Rowan's blog

Bali climate change agreement

Great news last night; consensus was reached at the climate change conference in Bali.

This is world changing stuff, and I don't believe this result could have been achieved if Howard still held power in Australia. In the end, the US were on their own and were forced to cave in by the other 189 nations to join the consensus. I would have loved to be a fly on the wall, sounds like it was a highly dramatic negotiation! Read the Sydney Morning Herald article.

Mobile phone recycling

My old mobile phone died recently. I did some research into what to do with it (rather than throw it into the landfill). I came across www.mobilephonerecycling.com.au which is an initiative between the Aussie Recycling Program and The Spastic Centre.

If you have an old mobile phone (or phones) lying around, go to the site, fill in your details and they will send you a pre-paid postbag. Just put your phone(s) in it and send it off. Phones that can be cleaned / repaired are sent overseas for re-sale in developing countries, to provide affordable access to telecommunications in areas which currently have little modern infrastructure. All other phones / parts are fully recycled. The Spastic Centre receives between $3 - $5 from Aussie Recycling Program for every phone that is donated.

Carbon credit cost comparison

Another year has flown past & it's time for me to buy another years worth of carbon credits. I did some research to check out the prices. Approx prices were:

Carbon Planet: AUD$23 per tonne
Climate friendly: AUD$24.20 per tonne
Easy Being Green: USD AUD$20 per tonne

Greenfleet: USD AUD$8.80 per tonne - They do not retail carbon credits, but offer an un-accredited, unregulated tree planting scheme. Greenfleet is a charity so payments are tax deductible.

[Dave Sag from Carbon Planet commented on this post and clarified: "Out of all the companies you cite, only Carbon Planet employs a full time carbon emissions audit team to help businesses reduce their emissions through engineering, rather than simple offsetting."

Dave, thank you for going to the trouble to a. check links to your site & b. educate people like me who are interested in the environment. (Carbon Planet have a superb website and blog too.) Thanks also for picking up my typos on currencies, the amounts are all Aussie dollars.]

Please note: While buying carbon credits does help clear the conscience, please remember to:
a. Reduce the amount of energy you use (switching off lights, car pooling, buying local produce etc)
b. Buy green energy
c. Offset the carbon you really can't help creating with carbon credits

~ End of preaching ~

:)

Japan eyes chopsticks for biofuel

 "Japan will try to turn the millions of wooden chopsticks that go discarded each year into biofuel to ease the country's energy shortage."

Source: wbcsd.org

Why don't people buy a nice set of chopsticks, carry them around, wash and reuse them? Maybe that's a bit too optimistic...

Terminating environmental damage

California's Terminator (AKA Governer Arnold Schwarzenegger) delivered a powerful speech at Georgetown University as part of the Georgetown University Environmental Conference.

"I believe the environmental movement is in the midst of redefining itself as something more modern, more confident, and more positive. As governor, I talk to scientists in our universities, I talk to CEOs that run major corporations. And let me tell you, those are not wacky people. Mainstream scientists are convinced, mainstream CEOs are convinced, and if you look at the surveys, mainstream Americans are convinced that global warming and climate change is real and we have to do something out it. So who are the fanatics now? Who are the fanatics? They are the ones who are in denial. They’re in environmental denial, they’re in economic denial, and they are in political denial. Who are the fanatics when DuPont has hired the former head of Greenpeace International? Who are the fanatics when major companies are now demanding that the federal government once and for all passes new laws to set standards for greenhouse gas emissions? Major companies like DuPont, GE, Wal-Mart, BP and PG&E believe that the climate change is real. That is the mainstream speaking, that is the establishment speaking."

"So the new environmental movement is not about guilt, it’s not about fringe, and it’s not about being overwhelmed by the enormity of the problem, but it is about mainstream momentum, exactly what I talked about earlier with bodybuilding. We have to make it mainstream. We have to make it sexy. We have to make it attractive so that everyone wants to participate."

Interestingly, that was one of the key messages that came out of the lunch with Greg Bourne. There were senior advertising folks at that lunch and as Greg talked, I think it dawned on a lot of them that they are in positions of serious power. If they sell their clients on concepts that make being environmentally friendly "cool", those ads will impact consumer perception and purchasing trends.

Schwarzenegger has had success 'selling' an idea and making it popular. He was of course a key driver of the weight training movement (consider how many weights gyms there are in the world today). Lets hope he can help us reach the 'tipping point' on environmental issues. The extra weight of his beefy abs, lats, and deltoids won't hurt!

You can read his whole speech here.

Greg Bourne | 2005 Hawke lecture

I received an invite today to a very nice business lunch. Greg Bourne, WWF CEO (amongst other titles) will be speaking.

I jumped straight on the internet, downloaded and listened to one of his past speeches.

His 'Hawke lecture' is from 2005 but it's even more relevant now. It made me feel angry and excited. There is so much we can do. Please download and listen from this WWF page.

Sarah Silverman’s “A Very Convenient Truth”

I thought Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" was great. But if you think he's A Bore, check out Sarah Silverman’s “A Very Convenient Truth” instead.

Same messages, just from a slightly different angle!

Watch “A Very Convenient Truth” on YouTube.

The Green Rant

I mentioned in an earlier post that Green issues seem to be gathering momentum. Yesterday's Question Time in Canberra was filled with heated questions on global warming, no doubt partially triggered by the UK's Stern Report. Dad sent me a link to the BBC Stern Report Q&A page.

I think I made a little bit of a difference last week.

Sunrise (TV breakfast show) the week before last featured David Suzuki discussing awareness in Australia. Great that they were talking about the issue but they didn't mention what people could do!! I jumped online and sent them a long detailed email, something to the effect of: "Please tell people they can switch to green power, buy carbon credits, go carbon neutral etc. And why doesn't Sunrise walk the talk and go carbon neutral (win the hearts of viewers and invite other co's to follow their lead)??"

Guess what happened last week? Sunrise addressed every item from my email, in order, on prime time TV!! And they're investigating going carbon neutral. I still haven't had a reply to my email (perhaps the production team received hundreds saying the same thing) but I felt I'd made a difference in the world last week :)

Google goes green

From GreenBiz.com:

"Google will house the largest corporate solar installation in the U.S., according to EI Solutions, the company installing the system.

"EI Solutions, the systems integration arm of Energy Innovations, Inc., says it will begin constructing a solar electricity system for Google's Mountain View, California, headquarters campus. With a total capacity of 1.6 megawatts -- enough to supply 1,000 average California homes -- the Google system will be the largest solar installation on any corporate campus in the U.S. and one of the largest on any corporate site in the world.

"The project will involve 9,212 solar panels provided by Sharp Electronics. A majority will be placed on the rooftops of some of the buildings in the Googleplex and others will provide shaded parking as part of newly constructed solar panel support structures on existing Google parking lots. The solar energy will be used to power several of Google's Mountain View office facilities.

"When the project is completed this spring, Google employees, shareholders and the community around us will begin to enjoy the environmental as well as economic benefits of clean, renewable energy generated on-site," says David Radcliffe, vice president of real estate at Google.

A three-dimensional representation of how the project may look once completed can be viewed online at www.eispv.com."

Super kewl!

Are you helping? Really?

I've felt good about being a UNICEF Global Parent for years. Until I saw before and after photos of the lake at Darfur. Darfur is one of the areas my donations have been going to.

The before and after images were in the movie 'An Inconvenient Truth'. The photos show glaciers, mountains and lakes. Glaciers have retreated, the snowline on mountains is higher, lakes have dried up.

The before shot of Darfur shows a huge full lake (that UNICEF could derive water from) and the after shot shows a pocket hankerchief sized area of water in one corner of the original lake (where can UNICEF get water from now?)

The average Australian emits approx 15 tonnes of Carbon Dioxide into the atmoshere each year, so at the same time I thought I was helping, I was contributing to the drought in Darfur.

I'm now 'Carbon Neutral'. It's very easy. Find out how you can become Carbon Neutral too (I listed what to do in my post below).

Sorry if I'm going on about this but I think it's really important.

By the way, UNICEF has a wide range of blank cards, Christmas cards, gift wrap, toys and pressies for sale. The cards work out cheaper than most cards from other shops and profits go to great causes. Check out their online shop or go to their little store at Level 7, 171 Clarence St (next to Comm bank near Cnr of King). The store is only open from 9-5 weekdays.