All together now

It’s getting hectic down here in the Waipara bunker: articles to write, truffles to harvest – stuff is piling up, not least in a multitude of tabs in my web browser, items set aside as possible subjects for posts here. So here’s one of my infrequent omnibus posts to give me some room to move around the web…

• Big news in Australia: the first draft of the Garnaut Report on how to introduce an emissions trading scheme has been released [PDF available here]. Lots of reaction, with the expected business backlash getting underway. There’s expert reaction at Science Alert, and No Right Turn gets the NZ perspective correct (as usual). Our new friends at the Carbon Nonsense Coalition don’t seem to like the proposals. I wonder why?

• Meanwhile, the NZ ETS is still getting it in the neck from Business NZ with Phil O’Reilly given room at Stuff to demonstrate how lobbying doesn’t have to be based on facts or fairness, as Rod Oram points out on the very next page…

• Elizabeth Kolbert is one of the finest writers working for the New Yorker magazine, and her recent piece about a Danish island that’s transformed itself into a net exporter of renewable energy, and a Swiss approach to living life within a 2000 Watt energy budget is well worth the effort to print out and savour. I may return to the 2,000 Watt idea – it is seductive… [Hat tip to the lagomorph]

• Also required reading: NASA’s Earth Observatory has just posted an in-depth feature on the ocean carbon sink and balance.

• The Carbon Trust in the UK has announced that it will certify companies to a green standard designed to protect them against accusations of greenwash [BBC, Guardian]. We could do with something like that here…

• Back in Australia, the CSIRO has released a report on climate change impacts on the major agricultural sectors – and suggests adaptation options [PDF here]. Once again, something like this could/should be done here.

• India has announced its energy and climate change strategy [18MB PDF]. Unsurprisingly, it rejects national targets and argues for global equity and their right to develop. Bizarrely, and on the basis of one sentence, cranks are claiming that it rejects the climate consensus. You don’t need to read more than the first few paragraphs to realise that’s nonsense. But what else did we expect?

• George Monbiot is very taken with Oliver Tickell’s new book, Kyoto2, which argues that we need a global auction of carbon emission rights for big emitters, the money raised to be spent on low-carbon development.

• A great story from the New York Times looks at how airship use could boom as a result of carbon restrictions on flying (from Boing Boing – love the picture of the whale blimp. I want one!) Meanwhile the EU has announced the details of its airlines emissions restrictions, to begin in 2012.

• Tesla, maker of the US$100,000 Roadster sports EV, has announced (with help from the Governator) that it’s going to build a US$60,000 EV “sedan”. I hope that’s more exciting than a chair. And Japan is testing recharging infrastructures for EVs.

More soon.