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The Forum > Article Comments > Doing it tomorrow > Comments

Doing it tomorrow : Comments

By Nicholas Gruen, published 17/12/2008

We need to provide substantial incentives for upgrading the environmental performance of Australia’s households and businesses - today.

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If we all improve energy efficiency by say 10% and the population increases by 10%, what have we gained?

Population is rapidly increasing. Improvements in energy efficiency and various other environmental parameters are perhaps very slowly improving….in some areas.

Is there an overall gain for the environment, and for our quality of life into the future? NO. The net direction is still solidly towards ever-greater energy consumption and environmental pressure.

So Nicholas, advocate population stabilisation and then maybe your energy efficiency message will have some credence. In isolation, it is not helping us. It is in fact helping to facilitate an ever greater population.

Secondly, a little bit of personal improvement in energy efficiency, whether it be spurred by government handouts or whatever, is more akin to a feel-good measure than to an effective improvement in efficiency. Thus it is really an enforcement of the business-as-usual paradigm, just with a bit of a green veneer.

Maybe one of the major factors in ordinary peoples’ procrastination on improving their personal energy efficiency and environmental footprint is that they can see, at least subconsciously, the futility in it for as long as we have a rapidly increasing population and hence a rapidly increasing rate of consumption and environmental impact that completely overwhelm any small improvements.

The main thing we need to stop procrastinating over is the imperative to get Rudd to implement a policy of net zero immigration and an end to the despicable baby bonus.
Posted by Ludwig, Wednesday, 17 December 2008 9:19:29 AM
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I think boosting the green economy will make everybody feel better. There is not only the immediate fiscal stimulus but it may soothe nagging fears that high energy prices and climate dramas will make a sudden return. The green stimulus should concentrate on fast payback activities. For a private house that might be a lighter coloured roof, extra wall insulation, double glazed or tinted windows and awnings. A total-watts meter in the kitchen could enable the electricity drain of each appliance to be deduced. Rainwater tanks could be the mains top-up type and big enough (>5kL) to justify plumbing to the house not just the garden. Solar water heaters for sunny areas. For many houses that outlay could top $50k but average say $5k. Times 9 million homes or whatever and this is a very large stimulus for the construction and hardware industries. Those boosted industries might re-employ people from retail, finance and mining.

The great thing is that all of that micro-infrastructure will seem like money well spent in the year 2020 if petrol is $5 a litre or rationed, airconditioning is remote controlled by power companies and we have Class 7 water restrictions. Can't happen? How quickly people forget.
Posted by Taswegian, Wednesday, 17 December 2008 12:46:40 PM
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Is it procrastination or masterful inactivity? Anyone who is a bit brighter than the average bear knows the frustration of having extra information, that would bring about a different outcome.

The Australian Government is going to have to stop procrastinating, and re-establish the Commonwealth. In forty years, the experiment of having a United States of Australia in a country with the population of a decent sized US State has resulted in enormous waste, corruption and total abuse of civil rights. The Australia Act 1986 is an oxymoron the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights contradicts. A Covenant reinforces Commonwealth Sovereignty, but we are procrastinating. For 40 years dishonesty has ruled Australia. New South Wales has become Rort Central, since Abraham Gilbert Saffron became King of New South Wales, and established the Saffron Supreme Court and abolished the existing one in 1970.

How many millions of dollars flowed into the Liberal Party through the lawyers who kept Abe Saffron in business? As a good businessman, there would have been the same millions, flowed into the Labor Party, and until he died Abe was the King, because he knew how much he had paid in bribes. Must we continue to procrastinate, and put off reestablishing the Rule of Law, of a United Commonwealth. Abe got the Federal Court of Australia he wanted, and the High Court he wanted, from the Liberal Party.

King Abe’s government has to have closet Jews and Muslims as Judges. They cannot be Christians or honest. A Jewish or Muslim man or woman, can accept that one man or woman can act as a Judge, and that discrimination is acceptable. The systems that work are based on Christianity, on honesty and integrity. All three are missing in New South Wales and Australia. The expense of maintaining nine separate “governments” is too high. One God, and Christianity means one nation, under Almighty God.

Repeal S 39 Federal Court of Australia Act 1976 and Order 46 Rule 7A Federal Court Rules inserted to placate King Abe, and the procrastination will end. A little competition, is a magical thing
Posted by Peter the Believer, Thursday, 18 December 2008 6:10:23 AM
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Well Peter thanks for the offering from the bigoted, nasty Christian right.

A letter from the Age 17th December http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/letters/go-with-the-times-20081216-6zrv.html?page=-1 sums up our policy towards renewable energy clearly -

Policy rains on our solar parade

WITH so much in the news about global warming, climate change and the need for all of us to do our bit in terms of alternative, renewable energy sources, it seemed an appropriate time to mention our 12 solar panels, installed in April 2007 at great cost to cut back our carbon footprint and ease our energy bill.

We have recently received our first "solar credit" after 18 months of even bigger energy bills. The amount credited was $1.20. Apparently, with the Victorian solar energy scheme, we still pay for all the energy we use (even though we generate it ourselves with our solar panels) and are only credited with anything sent back into the grid.

Needless to say, we are not exactly overjoyed and, in fact, would quite like our money back. No one explained that we would be subsidising the energy company with our solar panels.

In Germany and other parts of the world, solar panels installed on residences actually cover the cost of energy used and you still get paid for any excess that goes into the grid.

There's something terribly wrong with this system.

Anne S. Walker

The real pity of our short sighted policy of guaranteeing the revenue streams of the private electricity retailer and generator is that a third of all electricity generated in Yallourn is lost in transmission to Melbourne so there are clearly massive savings to be made through installing solar panels where practicable.
Posted by billie, Thursday, 18 December 2008 11:09:59 AM
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It is rather sad that so many people call the Christian electorate of Australia quote: the bigoted, nasty Christian right.

In point of fact the nasty bigoted right, is almost all dedicated to secularism, and is not Christian at all. Kevin Rudd realized this when Kim Christian Beasley, kept being shy about his middle name, conferred upon him when the Labor Party had Christian leaders. Kevin Rudd began his push on the 7th August 2006, when he addressed the National Christian Heritage Forum, in Canberra, and convinced a broad section of Christian leaders the Labor Party was not untrustworthy. After he was elected leader, he came a courting, as they say, the Christian vote, and his plea for a fair go was taken by 200,000 people when he and John Howard both put their case to the biggest jury of all time, by you tube. The result is history, 23 lower house seats got new bums on them.

You are quite right to whinge about your power situation. You should be upset at the double dipping, and unconscionable conduct of the power companies. If you left off the nasty bigoted Christian right, for a bit, billie, and started to examine the Good Labor Legislation, enacted by Paul Keating’s Government, you would see you should have a remedy under the Trade Practices Act 1974. It is the nasty bigoted secularists that have robbed you of a remedy. Invest a further $100 on an annotated Trade Practices Act 1974 and you will find there all you need to know.

You know its alright to vote Labor. You can be a Christian and support Kevin Rudd, and with a bit of luck, Kevin Rudd will give you a fair go. He has made a start, and it is going to take time to fix sixty years of secularist misrule. Send him your concerns on his website. He needs to know what’s going on, or he cannot fix it. You can get further help from Chris Bowen or Craig Emerson. Give them a chance.

Above all keep smiling. The best is yet to come
Posted by Peter the Believer, Thursday, 18 December 2008 1:36:44 PM
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Nicholas Gruen says “we provide substantial incentives for upgrading the environmental performance of Australia’s households and businesses” and “we killed two birds with one stone”.

My assessment is that they must have been stoned in order to just clobber the usual sitting ducks while avoiding the real target: total consumption of resources from ever-increasing populations.
What worse procrastination takes place than to, yet again and as usual for mainstream economists, avoid addressing the impossibility of long-term continuity for anything other than steady-state no-growth economics?

How many more years will we witness “what a heavy toll procrastination takes on our environment” when these very same economists complaining about it avoid pointing the finger at Rudd’s enthusiasm for increasing Australia’s rate of population burden and its resulting pressure upon the environment. Since coming to office, the rate has increased from an extra million in four years to a current extra million in just three.

Nicholas Gruen, however good the trimmings, without addressing population pressure the dish you offer us is a lemon, squeezed hard. It leaves a very sour taste to anyone with common sense
Posted by colinsett, Friday, 19 December 2008 3:42:13 PM
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