Canberra to be emitting 1/5th of 1990 level greenhouse gases by 2050?

housebound said :

Any more tweaking ideas?

Tell the bogans that releasing massive amounts of carbon dioxide is the best way to save the planet.

Hmmm, a more simple life emitting only 40% of 1990 levels, but with only tweaks. Here’s a few ideas for your simpler life:
1. ban airconditioning – the increase in aircon is a big reason for increases in residential and commerical energy use
2. put a cap on car travel (per household) of about 10k a year (about half the average Canberran travel)
3. build an airport just over the border and shift our pollution to NSW
4. go back to neighbourhood planning – local schools, local shops, local jobs, local food production (all aimed to help achieve #2)
5. use trains for all freight, and ban big freight trucks
6. limit appliance ownership to 1 TV, 1 computer per household; ban heating unless it’s snowing
7. mandatory solar panel/wind power to all households.

Any more tweaking ideas?

Raaf, sounds like you’re gonna get yourself a 2010 V8 Hummer, hot pink, with whale skin hubcaps and all leather cow interior and make brown baby seal eyes for head lights (yeah)!
And yer gonna drive in that baby at 115 miles per hour, gettin’ 1 mile per gallon, sucking down Quarter Pounder cheeseburgers from McDonalds in the old fashioned non-biodegradable styrofoam containers.
And when yer done sucking down those greeseball burgers yer gonna wipe yer mouth with the Australian flag.
And then yer gonna toss the styrofoam containers right out the side and there aint a goddamn thing any greenie can do about it
You know why, because earth’s got the volcano, thats why.
Two words, plate fucking tectonics, OK?

i’m sure your grandchildren will sit around parched in their tents out in the deserts [once food bowls], cowering from incessant windstorms

You are kidding aren’t you?

only partly – read james lovelock, for one, on the likely ramifications of unchecked cc and the scenarios are pretty depressing, if not downright petrifying; so alright, maybe great grand kids…

Rather than crazy targets, it would be good to see lots of small tweaks to the law that over time lead to lower resource consumption. Realistically, major changes like this occur over many years, and we should bear this in mind. Starting a culture change of living more simply, and learning to enjoy the basics more, would be a great start. Right now the lifestyle expectations of many people are wildly unrealistic.

Even the most hardened climate-change sceptic would surely accept that we can’t keep consuming the way we do currently. Do you think the environment could cope with the 2 billion Chinese who hope to emulate our lifestyle?

Compared to the rest of the world, we’re rich, stable and technologically smart. If anyone can find smarter ways to live comfortably within our environmental means, it should be us.

When the sh!t hits the fan, as one day it inevitably will, it won’t be much comfort to say to ourselves that at least we weren’t the very worst.

I’d like to know how they will deal with the massive carbon footprint that is the Canberra Glassworks … handful of moderately good, handblown bits and pieces produced from insane level of gas consumption. Is the Canberra community going to be happy to “carbon subsidise” this folly once we’re asked to tighten our energy belts?

p1 said:

“But I wish people would stop making the above statement. If we were talking about road tolls, would you say “Canberra makes up like 1% on the population, no point making us wear seatbelts….”?

That would be a valid statement if the only way to save lives was for everyone to wear seatbelts. This is not the case: the benefit of wearing a seatbelt goes directly to the wearer (and their family/friends).

In contrast, if any individual cuts their greenhouse emissions to zero (physiologically impossible, but that’s another point entirely), then it benefits no one directly. In fact, it could be a disbenefit to the individual (eg through being very cold in winter). It is only through collective action that any benefits accrue.

So if 1% of the population wears seat belts, that 1% gets a direct benefit. If 1% of the population cuts greenhouse emissions, then the benefit is miniscule.

It’s a variation of a classic tragey of the commons, and it is the reason people have been lobbying for effective collective action on greenhouse emmissions. It has worked : when governments banded together to ban some ozone depleting substances.

This time, with greenhouse gas emissions, a ridiculous ACT target set for less than 1% of the population is unlikely to see real change in behaviour, because the costs to individuals are high, the benefits very low, and all without making any real total difference.

“I WILL NOT pay one more cent for electricity”

You won’t have to when they cut it off

p1 said :

The difference being that you will either be spending the money now – money which will go to the glass and construction industry. Or spending it later, and the money going to the energy industry.

That’s the problem – most people cannot afford the additional up front expense.
If there was a magic car that never needed repairs and cost nothing to run, ever, everyone would run out and buy one. What if it cost $500k?

Affordability is already low, and the government relies too heavily on high land prices. Higher land prices for ever smaller blocks achieves nothing for energy efficiency, and leaves people with less to spend on ‘comfort’

I would say that the government needs to continue to increase the minimum standards, while reducing the land price to counter the additional cost burden. A rebate for double-glazing might be a good start but you would certainly need to go a lot further than that to achieve anything resembling the ‘Passivhaus standard’ mentioned elsewhere.

Noezis said :

Pffft, 6 star energy rating is abysmal.

The minimum 6-star energy rating is at least enforcing* a minimum standard. Better than nothing, though it could be better. (* may not actually be enforced..)

Captain RAAF said :

What’s next, Sheeple, Soylent Green?

Carbon neutrality = A very boring existance. Sure you may have saved the earth from dying one minute earlier over the span of a few hundred thousand years because lets face it, all that has to happen to set back all your carbon reduction schemes is for some volcano anywhere in the world to sneeze and you’re back to square one. Why bother? Is the pain worth the gain or do you just think that doing something, anything, is better than nothing at all? Well guess what, you could spend a lifetime being ‘green’ and you won’t make any difference to the planet, you could get all your friends to do the same and the end result, the planet would be no different. We are nothing in the life of the great green and blue orb that we ride on, when it wants us gone, it will just wipe us out and start again, it does’nt care how many plastic bottles you recycle or trees you plant, when the time comes nothing you do will make a lick of difference.

So, while you are all planning what color your Prius is going to be and whether or not you should wear the brown hemp pants or the green ones, know that I and people like me that vastly outnumber you, will be living a fun life, driving rainforest destroying V8’s, dragging the Victa out on the weekend to do the lawns, downing a beer, going to the footy in big 4WD’s, cranking up the heater in winter and maybe burning a few trees under the BBQ, but it will be a hell of a life and we won’t have it any other way!

just volcanoes? you forgot the sunspots…

i’m sure your grandchildren will sit around parched in their tents out in the deserts [once food bowls], cowering from incessant windstorms, praising your integrity; …or whatever word for it they then choose. s’people like you give humanity a bad name.

housebound said :

And all this for a city that makes up something like 1% of Australia’s population. JB is right – the impact of this on global emissions will be insignificant.

I totally agree with your other points, and think that people proposing (or worse committing to) totally unrealistic targets is counter productive.

But I wish people would stop making the above statement. If we were talking about road tolls, would you say “Canberra makes up like 1% on the population, no point making us wear seatbelts….”?

verbalkint said :

troll-sniffer, you are aware that all new houses and units need at least a 6 star energy rating, right?

Pffft, 6 star energy rating is abysmal. It’s the Building Code of Australia that needs to be revised in particular in Canberra, Victoria, Tasmania and the cooler areas of NSW.

Homes in these regions should be built to almost a European standard with thick walls (30 to 45cm thickness just in the bricks), insulation, double to triple glazed windows and positioning homes facing a north aspect.

The current building standards would not be accepted anywhere else in the western world.

Realistically, let’s just think about how we will get down to 40% of 1990 emissions by 2020.

A few points:
1. the ACT’s population in 1990 was just under 300,000 – we’re now over 350,000
2. our greenhouse gas emissions are dominated by (from the 2008 ACT GGI):
– electricity (63%) – residential (26%) and non-residential (37%)
– gas (8%)
– transport (23%) – petrol (19%), other (4%).

So to achieve a cut of 60%, a lot of us will have to die, leave town, get very cold in winter, or stop driving everywhere and live in the few caves that the ACT has. This is also in a context of the ACT government taking a regional approach to services provision – forcing people to drive everywhere for work and school.

In other words, the changes needed by 2020 will be very difficult to achieve just in practical terms. And that’s just talking per capita emissions (so not even allowing for population increase).

The biggest impact of this will be to give the government an excuse to massievly increase our electricity bill. They should thank the Greens, none of whom live in the outer suburbs, for that nice little earner – but they did flag this possibility just after the 2008 election.

And all this for a city that makes up something like 1% of Australia’s population. JB is right – the impact of this on global emissions will be insignificant.

hax said :

arescarti42 said :

troll-sniffer said :

That buildings (particularly houses) in the ACT’s temperate climate even need active heating/cooling systems is a testament to their poor construction. The German Passivhaus standard of thermally efficient construction allows houses in frigid northern Europe to mostly do away with heating, so there should be no need to have it at all in Canberra.

There would be a significant additional cost to achieve these standards.

Well yes. If (as an example) we were to make double glazing a requirement of any new dwelling built from today. It would mean;

roughly twice as much glass needs to be manufactured per house,
cost of window frames etc to hold it all in would increase,
cost of transport would increase, end result being an increase in the cost of the dwellings production (although since every new house being built would have them , the cost would be a lot less then the current cost of such a upgrade).

This increased cost per dwelling could then be considered against the benefit for the life of the dwelling. So for the next 50+ years the house will be better insulated against heat and cold, (lower heating and cooling bills) and better insulated against sound (might be nice for an inner city apartment on a McMansion on a tiny block).

So, having looked at this (just one option with positive environmental impact) we see that economically it is probably neutral, if not a benefit – so long as you are thinking very long term. The difference being that you will either be spending the money now – money which will go to the glass and construction industry. Or spending it later, and the money going to the energy industry. On one hand you will be getting house worth more, on the other hand you will be paying the same for the pleasure of using a heater more.[/rant]

A Noisy Noise Annoys An Oyster said :

I will say right now that I WILL NOT change my lifestyle, I WILL NOT accept a lower standard of living, I WILL NOT pay one more cent for electricity and I WILL NOT do one solitary thing to be “environmentally friendly” just to please a bunch of selfish, utopian, moronic greenies. They can go to buggery and take their weird ideas with them.

Are you being satirical? If so, well done. If not, you made me laugh so much my spaghettie came out my nose. Brilliant.

Heavens knows it would be just as effective to sacrifice a few virgins – I am sure there are a few green, tree huggers who fall into that category. Just slice and dice them on the top of Mt Ainslie and the Climate Change hysteria will be magically solved. Beats sacrificing an economy leaving the poor and elderly too darned scared to turn on their heaters. Cold kills more than heat. Half wits.

arescarti42 said :

troll-sniffer said :

That buildings (particularly houses) in the ACT’s temperate climate even need active heating/cooling systems is a testament to their poor construction. The German Passivhaus standard of thermally efficient construction allows houses in frigid northern Europe to mostly do away with heating, so there should be no need to have it at all in Canberra.

There would be a significant additional cost to achieve these standards.

What’s next, Sheeple, Soylent Green?

Carbon neutrality = A very boring existance. Sure you may have saved the earth from dying one minute earlier over the span of a few hundred thousand years because lets face it, all that has to happen to set back all your carbon reduction schemes is for some volcano anywhere in the world to sneeze and you’re back to square one. Why bother? Is the pain worth the gain or do you just think that doing something, anything, is better than nothing at all? Well guess what, you could spend a lifetime being ‘green’ and you won’t make any difference to the planet, you could get all your friends to do the same and the end result, the planet would be no different. We are nothing in the life of the great green and blue orb that we ride on, when it wants us gone, it will just wipe us out and start again, it does’nt care how many plastic bottles you recycle or trees you plant, when the time comes nothing you do will make a lick of difference.

So, while you are all planning what color your Prius is going to be and whether or not you should wear the brown hemp pants or the green ones, know that I and people like me that vastly outnumber you, will be living a fun life, driving rainforest destroying V8’s, dragging the Victa out on the weekend to do the lawns, downing a beer, going to the footy in big 4WD’s, cranking up the heater in winter and maybe burning a few trees under the BBQ, but it will be a hell of a life and we won’t have it any other way!

So, will our MLAs stop flying everywhere on ‘business trips’, or is the solution going to be “tax the shit out of citizens and let industry do its thing” like we do with water?

MDDRLD said :

We can bury our head in the sand, or we can try to do something. Yes our per unit electricity cost will need to increase but there are so many possibilities for decreasing how much we use, it’s criminal that we haven’t bothered much before. The Government is telling us all, now, that this will have to change. It might be time to stop your whinging and think about how you could turn your obvious spare time into something useful.

I will say right now that I WILL NOT change my lifestyle, I WILL NOT accept a lower standard of living, I WILL NOT pay one more cent for electricity and I WILL NOT do one solitary thing to be “environmentally friendly” just to please a bunch of selfish, utopian, moronic greenies. They can go to buggery and take their weird ideas with them.

MDDRLD said :

We can bury our head in the sand, or we can try to do something. Yes our per unit electricity cost will need to increase but there are so many possibilities for decreasing how much we use, it’s criminal that we haven’t bothered much before. The Government is telling us all, now, that this will have to change. It might be time to stop your whinging and think about how you could turn your obvious spare time into something useful.

I look forward to how you propose we drastically cut emissions without destroying the economy so much that we can still, you know, eat.

Until now – so this should be a cause for celebration!

troll-sniffer said :

There is no way in a believable universe that Canberra or any other part of Australia is going to come within a laryngitis-affected bull’s roar of even reducing our current greenhouse gas emissions in the forseeable future.

A prime example? ACT planning and building laws. By now house and unit designs should mandate carbon-free designs, but what do we have? The same perpetually stupid designs that make up for their deficiencies by slapping on air conditioners and gas or other heating units. The same idiotic series of new suburban developments, exactly the same as the last three or four generations that contributed so much to our current emissions. Pandering to the reactionary types and heritage lobbies who stymie any serious attempts to consolidate development into more environmentally friendly areas.

That’s the sad reality. The ACT has extremely limited industry, I’d say the majority of GHG emissions in this city would be coming from transportation and buildings, which would make it comparatively easy to reduce emissions compared to other states.

That buildings (particularly houses) in the ACT’s temperate climate even need active heating/cooling systems is a testament to their poor construction. The German Passivhaus standard of thermally efficient construction allows houses in frigid northern Europe to mostly do away with heating, so there should be no need to have it at all in Canberra.

As a nation, we lack the public and political will to do anything about it unfortunately.

We can bury our head in the sand, or we can try to do something. Yes our per unit electricity cost will need to increase but there are so many possibilities for decreasing how much we use, it’s criminal that we haven’t bothered much before. The Government is telling us all, now, that this will have to change. It might be time to stop your whinging and think about how you could turn your obvious spare time into something useful.

verbalkint said :

troll-sniffer, you are aware that all new houses and units need at least a 6 star energy rating, right?

The star rating system is badly flawed and has only the faintest relationship to a measure of how much energy a house may consume.

troll-sniffer, you are aware that all new houses and units need at least a 6 star energy rating, right?

There is no way in a believable universe that Canberra or any other part of Australia is going to come within a laryngitis-affected bull’s roar of even reducing our current greenhouse gas emissions in the forseeable future. Of course the average Aussie is concerned about greenhouse gas emissions; but only other people’s. The economy is not set up to make any substantial changes in our lifetimes unless war pestilence or famine takes over. There’s no real will in the vast majority of the population. Those who supposedly have the will are not encouraged to participate in any meaningful actions.

A prime example? ACT planning and building laws. By now house and unit designs should mandate carbon-free designs, but what do we have? The same perpetually stupid designs that make up for their deficiencies by slapping on air conditioners and gas or other heating units. The same idiotic series of new suburban developments, exactly the same as the last three or four generations that contributed so much to our current emissions. Pandering to the reactionary types and heritage lobbies who stymie any serious attempts to consolidate development into more environmentally friendly areas.

Even simple issues like the moronic policies that demand leased vehicles run a minimum of 27,000km a year. A continuing lower rate of taxes on large 4WD vehicles.

Every single person I know who professes to avidly supporting a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions drives everywhere, does not reduce their balmy winter indoor temps, buys all sorts of exotic foods from far distant places, has at least one full shower per day, and other than when sitting around the dinner table or drinks discussing the need to reduce our emissions does not seriously think about their lifestyle choices and how they actively contribute to the problem.

Look forward to whopping electricity bills just to give a bunch of loony greenies the warm and fuzzies.