Lighter Footprints Volunteers at the Burwood Festival

Avoiding climate catastrophe: defending renewable energy and scrapping money for big polluters

Lighter Footprint volunteers collected a large swag of letters defending renewable energy at the Burwood Festival on Sunday 5 May.

Concerned members of the public signed letters to Shadow Energy Minister Ian Macfarlane strongly protesting the Federal Coalition's decision to review the Renewable Energy Target within six months of taking office - should it be elected to power in September.

The promise of an unnecessary review comes hot on the heels of the Climate Change Authority's recent review which recommended endorsing the current target to promote investor confidence.

The existing target ensures renewable energy would gradually increase to  41,000 gigawatt hours in 2020.

The Coalition move has prompted widespread fears that the target is likely to be weakened in response to strong lobbying from the powerful energy retailers whose profits largely derive from coal and gas.

As the planet hurtles towards four to six degrees of global warming this century, it seems entirely prudent to strengthen the target and sheer folly to weaken it.

Lighter Footprints volunteers also collected letters to Federal Treasurer Wayne Swan urging the government to scrap fossil fuel subsidies which now amount to a massive $10 billion a year.

These subsidies include carbon price compensation to our dirtiest power stations, diesel fuel tax credits to miners and the transport sector, accelerated depreciation for oil, gas and coal seam gas projects and aviation fuel tax concessions.

The International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the International Energy Agency are among the conservative international agencies calling on all governments to scrap fossil fuel subsidies in the desperate race against time to halt  catastrophic climate change.

Lighter Footprints joins the "Paid to Pollute" Campaign

On Friday, members of Lighter Footprints joined in cancelling a mock cheque for $65 million dollars as  a symbol of how much each electorate in Australia pays in subsidies to the fossil fuel industries.
Over $10 billion dollars per year is handed out to the the biggest carbon emitters
If we are to turn around the growing levels of carbon emissions that drive unsafe climate we must stop supporting the biggest emitters and generate our energy from renewables.
We took our 'cancelled cheque' which represented what the  Kooyong electorate pays towards these subsidies,  - to be spent on many other important issues in the electorate, to our local member. Our Federal MP Josh Frydenberg invited the group in to discuss this matter.
MP's  of all parties across the country will have groups demonstrating at their offices, to highlight the levels of subsidies which must be challenged - no matter who wins the next election.
The website which has details of the campaign and the subsidies is found at:
www.paidtopollute.org.au

Lighter Footprints meeting

Wednesday 24 April  

7 pm for 7.30

Speaker: David Chiavaroli

Solar Energy practitioner for 20 years

“Solar PV’s – Current economics and future prospects”

This is an opportunity to hear directly from someone who knows the answers to all the questions you have wanted to ask about solar PV's. His recent presentation to the Alternative Technology Association was a great hit.

Canterbury Guide Hall, 

1 Faversham Rd (Cnr Shierlaw Ave)

Canterbury

Food and drink available from 7 pm and everyone with an interest in renewable energy is welcome. Gold coin donation.

 Even if you have never come to a meeting with us before, join us for the first hour of our meeting from 7.30- 8.30, and stay to hear more of the work of the group if you want to. 

Contact for more info :

Carolyn Ingvarson

 0411 115 186

Fighting the good fight:defending renewable energy

Renewable Energy: the people's choice
Lighter Footprints quickly and easily collected more than 80 letters at the Kew Community Festival on Saturday 23 March defending renewable energy.
Local citizens enjoying the festival were only too happy to sign letters expressing their dismay that the Renewable Energy Target was under attack from electricity  power generators like Origin Energy.
Origin Energy's managing director Grant King has attracted the ire of the Clean Energy Council and of wind farm operator Infigen Energy, which have accused him of trying to protect Origin's investment in gas from clean energy competitors such as wind and solar.
Government confirms target:
Following a Climate Change Authority review,  the Gillard Government last week accepted its recommendation that the target of 41,000 gigawatt hours of renewable energy by 2020 would remain.
Coalition position less clear: 
The Coalition has said it supports the target of 20 per cent renewable energy by 2020 but has also said it will review the gigawatt hours target in the light of falling electricity demand.
Shadow climate minister Greg Hunt has promised a review within six months of taking office, heightening fears that the target will be weakened.
Stable, predictable future required
The Climate Change Authority, which took account of the fall in demand, recommended the existing target remain to provide stability and predictability for renewable energy investors.
Lighter Footprints views attempts to weaken the target as reprehensible given the urgent need to move to a clean energy economy.
It seems that many of the good citizens of Kew and its surrounds agree with us.
Letters were also collected addressed to Opposition leader Tony Abbott demanding a stronger climate action policy, which would protect and strengthen the renewable energy target.

What price the truth at the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry?

Written by Robbert Veerman    March 13th 2013

I see it but I still don't believe it! 

With national polls repeatedly showing that the overwhelming majority of Australians want action on global warming, how can it be true that the huge membership of the ACCI (see list below, from Wikipedia) takes a different view? Were those hundreds of thousands of ACCI business folk excluded from the polling?

I think ACCI's recent stand against any kind of emissions trading/carbon price may well be a fraud on their own membership. I think it may be worth contacting each of their member organisations to confirm they are being fairly represented?

The ACCI offered no alternative to an ETS whereby we all might shoulder Australia's very large per capita share of Carbon Dioxide emissions. It just wants its members to avoid a tax that is actually mostly paid by ordinary consumers. 

The average effect of the current 'carbon price' across a broad basket of goods is around 1% . Is Australian industry so weak and on the point of collapse? Should I now rush in fear and take my superannuation investments overseas? It's time for ACCI either to identify which of its members are prepared to turn their backs on our beautiful country or to get real, get its hands out of OUR pockets and get back to business.

If that 1% is sufficient to "endanger" Australian industry then spare a thought for the effect of the massive increase in CO₂

Robbert Veerman

(Sorry for the long list) 

Members of ACCI are state and territory chambers of business, and national industry associations. They include:

• ACT & Region Chamber of Commerce and Industry
• Australian Made Campaign Limited
• Business SA
• Chamber of Commerce and Industry Western Australia
• Chamber of Commerce and Industry Queensland
• Chamber of Commerce Northern Territory
• Employers First
• NSW Business Chamber
• Tasmanian Chamber of Commerce and Industry Ltd
• Victorian Employers' Chamber of Commerce and Industry
• ACCORD
• Agribusiness Employers’ Federation
• Air Conditioning and Mechanical Contractors Association
• Association of Consulting Engineers Australia
• Australian Beverages Council Ltd
• Australian Hotels Association
• Australian International Airlines Operations Group
• Australian Made, Australian Grown Campaign
• Australian Mines and Metals Association
• Australian Newsagents' Federation
• Australian Paint Manufacturers’ Federation Inc
• Australian Retailers’ Association
• Bus Industry Confederation
• Live Performance Australia
• Master Builders Australia Inc
• Master Plumbers’ and Mechanical Services Association of Australia
• National Baking Industry Association
• National Electrical and Communications Association
• National Fire Industry Association
• National Retail Association Ltd
• NSW Business Chamber
• NSW Farmers Industrial Association
• Oil Industry Industrial Association
• Pharmacy Guild of Australia
• Plastics and Chemicals Industries Association Inc
• Printing Industries Association of Australia
• Restaurant & Catering Australia
• Standards Australia
• Victorian Automobile Chamber of Commerce

Global Warming and Visions of a Sustainable Planet

Facing the awful facts of global warming can be daunting and denial is a tempting option. But here is a heart-warming story of one woman's journey to climate action and her determination to leave her children and grandchildren a sustainable planet.
It is recommended reading.
http://www.psychotherapynetworker.org/magazine/recentissues/2012-septemberoctober/item/1798-global-warming-and-visions-of-a-sustainable-planet

A Garden Tip

Thank you, Michael, for mentioning that straw can be a useful additive in the garden, for improving the soil's water retention properties. I live in the sand-belt area and getting moisture into my soil is a mammoth task. Where does all the rain go? Last night it rained solidly, but this morning only the top few centimetres of soil were damp.

However, last weekend at the Ashburton Festival, there was a children's farm unit, and because Michael had mentioned to me the idea of getting straw from a horse stables [complete with horse poo] I approached the children's farm operator and was told I was welcome to the straw [and the poo] at the end of the day. We raked up a trailer full, covered it with a tarp and happily drove home.

Yesterday I dug about a quarter of it into a small area of my vegie patch, which was actually quite hard work, until I discovered that layering it was easier, and then joy oh joy, it rained all night! The straw obviously made an appreciable difference as this morning's investigations showed that the rain had penetrated quite a long way down in that area. I shall dig in the rest of the pooey straw as soon as I am able, and shall then plant my next crop.
Of course I put extra straw around all the strawberry plants, to keep the snails away and the berries clean.

The children's farm operator was happy for us to take it, as it meant that he didn't have to rake it all up and dispose of it himself. I'll be on the look out for more petting farm events later in the year.

Comfort Enhancing Tip!

In early February I had my roof painted white. It looks a bit as though snow has fallen, and the effect inside the house is almost the same in that the white paint reflects the sun and keeps the roof cavity much cooler than it was before the painting. This in turn keeps my old, badly-designed, west-facing house much cooler.

I have some storage space in my roof, and I had occasion to go up there one hot day in January. It was 60+ degrees, and I didn't stay long! Since the roof has been painted, I've checked it a few times and the hot day temperature seems to be around 32 to 35. That's a huge difference, and one that I'm mighty glad of. 

On most days the house itself peaks at 27, which is very easy to live with. As you know we've had several hot days on the trot recently and by the end of each hot spell the house had reached 31 inside, but it fell each evening when the windows and doors were opened up to catch any breezes. An ordinary fan inside helped the comfort level, as we don't use the old air-conditioning unit that was in the house when I bought it. It would use nearly 5 times the energy that the modern units require.

In my travels around Melbourne I've seen many newly painted roofs, but only one other white one, and SO MANY BLACK ONES. What a SILLY colour to put on a roof in this country. Good colour in Scandinavia, maybe, or Siberia!

So here's another tip: if you are about to consider a roof job, please think about ordering white paint. It looks rather nice, costs no more than any other colour, and has the most amazing cooling effect. 

Lighter Footprints at Ashburton Festival

Lighter Footprints joined other community groups at the Ashburton Community Festival on Sunday 24 February - the last weekend of the Sustainable Living Festival.

It was another welcome opportunity for Lighter Footprints to sign up new members to our email list and engage with the public. As always our message is that climate change is exceedingly dangerous, that we are close to tipping points that will push us into irreversible climate change and that political parties need urgently to step up policies that push a rapid transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy.

Pushing the change to renewable energy will be a theme at the next Lighter Footprints monthly meeting,  this WEDNESDAY 27 FEBRUARY, at the usual venue, where building community support for wind energy will be major topic.

At the festival, we shared  our spacious marquee, organised by the efficient  Mariette Tuohey from the Ashwood College Permaculture Food Garden and Petra Kahle from the Winton Road Food Forest, with numerous sustainability groups.

A local bee keeper and his family selling Ashwood honey added a special buzz - safely contained - to our section of the footpath.

Many thanks to Mariette for her coordination and to our own enthusiastic and indefatigable members who volunteered their time on a hot Sunday to push the climate change message.

Lighter Footprints meeting with Josh Frydenberg, Member for Kooyong

Josh Frydenberg meeting with members of Lighter Footprints, Carolyn Ingvarson, Convenor, Ken Coghill, Lynn Frankes and Lynne Holroyd 1 February, 2013

Permafrost, Josh Frydenberg and Lighter Footprints

On 1 February 2012 a small group of Lighter Footprints members, including our Convenor, Carolyn Ingvarson, met with Josh Frydenberg, the Member for Kooyong.

Lighter Footprints requested the meeting in response to the front-page story At the edge of disaster in The Age on 28 November which reported that the Arctic permafrost was melting.

We recognised this to be an extraordinarily dangerous development, suggesting the earth is on the brink of dangerous climate change that would be "irreversible on human timescales". http://www.theage.com.au/national/at-the-edge-of-disaster-20121127-2a5xe.html 

See also The top of the world is melting, a feature story on the Age published the same day http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/the-top-of-the-world-is-melting-20121127-2a5ne.html

Large scale thawing of the permafrost would release vast amounts of greenhouses gases such as methane from frozen organic material stored in the permafrost. It is feared this would set off a self-perpetuating feedback loop would cause global warming to spiral out of human control.

Our main message to Mr Frydenberg was that neither major political party has a policy which is sufficiently responsive to the dire warnings climate scientists are now giving us.

It is quite clear that the earth is more sensitive to greenhouse gases than politicians have understood. These dangerous changes, which include a record melt of Arctic summer sea ice last year, are occurring after less than one degree Celsius of global warming since pre-industrial times

Our present course of "business as usual" will take us past the two degree "guardrail" that has been agreed on at international negotiations as the level we must stay below to avoid dangerous climate change. The melting of the permafrost is a clear signal that we are already in exceedingly dangerous territory.

We asked for stronger climate change policy from the Liberal Party and for leadership on this issue from Mr Frydenberg who has said that he accepts the science on climate change. He said he and his party were committed to taking effective and immediate action to tackle climate change.

Mr Frydenberg was referred to the David Roberts “Climate Change is Simple” youtube video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7ktYbVwr90 and to the article “Climate Change Going Beyond Dangerous – Brutal Numbers and Tenuous Hope” by Kevin Anderson.  http://whatnext.org/resources/Publications/Volume-III/Single-articles/

wnv3_andersson_144.pdf.

We also presented him with a copy of Climate Code Red, the book by David Spratt and Philip Sutton which details the various feedback mechanisms which would tip the climate into escalating warming beyond our control. See our link to the website of the same name on this page

We may not have agreement with Mr Frydenberg about what constitutes effective action on climate change but we were given the opportunity to fully express our concerns and felt that they were heard.

YouTube - Videos from this email

Energy Saving Tip

Tuesday night's meeting with Simon was very helpful in that he [oh so patiently] talked us through posting, previewing, editing and publishing blogs on this website. 

Here's my first post!

I think adding tips about using less power/energy in the home and at work would be a good way to help everyone to reduce their consumption and peg their power bills somewhat.

So here's a good idea: put into the kettle only as much water as is needed for number of cups of tea or coffee you want to make, stay in the kitchen getting cups/mugs ready and the tea or coffee and sugar, by which time the kettle will be coming to the boil. Turn it off immediately, instead of letting it go on for the extra seconds until the auto switch off kicks in. 

Doing this regularly will lower a household's consumption of energy. Over the three months of a power bill, the reduction should be clearly noticeable.

Maybe other readers would like to add comments about other energy-saving ideas that householders can adopt. I know I'd be pleased to hear of other ideas.

Strategy Planning Day 2013

Lighter Footprints Strategy Planning day was held on Sunday 10 February at Balwyn Library. We set the framework for the group for 2013. Come to the first general meeting and join with us.