Having your say on how we can become more sustainable in the ACT

HI everyone,

It’s really great to read your comments, some interesting thoughts and knowledge going around. We really want to know the views of the community, some of what is written here is valuable community input to us.

Please spread the word about the consultation paper to your family and friends, we want as much community input as possible to help shape our role and actions.

So feel free to make your thoughts known to us through our website, every serious suggestion and thought will be taken into consideration.

Cheers, and thanks again for the interesting discussion (RuffnReady) and the kind words (Granny).

Max Cooper

BTW monomania, lights don’t mean much, they account for about 4% of the elec. budget of an average ACT house. Your big ticket energy items are heating/cooling (50+%), water heating (20%), fridges, plasmas, and multiple appliances (eg. having the plasma, stereo, Xbox, PC etc. all running while using one of them – many people do this, I see it all the time)… oh, and standby power is up to 10%.

Mary Whitehouse said :

We can make a start by building on most of Canberra’s parkland. Urban consolidation is environmentally sound.

Caring for the environment also means caring for social values, which means keeping some green space.

As for solar panels, fine if you can afford them, but I don’t understand why so many people are opposed to grid renewables – wind is about the same price as gas fired electricity, and if the government is smart and invests some of this infrastructure money in building HV powerlines to the Cooper Basin, geothermal should be online in about 5-10 years. Solar thermal is also a good way to go. And in a few years the price of solar PV will be drastically reduced. Most cost effective things you can do to save energy in your house are: plug gaps, put in pelmets and good curtains, insulate properly, solar hot water… check out the Home Energy Advice Team Website:

http://www.heat.net.au/

But actually, forget all that – you can halve you energy consumption for NO COST – CHANGE YOUR BEHAVIOUR! Do a home energy, water, transport and consumption audit to work out where you waste, then act accordingly. I did exactly that and cut from 5600kWh/yr electricity to 2800kWh/yr in 2 years. I bought a bike and cut down from 3000L/yr petrol to 1200L/yr LPG. I shop at the farmers markets, buy Australian products to reduce food miles, buy anything else second hand unless I absolutely must buy first hand. I treat eating out as the luxury it is, and thus very much enjoy it when I do. I recycle everything possible, and produce about 2 Woolies bags of garbage a month (mostly unrecyclable packaging). My footprint has been cut by over 50% in two years. If everyone did that, we’d be a long way to solving the problem.

These things are not difficult with a little effort. The question is, are you really serious, or just another person who wants to say they care without doing a damn thing about it?

The information is all out there, but if you really want help with it I’ll do a thorough audit with you for $30/hr. Why charge? I didn’t spend years of study and thousands of dollars learning about this stuff for nothing. But the few dollars you spend on me will save you thousands a year. I really should go into business.

Actually Dr Cooper was saying something similar, monomania. She said we don’t need to be all drastic about it to make a difference. She said that if each Canberran did just four small things – made four choices to do something differently – it would add up to something quite significant.

Where is the OP for goodness’ sake? This isn’t even my thread, and I am completely pig ignorant about it all.

Granny said :

Apparently our ecological footprint is eleven times the area of the ACT … or something like that. We are worse than most other parts of Australia, mainly because we are so affluent as I understand it.

I suppose if we fill the place up with cost ineffective solar cells and grey water recycling systems somehow our footprint is going to shrink. Buy less. Turn the lights out and the taps off.

The ACT is very lucky to have this resource.

If you feel the politicians are doing the wrong thing by the environment then, you, the individual have some recourse to hold them accountable for their actions. That is my understanding anyway.

If nobody has any issues with what the government and general populace are doing here, fine, you won’t need their assistance. I think it is very positive that the Office is seeking to engage with the community in this fashion.

There is a lot of fascinating information, both in the report and in the Commissioner’s presentation to the Gungahlin Community Council.

However, I suspect that there will be too much apathy for this post to go very far. Shame, really. Good on them for trying, though.

Mary Whitehouse said :

We can make a start by building on most of Canberra’s parkland. Urban consolidation is environmentally sound.

Is that you Andrew Barr?

We can make a start by building on most of Canberra’s parkland. Urban consolidation is environmentally sound.

Apparently our ecological footprint is eleven times the area of the ACT … or something like that. We are worse than most other parts of Australia, mainly because we are so affluent as I understand it.

The ACT is at it’s population limit for sustainability.

The answer is to discourage people from moving to here, and encourage people to move away.