Fresh green links

No-take zones in Great Barrier Reef a success for fisheries – also working out well for California.

Gorgon gas project ‘saves’ endangered animals by moving them to a radioactive location – and a national park full of cats, dogs and foxes. Gee, thanks for your efforts to preserve the ecosystem while you take the profits.

News just in: carbon pricing works in the long term – so now will our politicians stop pretending that Australia is about to embark upon some wacky experiment? Because we’re actually playing catch-up with programs that have been in place in Europe for nearly a decade now.

The Bloom Box explained – it’s been all over the green news this week. Gizmodo.com explains what it is (energy-generating and -storing fuel cell) and how it works.

The Year of the Tiger – urban sprawl, pollution and poaching for black market trading are driving tigers to extinction. This slideshow has beautiful pictures of these magnificent animals, plus links to organisations trying to help them.

Plantation toxins in Tasmania

A scene from Something In The Water

Did anyone else watch Australian Story on Monday night? It was about an alliance between a GP, a group of oyster farmers and a Sydney scientist, investigating water quality issues in Tasmania’s George River.

The oyster farmers found that their business was suffering because of toxins in the water. A local GP believes there is a cancer cluster in the region her patients are from. And they got together with a scientist from Sydney to try to find out if there was any evidence for what they suspected.

The toxin problem in the water has been traced back to eucalypt plantations along the George River. Now the group of locals want further testing to confirm what’s going on.

You can see the episode online for a while at the Australian Story website: Something in the Water Part 1, and Part 2. I’m sure it will also be shown on ABC’s iView website as well, but the Australian Story site has extra information and interviews that weren’t able to be included in the show.

Because of the tv show, the issue has now been picked up by newspapers like The Mercury and The Australian.

Naturally, the Tasmanian government is denying that there’s any problem. This is the same government that let Gunns rewrite state national parks legislation to allow logging, so I can’t say I’m shocked that they’d instantly move to protect any part of the forestry industry.

As Dr Bleaney says,

Dr Bleaney says she wants further testing of the water supply to be able to make firm conclusions. “We’re not saying we actually have absolute proof of what’s going on,” she said. “We’re actually saying that this needs to be investigated and it needs to be looked at very carefully.”

Toxic drinking water is worth investigating. It remains to be seen if Tasmania’s government is impartial enough to actually conduct a scientific review of the situation, or take any action on it if a problem is found.

Innovating to zero

Bill Gates, owner of Microsoft and one of the world’s largest charity organisations, has come out on the side of the greenies. He’s realised the importance of fixing climate change, and he’s come to that realisation via his interest in relieving extreme poverty around the world.

Last week, he gave a fascinating TED talk. You might have heard me mention TED talks before, they feature speakers who are leaders in their field talking about their ideas for making the future a better place.

[I'm not sure if this video will show up for email and RSS subscribers: if you can't see it, come on over to my website or check out the talk on TED.com]

Gates has an equation for how much CO2 is created by our world. He puts it like this:

CO2 = P x S x E x C

where P is population (currently at 7 billion and rising), S is services (from basics like electricity and running water to McMansions and SUVs), E is energy required to create S, and C is the amount of carbon in our E.

If you want to get CO2 down to zero, at least one of those multipliers has to come down to zero as well. I think we can all agree that zero population or zero services doesn’t sound like the kind of future we’re hoping for!

So how do we get to zero CO2 emissions?

Gates thinks we can get a reduction in energy of maybe two-thirds, by efficiency methods. But the amazing thing is that Gates is aiming for a 100% reduction in the carbon dioxide created by our energy.

No other public figure of his importance has set this as a goal – no one else in that league even thinks it’s possible. But Gates is a man with big ideas, and if he says zero-carbon is a realistic target, a lot of people will be convinced by him.

So he’s listed the ‘miracles’ we need to get zero-carbon energy. And he’s found the people working on making those miracles happen, and is offering them his support.

I don’t agree with the details of his position: I think efficiency needs more effort than he realises, and I’d prefer less nuclear. I’m not the only one quibbling with him. Alex Steffen at Worldchanging (Most Important Climate Speech of the Year)  and David Roberts at Grist (Why Bill Gates is Wrong) have some comments which I hope will keep the ball rolling.

But I firmly believe that the conversation Gates is bringing to the mainstream is a million times more important than the squabbling in the media over typos in air temperature reports. Gates is moving on to the next stage of the climate discussion: solutions.

I hope he can bring more people to this next stage. This talk lays things out simply and clearly, so that everyone can feel like they understand what’s at stake and what we need to be working on. I’ll be showing it to as many people as possible!

Fresh green links

First large-scale solar station in WA – should be up and running by 2011, up in Carnarvon. It’ll be extra good because it’s supplying energy to remote areas not on the north-west or south-west grids, and will provide most energy when demand is highest in that area.

Single-stream recycling: what is it? how do you get it? – a short video over at Twilight Earth. We’ve got single stream in most of Perth, is it the same elsewhere in Australia? I bet it increases the amount of people who recycle if you don’t have to separate your rubbish.

Michael Pollan on Oprah about how we’ve made it rational to eat junk food – great little video via @lisaborden

Earth Hour 2010 – new video for this year’s global show of support for climate action, with footage of landmarks going dark in 2009. Last year’s was the largest mass-participation event ever, hoping this year’s will also be huge.

Green cleaning

So my New Year’s theme this year is “Reduce”. One of the things I’ve been doing to help this along is to declutter my house. I feel like getting rid of stuff, preferably to charity or to be recycled instead of creating landfill, will help me keep focused on my journey to live more simply and sustainably.

Yesterday I tackled my laundry. I can’t believe how much junk was in there! Plus cardboard boxes (recycled), 3 more laundry baskets than I need (I’m giving those away), and more cleaning products than you’d need to keep the Opera House shiny.

Which is silly, because for a couple of years now I’ve had a very pared-back cleaning system. Here’s the list of cleaning equipment I actually use each week:

• microfibre cloths, and a microfibre broom with extra mop attachment
• low-phosphate toilet cleaner, dishwashing liquid and washing powder
• bicarb soda
• vinegar

That’s it! That’s all I use, and it’s all kept in a couple of easily accessible boxes in the laundry and kitchen. I have no idea why I was hanging on to all that other stuff.

So I ditched all the extra bits and pieces of fabric softener, glass cleaner, and so on. I kept one bottle of washing liquid specifically for woollens, because I knit and it comes in handy once in a while, but everything else was disposed of and the bottles went into the recycling.

I could probably reduce the amount of chemicals in my cleaning even further, if I looked into making my own dishwashing liquid and so on. But the ones I’ve chosen are reliable and safe, I’ve kept them to a minimum, and I don’t want to have to find storage room for the ingredients needed to make them myself.

The microfibre cloths aren‘t 100% necessary either – you could easily replace them with clean cloths of any sort. But I find them easier to use and clean than random cloths, so as long as they last (they’ve got a 3 year guarantee) I’ll hang onto them.

After I cleared out the laundry, it was pretty dusty and sticky. I scrubbed the sink with bicarb and vinegar, wiped down the washer and dryer, and gave it a sweep and a mop. No fancy chemicals needed, and it looks pretty damn good. All I’ve got to do now is figure out how I ended up with 4 washing baskets in the first place!