Run For A Safe Climate passing through Byron Bay and Lismore on 11 & 12 November 2009

Runners taking part in Run For A Safe Climate will be passing through Byron Bay and Lismore on 11 and 12 November 2009 respectively.
Show you care about these emergency workers putting their feet where their hearts are and give a big wave if you see them passing down our roads on the North Coast leg of this 6,000km run.

What is Run for a Safe Climate?
- 6,000km run from Cooktown to Melbourne to highlight the growing threat of global warming to the social, economic and ecological health of our country.
- The route will take runners through capital cities, regional centres and rural towns, engaging with all levels of these communities.
- The runners will meet leading scientists tracking a range of increasingly dangerous and destructive impacts of global warming affecting Australiaʼ s communities, water and food security, coastal settlements and world famous ecological icons.
- The run will highlight energy resources and technologies – including geothermal, biomass, solar thermal, wind and smart grid technologies – which can be harnessed to hasten the move to a clean-energy economy, and emerging techniques that can be deployed to safely sequester carbon from the atmosphere.

Who is participating in the run?
- The team includes 25 Australian emergency service workers including serving police, a nurse, firefighters, paramedics and CFA volunteers.
- Emergency workers are the ʻfirst respondersʼ to extreme weather events and our first line of defence in dealing with global warming.
- All runners are donating a month of their annual leave to participate in this project. They are donating their time, and are receiving no financial benefit through their participation in the Run for a Safe Climate.

When?
- Runs from Monday 2 November 2009 until Sunday 29 November 2009.

Where?
- The Run starts in Cooktown and follows the coast through Cairns, Townsville, Brisbane, Sydney, and Canberra to Albury on the Victoria/NSW border.
- It will then follow the Murray River west to Mildura, then on to Adelaide and the Coorong.
- The final leg to Melbourne is via Apollo Bay, Ballarat, Kilmore and the towns most affected by last summerʼ s devastating fires, to finish with a community run along the last two kilometres of the run at St Kilda beach.

Follow on www.twitter.com/Run4SafeClimate

Become a Facebook fan of ʻRun for a Safe Climateʼ

Follow the blog and news on http://www.runforasafeclimate.org/

The vexed question of holding political office in two tiers of government raises its head once again

Sometimes it is hard to tell if candidates for political office are merely doing the bidding of their ego-inflated party bosses or are just old-fashioned paternalistic control freaks themselves.

This question is likely to be one faced by voters in the Richmond electorate sometime in 2010-11 if a report in the Tweed Heads Daily News is accurate:

TWEED Shire councillor and former mayor Joan van Lieshout faces no impediment to remaining a councillor if she is elected to Federal Parliament, according to senior council staff.

Cr van Lieshout confirmed earlier this week she would nominate as a Liberal party candidate for the Federal seat of Richmond, challenging sitting Labor Member and Minister for Ageing Justine Elliot.

Cr van Lieshout said she intended to stay on as a councillor even if elected, raising questions from some readers if that was legally possible.

According to the council's Technology and Corporate Services director Troy Green "on the face of it, there is nothing in the Local Government Act that precludes a councillor from being a Federal member".

"Several councillors throughout the country hold positions in local and state government, so there are certainly precedents."

According to a report compiled by political researcher Dr Ian Holland while State and Federal public servants are not eligible to stand for Parliament "no- one is sure whether local councillors are affected".

These companies lobby for major greenhouse gas polluters in Australia

The Sydney Morning Herald has published a list of major greenhouse gas emitters operating in Australia and the lobbyists these companies use.

The list contains some background information on lobbyists, many of whom were formerly state or federal ministers, members of parliament, political advisers/staffers or public servants.

One hundred page Australian list PDF download here.

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists November 2009 The Global Climate Change Lobby: Inside the Battle to Influence the Most Important Environmental Treaty of Our Time takes a global look at this lobbying on behalf of polluting industries, with an interactive search function for the U.S. available**

Updates on the ICIJ investigation can be followed on Twitter at Climate Lobby

** A search of this ICIJ data base reveals that biotech giant Monsanto has spent over U.S.$4 million in 2009 alone on lobbying activities.

When local government descends into politically correct insanity

Sometimes the email inbox holds the strange but true and last week was no exception as it spat out a little local government weirdness.
Now I'm not a cigarette/cigar/pipe smoker and generally agree that passive smoke concentrated in enclosed spaces isn't a good thing for people to breathe.
But even I think Clarence Valley Council has descended into madness by seeking to stop people smoking in quite a few council controlled public spaces that are often beside busy town roads and main roads which in the course of a normal day give off a steady flow of fine heavy metal particles which are known to be injurious to health when inevitably inhaled by pedestrians.
With barely a legal leg to stand on that isn't highly contestable as far as I can tell, it has adopted a Smoke Free Public Areas Policy which will:

restricting smoking in the following public outdoor areas on Council owned or managed land:

􀂃 Within fifteen (15) metres of all children's playgrounds;

􀂃 Within fifteen (15) metres of all covered bus stops and taxi ranks;

􀂃 At Council playing fields, sporting fields, sports centres and at outdoor sporting facilities where active sport is being played;

􀂃 At all events run or sponsored by Council;

􀂃 At all patrolled beaches and public jetties; and

􀂃 Within fifteen (15) metres of Council owned building entrances, including, but not limited to, sports stadiums and centres, swimming pools, tennis courts, squash courts and community buildings.

For this purpose, a public area can be defined as an area set aside for public recreationon Council owned and/or managed land, including: children's playgrounds; covered bus stops and taxi ranks; public jetties; patrolled beaches; sporting fields; sports stadiumsand centres; public swimming pools; squash courts; tennis courts; croquet lawns; and community buildings.

This Policy does not apply to the following public areas:

􀂃 Public footpaths;

􀂃 Al fresco dining areas; and

􀂃 General parks, gardens and open spaces, including grassed areas behind and/oradjacent to patrolled beaches.

What happens if you're on a public footpath just outside a council-owned building entrance which fronts the path?? Good luck with trying to police this one, councillors! The cost of pursuing recalcitrant smokers through the court will far outweigh the possible $110 penalty council has been strangely silent about.

Environmental Defender's Office holding workshops on reconnecting the community to the NSW EP&A Act, 14-28 November 2009

Click on flyer to enlarge

From mid to late November the Environmental Defender's Office (EDO) and Total Environment Centre (TEC) will be holding FREE workshops in Sydney and regional centres to collate community views regarding the NSW Planning System and how it can be improved.

These will be particularly relevant to anybody who has ever submitted to a major project, the Regional Strategies, Housing Codes, engaged with the 2008 Planning Reforms or been involved in a community consultation process with a developer.

Each workshop will include a brief overview of the Planning System and case studies specific to each region. Community feedback and views will be compiled into a report to be presented to the Minister for Planning and the Department early in 2010.

There will be capacity to interview groups and individuals who cannot attend or wish to give in depth feedback on particular experiences after each workshop.

EDO is also seeking feedback and views on indigenous engagement with the planning system.

* These workshops are funded by the Department of Planning NSW and will be jointly facilitated by the EDO and Total Environment Centre.

The Yamba Rod Run is on again 13-15 November and The Bridge to Breakers sail on 15 November 2009

Every year the small coastal town of Yamba at the mouth of the Clarence River plays host to hot rod enthusiasts from up and down the Australian east coast for the Yamba Rod Run.

Some splendidly restored modern and vintage rods can be seen tootling around Yamba streets adding an extra layer of colour to the sun and surf.

So if you want good clean fun and a chance to have a close up look at sparkling, well-loved cars presented by the Borderline Street Rodders this is the place to be next weekend.

Contact for information: falzonsofus at bigpond dot com or phone (02) 6685 0107.

On the Sunday the Harwood to Yamba Bridge to Breakers sail also takes place.

Photographs from Hot Rod Features

Target Australia isn't making Maud feel good....

Maud up the Street pointed out to me that some of the clothing she's brought from her local Target store (owned by Wesfarmers) is labelled "Target MADE IN CHINA from Australian fabric".

Seems the stuff her knickers are made of is probably grown and definitely woven here, rolled into bolts and shipped overseas - only to return as clothing items.

Can't think of any reason other than employee wages are in all likelihood much lower in China.

Bit naughty of Wesfarmers, isn't it.

Graphic from Wikipedia

Christine Hazell wins Grafton Art Club’s 41st Jacaranda Art Exhibition

Well done, Christine.

Photograph from The Daily Examiner 5 November 2009

I shouldn't read 'denialist' blogs.....

With global warming scepticism in full swing out in the blogosphere in the lead-up to the UN Climate Change Conference Copenhagen 2009 it is hard to resist opening some of the 'denialist' blogs referred to in passing by other bloggers.
A bad habit which can temporarily addle the brain.

This week I came across Denial Depot which apparently went online in April 2009 and boasts in its sidebar that:

We are not afraid to be called climate "deniers". In fact we embrace it as medal of honor bestowed on us by our alarmist foes. Galileo was a Denier. It is not an insult. I call this blog "Denier Depot" for that reason.
Welcome to my climate science blog.
I believe that one day all science will be done on blogs because we bloggers are natural skeptics, disbelieving the mainstream and accepting the possibility of any alternative idea.
We stand unimpressed by "textbooks", "peer review journals" and so-called "facts". There are no facts, just dissenting opinion. We are infinitely small compared to nature and can't grasp anything as certain as a fact.

The DD blogger Inferno (who has a twin blogging on Rouge Force with the occupation of Bum) comes out with confusing little gems which cast doubt on how well researched the main arguments being put forward in his posts are.

The latest brow furrow is this:

The difference between fraud and no fraud turns out to be about 0.4 degrees C ('C' means Cold, sometimes spoken in latin, 'Celcius').

Here I was thinking that C meant Celsius (named after the formulator of an early centigrade temperature scale, Anders Celsius) and that the usual Latin words for cold and very cold/icy are frigidus and gelidus respectively.

However, there is a rather large kernel of suspicion that Inferno and his {a presumption of gender} anti-global warming blog might actually be a giant leg pull.
The constant decrying of others cloaking identity behind a pen name, while continually doing the same on Denial Depot and repeated over-the-top boasting (along the lines of six impossible things to believe before breakfast) does make one wonder if he is having fun at the expense of others.

If Inferno is indulging in a little spoofing, I suspect that Britain, New Zealand or Australia might be where he hails from.

What is obvious from many of the comments attached to Inferno's posts is that he is taken very seriously by some readers.

Some of the most depressing online posts about the Internet this week - confirming that we're all just mushrooms to the powers that be

From Boing Boing:

Secret copyright treaty leaks. It's bad. Very bad.
The internet chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret copyright treaty whose text Obama's administration refused to disclose due to "national security" concerns, has leaked. It's bad. It says:

• * That ISPs have to proactively police copyright on user-contributed material. This means that it will be impossible to run a service like Flickr or YouTube or Blogger, since hiring enough lawyers to ensure that the mountain of material uploaded every second isn't infringing will exceed any hope of profitability.

• * That ISPs have to cut off the Internet access of accused copyright infringers or face liability. This means that your entire family could be denied to the internet -- and hence to civic participation, health information, education, communications, and their means of earning a living -- if one member is accused of copyright infringement, without access to a trial or counsel.

• * That the whole world must adopt US-style "notice-and-takedown" rules that require ISPs to remove any material that is accused -- again, without evidence or trial -- of infringing copyright. This has proved a disaster in the US and other countries, where it provides an easy means of censoring material, just by accusing it of infringing copyright.

From An Onymous Lefty:

Why shouldn't a US media company kick you off the internet with no right of appeal?
Do you remember voting for the government to force your ISP to spend your money sifting through your internet logs to check that you're not infringing a foreign corporation's potential copyright? No? That's weird

From Michael Geist:

The ACTA Internet Chapter: Putting the Pieces Together
The Internet chapter raises two additional issues. On the international front, it provides firm confirmation that the treaty is not a counterfeiting trade, but a copyright treaty. These provisions involve copyright policy as no reasonable definition of counterfeiting would include these kinds of provisions. On the domestic front, it raises serious questions about the Canadian negotiation mandate. Negotations from Foreign Affairs are typically constrained by either domestic law, a bill before the House of Commons, or the negotiation mandate letter. Since these provisions dramatically exceed current Canadian law and are not found in any bill presently before the House, Canadians should be asking whether the negotiation mandate letter has envisioned such dramatic changes to domestic copyright law. When combined with the other chapters that include statutory damages, search and seizure powers for border guards, anti-camcording rules, and mandatory disclosure of personal information requirements, it is clear that there is no bigger IP issue today than the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement being negotiated behind closed doors this week in Korea.

From The Huffington Post:

Transparency of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA)
Unlike nearly all other multilateral and plurilateral discussions about
intellectual property norms, the ACTA negotiations have been held in
deep secrecy. This has led to a chorus of criticism, and demands that
the ACTA process be opened up, and that documents in ACTA negotiations
be disclosed, as they are routinely in intellectual property
negotiations at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) or
the World Trade Organization (WTO).
After a year of criticism over the secrecy of this negotiation, the
White House United States Trade Representative (USTR) recently began a
policy of offering some persons access to documents in this negotiation,
on the condition that they sign a non disclosure agreement (NDA) that
prevents any public discussion of the contents of those documents. The
opportunity to see the ACTA documents under the NDA was offered to a
large number of business interests, but very few public interest or
consumer groups, and there were no opportunities for academic experts or
the general public to review the documents.
USTR officials have indicated that this policy of access by invitation
and NDA fully addresses the legitimate demands for more transparency of
the negotiation, and it is being considered as a model for the future.
We are opposed to this approach because it creates a small special class
of citizens who have rights superior to the majority of the population,
and because it gives the government too much discretion in deciding who
can monitor and criticize its operations. We have no confidence in this
new approach.

And this pretence at transparency from the Australian Government's Dept of Foreign Affairs and Trade, in which we're given a short one page general summary and the meeting agenda:

Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA): Public information and consultations on the ACTA
The ACTA was first announced publicly by the US on 23 October 2007....
A detailed summary of all elements currently under discussion has been drafted by all ACTA negotiation participants, setting out the topics being addressed in ACTA discussions. This paper is intended to provide greater information to the public on the matters being negotiated, and guide stakeholders seeking to make submissions on ACTA negotiations...
As noted in Mr Crean's media release, Australia seeks an enhanced, practical international standard on IPR enforcement with broad international support, to compliment the existing international IP architecture. Australia regards the extent to which the ACTA can attract support from countries in our region as a critical issue in determining the real value of the ACTA for Australia. Taking part in the negotiations does not oblige Australia to join any resulting treaty.....
Australia will next participate in the sixth round of negotiations to be held in Seoul in November. The agenda for this meeting can be found here. We also intend to continue to promote enhancing the transparency of negotiations at this round, to ensure the Australian public is kept well informed and has further opportunities to give input. Australia expects negotiations to extend into 2010.