Liberal Leader Stephane Dion has lost the Canadian election: “The owlish professor-turned-politician defied two central political tenets in this election campaign: avoid overly complex policy and, above all, don’t even suggest new taxes. His beloved ‘Green Shift’ attempt to tax pollution was lauded by environmentalists and 250 economists. But on the campaign trail, it became more of a Green Albatross around Dion’s slender neck, forcing him over and over again in the face of a Tory advertising onslaught to stress that any new levies on polluting fossil fuels would be offset by income tax breaks. In the end, Dion’s impassioned calls for voters to “go green vote red” weren’t enough. While the Conservatives were held to a minority government, the Liberals were leading or elected in just 74 seats, down from the 103 claimed in 2006.” Read more here.
Financial Crisis Has EU Climate Plans in Crisis
“The fallout from the financial crisis might be ready to claim another casualty: Europe’s ambitious plans to tackle climate change… Or, as Germany’s foreign minister said last week: “This crisis changes priorities.” And where Europe’s biggest economies lead, others follow. The British, French, and Italians are also all getting cold feet about imposing more-expensive climate legislation on European businesses. The British, dependent as an island nation on air travel, don’t want aviation included in emissions schemes. The Germans want an out for heavy industry… That contrasts with newfound enthusiasm for climate-change policy in the U.S., which seems more likely to pass Congress if energy prices keep falling. Both presidential candidates, if not quite both vice-presidential candidates, have plans to fight global warming.” Read more here.
Sydney to Have Farmers on Rooftops
“Australian cities must join a global network in which urban farmers grow produce on rooftops, a leading science commentator says. Professor Julian Cribb, author of The Coming Famine, said the global food crisis was a forewarning of what could be expected as civilisation ran low on water, arable land and nutrients, and experienced soaring energy costs. Professor Cribb said the urban farmers of the future – who would primarily grow vegetables – would play a much larger role in the global diet. Read more here (free sign-on at FarmOnline).
Bull Market in Environmental Guilt
“This is strange territory. The Dow is down. Wall Street needs a bailout. But in the Washington area and across the country, there is still a bull market in environmental guilt. Sales of carbon offsets — whose buyers pay hard cash to make amends for their sins against the climate — are up. Still. In some cases, the prices have actually been climbing. In other words, when nearly everything seems to be selling for less, thousands of individuals and businesses are paying more for nothing, or at least nothing tangible.” Read more here.
Mobile Phones to Track Carbon Footprint
I gather there are three ‘things’ now shared by most communities on this earth: keys, money and mobile phones. So with the development of new software that enables mobile phones to track our carbon footprint, well, perhaps we can each soon be individually allocated a carbon credit by the United Nations? Read more here.
Counting Cows In Outback Australia
A Queensland jackeroo (‘jackeroo’=cowboy, Australian version!) is overseeing his herd in remote territory when suddenly a brand-new BMW advances out of a dust cloud towards him. The driver, a young man in a designer suit, Gucci shoes, Ray Ban sunglasses and YSL tie, leans out the window and asks the cowboy, ‘If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, will you give me a calf?’
The jackaroo looks at the man, obviously a yuppie (‘yuppie’=A young city or suburban resident with a well-paid professional job and an affluent lifestyle) , then looks at his peacefully grazing herd and calmly answers, ‘Sure, why not?’
The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer, connects it to his Cingular RAZR V3 cell phone, and surfs to a NASA page on the Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite navigation system to get an exact fix on his location which he then feeds to another NASA satellite tha t scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo. The young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg , Germany .
Within seconds, he receives an email on his Palm Pilot that the image has been processed and the data stored. He then accesses a MS-SQL database through an ODBC connected Excel Spreadsheet with email on his Blackberry and, after a few minutes, receives a response. Finally, he prints out a full-color, 150-page report on his hi-tech, miniaturized HP LaserJet printer and finally turns to the cowboy and says, ‘You have exactly 1,586 cows and calves.’
‘That’s right. Well, I guess you can take one of my calves,’ says the Cowboy.
He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on amused as the young man stuffs it into the trunk of his car.
Then the cowboy says to the young man, ‘Hey, if I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my calf?’
&n bsp;The young man thinks about it for a second and then says, ‘Okay, why not?’
‘You work for the Australian Government’, says the Jackeroo.
‘Wow! That’s correct,’ says the yuppie, ‘but how did you guess that?’
‘No guessing required.’ answered the jackeroo. ‘You showed up here even though nobody called you; you want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked. You used all ki nds of expensive equipment that clearly somebody else paid for, You t ried to show me how much smarter than me you are; and you don’t know a thing about cows … this is a flock of sheep. Now give me back my dog.’
[via Denis Barrett]
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD has worked in industry and government. She is currently researching a novel technique for long-range weather forecasting funded by the B. Macfie Family Foundation.