Strike a light! - 8 July 2010
Strike a light! I go into a two-week hibernation and when I come out, there's a Redhead leading the land. It will be interesting to see if she makes any significant new moves on climate. Voters will not easily forget Rudd's impassioned argument that climate change was the "greatest moral challenge of our generation" and his subsequent decision to dodge it. It's true that by the time it was filed in the "do something later" drawer the scheme was an ugly beast that gave massive concessions to the fossil fuel industry, but abandoning one's own baby is never a good look.
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Meanwhile, oil continues to surge into the Gulf of Mexico, a disquieting symbol of the downside of our addiction to fossil fuels. Like all addictions, it starts off feeling good, then comes back to bite one on the bottom. The former British Petroleum company (it now prefers to be known simply as BP) has prided itself on its willingness to go to the edge of financial and technological possibility to get at the world's remaining oil reserves. Investors the world over rewarded it with their money and, according to a story in last week's UK Guardian by George Monbiot, decided not to hear warnings of possible environmental disaster. The company overreached itself, and now faces the real possibility of its own collapse.
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Fortunately, governments and communities all over the world are actually responding to climate change "on the ground" so there could be hope for us yet! Bathurst residents are responding to the state government's gross feed in tariff scheme by ordering roof-top solar panels, and the government has also released its response to an inquiry into rural wind farms. Local windfarm campaigner Doug Herrick notes that wind farms with a minimum of 30 Megawatts generation capacity (at least 15 2MW turbines) will be defined as "critical infrastructure" and the state government will waive the fees associated with these projects until 30 June 2011.
Another issue that was a stumbling block to wind energy, the setback between wind turbines and residences on neighbouring properties will now be based on the specifics of individual sites and not on a catch-all minimum distance such as two kilometers. BCCAN's Action Planning Team devoted to this issue meets at 5pm on the first Tuesday of the month at Charles Sturt University. (See BCCAN calendar for details).