Victoria needs strong climate targets

An open letter to Victoria’s Premier Andrews, signed by 285 businesses and organisations, has been published in a full-page advertisement in today’s Melbourne Age.

The letter was headed: “Victoria needs strong climate targets”.

It said:

Dear Premier Andrews,

Now is the time for courage on climate change.

This summer’s unprecedented bushfires are a tragic demonstration of the climate crisis we all face.

With only 1 degree of global warming, Victoria is experiencing more dangerous fires, heatwaves, storms and drought. These events cost lives. 

They put families, workers, businesses and all Victorians at risk.

Yet this is just the beginning. Without urgent action to reduce the pollution overheating our planet, we are on track for temperatures and consequences beyond our ability to cope.

We can only solve this crisis by acting together. Through the Paris Climate Agreement, the global community aims to limit warming to 1.5 degrees.

If Victoria wants others to do their part, we must do ours. By doing what’s right in this moment of crisis, you can send a clear signal to other states and countries.

Your government has taken some welcome steps – particularly with renewable energy – but now more is needed, and Victoria can reap the benefits of a cleaner economy with new industries and secure jobs.

By the end of March 2020, your government will set emissions targets for the next decade.

We call on you to set targets that ensure Victoria does our fair share to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees.

Environment Victoria played a key roll in the placing of the advertisement.

Leunig produces flames and fury

Leunig’s regular musings in the Melbourne Age seem to drive people to their extremes (and that how it should be) as they either love him or loathe him.

Here’s an example:

Golding from The Melbourne Age:

Vintage Golding from The Melbourne Age

Vintage Golding from today's (September 19, 2019) Melbourne Age

A regional commitment for combat climate change

"Golding" from The Melbourne Age:

Rights and wrongs!

Golding from today's Melbourne Age - 

Letters question Frydenberg and 'muddle-headed government'

Letters from today’s Melbourne Age - 

Age letter sets a challenge for Matthew Canavan

A letter from today's Melbourne Age: 

Age letter writers respond to Frydenberg claims

Today’s Melbourne Age had several letters written in response to an earlier letter from the Minister for the Environment and Energy, Josh Frydenberg, questioning his views.

Read the letters here.

Is it renewables of "reliables"?

Horacek in today's Melbourne Age.

Watch and note and you will 'see' climate change

Climate change advances, in human terms, slowly and almost imperceptibly.

To “see it” we just need to watch and take note, just as Seaford’s Jeanne James has in her letter to today’s (May 6) Melbourne Age.

Hazelwood: After 50 years, power shut down will take just three days

Hazelwood power station which will
 be closed later this month. 

After more than 50 years as a mainstay of Victoria's power generation industry, it will take just three days for Hazelwood to shut down.

Three of the Morwell power station's generating units will stop operating on March 27, a further three on March 28, and the final two a day later.

Read Darren Gray’s story in today’s Melbourne Age - “Hazelwood: After 50 years, power shut down will take just three days.”

Drunk robots': How driverless cars could leave humans behind within five years

Google has experimented with its
own self-driving car known as Waymo. 

Self-driving cars – regarded by many Australians as a form of "science fiction" – will be commercially available within five years and could eventually become so advanced that humans are regarded as "drunk robots" who are banned from driving, a federal parliamentary inquiry has heard.

In a submission to the inquiry, the mayors of Australia's capital cities say they expect autonomous cars to become commonplace between 2020 and 2025 and be safely moving in traffic with traditional cars.

Read Matthew Knott’s story in today’s Melbourne Age - “‘Drunk robots': How driverless cars could leave humans behind within five years.”

(We don’t need privately-owned vehicles of any sort -  electric, self-drive or otherwise: what we need is a sophisticated public transit system that answers all the needs of human movement, along with that of freight. However, that will only be achieved through a massive change in mindset that allows for an encourages a new way of living - Robert McLean)

'Thumbing nose at world' - Age letter writer

Letter in today’s Melbourne Age from Andrew Laird of East Malvern.

Naomi Klein - Australia is raising its
middle finger to the world on climate change.

Renowned author Naomi Klein observed  this week on Q&A that Australia is raising its middle finger to the world on climate change. It is difficult to disagree. The Paris climate agreement is now in force (and the world is meeting in Marrakech to map out how to implement it), but Australia has not ratified it, notwithstanding the inadequate emissions reduction targets the government pledged.

Our coal pollution is rising and the government continues to promote fossil fuel developments (despite this being incompatible with a safe climate and the Paris commitments), while the decision to close the polluting Hazelwood coal plant has simply been used as fodder for a fear campaign. To cap it off, the government continues to court the vote of the climate denialist One Nation rather than repudiating its absurd, anti-scientific views.

Age letter writer confused by AFL and society's choices

(Climate change has had no measurable or obvious physical impact on my life, except in that it has, for more than a decade now, distracted me from the broadly accepted principle of ensuring your financial well-being.

However, there has been other things that have changed – I owned a beautiful motorcycle and it’s gone; I owned an equally beautiful bicycle and it’s gone, and I had long been a member of the Australian Football League (AFL) premiership winning club, the Western Bulldogs, and just a few years ago I allowed that membership to lapse, not wanting to be seen supporting a club which is part of an organization operating a national sport whose operations are diametrically opposed to good climate behaviour.

The motorcycle and the bicycle could both be seen as environmentally friendly, but they were not as they a part of a wider paradigm that is offensive to the world; a human behaviour that is damaging Earth’s atmosphere.

Christopher Roger Fernando, from Montrose, writes in today’s Melbourne Age about another aspect of that he finds offensive and impossible to explain to his students – Robert McLean)

Wasteful AFL

In the same week that global CO2 levels are reported to be above the 400 ppm mark (The Age, 25/10), the AFL releases its latest fixture, awash with a multitude of twilight and night games. The majority of games will now be played under partial or total artificial light. The energy required for these lights is (in Victoria anyway) usually produced at about 40 percent efficiency by burning coal or natural gas. As a VCE chemistry teacher charged with teaching students about energy production and greenhouse gas emissions, I despair at a society that chooses entertainment and filling coffers over the care of the environment.

Perhaps I should rethink the purpose of my teaching. Maybe it should now be about simply gaining a qualification rather than equipping young people to live faithful, earth-caring lives.

Christopher Roger Fernando, Montrose.

'Move to clean energy requires smart policy' - Age Editorial

The phrase "sovereign risk" is used liberally in Australian public debate, most often in relation to established industries that may be affected by change in federal and state policy. But few have suffered as much as the still-establishing renewable energy sector, which has had to deal with constant chopping and changing in government thinking since the turn of the century.

This has particularly been the case since the election of the Abbott Coalition government in 2013. With an axe hanging over the renewable energy target and the abolition of the Labor-Greens carbon pricing scheme, there was a 70 per cent decline in clean energy investment.

Read the Editorial in today’s Melbourne Age - “Move to clean energy requires smart policy.”

CSIRO board extends CEO Larry Marshall's contract until mid-2020

CSIRO chairman, David Thodey.

The chairman of the CSIRO has reappointed the science organisation's chief executive officer Larry Marshall for another four years even as the agency reviews the results of a staff survey that produced "uncomfortable" results.

The extension, announced on Friday, adds another six months to the original five-year contract. It now runs until June 30, 2020.

Chairman David Thodey said Dr Marshall's reappointment "underpins our commitment to CSIRO's Strategy 2020" for the organisation to act as "Australia's innovation catalyst".

Dr Marshall had been under sustained pressure as head of the federal government's science organisation during a restructure that started in 2015 that led to the loss of about 300 jobs in the latest round of cuts, according to the Community and Public Sector Union.

Read the story in today’s Melbourne Age - “CSIRO board extends CEO Larry Marshall's contract until mid-2020.”

Richard Campbell ponders power generation

Letter in today’s Melbourne Age.

Power of the state

One good, if dodgy, reason for NSW to sell 50.4 per cent of its Ausgrid network to a Chinese company is that in 10-15 years' time the network will have lost value as a new generation of energy storage erodes profitability and power generation becomes decentralised. If Germany can produce 90 per cent of its power from wind and solar for a few hours as it did on May 11, what can a far sunnier NSW do for much of the year?

But if Ausgrid were kept in state hands, then NSW would be able to manage the transition to decentralised power generation more effectively and ensure a balance between zero carbon renewables, storage and "always-on" base load power. Furthermore, the deal ensures a return of 6 per cent. As we move to a possibly long period of ultra-low interest rates, retirees and superannuation funds would jump at the chance to invest under these conditions, especially if the deal were underwritten by the state government.

One of the two shortlisted entities is the State Grid of China, one of the largest state-owned and controlled organisations. While Premier Mike Baird is making the decision now, he won't be in power when the telephone call is made saying, in effect: "May I remind you, sir, not to forget who controls your power distribution."

Richard Campbell, Toorak.

Criticisms of self-driving cars overlooks human frailties

The safety of self-driving cars questioned.

Criticisms levelled at self-driving cars seem to ignore the realities and faults and frailties of human controlled cars.

The director of the University of New South Wales' Transport and Road Safety Research Centre, Professor Ann Williamson has argued that the growing fleet of "self-driving" cars on Australia's roads are unsafe.

She says they will almost certainly be involved in fatal crashes unless the technology is improved, seemingly ignoring that the death, injury and damage caused by human controlled cars will probably never be surpassed.

Read Patrick Hatch’s story in the Melbourne Age - “Self-driving cars are accidents waiting to happen, expert warns.”

Thunder, hail and snow expected to 'smash' Victoria, NSW, Tasmania

Melbourne will feel as cold as zero degrees in coming days, as storms causing thunder, hail and snow come charging towards south-eastern Australia.

A damaging cold front, coupled with a freezing air mass behind it, is expected to smash Victoria, New South Wales, Tasmania and South Australia by Tuesday evening.

Rainfall is forecast overnight on Monday and into Tuesday morning, before the possibility of hail and thunder developing later in the day, according to the weather bureau. Temperatures are set to plummet across Melbourne, with severe wind chill making it feel even colder.

Read the story from today’s Melbourne Age - “Melbourne weather: Thunderstorms, hail and snow on the way.”