1 January 2017, The Conversation, Cabinet papers 1992-93: Australia reluctant while world moves towards first climate treaty. Cabinet papers from 1992 and 1993 released today by the National Archives of Australia confirm that Australia was a reluctant player in international discussions about climate change and environmental issues under Prime Minister Paul Keating. Internationally, it was an exciting time for the environment. In June 1992, the UN Earth Summit was held in Rio de Janeiro. Here the world negotiated the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (which last year gave us the Paris Agreement) and opened the Convention on Biological Diversity for signing. So what was Australia doing? Australia stumbles towards climate policy Domestically, the focus was on Ecologically Sustainable Development (ESD), a policy process begun by Prime Minister Bob Hawke. Working groups made up of corporate representatives, environmentalists and bureaucrats had beavered away and produced hundreds of recommendations. By the final report in December 1991, the most radical recommendations (gasp – a price on carbon!) had been weeded out. Democrats Senator John Coulter warned of bureaucratic hostility to the final recommendations. Keating replaced Hawke in the same month. The August 1992 meeting, where the ESD policies were meant to be agreed upon, was so disastrous that the environmentalists walked out and even the corporates felt aggrieved. Two interim reports on the ESD process from the cabinet papers fill in some of the detail. The first interim report, in March 1992, said that government departments had not been able to identify which recommendations to take on board. Cabinet moved the process on, but the only policies on the table were those that involved: …little or no additional cost, cause minimal disruption to industry or the community, and which also offer benefits other than greenhouse related. Read More here
Category Archives: PLEA Network
27 December 2016, The Conversation, Universal basic income: the dangerous idea of 2016. The resurrection of universal basic income (UBI) proposals in the developed world this year gained support from some prominent Australians. But while good in theory, it’s no panacea for the challenges of our modern economy. UBI proposals centre on the idea that the government would pay a flat fee to every adult citizen, regardless of his or her engagement in skill-building activities or the paid labour market, as a partial or complete substitute for existing social security and welfare programs. Of the schemes run in developing places like Kenya, Uganda, and India, some have been evaluated statistically, delivering some evidence of positive impacts on educational investments, entrepreneurship, and earnings. In the developed world, Canada is trialling a UBI scheme. Finland also just rolled out a UBI trial, involving about 10,000 recipients for two years and costing about A$40 million. While Switzerland’s voters just rejected a UBI proposal via referendum, a similar proposal is presently looking like a goer for Utrecht in the Netherlands. Here in Australia, it has been suggested the government might hand out somewhere between A$10,000 and A$25,000 a year to every man and woman. Can we afford it? There are two big questions to ask before taking a UBI proposal seriously, and the first is the most obvious one: where would the money come from to pay for it? The present Australian welfare system (excluding the Medicare bill of A$25 billion) costs around A$170 billion per annum. Our GDP is around A$1.7 trillion per year, so this welfare bill is about 10% of annual GDP. Read More here
26 December 2016, Climate News Network, Online calculator cuts farms’ emissions. An internet tool is now available that helps to quantify and control farms’ greenhouse emissions released during the crop production cycle. It’s called the Cool Farm Tool (CFT) – an easy-to-use online calculator that helps farmers monitor their emissions of greenhouse gases. Agriculture accounts for about 15% of total global greenhouse gas emissions, though when fertiliser manufacture and use and the overall food processing sector are included in calculations, that figure is considerably higher. The land can also act as a vital carbon sink, soaking up or sequestering vast amounts of carbon: when soils are disturbed the carbon is released, adding to greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The CFT was initially developed by researchers at the University of Aberdeen in the UK in partnership with Unilever and the Sustainable Food Lab. Now managed by a group including academics and food manufacturers called the Cool Farm Alliance, the CFT is free for farmers to download. Various details, including the crops being planted, soil types and pH levels (the relative acidity or alkalinity of the land), are entered into a series of boxes. Moisture levels, amounts and types of fertiliser used and general management details are also entered, along with information on quantities of diesel and electricity used in the cultivation and storage of crops and the fuel needed to transport goods on and off the farm. Halving emissions In 2010 PepsiCo, the drinks and food conglomerate, launched a programme aimed at making its operations more environmentally friendly. In particular it sought to halve the amount of greenhouse gas emissions and water use arising from production at its Walkers Crisps factory at Leicester in the UK – the largest such plant in the world, producing five million packets of crisps (known as potato chips in the US) every day. A central part of the PepsiCo project involved encouraging its potato suppliers to farm more sustainably through the use of the CFT and by using other devices to monitor and cut back on water use. New potato varieties with improved yields were also introduced. Within six years, the goal of halving carbon emissions and achieving a 50% reduction in water use was reached. Read More here
21 December 2016, The Conversation, Why we can get over the ‘yuck factor’ when it comes to recycled water. In light of climate change and a growing population, water authorities around the world are looking at the treatment of recycled water to achieve water security and sustainability. Recent authors on The Conversation have raised the possibility of expanding the use of water recycling in Australia, noting the potential benefits for domestic, agricultural and industrial water supply. Some contributors have noted that the major roadblocks to water recycling, in places where it could be beneficial, are not technical issues, but public reluctance to use recycled water. Emotional Responses In the past, our aversion to recycled water has been explained by the “yuck factor”. Some people have an emotional response of disgust to using recycled water, even when they know it has been highly treated and is safe. There are large individual differences in the strength and type of different people’s disgust responses. Psychologists have tried to understand why our thought processes can lead some people to think of recycled water as unclean. One explanation is contagion thinking, the idea that once water has been defiled it will always remain unclean, regardless of treatment, at least according to the mental models that underlie our emotional responses. What such approaches often neglect is that cognition does not occur in a cultural vacuum, but is affected by the associations and stigmas of society. It is important to note that these emotional responses are often in conflict with our rational thinking. Some theorists, such as Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman, have argued that we make judgements using two contrasting systems. One of these systems is slow and operates according to a formal risk calculus. The other is fast, based on positive or negative emotional responses. Because of this, how we feel about someone or something (positively or negatively) is often as important as what they are being judged on. In other words, the fact that a person understands that a highly treated sample of recycled water is safe to drink may not be enough to stop the emotional response, as we often tend to think intuitively, drawing on our social and cultural values. The most important question, however, is whether the emotional responses some people have to recycled water can be changed. And what role do stigmas associated with cultural norms play in shaping these? Read More here