A pre-Copenhagen 2009 climate change question for governments of the day

It is widely accepted that (i) there is an increase in global warming due to anthropomorphic activity (principally though greenhouse gas emissions), (ii) this increase in warming is/will result in climate change with a significant deleterious effect on natural environment, infrastructure and society, (iii) there is limited extant legislation and/or binding treaty which seeks to adapt human activities in order to reduce these emissions at the national or international level, and (iv) the continent and territorial waters of the Commonwealth of Australia are/will experience the negative effects of climate change earlier or to a greater degree than some other nations.

What is also beginning to emerge is the possibility that few, if any, national governments are willing to create legitimate policy or enact legislation which seeks to either curb actual greenhouse gas emissions or limit exposure to climate change impacts. To date political rhetoric on climate change has been profuse and relatively worthless.

It is also becoming apparent that with a few exceptions change of government is unlikely to lead to real policy change in relation to how a country deals with global warming and, in Australia, any change of government is just as likely to result in a weakening of structural response.

So when will Australians start to band together and sue one or all of the three tiers of government (under existing common, statute law and/or international treaty) in order to effect climate change mitigation?

An critique: CLIMATE CHANGE LITIGATION IN THE LAND AND ENVIRONMENT COURT OF NEW SOUTH WALES AND OTHER COURTS,The Hon. Justice Brian J Preston Chief Judge Land and Environment Court of NSW,August 2009

A little dust storm? Don't worry be happy!

Dust plume passing over the southern section of the Great Barrier Reef
24 September 2009
From Universe Today

If you thought that anti-science 'what anthropomorphic climate change?' blogs couldn't get any worse, then Watts Up With That just proved you wrong.

WUWT thinks that the recent massive loss of top soil across three states due to the big dust storm (larger picture) which hit the Australian east coast on 23 September 2009 is a real bonus:

That dust headed to sea has an unappreciated benefit – it will fertilize the ocean with its mineral rich dust. There may be some interesting blooms of sea life in the weeks to come.

Unfortunately, some of these interesting blooms may occur on the Great Barrier Reef which is already negatively impacted by silt and nutrient rich run-off from adjacent coastal lands.

Some readers' comments shown on the blog also posit that a dry Lake Eyre might be to blame for all that dust. Confusing the much larger Lake Eyre Basin with the actual lake.

Image from The Lake Eyre Basin Intergovernmental Agreement Click to enlarge

NASA which had a space-eye view of the storm's progress pointed out that dust was rising from multiple sources including agricultural land not just from the salt lakes.

The second dust storm which formed on 25 September also crossed three states and reached the coast.

On a continent with some of the oldest and most depleted soils on Earth, dust storms and the potential for erosion they represent, don't actually have an upside.

On the NSW North Coast four days of dust-laden air followed in some areas by a day of bushfire smoke on Sunday were not ideal living conditions for the very young, frail aged and those with respiratory problems.

Smoke from mulitple fires mingling with dust
27 September 2009
Southern Queensland to Northern NSW
From MODIS

iSnack2.0: the 'new' Vegemite being panned?

Every time I visited my local supermarket these last few months it seemed that its display of the 'new' Vegemite and cream cheese spread didn't move very many jars from the shelves into shopping trolleys.

Last week the store was forced to offer the spread at almost half price in the hope of finally getting rid of all those yet unnamed jars ahead of Sunday's announcement that it was to be called iSnack2.0.

Here are some of the responses to The Daily Telegraph story on the naming competition:

1.0 of bondi Posted at 3:44 PM Today

That's the best they could come up with??

origimite Posted at 3:46 PM Today

what the hell kind of name is that? I will admit, it's a crap product - it tastes like bum, but giving it a name like that is just stupid. If I were Apple, I'd be getting my lawyers ready

Stephen of Quakers Hill Posted at 3:47 PM Today

WTF ???????? That is the stupidest name....Ever ! No argument.

JOHN STRONGER of BRISBANE Posted at 3:48 PM Today

MORE LIKE CRAPMITE!!!!!

Timothy Dub Posted at 3:53 PM Today

iSnack2.0 sucks. Worst. Name. Ever. What about vegelite. Anything would be better than that generic name. Why does everything have to have a 2.0 at the end of it these days. So passe. I won't be buying iSnack2.0 it doesn't sound very appetising, well maybe to a Dell Laptop it may.

Medusa Knows of Banana Republic Posted at 4:03 PM Today

You're kidding!?

N of Bondi Posted at 4:04 PM Today

That has got to be the stupidest name ever

It was always going to be chancy, fooling around with an Aussie icon. At this rate it's odds on there'll be a name change and then removal from the Australian market sometime in the next two years.

UPDATE:

Kraft Foods Inc. calling out 'uncle' - after less than a week it has announced it is considering a name change for its new spread.

Matters are moving so fast that it might be gone from the supermarket shelves by New Year. ;-)

Happy 11th Birthday Google!

Google's 11 th birthday logo on 27 September 2009

Google Inc was created way back in 1998 off the back of the founders' earlier foray into search engines, BackRub, and the fledgling company set up in a Santa Monica garage in September of that year.

You may be getting older, suffer from the occasional hiccup and have a few aches and pains around the Gmail area, but you are still the world's favourite first stop for information searches.

So happy birthday, Google and may you have many more.

North Coast Voices

Casino and Grafton winners in house price growth according to ANZ September 2009 rural & regional quarterly report

Snapshot from ANZ Rural and Regional Quarterly 23 September 2009

According to the ANZ Rural and Regional Quarterly 23 September 2009 non-residential and residential building approvals are weak across the NSW North Coast and are falling back towards 2001 levels. Existing dwelling slae prices have also fallen in Coffs Harbour and Byron Bay.

However, the median house price in Casino and Grafton has risen by 5-6% in the last twelve months. In part due to the fact there appears to be more housing stock on the market under $350,000 potentially attracting buyers eligible for the First Home Buyers Grant.

State of Play 2009: Indigenous Land Corporation

The Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies has published a 2009 discussion paper on Policy Change and the Indigenous Land Corporation.

According to National Native Title Tribunal Library Services:

Policy change and the Indigenous Land Corporation / Patrick Sullivan

The Indigenous Land Corporation (ILC) was established in 1995 by the Keating Government as one element of its three-part response to the Mabo judgment. The first part was the Native Title Act (1993), which validated past grants of land to settlers and set up a process for claiming and registering surviving rights of native title. The second part was the creation of an Indigenous Land Fund, established by successive appropriations over ten years, after which it was to be self-sustaining.The ILC was set up at the same time to receive part of the allocation each year to buy alienated land for Indigenous groups. The third part of the Keating response, a Social Justice Package, was never implemented.

This discussion paper investigates changes in ILC policy from its inaugural period, when land was bought and divested to Indigenous groups rapidly, to the present day, when the ILC controls application procedures more tightly, divests under strict conditions, and augments its income from its own operations and investments. The paper suggests the ILC has shifted its focus from the direct benefit of land ownership towards joint programs with other government agencies for training, education and employment. The paper suggests this policy change has occurred without widespread consultation and communication, which has resulted in the dissatisfaction of Indigenous groups. The paper also discusses ILC finances, finding that it has faced considerable challenges since 2004 when it began funding itself entirely from the earnings of the Land Fund and its own investments.

Full research paper PDF here.

Anyone else just a mite suspicious of the G20's motives?

The G20 has been around since 1999. It's a group of finance ministers and central bank governors. Many of the same ministers and bankers who sat complacently by while the global financial crisis grew into a tsunami which threatens to widen the gap between the developed and developing world, between rich and poor, between those countries with enough resources to buffer against climate change and those that will simply sink into the ocean or blow away on the wind.
One or two of its members countries have also been on record in the past as wanting to sideline the United Nations as an international forum and decision making body.
I think that the dynamic duo, Kev and Wayne from Nambour, need to be careful here because in this group of twenty they will still be mice in bed with at least two elephants - the USA and the European Union.
Even though Australia is now considered a developed country by those heavies participating in setting G20 policy, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank; it's still privately rated as something of a wannabee.
When I look at how things went down at Pittsburgh this month I can't help feeling that what I'm really seeing is the international banking and business world shoring up the status quo and trying to kick the UN off the field.

Pic from Financial Axis

Update:
Mungo MacCallum writing over at Crikey believes that the G20 Pittburgh Summit is a true change in the world economic order:
"It is almost impossible to overstate the significance of the events last week in Pittsburgh.
The acceptance by all the major players of the role of the G20 as a rule maker for the conduct of the financial systems of member nations quite literally ushers in a new world economic order.
And this is not some kind of Orwellian nightmare in which a conspiracy of plutocrats (or Jews, or Masons, or Martians) use their might to enslave the wretched of the earth, but a genuine democratisation that directly includes two thirds of the world’s population and indirectly gives a voice to the rest.
The London meeting of the G20 in April proved that the new organisation could actually work; that the diverse array of interests could co-operate in reforms to a system in desperate need of them. Now the process has been formalised and we have a long-overdue representative body with the power and the will to lead the world out of the global economic crisis and towards a better and fairer model of interdependence for the future.
Unsurprisingly, the Australian media have made much of the fact that Australia, as an active member of the club, now has a seat at the top table and this is indeed a cause for rejoicing. But far more important is the part Australia played in its construction, which is a matter for genuine and bipartisan pride."

Leaders Statement from the 2009 G20 Pittsburgh Summit signals new directions or business as usual?

This morning The Pittsburgh Summit released a lengthy Leaders' Statement, the full transcript of which can be found here.
Only a handful of its 50 clauses plus annex dealt with climate change.
In this the G20 (like the G8 before it) fails to live up to the UN's record on climate change, on the day the Australian media reported that it had become the new premier forum for global governance and economic management.

In part the Leaders' Statement reads:

12. Today we agreed:

13. To launch a framework that lays out the policies and the way we act together to generate strong, sustainable and balanced global growth. We need a durable recovery that creates the good jobs our people need.

14. We need to shift from public to private sources of demand, establish a pattern of growth across countries that is more sustainable and balanced, and reduce development imbalances. We pledge to avoid destabilizing booms and busts in asset and credit prices and adopt macroeconomic policies, consistent with price stability, that promote adequate and balanced global demand. We will also make decisive progress on structural reforms that foster private demand and strengthen long-run growth potential.

15. Our Framework for Strong, Sustainable and Balanced Growth is a compact that commits us to work together to assess how our policies fit together, to evaluate whether they are collectively consistent with more sustainable and balanced growth, and to act as necessary to meet our common objectives.

16. To make sure our regulatory system for banks and other financial firms reins in the excesses that led to the crisis. Where reckless behavior and a lack of responsibility led to crisis, we will not allow a return to banking as usual.

17. We committed to act together to raise capital standards, to implement strong international compensation standards aimed at ending practices that lead to excessive risk-taking, to improve the over-the-counter derivatives market and to create more powerful tools to hold large global firms to account for the risks they take. Standards for large global financial firms should be commensurate with the cost of their failure. For all these reforms, we have set for ourselves strict and precise timetables.

18. To reform the global architecture to meet the needs of the 21^st century. After this crisis, critical players need to be at the table and fully vested in our institutions to allow us to cooperate to lay the foundation for strong, sustainable and balanced growth.

19. We designated the G-20 to be the premier forum for our international economic cooperation. We established the Financial Stability Board (FSB) to include major emerging economies and welcome its efforts to coordinate and monitor progress in strengthening financial regulation.

20. We are committed to a shift in International Monetary Fund (IMF) quota share to dynamic emerging markets and developing countries of at least 5% from over-represented countries to under-represented countries using the current quota formula as the basis to work from. Today we have delivered on our promise to contribute over $500 billion to a renewed and expanded IMF New Arrangements to Borrow (NAB).

21. We stressed the importance of adopting a dynamic formula at the World Bank which primarily reflects countries' evolving economic weight and the World Bank's development mission, and that generates an increase of at least 3% of voting power for developing and transition countries, to the benefit of under-represented countries. While recognizing that over-represented countries will make a contribution, it will be important to protect the voting power of the smallest poor countries. We called on the World Bank to play a leading role in responding to problems whose nature requires globally coordinated action, such as climate change and food security, and agreed that the World Bank and the regional development banks should have sufficient resources to address these challenges and fulfill their mandates.

22. To take new steps to increase access to food, fuel and finance among the world's poorest while clamping down on illicit outflows. Steps to reduce the development gap can be a potent driver of global growth.

23. Over four billion people remain undereducated, ill-equipped with capital and technology, and insufficiently integrated into the global economy. We need to work together to make the policy and institutional changes needed to accelerate the convergence of living standards and productivity in developing and emerging economies to the levels of the advanced economies. To start, we call on the World Bank to develop a new trust fund to support the new Food Security Initiative for low-income countries announced last summer. We will increase, on a voluntary basis, funding for programs to bring clean affordable energy to the poorest, such as the Scaling Up Renewable Energy Program.

24. To phase out and rationalize over the medium term inefficient fossil fuel subsidies while providing targeted support for the poorest. Inefficient fossil fuel subsidies encourage wasteful consumption, reduce our energy security, impede investment in clean energy sources and undermine efforts to deal with the threat of climate change.

25. We call on our Energy and Finance Ministers to report to us their implementation strategies and timeline for acting to meet this critical commitment at our next meeting.

26. We will promote energy market transparency and market stability as part of our broader effort to avoid excessive volatility.

27. To maintain our openness and move toward greener, more sustainable growth.

28. We will fight protectionism. We are committed to bringing the Doha Round to a successful conclusion in 2010.

29. We will spare no effort to reach agreement in Copenhagen through the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations.

30. We warmly welcome the report by the Chair of the London Summit commissioned at our last meeting and published today.

31. Finally, we agreed to meet in Canada in June 2010 and in Korea in November 2010. We expect to meet annually thereafter and will meet in France in 2011.

* * *
1. We assessed the progress we have made together in addressing the global crisis and agreed to maintain our steps to support economic activity until recovery is assured. We further committed to additional steps to ensure strong, sustainable, and balanced growth, to build a stronger international financial system, to reduce development imbalances, and to modernize our architecture for international economic cooperation.

The blogosphere is growing?

According to the pundits the amount of Internet time spent on social networking and blogging sites is growing and the amount of time in front of the teev is falling away (except for those over 40 years old).
However we're all still spending more time watching television than cruising cyberspace.