hpfm - Triple Bottom Line

Today saw the current federal government cave into Australia’s filthiest companies and consigned the Barrier Reed, Kakadu and probably the Murray Darling System to history.

Given the chance to show that we truly understand how important the condidtion of the worlds atmosphere is, our representatives bubkled at the knees and gave i because it seems too hard.

They even decided to reward the most digusting forms of environmental vanadlism with an extra $4billion AUD.  This is equivalent to giving Rothmans money to fight lung cancer!!!

I thought the Rudd government was serious about this, but it seems oiling squeaky wheels is more effective if you want to stay in power.

This effort gets 3/10 simply because they announced a target - paltry and pathetic as that may be.

I guess its still slightly better than the other lot.

But either our kids, kids lose, severely.

I guess we become the titleholders of ‘most selfish lifeform ever’

I was looking at the Rocky Mountains Institute web page directed to transport, which follows watching The Daily Show last night in which I heard for the first time someone saying that the smart way ahead is to plan for the termination of our dependence on fossil fuels.  The RMI is planning for the end of oil, Australia I would propose needs to plan to eliminate coal mining by 2050 as well.

Why kill the goose that laid the golden egg?  Because someone is going to work out how to produce power without pollution.  That person, company, group or country will have a mortgage on the future.  The market economist must admit that with the climate situation as it is, there is definitely demand there.

In the Daily Show interview the ‘bubble’ nature of economics was discussed.  That is we had the first wave of internet players, this created a hyper infalted bubble that crashed and cost a lot of people lots of money. When the dust cleared we had this amazing resource called the World Wide Web which is now core to most of world trade.
We can look at Coal in the same way.  We currently have a hyperinflated buble of coal generated power networks.  Once this bubble bursts, there will be huge costs and business failures etc, BUT we will be left with highly valuable power networks that the new generators can leverage.

But how do we get there?

2 ways:

• Wait - then pay the price and conintue as a third rate economy, desperately trying to catch up.
• Take the pain in lumps

• Stop all subsidies to fossil fuel immediately

• E.g remove trade incentives
• Tax emissions
• Make them pay for the water they use
• Cancel all exploration permits immediately

• Free, non-poluting universal public transport
• Free, non polutting  personal  public transport
• Disuade private fossil fuel use

• in cars, lawnmowers etc

Of course we cant see thus happening for a while because of the outrageious lobbying power that these organisations have.

Coal Miners, Oil companies etc may well employ a lot of people, but the damage they are doing to us is now measurable and must be acknowledged.

Protecting these dinosaurs serves noone, we must see them off the premises for our own good, regardless of how good they make us feel.

I was waiting for a take away coffee and I saw today’s Sydney Morning Herald.  While I love it when the Markeeters and Fund Cowboy’s start crying fowl because the circumstances others have had to face that lead to fat commissions are now at play on them, I was more struck by a question.  Why would anyone care what the likes of Access Economics thinks about the current financial crisis.  We are in the direct consequences of their advice for the past 10 years.  They have, apparently been so wrong that the only measurable output from their advice right now is the largest financial crisis since the great depression.

When will we start to hear from credible analysts that have a different world view?

As Albert Einstein said “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” (Ref Quote )

While we have an incredibly severe financial crisis on our hands, it is dwarfed in both size and immediacy by the changes in the planets climate.

Planetary Change is bigger than all of the economies in the world, if only because to totally encloses them.

We must have more and very different ideas to provide us with an alternative to the vision that is able to ignore the single largest threat to civilisation ever encountered.  This is bigger than the last Ice Age, at the level of the organism the change is on a par with the extinction event that saw off the dinosaurs.

And we engineered this one.

To quote a very smart man “”We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” - Albert Einstein

A chap I know from the Greens called me last week to ask if, as a rep of one of the groups I belong to, I would endorse a proposal to have the Warringah Council write to both State and Federal Govt’s to protest over a proposal to explore for Coal off the Sydney coastline.

Just how many things are wrong with this idea? Who is the fool that thinks this is sensible?

We want to decrease the amount of coal we burn not use more.

And given the amount of coal we have on the mainland, why would gassification, offshore with the all the attendant environmental issue be entertained at all?

I am amazed that we still have people that want to expand the most toxic industry the earth has seen. The first steps SHOULD be to immediately cancel all fossil fuel exploration licences, remove all government subsidies on mining (of all kinds) and look to seek damages from these companies for the damage they have wrought on the world.

But is that likely to happen? Of course not, we will these dirty, polluting industries rewarded for driving the Earth toward the 7th major extinction event.

For that past few years, I’ve spent most of my time trying to attract senior and executive leaders to the need for simple, strategic and long term thinking about the lifecycle of their organisations. The advances in information management technologies, well ordered information exchange and systems of identifying, locating and storing everything that organisation provides an opportunity of accelerating value over the long term.

So why is that a strategic view of the activities of the business, intolerance of empire building and good governance falls of deaf ears?

Why?

From time to time, I hope to return to this theme.  I suspect it is to do with a shift in value from the means of production to the means of manipulation.

Huge amounts of young people take advantage of the first home owners grant when buying or building their first home. What about a change to the first home owners grant to include grid fed energy solutions aswell as a cash payment. If this was introduced, as each new wave of first home owners buy into the real estate market, the phase in of grid fed power solutions will increase dramatically. This will not only save people money but also decrease the base energy load needed by almost every community in Australia. This solution also means that although many people do not have the spare money to spend on these options, it is an accessible option by providing it through the first home owners grant.

The change would need to include environmental first home owner options instead of simply one payment of $7000. Something similar to these options:

Option 1:

$2000 plus 3 grid fed solar panels (installed and connected to the grid)

Option 2:

6 grid fed solar panels (installed and connected to the grid)

This would mean an incredible increase in renewable solutions at an individual home level which will be accessible to all people in Australia.

For the government this would provide lower base level power needed to almost all Australian communities, which means the government can put all resources into the implementation of real and practical clean power solutions to cater for Australia’s needs.

Grid fed power using wind or solar is a massive step into the future however the cost of this technology is still relatively high, which means the majority of people, weather environmentally aware or not, can simply not afford these solutions and do not have the extra money in order to embrace these options.

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