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June 11, 2008
We are still waiting for clear direction from the Rudd Government on its plans to drive the Australian economy to reduce its greenhouse emissions by 60 per cent by 2050. The signs so far aren't good. Various Ministers evade publicly even saying that an emissions trading scheme will cause petrol and electricity prices to rise. Why not come clean? Then outline the options?
Pat
The Rudd Government is backpedaling (eg., solar panels on households) even though a price on carbon is coming, and soon. How come the back pedalling? Why not start a public debate about the way that households can make the energy shift in terms of their cars and houses?
As Anthony Burke says in The Canberra Times:
The only relief consumers can rightly expect is that existing excises are replaced by a carbon price. Such ''relief'' will be short-lived: within a decade, as stringent new global emissions-reduction targets are agreed, petrol prices will go much higher. We need to move to more fuel-efficient vehicles fast, and be able to use them less. What the Government has failed to recognise is that we need help to do so with affordable hybrid vehicles and better public transport.
I guess the hybrid needs to be encouraged because it opens a pathway to ultimately breaking with liquid fuels. But it is not just cars is it? It is also investing in public transport to carry people to work from the suburbs to the city. State governments have failed, and continue to fail big time, to invest in urban transport infrastructure.
Public transport infrastructure such as underground and surface light rail systems are expensive, requiring state authorities to borrow large amounts of capital to construct.
SA, for once, is beginning to think in terms of long term strategic urban planning to develop high density housing along rail corridors of a rejuvenated public transport system. From these hubs--- such as Port Adelaide, West Lakes and Bowden-- people will be able to take a quick light rail ride to the city rather than clog streets with cars. It is beginning to think otherwise to a car dominated city centred around jobs in the CBD.
That means not just getting people into the city from the outer suburbs by rail and trams but enabling people to get around the city easily without needing to use cars. That means less cars in the city, better public transport in the city (bikes in Adelaide, for instance) and making the city much more people friendly. The city as a city has been dominated by engineers and traffic flows for too long.
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Gary
I've just read Chris Kenny on climate change on The Advertiser's low grade AdelaideNow website. His is a voice from the Howard past, as he is saying that climate change has become a dangerous ideological cause that could ruin our national economy. I kid you not.
He says:
Amazing. Its all tabloid emotionalism. He continues:
Climate change, apparently, is driven by the Left who see climate change as their salvation: Mother Earth's revenge on capitalism.
In other words climate change is not real. It is not actually happening. It's only an Leftist ideology.