Bathurst Community Climate Action Network

The federal budget has been proclaimed and the opposition has predictably poored scorn on it.
Mr. Rudd does not seem to have been given the bounce from it he may have hoped and he is still being roundly criticised for his abandoning of the government's proposes Emissions Trading Scheme.  Having trumpeted so loudly that this was the great moral challenge of our time and then to have been so critical of the opposition for not embracing it - nay it was an act of political cowardice to do so, he then so glibly walked away from it himself.
True, the opposition saw to its demise in the Senate, true, no international concensus of any weight was reached at Copenhagen and it is true also that the public support for action on climate change was dropping too, but still ,in the public's imagination, he has appeared to give in too easily. Not even waiting until the outcome of the next election might yield a more favourable Senate or not.
Rather than the issue just going away for him, it has in fact given more traction to the opposition claims that he is a hollow man, standing for  nothing.
I  had lived with the optomistic hope that he had a trick up  his sleeve in the budget with a ramping up of renewable energy. He forshadowed this with his usual hyperbole, that he was going to annnounce the biggest increase in renewable energy projects this country has ever seen.
What we were given in the budget is something just over $800 million dollars, which is so petty given the rate of increase in fossil fuel technology and projects planned in the near term.
The planned revenue gained from increasing the tax on smoking will yield over twice that amount.
We will run out of coal in 60 - 90 years, which is certainly a long time in the politicians  yard stick, but it stands to reason that a society should be planning a transition now.
Of course in this country it is very difficult for a politician to oppose coal. Coal to a large extent is a cash cow to our coffers. It will be largely responsible ( along with iron ore) to returning our budget to surplus and it becomes very hard for a politician to be actively planning its very demise.
Politicians have long been caught in the same grip by taxes imposed on alcohol, cigarettes and gambling. All elements known to be toxic to society and individuals but politicians in our name seem happy to enjoy the windfall gains  from the taxation and turn a blind eye to the harm they cause.
As readers will know, I am very busy promoting the Bathurst Becoming Cycle Friendly in our region.  When one looks at the ecenomic and health benefits of a cycle friendly city, such as a net profit of $0.26 for every km cycled against a net loss of $0.13 for every km driven by a car, and the fact that a person cycling to work has a 30% lower mortality rate than all others who are similar in all other respects, it is hard to  imagine a government, local, state or national who wouldn't be doing their best to bring about the implementation of cycle friendly policies.
Yet I suspect our love affair with cars, and the lobbying of motoring organisations and manufacturers and unions will be lining  up to assure the car's dominance in our civic space.
I was reminded of this self interest after a report coming to light last week highlighting the parlace state of the wetlands and forests in the Murray Darling and the authors pleading that the environment needed to be watered at least equally to irrigation.  The irrigators response was the irrigation was more important than nature. Their voices in the corridors of power carry a lot more weight than a dying tree in the Barmah forest or a lizard faced with extinction.
Rather than despair as I often do, a new web site has been linked by a favourite of BCCAN, Lis Bastion, in her new role as the Climate Adaption Officer for the Central West Councils. At that web site, you are invited to make a comment on her blog, called My Shiny Halo and can be reached at:
centroc.com.au/shinyhalo/
Lis invites you to submit an action you are personally undertaking to be more sustainable in a social, environmental or economic sense. By sharing it with others, you may give encouragement and ideas so that this will spread beneficially throughout our communities. In doing this Lis will organise the planting of a  tree on your behalf at the location you choose.
By taking action ourselves we are doing something positive whereas it is all too easy to be downcast by events around us. We all need to feel better for our personal sustainability.
Give it a go!
Finally a reminder that this month's "Chew" will be held on Wednesday evening the 26th May at Cafe Kai in George Street, Bathurst. Our guest will be Dr. Andrew Rawson, a scientist involving in measuring many of the facets of our environment such as water, soil carbon and so on. He would particularly like to invite those who may be sceptical of the scientific evidence in the climate change debate. Please come - rsvp so we can be sure of catering requirements
mailto:pforman@csu.edu.au