the ACF Sustainable Cities Index 2010, we cannot escape the fact that within our cities and indeed our whole country we are living in a grossly unsustainable manner... and that we are going to come unstuck big-time if we don't get our collective arses into gear !! !!

For our aspiring Prime Ministers to completely miss this, or at best to treat it extremely superficially, is gravely, dismally and pathetically unfortunate and irresponsible.

Oh yeah, I said that.

But by crikey, it needs to be yelled from the rooftops!

Come on Ludwig mate. I'm sort of in agreement with you, but you do go on.

You sound like the priests of doom who reckoned England would run out of wood, because so much of it was being used to build ships of the Royal Navy.

So what happened? They used steel of course.

If we run out of oil, we will have to have lots of horses pulling carts delivering those plasma TVs.

Lots of horses, lots of horse dung to burn, to cook our dinners.

No problem mate.

What a sour neo-puritan whinge. Many of the things the authors bemoan about Perth are what makes it a good place to live. So even the working classes have swimming pools out west! I reckon that’s pretty good.

The first and most important thing that can be done to improve the sustainability of cities and of Australian generally is to reduce immigration numbers. The most obvious, practical 'cure' is to reduce or remove the root cause of the ailment.

Another very obvious and practical consideration would be to have obligatory standards applying to the construction of residential accommodation. At present there are voluntary 'standards' such as the Building Code and Australian Standards that are honoured in the avoidance of them. That there are no compulsory minimum building standards, or even the basic requirement to follow manufacturers' installation requirements, was the elephant in the room for the recent insulation installation debacle.

As well as the corner-cutting and poor worksmanship that are endemic in the home building industry, there is scant regard for building homes that suit the environment. Houses without eaves in temperate and tropical areas, western walls with large windows into the sun are common in Australian houses and shouldn't be, leading to discomfort and high energy costs.

Improving the standard, suitability and sustainability of construction is not possible where anyone who can strap on a nail pouch is required to throw up cheap pine and blue-board units to house a too rapidly growing population.

High population growth has required escalating taxes for the present population, examples being crippling hikes in council rates and vehicle registration taxes, to develop new infrastructure. There is no accrual accounting by government to provide for the maintenance and eventual replacement of existing infrastructure, examples being water and sewerage.

The future 'solution' will be more of what is currently happening which is that government services, such as street cleaning and general maintenance of health and educational facilities, will be gradually withdrawn from poorer areas, resulting in the slums of major US cities.

The first and obvious step (as well as a huge save in our taxes) is to:

STOP THE BABY BONUS.

We still need immigrants to make up for the skills shortage, thanks to the short sightedness of previous governments.

And I'll be watching Dick Smith tonight on ABC1 at 8.30 PM, for further ideas.

Sheesh, so those naughty people in Perth are buying air conditioners
in massive numbers.

Perhaps the authors should start to think outside of the square.
Murdoch University claims to be a place of talent. We'd
happily buy solar powered air conditioners, if they were available.
When its 40-45 degrees outside in summer, as happens in WA,
they would work even better!

I think you have buckley's chance of convincing consumers to
go without, now that they have become used to them.

When you look at the design and construction of the houses it is immediately obvious why they are hot boxes requiring expensive airconditioning. It is not as though better design would cost significantly more either and often it is only a question of a slightly different construction approach. Government and industry know that but palms get greased and then there are those campaign funds.

Government wastes our taxes feel good statements and brochures eg http://www.yourhome.gov.au/ but there are no obligatory standards. So the home construction industry is, to all intents and purposes, self-regulating. Government continues to throw problems back to the consumer who, if he cannot afford an expensive architect designed and supervised construction, is obliged to take what is on offer and 'suck it up' as the saying goes.

<< Come on Ludwig mate. I'm sort of in agreement with you, but you do go on. >>

D’ho Hasbeen, you sort of agree with me but you begrudge me the right to express it!

Bloody oath I go on… and on………. and on.

What you’ve read of my comments on OLO is but a small part of my repeatpeatpeatpeated spiel. I’ve only been on OLO for 4.8 years, but I’ve been repeatpeatpeating this message for 20 years!

I hope you saw Dick Smith’s docco and Q&A this evening. At looooong last, my message is sinkin’ in where it counts!

That’s the message about population stabilisation and sustainability. Unfortunately the message about oil dependency is still floating around above peoples’ heads and yet to penetrate their thick skulls.

<< No problem mate. >>

Huuuuge problem actually. We are so totally hooked on oil that our society is in real risk of collapsing if prices rise significantly, let alone if we can’t get enough of the stuff!

WE can’t just adapt overnight. Jobs will be lost en masse. Food supply lines will be severed. The rule of law will collapse.

OK, so this is way over the top……or is it ?? ?

<< The first and obvious step (as well as a huge save in our taxes) is to: STOP THE BABY BONUS. >>

Absolutely Severin.

<< We still need immigrants to make up for the skills shortage, thanks to the short sightedness of previous governments. >>

Dick Smith is advocating 70 000 per annum, which would be about net zero, and within which there would still be a significant skills category, as well as an expanded refugee intake. I concur.

Thanks Ludwig

I watched the doco and saw a part of the Q&A. How out of touch was John Elliot?

I thought D.S.'s humanitarian approach to immigration the most pragmatic. Our skills shortage was created here and can be remedied here as well.

It is up to us to urge our pollies to support infrastructure where it is needed: education, transport, health, communication and environment - not necessarily in that order but it requires a multi-layered response. There is no quick fix as the John Elliot's seem to think, therefore we need to ask, who is more likely to deliver a sustainable Australia?

It is simply not possible to provide the infrastructure that would be required for anywhere near the environmentally unsustainable population of big business's Big Australia.

Even if the money were available and the community is already being taxed to the hilt, the trades are simply not available to do the work. -Unless that becomes yet another immigration hike for skills, followed by another hike in building for more housing and for more infrastructure. It is as Dick Smith suggests, it is a carousel that is spinning ever faster.

On top of that we should not be forgetting that there is no accrual accounting by government and consequently no provision of funds for maintenance of existing and largely old infrastructure, or for its replacement. A new Sydney Harbour bridge anyone?

It is unreasonable to require that young Australian couples should continue to defer their one and a bit children or not have children, because of high housing costs, or through lack of fertility control options (or will) in other countries.

The democratic problem remains, Australians voted with their minds, hearts and feet in the Seventies for zero population growth (ZPG) and achieved it, realising full well the problems of sustainability and over-crowding. However, big business and government decided to frustrate the will of the electorate and went ahead with large scale immigration nonetheless.

Australians still demand ZPG and have woken up to the sly attempts of politicians to slip the issue onto the back burner again. The Greens did the same, suggesting a population review some time after the election, yeah right!

It should be remembered too, that the so-called problem of aging 'baby boomers' was largely attributable to large scale immigration post WW2 and the waves of migrants since, together with their extended families. In the Eighties for instance there were large hikes in immigration to build residential housing and infrastructure, guess why? It isn't only in war that truth is the first casualty, it is always apparent where there are windfalls of profit to be made.

Of course Australia's immigration is a Ponzi Scheme, it always was one.