…before election day. I really liked the Kevin Rudd interviewing himself clip, but I think I like this one even better. Very funny stuff.

Oh, nice.

That treacherous Liberal Party has turned Glen Waverley into a suburb of Beijing and instigated the genocide destruction of our white Australian identity.
Vote 1 Neil Henry Smith One Nation to enforce a 100 years moratorium on coloured immigration.
– One Nation candidate for Bruce’s pamphlet, as quoted in The Monash Journal. (via Polly Morgan)

The Journal also notes that Family First chose to preference this piece of excrement above The Greens, Labor and the Democrats, using the excuse that the One Nation have no chance of winning the seat, whereas the latter do. Pathetic: frankly in that position, I’d rather hold onto whatever scruples and morals I could muster and put him last.

I wonder what my local FF candidate, Joyce Khoo, thinks of it.

It underscores for me the concerns over Family First. Despite the name, they’re really just ultra-conservatives, claiming they’re “for families” (as if the other parties are anti-family). No wonder some call them Fundies First.

Funnily enough, today’s online Dilbert dips into this territory:

Once again, we all have to decide who to put last. No One Nation option for me, but if FF are elsewhere preferencing them above most others, they might get the gong. CEC would have to be in the running again, too.

But I’m in Goldstein, and nominally safe Liberal, so it may not make a lot of difference. What will be more interesting is how the senate vote goes.

Oh, and for those pondering if they should use their primary vote on a minor party they like better than the big two: Yes, you should. As Beth Spencer in The Age explains, it makes a big difference to the funding of those smaller parties, it helps send the message of what and who you really support, and of course your vote isn’t wasted; it will go to the biggies as the preferences get distributed.

So after pondering how heat-efficient my house is (at least for summer), and my water consumption, I was thinking about the rest of my energy use.

Since I don’t have air con, I’m hoping the house is fairly efficient, despite heavy use of two computers. Recent bills show usage at around 8-10 kilowatt hours per day, throughout the year, with a peak of 11 kWh per day in July 2006.

That makes around 3300 kWh a year. Apparently the national average is around 6000 kWh, but 3500 kWh in cities like Perth which aren’t super-hot and have natural gas available for hot water (which is what really burns up the watts for those who have to use electricity for it).

Most of my lights are now CFLs, but there’s probably more I can do on this front, such as setting things up to be able to easily turn off most appliances at the wall instead of leaving them on standby power. Solar electricity is an option, though quite expensive, even with the current subsidies.

Cooking, hot water and central heating for me is by natural gas. Recent bills show usage at about 21 megajoules per day during summer, but a whopping 230 MJ per day in the coldest part of winter. Not sure how that compares with other homes.

Solar hot water (gas-boosted) is reasonably affordable with the rebates, so I’m seriously looking at the options there. But given the bulk of the gas is probably central heating, better insulation may be more effective in the short term.

What I’d like to see from the federal government is commitment to help people reduce their energy needs. Better public transport will help a lot. (See the PTUA’s evaluation of policies). And for buildings, more money for household and commercial solar installations could be the way to go.

For all the talk about nuclear and the myth of clean coal, both of these will cost years and billions and billions to develop (if they work at all). And in the mean time, solar technology is available now, and mass production for Australia’s sunny cities should see the price drop. So how about the right mix of subsidies and rebates to get solar panels up on more roofs?

Get the states mandating better building designs (hint: if you must have huge windows, don’t have them facing the summer sun), and we’ll be going a fair way towards reducing our energy use, and generating more of it sustainably.

What did you do in the war, grandad?

Sunday is Remembrance Day, when we pause to remember the generations of young soldiers who went away to war to fight for the freedoms we enjoy today, many of them paying with their lives.

Those of us young(ish) adults no longer have the threat of world (or even local) war upon us. Soldiers going to war now choose to do so, rather than being compelled to do so.

No, we have another war to fight for the sake of future generations.
(more…)

The other week at dinner with friends, we got to talking about being a spokesdude. Michael was describing his experiences doing media on behalf of an organisation, as I just sat there nodding in sympathy.

He was describing being rung up by 3AW at half-past-six in the morning, to be quizzed on his particular expertise, trying to sound authoritative to however-many hundreds of thousands of people were listening when in fact he was half-asleep, in a hotel somewhere in Sydney, sitting on the edge of the bed in his underwear.

And he said that he couldn’t listen to morning radio now without realising that every talking head they speak to is likely to be in much the same position. I had to agree — I know I’ve heard myself and noted the slurring in my voice, and I hear it in others’ voices at that time of the morning too.

Bob Geldof on Live Earth: “I hope they’re a success. But why is Gore actually organizing them? To make us aware of the greenhouse effect? Everybody’s known about that problem for years.”

But some don’t. I keep hearing about people who routinely use their clothes dryers for everything. Or people who leave lots of lights on around the house when they’ve settled into the lounge room to watch TV for the evening. Or buy huge TVs that burn lots of power. Or buy fleets of 4WDs to drive around town. Or leave the heating on in empty rooms. Or, like one of my neighbours, drive the 5 minute walk to the supermarket (OK, maybe he’s getting more than he can carry).

And offsets aren’t everything, either. Greenfleet is already running out of land to plant trees, let alone if everybody did it. And such schemes don’t take into account future loss of carbon through things such as bushfire.

It’s like the three Rs, the first of which often gets forgotten: Reduce, Re-use, Recycle. Offsetting them helps, but it’s far from ideal. Reducing, thus not producing the emissions in the first place, is better.

A lot of people know what’s going on, and are doing what they can to reduce their carbon footprint. Some really don’t know, and don’t care.

And some just don’t believe. Maybe they watched The Great Global Warming Swindle and believed all of it; and switched off before Martin Durkin was queried on some of his claims.

But when people say they’re not going to do anything because they don’t believe carbon emissions make a difference, they’re ignoring that there is a myriad of other benefits from cutting pollution. Take my pet cause, public transport. Encouraging and enabling people to drive less is not just about cutting emissions. It also has benefits in, off the top of my head: clean air, road space, congestion, oil dependence/peak oil, transport costs, road toll, social isolation, equity/access to work and education, obesity, road rage, street crime. It’s not all about emissions.

And then there’s other people, who know about it, but think others should do all the hard yards.

Maybe it’s time for personal carbon trading! Apparently Caltex is proposing it, with the RACV objecting.

Yes? No? Well consider this (though I wonder if there’s evidence to back it up):

In recent years wealthy Texans have discovered the joys of sitting in front of a log fire. As it is usually hot in Texas they must turn their air conditioners up so they can enjoy the cosy warmth from their hearths. — Clive Hamilton.

I’m sure most of us have already worked this out, but let me decode the phrase “aspirational goal” for you. It means “goal that we’d like to reach, but we’re not going to actually make any effort to reach, and there certainly won’t be any penalties or anything if we never come close.” In other words, it’d be terrific if it happened by itself. Yeah right.

Examples from our illustrious leaders:

• [Prime Minister John Howard] said the Government would next year — the timing recommended by the group — set a long-term “aspirational goal” for emissions reduction.
• [Bush's proposal for international] meetings would not be to set caps on emissions, but to establish what the White House — uncorking a bold new euphemism — calls “aspirational goals.”
• [Public Transport Minister Lynne Kosky] played down the Government’s aim of doubling all trips taken by public transport by 2020, describing it as always aspirational.

What a load of bollocks. Either you support a goal, or you don’t. And if you do, you should be actively working towards making it happen, not just saying it’d be a good idea.

You don’t see football teams talking about aspirational goals, do you? — No, because they actually want to achieve something. Richmond are at the bottom of the ladder, and aspire to start winning games and climbing the ladder. But the difference between them and the politicians is they’re actually trying to make it happen.

Cameron Reilly’s done a podcast followup to his Age article encouraging people to “get off the bench”.

Listening to it reminded me of something I once wrote:

“Every person has the potential to create a great work of art; to work for the benefit of humanity; to become a spokesman or a great leader; to do good. Your role as a member of the human race is to reach your potential, and to help others to reach theirs.”

– Me, obviously feeling philosophical, January 1996

PS. Call me an imbecilic philistine, but I didn’t know Moleskine is pronounced “molly skeena”. But apparently they’re Italian, so fair enough.

PPS. Cam’s helping to run the MODM (Melbourne’s Online Digital Media) gatherings to talk about various aspects of this new digital thingamebob age we’re living in. I’d hoped to go to the meeting next Thursday night, but alas something else has clashed with it. Maybe next time, it sounds kinda interesting.