"but most likely will only impact on the poor the most"

You'd be surprised how often that comes up: http://www.ozpolitic.com/green-tax-shift/green-tax-shift-FAQ.html#Q3 (btw I disagree)

"most people will simply pay the bill and complain "

Not if they're in charge of the energy bill for a large company, or buying a new car, or deciding how close to work they are going to live, or choosing between roo meat and beef.

"I don't think it is so easy to reduce consumption "

You'd be surprised how far industry will go to save money over time. Of course it won't be easy, but this is the easiest way. And a green tax shift does not only result in a decrease in consumption. It will lead to a switch to renewables once the easier options have been taken.

"even then I can't see that making much of an impact"

It depends how much the price goes up.

"Does not seem to work for Petrol consumption"

Actually it did - have you seen the sale figures for bicycles and small cars?

"Aust's energy demand will continue to increase"

Eventually, when we switch to renewables and the normal economic processes take over, but in the short term we are headed for a reduction, if our politicians know anything about economics.

"The goal needs to be some form of electrical power supply attached to every house"

Why would that be better than say, wind farms?

“It is more about the reality than a contradiction”.

Thebull, our reality in Australia does not have to include endless growth in population and resource consumption. We cannot for one moment just accept that future outlook.

Globally we are just not going to be able to address the overpopulation issue, but we surely can in this country.

So there is a contradiction – thinking you are doing the right thing by promoting clean energy and frugal energy use, while just accepting that overall energy consumption is going to increase unendingly.

You also seem to be confused about the scale on which you are talking here. In your first post yesterday it was all about Australia; (“Australia’s expected energy demands….”) but today it is all about the global situation.

The two levels are extremely different. Basically, we have stuff-all ability to change worldwide population growth and energy-consumption patterns, but we CAN and MUST conquer these issues in Australia.

So back to the Australian situation, which I was talking about, following on from your obviously nationally focused comments; to just accept rapid growth is absurd, especially when it can so easily be dealt a huge blow by reducing immigration down to net zero, if not declaring a moratorium on it until such a time that the country reaches genuine sustainability and is able to absorb more people without negative impacts on our environment, and resource base.

“What is the current growth-at-all-costs regime”

It is the type of government that we have always had in this country, which is so fundamentally hooked into continuous population and economic growth that it is just completely unable to even entertain a suggestion that growth should be slowed or halted for a while, let alone us reaching a steady state economy and population.

This can’t be more obvious than in Sydney, Brisbane, Perth, etc, all of which have dire water problems… and all of which continue to have rapid growth in population, fully encouraged by just the same state governments that are telling all their citizens to use less water!!

This situation is just stonkering!!

Further to my last post…

“The simplicity in saying the answer is in stopping growth…”

The bull, I have never implied that THE answer is stopping growth. It is one factor, albeit the single biggest factor in the Australian situation.

Consider I=PAT (kindly brought to our attention by freediver), where I is impact on environment, resource base and quality of life, P is population, A is affluence or per-capita consumption and T is technology or efficiency of resource usage.

I should also point out that ‘growth’ has two very different components; expansion and technological advance. The first component has become highly undesirable if we are to reach sustainability, whereas the second component is highly desirable.

The trouble is the two are seldom differentiated, which is very confusing for all.

Ludwig

I'm with you over your concerns with increasing Australia's population. Bumping up population figures is foolhardy indeed given the dire situation of the environment and the destruction of the ecolology by the human footprint.

While gas is also a pollutant, I understand that gas emits only half the carbon based emissions compared to coal. Given the amount of gas we have, I am at a loss as to why this fuel has not been seriously considered for debate, at least for an interim period to mitigate our current pollution.

The latest annual figures for coal in the National Pollutant Inventory (www.npi.gov.au) reveals that 88 coal facilities reported to the NPI. The total amount of all pollutants emitted during 04-05:

........................88 facilities = 97,600,319 kgs

The latest annual figures for 3 uranium mines reveals the total pollutants emitted for 04-05:

........................3 facilities = 6,100,125 kgs

Radioactive emissions are not included.

Most of the pollutants are carbon based - a few, non-carbon based, however, all are hazardous.

A quick calculation to achieve an average for each facility reveals that uranium mining is emitting almost double the pollutant emissions, per facility, than the coal industry.

Average emissions for Coal = 1,109,094 kgs per facility

Average emissions for Uranium = 2,033,375 kgs per facility

For governments to declare that we must have nuclear energy "clean and green", to reduce our carbon based emissions, wins the medal of the century for spin and deception.

There are many new uranium tenements with companies eargerly waiting for the green light, to commence operations!

In addition, I believe there are already some 100 million tonnes of radioactive tailings to dispose of. Additional tailings have been dumped in an aquifer with no remediation. It's mind boggling to think that we may proceed down the dead end path of nuclear energy!

We've plenty of sunshine - let's get serious about solar.

Ludwig: Australia’s overall population growth is about what… 0.8 per cent, per year. That is NOT rapid growth. Sure we need to get people back to living in country towns, and out of Sydney etc, but that is a new subject. Yet our demand for power is going through the roof, driven by demand from industry and general economic growth and prosperity.

Freediver: Build or Tax let me see… If I where a politician what would I do? I would build… because Tax is BAD.
My electricity bill is about $600 per year, gas another $500, petrol another $1,500. Lets assume you can introduce a ‘Green Tax’ at say 50%, I won’t like it, but it will not change how I live. I just can’t see that becoming a reality, no politician or political party would go for that level of Tax and survive an election. It may effect some usage for some people, but I can’t see it happening to the extent needed to avoid an alternative to more Coal fired power stations.

I’ll put my money on building more power stations of some description and the price being only marginally higher. If Nuclear can be done in a safe, cost effective way “a thorium nuclear reactor” maybe a possibility, if, whenever, proven: http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/node/348 (Freethinker), I’ll put my money on that, as a political bet for what will happen, rather than what should or could happen.

I’m unsure how much Thorium we have in Australia or the World for that matter. I assume it is more abundant than Uranium, if that is the case, once proven, it just needs to be sold as new safe “Thorium Power” with a nice community message and a bright logo.

As for Wind Farms, just about every place I go in the country, I see signs on fences, “Wind Farm Free Zone”, not popular in country areas! Noisy & ugly and you need lots of then to power a small town, last I heard was about 100 windmills to power a town of under 20,000 people, in a good windy area.

“1) It's about carbon emissions, not energy consumption”

Freediver, it needs to be about sustainability. Energy consumption is a subset of that. And carbon emissions is a subset of that.

Let’s stop thinking about ‘subsets’ in isolation and start thinking about overall sustainability in a holistic manner! PLEASE!!

The notion of debating energy use or clean vs dirty energy or nuclear vs fossil fuels, without putting it fairly and squarely within the context of sustainability is just crackers!

“2) It depends on how quickly you reduce emissions.”

How quickly do you think we can reduce emissions, or overall energy consumption on the personal level, compared to our current rate of population growth? Even if by some miracle we can reduce them substantially and quickly, how long do you think it would be before population growth cancelled out the gains?

This is what I said on another thread; “Even if we are hugely successful in addressing the per-capita resource-consumption aspect, to the point of reducing it by say 25%, and the population increases by 33%, then we have gained nothing. With the current mindset of our political masters, the population is set to increase by an amount that will cancel out and completely overwhelm even the best improvements in the average personal footprint, and in a pretty short timeframe, after which it will of course just keep on increasing.” http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=5315#66383

Continued