Australia is in the beginnings of a Federal Election year. This means that every night we have to sit through politicians arguing over every thing from the economy, water, coal, nuclear power, education, industrial relations and taxes.
The party currently in power, the Liberals, have just found out that Australians care about the environment. For years this government has refused to do anything related to global warming, CO2 levels or water consumption and provision. Now they want to take over control of the Murray-Darling river system (the largest in Australia, like the Mississippi for the USA) from the individual states. They want to legislate to basically ban the old incandescent light bulb. But the big one is to develop approx 25 nuclear reactors to provide electricity in the future. However they don’t want to sign onto Kyoto and any international carbon trading that has already started, but they are considering an Australian only carbon trading system.
OK so now you have the background, over the next few weeks I will be talking about the following environmental issues and solutions:
- Lighting
- Transport especially cars
- Electricity Generation
- Housing and Urban design
- Carbon trading and taxing
I hope that you stick around while I do some research and articulate my ideas and maybe we can discuss other options and opinions.
argh! politicians!