Fossil fuel marketing terms swamp the ABC and national media

Fran Kelly.

Hats off to ABC Radio National’s Breakfast announcer, Fran Kelly. On Wednesday, when picked up by a listener following an interview, Kelly said she was wrong to use the term “clean coal”, because it didn’t exist.

She was right. But then Kelly got into murky territory.

Better, she said, to use the term “low emissions” to describe the coal plant technology now known as HELE (high efficiency, low emissions). But why? It may not be as extreme as “clean”, but “low emissions” in this case is just another marketing term from the coal and fossil fuel lobby.

After all, these plants claim – at best – to emit between 0.7 tonnes and 0.8 tonnes of greenhouse gases for every megawatt hour of electricity produced. That sounds like high emissions technology to me.

It is only “low” in comparison to the incredibly dirty coal plants that preceded them, and their emissions are substantially higher than any other technology – including gas, but particularly solar, wind, hydro and nuclear.

Read the RenewEconomy story by Giles Parkinson - “Fossil fuel marketing terms swamp the ABC and national media.”

Environment groups forced to justify tax deductability

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nvironmental groups and the market system favoured by Australia’s Federal Government have long been at loggerheads.

The prevailing market system, despite what many businesses suggest, cares primarily about profits and illustrates little concern for the environment.

And now the market-drive Abbott-led Coalition Government disenfranchise environment group in anyway it can.

An April 1 interview on Radio National by host Fran Kelly - “Parliamentary inquiry into environmental organisations' donation spending on RN Breakfast” – discusses the reality that environmental groups could soon be facing a fight to hold on to their tax deductible donations.

Rolling back three decades of environmental leadership

Australia appears to be rolling back three decades of global environmental leadership, according to U.S. conservation biologist, Dr. Thomas Lovejoy

Prof Thomas Lovejoy.

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Dr. Lovejoy is presently in Australia for scientific talks and has said we, that is you and me and the rest of humanity, are deluding ourselves if we believe many of the stories presently being put about in relation to climate change.

He argues that the proposed “safe” two degree increase in global temperatures above that of the pre-industrial era is clearly misleading.

In a Radio National interview today with host, Fran Kelly, he has suggested with should be aiming for 1.5 degrees if we are to maintain a livable world.

Dr. Lovejoy introduced the world to the term “bio-diversity”.