Fresh green links...

I’ve got a bit of a theme this week! All over the news are hints that the campaign to get a better Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) from the government is starting… Gavin on Today Tonight - Gavin from The Greening of Gavin blog was on Today Tonight in Victoria, explaining how his expensive solar panels will be used to allow an electricity company to remain below their emissions cap without making any...

Cursing cap...

The Environmental Defence Action Fund in the USA recently had a competition for the best video that explains what a carbon cap scheme is. There were two winners, Thinking Cap and Cursing Cap. Personally, I liked the Cursing Cap one best, so I’ve chosen to show it to you now: If you liked that one, check out the other prize-winners at the EDF’s YouTube channel. I’m not sure why Americans conflate oil...

Cooking the rainforests...

Palm oil is the world’s second most popular edible oil after soybean oil, and is used by food and cosmetics companies around the world. It’s a cash crop for several South-East Asian countries, grown in rainforest areas. It’s also a product that leaves a huge trail of environmental destruction, and we need to seriously look at alternatives. What is palm oil? Palm oil comes from, you guessed it, the fruit...

Fresh green links...

So what’s new this week? Peter at Reluctant Greenie tells us what to do with that DVD collection when you’ve decided you want the space for something else, or have gone completely digital as he did. He did it as part of Planet Ark’s Green Resolutions campaign, which might be handy for those of you who need a bit of support for keeping your own resolutions. Surprise! Economists have reached a consensus...

Bright ideas: solar-powered air-conditioning...

We’ve already talked about how over-using air-conditioning isn’t great for Australia. On hot summer afternoons we all want to use electricity at once, and it can be too much for our coal-fired power stations to handle, which can leave us with rolling blackouts in the city. There’s also the added problem of the refrigerants used in standard air-con - they’re a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon...

How to write a letter about eco-issues...

What if you’ve just discovered that your favourite brand of biscuits uses palm oil made from the habitats of orangutans? Or that your federal MP thinks that a 5% reduction in emissions is plenty? Or that your local supermarket doesn’t stock any free-range eggs? What can you do to change the situation? One of the things that’s often recommended is to write a letter. But for many of us, the last letter...

Fresh green links...

The big topic this week is of course the bushfires in Victoria. If you’d like to help out the victims of the fires, I recommend ABC Melbourne’s How Can I Help page, because it lists all the different types of goods and services needed as well as places to make donations. After such a tragic event there is of course plenty of analysis of how we can stop it happening again. What surprised me was how many people...

What is biochar?...

Biochar is a possible way to reduce the carbon emissions that come from farming. It’s been in the news a little bit lately, and I think it’s got the potential to really help Australia reduce it’s eco-footprint, and hopefully will have other benefits for farmers too. By RaeAllen at Flickr.com Our agricultural sector is responsible for nearly 20% of our climate-change emissions, so a new technique for...

Eco-Minds Youth Forum...

The 2009 Eco-Minds Youth Forum is a week-long event being held in New Zealand. This year it’s theme is  Sustainable Energy Systems: Challenges and Opportunities. People there  will be looking at some of the challenges around energy supply, including climate change, and practical solutions that can overcome such challenges. Eco-Minds is open to all university students aged 18-24 years, with delegates coming from...

Fresh green links...

Here’s a few little bits of interest from this week: John Hepburn at Rooted posts about the Climate Action Summit’s protest at Parliament House this week. It wasn’t much in the news, but was noteworthy because they managed to break the standard rules (protests go on the protest lawn only) without anyone getting arrested. Civil disobedience can be managed well. One of the reasons the Climate Action Summit...