carbon emissions

(This item is my entry for Blog Action Day October 15, 2009. It has also been posted to Earthwitness.)

There are times when it is really frustrating to be an Australian. We're in a great position to be a world leader in renewable energy production. Our politicians think so too... but only after they change the definition of "renewables".

With WYDstock 2008 happily out of the way for ten days now, time for me to make a few comments, having spent most of the WYDstock Week out of town taking my daughter on school holidays.

Firstly, this was a Northern Hemisphere event transplanted to the Southern Hemisphere. It's summer vacation time for students in the Global North, but in Sydney it's mid-winter. And, school holiday fortnight notwithstanding, not an especially quiet time for the Central Business District in July either.

We've accepted by now that the Federal Budget gave little more than lip service to handling climate change. One of the more kindly suggested reasons could be that the Government might be saving up its pork barrelling... er, expenditure announcements till the Prime Ministerial Task Force on Emissions Trading presents its report on May 31.

The Task Force's sub-website can be found here. Worth noting is the composition of the PMTFET:

Costa Rica Aims to Become First 'Carbon Neutral' Country
- The Costa Rican government is developing plans to begin offsetting all of the country’s carbon dioxide emissions.
[Worldwatch Institute]