Dec 16 2008
An endorsement for Labour
Cheers to Kevin Rudd for making a hard decision yesterday. His decision to cut emissions by only 5% on 2000 levels may seem nothing to the screaming greenies out there but it is not going to be an easy target to reach.
Lets first acknowledge that I called these ‘items’ emissions. Not green house gasses as the greenies will call them. They are simply emissions. Green house gasses are based on a theory created around a pot clouded table at some sort of hoochie coochie-mudlo party in the 70’s. The term is incorrect in my opinion and leads to misunderstandings.
Back to the ramifications, just for a minute think about how much things have changed since 2000. One of the main contributors to emissions is getting those little black rocks out of the ground that enable us to create a chunk of these emissions in the first place. Since 2000 production of coal has increased exponentially (I am to lazy to research the figures, but its high, maybe some of my learned colleagues could confirm) and the burning of this black gold has kept a steady pace as well.
You will note since the years 2000 nearly everyone you know has either an Ipod or some sort of mp3 player. There are now DVD players / recorders, VCR’s, PS3’s, Wii’s, home theatres, Foxtel boxes, plasmas or LCD’s. Everyone has a three station cordless phone and the mandatory mobile on the side. The broadband modem blinks away for all hours and there is an average of 1.3 computers in every home, most of them on downloading goodness knows what 24/7. With all that heat coming out of these computers you need an air conditioner to cool the place down. Then there are coffee machines, pancake makers, home made bread machines (still don’t understand how this idea took off) and massage machines. The average anticipated electricity usage per capita has over doubled since the late 1990’s (and you wonder why the electricity network can’t keep up).
As a prick of a man who made life a misery for me in late 2005 told me ‘Electricity is a drug and it is spreading’. The only useful piece of information he ever dribbled.
If Kevin Rudd wants us to drop back to sub 2000 emissions then lets do it. It seems a hard but achievable figure. And you greenies who think otherwise, well you can piss off to Germany where you can join the 4th reich and ‘sort’ us out once and for all.
Got to go against you here. We need to really make some changes if we are to avoid the disaster of Climate Change. Australia are far less than 1% of the population yet we contribute over 1% of the worlds green house gasses. This needs to be looked at or Mr Rudd may find himself out of a job.
Who the hell has a pancake maker? Those shake and mix things sound heaps easier.
I’ve also been known to contribute to our ‘emissions’. Maybe I should offset them by planting some trees.
Ruds a bloody lunitic at times but I am glad he has held on to his guns this time. I think this climate change is a bit of a concern but I dout Australian is gonna make much diference either way.
Jethro, I think you mean that he has ‘stuck to his guns’, and unless your definition of this phrase means ‘promised one thing during the election campaign and then did the complete opposite once elected’, you couldn’t be further from the mark.
Big Kev told the voters that this issue, and the need to reduce Australia’s emissions by at least 25% was the biggest moral issue facing this country. Apparently moral issues now only need to be addressed every 3 years.
That aside, whilst I agree with SJ on that there’s too much uneducated banter on this issue that confuses the majority of us, I’d prefer to see us making a concerted effort to reduce emissions now just in case it’s all true. The alternative is that we continue the way we are currently going, find out that it’s all true but that it’s too late for us to do anything about it.
PS. I’m with Velcro on the pancake maker and SJ on the bread maker.
It should be easy for us to cut emissions by going solar, we have heaps of bloody sun, and then we can export MORE coal rather than use it here, that works for me.
And we have tonnes of uranium too, bring on nuclear and solar power I say and we have hit our targets.