Concentrating solar power - what is it?...

Last night I was reading through the Beyond Zero Emissions summary report, the one which lays out a plan for Australia to move to 100% renewable energy by 2020. Their plan relies lots of energy efficiency to cut back on the amount of baseload we need. Then we switch to nearly 40% wind power, which we’re all familiar with, and on nearly 60% ‘concentrating solar thermal’, which I had to look up. CST is really...

Fresh green links...

Not many links this week: did I miss something interesting going on in the world of green? If so, leave a comment and let me know! The Story of Bottled Water - Annie Leonard releases another one of her informative videos, this time about bottled water. Give it a look if you’re still buying the bottled stuff. The Plastiki sets sail - a boat made of discarded plastic, travelling from California to Sydney to show the...

Western Swamp Tortoise...

Photo credit: Friends of the Western Swamp Tortoise On the weekend I went on a food-lovers’ tour of the Swan Valley as part of a fund-raising thing for the Friends of the Western Swamp Tortoise. It was a great day out - a small busload of us were taken to the best road-side stalls and food places in the valley to sample some great market garden produce and treats. We finished up with lunch at the Edgecombe Brothers...

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....

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...

How to spot greenwashing...

On Saturday I had a brief interview with Harvey Deegan on Perth’s 6PR radio station. We were chatting about greenwash, and I got a lot of interested reactions in my email and on Twitter about it, so I thought I’d post a little more about it here. More and more people are going green these days, making changes in their lives. And more businesses are doing the same, in order to save money and their workers’...

Unchopping a Tree...

Watch this: Maya Lin - Unchopping a Tree from What is Missing? Foundation on Vimeo. I saw this video in a post at Treehugger.com, where they’ve gathered some interesting facts about deforestation. Currently 90 acres of rainforest worldwide are being destroyed every minute. That’s an amazingly fast rate. The video shows how quickly some famous parks around the world could be deforested. I wanted to try it...

Would you like a green, clean job?...

Recently I posted about ending the coal industry in Australia. Although it only contributes 1.3% of Australia’s employment, that’s still over 200,000 people affected by the change. But it doesn’t have to mean that they’re out of work - we’ll be needing lots of people to work in new clean energy industries. Plus, we can’t be telling our kids to head off to the mines and rigs for a well-paid...

Blog Action Day: What are you doing about climate ...

Today is Blog Action Day, when bloggers all around the world write on the same topic to raise awareness about how an issue affects our world. This year’s theme is: climate change! Because climate change is a subject I write about regularly, I hope my regular readers will forgive me if I don’t go into detail explaining what it is! If you’re a new visitor, definitely check out the Australian Conservation...

Coal: not necessary for our future...

Back in the 1880s when people first started building coal-fired electricity generators, we had no idea that we were messing with the delicate balance of our atmosphere. But now we do know: coal contributes 20% of the world’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Australia is currenlty the world’s 4th largest coal producer. We use 80% of our coal ourselves, which is why we have the world’s highest GHG emissions...