Energy industry raises concern over speed of ACCC reform

The energy industry is tentatively backing the consumer watchdog’s recommendations to fix a broken electricity market but remains wary of the unintended consequences of rapid reform.

The ACCC wants to cap market control levels but supported
 companies expanding their share by building new
generation such as wind farms.

On Wednesday, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission made 56 recommendations to fix Australia's energy market, pushing for measures that could slash households' power bills by a quarter.

Read the story by Cole Latimer from The Age - “Energy industry raises concern over speed of ACCC reforms.”

Should we 'hack the climate' to fight global warming?

The Paris Agreements won't be enough to reverse global warming, whether President Trump pulls the US out or not.

Is it time to try altering the atmosphere by what's called "geoengineering?"

We hear about unintended consequences, international relations… and ethics.

Listen to the KCRW report - “Should we 'hack the climate' to fight global warming?”

We have the fossil fuelled car because of an unintended consequence

T

he fossil-fuelled car became the pre-eminent mode of transport because of an unintended consequence.

Steam powered cars were gaining in popularity when the regular source of water they depended upon dried up.

Prof Trevor Hancock - his students
never include
cars when visioning cities of the future.

Horse water troughs had become a source of water for the steam car, but a spreading horse disease from water in the troughs saw them emptied leaving the steam cars without easy access to that essential need.

So as the steam car became less convenient, the petrol powered car came to the fore to take a lead it has never relinquished and really been threatened, until now.

With science illustrating unequivocally that vehicles dependent upon fossil fuels are having a seriously negative impact on the world’s weather, or at least in terms of the “Goldilocks-like” conditions in which humans have thrived, serious moves are afoot to re-power our cars.

The carbon powered car is, little by little, being replaced by electric cars, initially with great success from newcomer, Tesla and now some of the major manufacturers are joining the rush to go electric, the latest being Porsche.

Porsche, which is part of the gigantic Volkswagen Group (also owns: Audi, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini, SEAT, Škoda and of course Volkswagen itself), is throwing its hat into the electric car ring. Or at least, they say that they will "within the next 5 years."

Read the Treehugger story about what is happening at Porsche - “Porsche goes after Tesla with the 600hp Mission E electric car”.

All the excitement and hype about the electric car is misplaced.

Private cars, electric or otherwise, are rooted in the energy and resource rich 20^th Century, but the 21^st Century will see that situation reversed when the emphasis will shift from private to public and human movement will be by mass transit, rather than privately owned individual vehicles servicing just one or two people.

Beyond the car itself, the public purse is plundered without hesitation, or guilt, to fund and build an infrastructure to support private enterprise; an enterprise that is one of the key determinants in the deterioration of Earth’s atmosphere.

We should step back from privately owned motor vehicles of whatever shape and form, or whatever powers them, and through fresh eyes look at completely different ways of moving people.

Interestingly, only this week, the Professor in Public Health from Canada’s University of Victoria, Trevor Hancock, said that when his students were asked to create a “visionary image” of a city of the future, motors cars were not included, electric or otherwise.

-      Robert McLean.

Climate change and its effects can be countered through belonging

C

limate change and its effects can be countered through ensuring everyone has a powerful sense of belonging and along with that an understanding that they are included.

Modernity has engendered a society-wide idea of individualism that has is the cornerstone of the world’s market system that has two marked unintended consequences.

Capitalism has expanded and profited because of individualism, which has left many in our communities with an unexplainable feeling of “aloneness” and beyond that seriously depleted earth’s resources and, at least on a human time scale, disrupted and caused irreparable damage to the earth’s climate system.

One troubled by the sense of “aloneness” and somewhat alienated by the capitalistic market system and disenchanted, even unconsciously, by the depletion of earth’s finite resources and the subsequent damage to the climate system appeared recently on the ABC’s Q&A.

A Postdoctoral Fellow at European University Institute, Vivian Gerrand, writes on The Conversation about the Q&A show in here story - “Zaky Mallah: a cautionary tale of radicalisation and the need for belonging”.

Climate change efforts on 'life support'

Efforts to halt climate change are, according to an article in the magazine “Foreign Policy” on life support.

It says the world’s scientists as considering some radical cures, but then rightly asks: “Could the cure be worse than the disease?”

The story entitled: “Playing God”, discusses two options for easing the challenges associated with climate change, neither of which are truly understood or proven and could bring with them frightening unintended consequences.

 What’s proposed is unquestionably unsettling, but equally unnerving is the do nothing attitude of the business as usual boosters, back by their powerful legions of fossil fuel lobby groups.