sustainability news 22nd Nov 2007
Posted on 23 November 2007 by e-news
MASG social and thankyou: – celebrate our successful spring-time of sustainability! Friday 30th November, 5.30 -7pm. In the last two months our marvellous team of volunteers, committee and staff have run: Ride to Work Day; Finding Our Power; the Renewable Expo and the Big Night Out. We were also present [often simultaneously] at the IGA, the Wesley Hill market, the Mostyn St stall, the Maldon Festival, the Farmers market, Farmer John, the Steiner school fair, the Walk Against Warming, the Bendigo Permaculture Design Course and many other similar promotional opportunities to help raise awareness of MASG and its events. Come along to share stories and photos. Nibbles and soft drinks provided. [BYO if you want different/extra]. At Bronwen’s: 7 Munro Court, off Dudley St, Castlemaine. Children welcome.
You can go on to the “Movember” party later the same night if you wish – Theatre Royal. If you have noticed extra hair on the upper lip of some of us, it’s because we are participating in Movember – growing a moustache to raise money for men’s health. $100 already raised. More donations welcome – to Ian or Dean!
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Cycling’s Big Night Out at the Theatre Royal last Friday night was a highly successful fundraiser for MASG. Though all the bills aren’t yet in, we cleared over $7,000, almost twice as much as our 2006 fundraiser at the Royal. More importantly, from all reports, members and others had a great time. Once again our sincere thanks to David Stretch of the Theatre Royal and to the following companies which sponsored the night: Tonks, Stephen Breheny Electrician, Kelly Plumbing and Castlemaine Property Group; and to the performers, Team, Andree, Justin and Grace, to the MC: Jan Wozitski and all those people who helped with raffle tickets and organisation on the night. We realise it was a long show and that some people had to leave before the end of the movie. If you’d like to have a showing of it in the MASG front room anytime, please let us know. If the demand is there, we’ll do it, perhaps after a Friday night get-together.
MASG REQUESTS: 1. Office desks, carpets, screens, pinboards in reasonable condition;
2. visit our Website, now often listed on Google in relation to climate and energy news. Usually updated more than once a week, plus new pics and pages added this week. If you have any pictures for the web, email ian@masg.org.au. For larger print size you can use ‘view’ on the menu bar, then ‘text size’.
OTHER CLIMATE NEWS – local and international, not endorsed by MASG
HEPBURN: The Hepburn Community Wind Park is Australia’s first community-owned wind farm. It will be located in the Hepburn Shire, Victoria and consist of two wind turbines giving a capacity of 4 megawatts of power. It will produce enough electricity to power more than 2,000 homes – equivalent to around half the homes in the local Shire. To help with this development, please complete this survey.
FRANCE: significant leadership and [hopefully] action from a conservative government: Under the leadership of President Sarkozy, France has embarked on an ambitious program of deeper carbon reductions. In introducing the measures, Sarkozy said “The guiding principle is that the cost to the climate — the carbon cost — will be integrated into planning of all major public projects, and into all deliberations affecting the public.” These measures include: a commitment that all new buildings would be net energy producers by 2020, incandescent lighting would be banned by 2010, buyers of efficient vehicles would be subsidized, drivers of inefficient vehicles would be penalized, and road construction would be severely curtailed in favor of expanded rail travel. These proposals are the result of an intensive months-long series of discussions with scientists and stakeholders such as environmental nongovernmental organizations, industry representatives, and labor union representatives. The process, known as Le Grenelle de l’Environnement , was extensively reported in the press. [thanks to Greenleap email list]
UNITED STATES: PG&E, one of the world’s biggest utilities is going for 20% renewables by 2010 and is lobbying US federal government for mandated action on climate change.
ASIA: “Climate change will reverse decades of social and economic progress.” The Working Group on Climate Change and Development says industrialised countries must cut carbon emissions massively by mid-century. Up In Smoke? Asia and the Pacific – says Asia is “effectively on the front line of climate change”, as it is home to almost two-thirds of the world’s population. With half of this population living near the coast, billions are directly vulnerable to sea-level rise driven by a warming world. The report says Asia is where the “human drama of climate change” will largely be played out. Members include ActionAid, Christian Aid, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, Oxfam and WWF. There are many other useful climate change related stories on this BBC site.
UNITED NATIONS: IPCC conclusions confirm need for urgent global action: Secretary General Ban Ki-moon launched the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Synthesis Report, the final part of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report Climate Change 2007. It states that urgent action must be taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, or climate change will intensify and have a dramatic effect on the natural world and human society.
“The wombat speaks, and he’s smarter than you, so listen up! In less than a minute, this rapid-fire animation tells you everything you need to know about how to get along on earth for the next million years.”
Quote: this week from a dinosaur, thanks to Gary Larsen (The Far Side):
“The picture’s pretty bleak, gentlemen … the world’s climates are changing, the mammals are taking over,
and we all have a brain about the size of a walnut.”
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