Fresh green links

It’s been an interesting week!

Rudd announces 50,000 green jobs and apprenticeships – mostly in the building industry, which is great. But as the Australian Conservation Foundation points out, the funding is for the unemployed, and we need to upskill people already working in the industry. And the Greens, while supporting the move, say that it’s not much good to have green skills if you won’t make serious reductions in emissions.

Power firm sued over carbon emissions – eco-group Rising Tide is taking the fight to the Baywater coal-fired power station in NSW. Their goal is to toughen environmental emissions laws, and make it compulsory for CO2 emissions to be controlled (not just monitored).

Olympic Dam uranium mine expansion will increase South Australia’s emissions by 12% – which kind of puts Premier Mike Rann in a hot spot, since he pledged to get emissions down to 108% of 1990 levels by 2012.

Spy photos reveal extent of Arctic ice loss – the Bush government kept them secret for ‘national security’ reasons, but President Obama has declassified them.

Toyota answers reader questions at the Guardian’s Ethical Living blog – I wish I’d heard about this sooner, but it looks like the readers asked all the same questions about the Prius and hybrid cars that I would have. Readers had a week to leave comments on the blog with questions, and a Toyota representative (ToyotaGB, if you want to skip to the answers) replied with as much information as they could.

Glass and plastic and imports, oh my

I took this photo on the weekend, in a big department store in the city. The more greenie I become, the more stuff like this disturbs me.

In just a few metres, we’ve got water from:

• Australia, in plastic bottles (top right, middle left)
• Australia, in glass bottles (middle right)
• Fiji, in plastic bottles (top left)
• Italy, in glass bottles (bottom right)
• Norway, in designer glass bottles

All just in case you get thirsty and can’t wait 10 minutes to find a tap or ask for a glass of water somewhere. You can click on the photo to see a larger version on my Flickr account if you’d like to see the labels.

Think of all that water, being shipped and trucked around the world. I can’t figure out if the plastic or the glass is worse – glass is more easily recycled, but it’s heavier so adds to the transport costs and pollution.

The water from Norway is the heaviest and most well-travelled of the bunch. But I reckon the stuff from Fiji is the worst: in spite of the company making some minimal efforts to green their business, that doesn’t change the fact that one third of Fijians don’t have access to clean drinking water. Yet 130 million litres of water are exported from Fiji every year.

I don’t see how we can justify buying water from overseas when so many people don’t even have tap water to drink or cook with. If this bugs you as much as it bugs me, here’s what to do:

• get hold of a reusable bottle and fill it from your tap at home to take with you when you go out
• drink tap water at home and and at work (get a filter if the tap water’s no good in your area)
• if you find yourself in a situation where you must buy bottled water, at least buy Australian and make sure you recycle the bottle

And finally, consider making a donation to people trying to build wells in developing nations. It doesn’t cost much, and yet it can make a huge difference to people’s lives.

The problem with CFL bulbs…

… is that because they last so long, I don’t often get a convenient opportunity to clean out the light fittings that cover them. The lightshades in our bedroom and living room are full of little bugs and dust. We’re pretty lazy in this household, but when we had incandescents we’d at least get a chance to clean the shades once a year

Fresh green links

Hello again!

Baby loggerhead turtles washed away – if you see loggerhead turtles anywhere other than Shark Bay in WA, don’t just throw them back in the water, the little cuties are probably lost. These endangered turtles prefer warm water, so let your local wildlife authority know about them.

3 simple changes to get fit and green at the same time – I’m posting this to remind myself not to let winter weather put me off public transport and eating more vegetarian meals!

Powershift flash mob dance – hundreds of activists swarmed the steps of the Sydney Opera House to dance and send a message about how much we want renewable energy in this country.

Victoria is the dirtiest state – for energy, not anything else, get your minds out of the gutter! They’ve got 3 of Australia’s 4 dirtiest coal-fired plants, and none of the top 12 renewable energy projects.

Snarky reuseable bags – if you’d like to use a calico bag, but don’t want to look too much like a hippy, try these instead. With slogans like “See ladies, I am sensitive”, it’ll get a laugh at least.

From the Earth to the Moon – people working on climate change issues have much to learn from the Apollo missions, which put a man on the Moon 40 years ago. This slideshow quickly covers what the topics have in common, and what separates them. It was a stunning achievement, and pushed the boundaries of what was accepted science at the time – we could do something of similar difficulty again, if we just keep trying.

Hey Mr Grumpy Gills

It’s been a depressing few months for environmental news in Australia. Just recently we’ve had all of these bits of news:

• Rudd thinks a Copenhagen agreement will be difficult to reach
• Senator Fielding wants to re-run the debate over whether climate change is real or not
• Two-headed fish in Queensland, from pesticides in the water
• Fruit and veg crops will fail unless we move them or stop climate change

It’s enough to make me give up and go have a beer, or throw a rotten egg at the G8. And it’s a common feeling for anyone who cares about the state of our planet – how can you keep going when the news is so bad? A lot of eco-warriors get burned out from trying to solve the biggest problem we’ve ever faced.

But I’ve got a daft little trick to lift me out of the doldrums when things start looking too bleak. I remember Dory from Finding Nemo:

She’s always an optimist, no matter how bad things look. The song returns later in the movie, when a school of fish are trapped in a fishing net. She tells them that if they all swim together, they can break free. So they’re all there, shouting “Keep swimming!”, pulling together. And by working as group they get out of danger.

So I remind myself to just keep doing the right thing, no matter how small it seems. And I go out and talk to other people who are trying to help the earth, or go online and see all the awesome stuff people are working on. Stuff like:

• The Powershift conference
• Northern hairy-nosed wombats making a comeback
• Bundanoon’s bottled water ban

If you’re feeling a bit fed up, get out there and chat to other people. If we all keep swimming together, we’ll get there in the end.

I’m taking next week off from the blog, because it’s my birthday and I need to recharge my batteries. But I’ll be back after that – see you then!