Up in smoke: what did taxpayers get for the $2bn emissions fund?

At some point in June, the Australian government will announce it has spent up to $2.3bn over three years on a scheme that the prime minister believes is a reckless waste of public money.

The government’s enthusiasm for the Direct Action
climate policy has visibly waned since Malcolm
Turnbull returned to the leadership in 2015. 

That is not how it will be expressed. If the past is a guide, the government is likely to quietly issue an understated press release saying the latest auction of the emissions reduction fund – the scheme better known as Direct Action, which the former environment minister Greg Hunt described as the centrepiece of Australia’s efforts to tackle climate change – has been a success.

However, the specifics of how the money is to be spent will be all but impenetrable to most people.

Read the story from The Guardian by Adam Morton - “Up in smoke: what did taxpayers get for the $2bn emissions fund?.”

Swanpool Environmental Film Festival coming up in June

Another e-flow - but do we need it?

We're on the river most days, so we were watching for the environmental flush due to start on Saturday. By Sunday morning it was creeping over the sandbar and The Boss wasn't all that happy about it.

The next environmnental flow is happening but you can see
a dark strip low along the far bank, still damp from the last one....

He reckons the south- and east-facing banks are still damp from the last e-flow, which happened over a month in June to late July. That followed an autumn flush back in February for a month - now there's this one for 23 days and another one planned for November.

There's a few fingers in the e-flow pie: the water is owned by the Commonwealth Government after its program of buy-backs to meet the targets of the Murray Darling Plan and the responsibility for that water rests with the Environmental Water Holder.

Our Catchment Management Authority then works with the Water Holder to schedule the flows appropriately and Goulburn Murray Water, which runs the storages, actually releases it and warns its irrigators with pumps on the river that a flush is coming.

Read the story by The General on Country News - “Another e-flow - but do we need it?”

Lament for carbon tax now clearly understandable

Australia’s dumping of the carbon tax was lamented by thinking people all around the world.

Reasons for that sadness are now clearly apparent with the carbon intensity of Australia's main electricity grid having surged since the tax was abandoned.

Writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, the Environment Editor, Peter Hannam, said that on an annualised basis, emissions from the National Electricity Market serving eastern Australia have risen by 3.9 million tonnes since June, while the sector's emissions intensity has risen 11 per cent.

His story, headed: “Emissions for power sector jump as carbon tax ends” discusses this jump in carbon emissions.