Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

5%, this is pretty much the howard government package, which just goes to show it's inline with whats achievable. not the greens 40% pipe dream.
it'll still cost the country a fortune, but atleast it won't send us under. failing industries use cheaper technology which is less clean, so you have to walk a knife edge in this economic climate or you'd do more harm than good.

Frankly I think the whole package and underlying "philosophy" is totally misguided, will be totally ineffective... and is actually no more than a political con job....

The package not only allows industries to pollute... i.e cause the problem....

But licences them to do so..... and under the current announced policy.... actually grants the major polluters ... licenses to continue to do so, millions of dollars to assist them to do so....

And is likely to give those same industries a "license" to actually charge us... more for the goods and services produced....

Industry has grown fat on the profits through environmental rape and pillage during the last twenty years, primarily with the assistance of policies enacted by the previous governement...

Often a direct reversal of policies which were implemented in the '70s & '80s....

They've polluted and profited for twenty years during the "good" times... with virtually no real investment or dedication to cleaning up their acts...

Now we are expected to reward them with "free" licenses to continue the pollution of our childrens environment and futures... and to actually pay them, both with "assistance" packages and the inevitable inflated prices for their products and services.... which they'll justify on the basis on increased costs that they wont in fact be paying....

Bullocks ... I say.... it's another giant gowvernement and corporate con job....

Give industry two years to meet certain strict environmental guidelines.... then fine them 10% of their company turnover annually until the get the message...

Bet that would solve the pollution problem well before 2010..... pricks....

5% is a bit of a joke, I guess big businesses are starting to dig their spurs in to the government with their cries of "but what about the jobs". It's been shown that you can have major cuts in emissions without adversely effecting the economy adversely in the long term. Yes some industries will suffer, but other industries will take over from those old polluting ones.

Any industry uses cheaper technologies to try and increase profits and often with little thought about how clean the technology is.

Failing industries need to be left to fail, not propped up by band aid measures. Rather like farmers on extremely marginal land, if the land is marginal then its also generally a very fragile ecosystem, now how many years do you keep trying over and over again to make it viable, sooner or later you have to stop propping people up..
The government props up our failing car industry which claims it can still be viable. It hasn't been viable for years, it's kept alive by government subsidies.

Yep, companies have to pay for their pollution and perhaps CEOs should be charged directly..

I have to disagree rupe.
industry already pays heavily for a license to pollute, so in that sense it's nothing new, this is just another license to produce CO2. by charging this levy the government encourages industry to clean up it's act without shutting them down. industry isn't going to just sit back and pay millions in fee's forever, they are going to try reduce that through cleaner technology.

we already have a committee hard at work on it in my workplace (we are a major polluter). we have already implemented grass roots changes likely timers on aircons as well as technology solutions in our process plant. this kind of action is all through industry in an attempt to lower their costs.

If you encourage industry to invest in cleaner solutions, everyone wins with a cleaner environment and economic growth. if you just paint them as the bad guys and slug them, the money will pull out and there's no chance for "green" solutions.

i agree with the failing businesses EB, but this isn't about the car industry which is failing due to inability to compete, this is industries which are perfectly viable and then slapping them with government fee's till they die (well it would be under something a 40% emissions target)

"It's been shown that you can have major cuts in emissions without adversely effecting the economy adversely in the long term"<p>
i'd also like to see a credible study on that, because all the ones i've read say 10% - 15% inflation which we would NOT survive in our current state.

Sorry Timmy... case in point are two of the major emitters... the power and aluminimum industries....

Both have, and have had gazetted exceptions from nearly all EPA laws and emission levels for years...

The Latrobe power stations were built 40 years ago... (as were most generating capacity)... and burn the dirtiest coal.... brown coal....

They are near the end of the lifecycle.... and need to be replaced with new generating capacity....

But have they designed/built any "newage" clean technology power stations... or retrofitted any of the exisiting generators to "clean" them up....

NOPE.... it has been cheaper to pay the "pollution" licenses, than invest in R&D or retrofitting the old technology plants....

Bullocks..... the cause of the problems is pollution.... by certain industries... they have had the chance to redress the situation... but haven't had the financial incentive (in the form of legislation)... to do so ...

Why should the taxpayer have to fund "new" power stations to replace old soon to be decommissioned plant.... or fund developement of technologies that solve the companies pollution problems....

Bugger them....

In terms of the power industry... I consider it to be a matter of national importance and security.... I'd nationalise the lot of them... especially if it was/is needed to secure our generating capcity in the near future...

If I'm going to pay... I want the control... and the profits ....

Same goes for the car industry and anyone else putting out their hands for public funds....

Control, conditions and compensation back to the people for the priviledge....

The power industry. I've gotten some large power bills over the years. Asked the power guy that was fixing a meter in the power box why the earth wire was wired into the neutral terminal. Power is like water the current comes into your house and then flows back out and back into the grid. But most peoples power does not go that way and flows into your house and then through the earth wire to the ground. How much does that cost people and resources if we are paying for power that goes into the ground. Power guy didn't know. Any one understand how that works.

Still think on the emissions front that until we all walk around in smog wearing masks everyday of our lives that even then there will be little change. Because there are parts of the world that already do this and nothing changes.

You sure do pick them Timmy
Quote "industry already pays heavily for a license to pollute".
Never has and never will; you pay for it.

If the European Union can agree to 20/20/20 - 20% of 1990 emissions by 2020, why the *frack* can't we (Australia) at least match it!!!

If you want a good reason to hang your head (Australia, not necessarily individuals) in shame take a look at the The carbon atlas.

Though the graph attempts to show that China is now the worlds largest emitter, it fails to realise population (i.e. per capita emissions).

However, if you click on the circles you can drill down to what an individual country emits. Australia is circle #16 - look at the per person emission (20.6 - China is 4.6), now try to find another one that is worse than Australia's 20.6 (good luck with that!).

We, Australia, are one of the worlds worst emitters of CO2 per capita - does the governments feeble attempt at reductions match this fact?

Yep agreed Myles... part of the reason I voted for Rudd was because I wanted a fundamental change to the way in which australia was governed and the directions in which the country was going....

I did'nt vote to replace one "L" party with another "L" party that has the same philosophies...

Have jsut emailed a three page letter to rudd.... expect nothing but claptrap back...

Problem is "he who would be god" Turnball and the remnants of the Howard bother boys... would be even more disastorous to the country .... grrrrrr

In some ways I think those figures are biased. How do they work out the figures? Is it purely on CO2 produced within the country? You may have a country thats a high end consumer, yet imports everything into the country so the high CO2 producing manufacture of those goods, gets lumped into someone elses figures...

See we may actually be far more self sustaining in manufacturing, and as such have a very high CO2 output figure, where as a Eurpoean country may have all heavy CO2 producing industry out of it's borders, then rail the goods into the country and have a seeming incredibly good CO2 production rate...

Perhaps the US figures would be far worse if there is an allowance for all CO2 produced from goods imported into the country...

I'd like to see more info on how they work the figures..

The figures for the Carbon Atlas reportedly come from the Energy Information Administration.

I assume they are simply emission figures, so yes, bias in relation to consumed product manufacture emissions, that may well be manufactured elsewhere. Hence the real need for a Global emissions trading scheme - but it has to start somewhere, and I feel those who have contributed the most to the problem (i.e. first world countries) should be the ones to set the example and perhaps pay the most...

It is completely unfair to label China as the bad guy, as they have not contributed as much to the problem, and are actually doing considerably more than many of the First World countries are currently doing (including Australia) in reducing the problem (in proportion to their current growth)... Though the world, environmentally, would have a better outlook if they slowed that growth considerably, but that raises enormous problems for all those (pretty much every first world country) that depends on them...

Facing the facts I reckon we are screwed...

Personally I blame Luxembourg (number 93) which has 26.3 per person...

Yep, It's a global thing and their aint no sense in trying to point fingers.

Energy is typically the largest contributor to emissions, which is why Australia ranks so poorly - coal, coal coal - gives us electricity that is priced way too low...it will rise, and my guess is that it will rise a lot.

Secondary is transport - its a long way between pubs for much of Australia, so our transport emissions are high as well.

The Virgin Islands, (US) #88, and Gibraltar #125 are the real culprits