A vegamite sandwich short of a picnic

It's no laughing matter - but to be honest I do have some difficulty in finding a lot of sympathy for the Australians at the moment. Most of you will know that as I am writing this they are in the midst of just about the worst drought they have ever experienced. Of course - like all evtreme weather events - you can never say that it has been caused by climate change, but the odds are that it has.

Unfortunately the Australians do not have a good record in this department. Since the colonisation of the area around 90% of its natural rainforest has been destroyed. Much of the remaining natural rainforest in Tasmania is due to become a victim of the the chainsaws of Forestry Tasmania in the next few years.

Nearly all of the country's electricity is generated by coal fired power stations, and they remain one of only two developed nations to refuse to sign up to the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change. (The other being - wait for it - The Whitehouse Fuckwitt.) Their reaoning being that they do not want to harm their important coal mining industry - no matter if they make the planet uninhabintable in the process.

This is in spite of having more solar energy on tap than they could possibly know what to do with, more uninhabited deserts on which to build solar power stations than the eye can see, and an educated population who shoud be setting an example o the rest of the world.

This contrasts with the much maligned Chinese who have the world's biggest windfarm, and the prospect that every wind turbine and solar panel on hte planet will shortly have Made in China stamped on it.

On a brighter note - I see that the world's first commercial solar power station has now come into service in Saville in Spain at a cost of 36 million Euros. Which seems to me like a pretty good price for a power station.

A load of hot air

Our friend Mr Milliband was on the Today programme this morning trying to defend the Government's record on carbon emissions. His first premise was that under Labour carbon emissions had decreased by 11% and that we were now well on the way to meeting our Kyoto targets.

Not according to a documentary I caught a couple of weeks ago - and which given this Government's record on spin I am inclined to believe - carbon emissions have actually increased under this government. A view supported by The Independent too.

In an earlier life I spent a lot of time campaigning against the Child Support Agency and I became well versed in some of the ways that the figures get manipulated. Carbon emissions it seems are no exception. For example: carbon emissions from international flights are excluded from the emissions that the Government owns up to. Did you know that?

The difficulty I have with all this is that this really isn't an issue that people should be spreading lies about. We are talking about the entire fossil fuel based energy industry being phased out over hte next 50 years. There are some people who aren't going to like it - get used to it.

Strewth!!!

This morning's announcement by the Australian government that they will be banning the sale of incandescent lightbulbs by 2010 is an interesting development.

Commentators have been suggesting for a while now that the incandescent bulb will be extinct within ten years. And regular readers will recall that when I changed every lightbulb in the house to a low enegy type the household electricity consumption dropped by a staggering 30% and an article in today's Independent suggests that this is typical.

But the Australian conversion is interesting because Australia is on of the few developed countries other than the United States to have refused to sign up to Kyoto on the grounds that it would damage their coal based electricity industry too much. Strange that, when you consider that Australia is one of the sunniest countries in the world and that the scope for solar power generation using CSP (Concentrated Solar Power) technology must be huge.

So is it too much to hope that the recently awakened Australian government will follow their lead in becoming the first major economy to outlaw incandescent bulbs by phasing out their coal fired power stations in favour of cheap, clean, plentiful, everlasting power from the sun?

Now the light is really starting to go on.... Strewth Bruce!!