Wednesday 5 November 2008

US Presidential election ... be careful what you wish for ...

How important to the rest of the world is this US Presidential election?

As I read this NZ Herald story online, the TV is on downstairs and we here in Australia have blanket live coverage of the US Presidential election results on four of the five free to air channels.

Tracey Barnett : Obama's dream will seal the deal - 05 Nov 2008 - NZ Herald: Opinion

I have been waiting for eight long, dark years to be able to write a column that can talk about what's right with America instead of what's wrong with America.

I need to wake up tomorrow morning and hear that the United States has chosen to create a better history.

Under the disastrous administration of George W. Bush, America has become a nation I can hardly recognise.  ...

The truth is, I am afraid. I am afraid to put so much hope in just one man. Since the day Barack Obama won the primary in Iowa, my secret threefold prayer has been: let him get the nomination, don't let him get shot and don't let him become Jimmy Carter once he's in office.

If an Obama presidency is smothered by the mess he will inherit (and the presidency could well be for whomever takes office next) at least he will have given us something America desperately craves today - the possibility of renewal. I believe they call that hope.

Well Tracey, I think that's how many of us outside the US are feeling too, and ... it's sounding like a landslide, with unprecedented turnouts at the polls, and punishment of the incumbent Republican administration; Republican state governors are losing en masse, the US House of Reps and Senate are both already shaping up as overwhelmingly Democrat dominated houses.

And therein lies the rub. So much hope, so much promise. Now they're going to have no-one to shift blame to.

Hit the ground running people, and fasten your seat belts folks - it's going to be an exciting ride!

Sunday 2 November 2008

$1 a day to save the planet!

Kevin Rudd's emissions trading scheme: $1 a day to save planet

theaustralian.com.au. Lenore Taylor, National correspondent | October 31, 2008

THE Rudd Government has moved to ease fears about the impact of its emissions trading scheme, releasing Treasury modelling showing the scheme is affordable, with households paying up to $7 a week more for electricity and gas, and no industries forced offshore.
>> Full story

Rudd Government launches Australia's Low Pollution Future - The Economics of Climate Change Mitigation >>Press Release  (links to PDF documents only.)

Apparently, we're not going to reduce greenhouse gases, we're going to reduce carbon emissions.  The methane and nitrous oxide* emissions can look after themselves.

(*No wonder we're all acting as silly as drunk ducks ready for the Christmas dinner chop.)

And you'd think with all the talk of emission trading schemes and the imperative to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, that a story about an electric car network for Australia - well, Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne, would get a bit more traction.

Plan for electric car network
theage.com.au, Mex Cooper, October 23, 2008

Australia will become the third country in the world to have an electric car network in a bid to run the country's 15 million cars on batteries powered by green energy under a plan announced today.
Thanks to Kwoff for the heads up on the electric car.

AIM Emissions Trading Scheme Survey  1st July 2008

The Australian business sector is largely unprepared for the introduction of the Federal Government’s emissions trading scheme according to the findings of a new survey of top level executives conducted by the Australian Institute of Management.

Only 36 per cent of those surveyed were aware the Australian Government’s emissions trading scheme, the centrepiece of the nation’s greenhouse reduction efforts is to commence in 2010.