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my clarity is a gust of wind, gone too soon (at home in the matrix)
my clarity is a gust of wind, gone too soon (at home in the matrix)
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Australia's mining future and economy?
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very interesting piece here from ross gittins on mining and the growth of china and india.

it does raise some serious questions about the future structure of our economy, the models of economic development and how sustainable they are, and gives further drive to changing our tax system here - taking bads not goods i think! and using the money we are making from all of these minerals to give ourselves some serious soft and hard infrastructure for the next 100 + years ... such as education, health care, low carbon energy, radically transformed buildings and housing and urban set ups, state of the art public transport infrastructure, etc.

we can't get sucked in to allowing these minerals - which belong to the nation - to make a small number of people very rich. we need to ensure we get rents from them to fund nation building.

and let's add elimination of poverty, homelessness, and the indigenous health gap to things to be funded!

http://business.smh.com.au/everythings-coming-up-roses/20080423-27xr.html?page=1

April 22, 2008 | 10:07 PM Comments  0 comments



World Bank calls for food crisis action
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http://news.smh.com.au/world-bank-calls-for-food-crisis-action/20080414-25xr.html

April 14, 2008 - 7:49AM

The World Bank has called for the international community to beef up its response to soaring food prices that have led to starvation and are threatening political stability in the developing world.

Many ministers gathered for the World Bank's annual spring meeting also raised concerns over the increased use of bio-fuels, which share much of the blame for the lack of food supplies, as an alternative energy source.

A joint statement by the ministers urged countries to meet a $US500 million ($A536.88 million) aid shortfall at the World Food Program to help the world's poorest regions, where hundreds of thousands are threatened with starvation.

Global food prices have jumped 83 per cent over the last three years, and World Bank President Robert Zoellick warned that the crisis had already toppled a government in Haiti and could push ever more people into poverty.

"We have to put our money where our mouth is now, so that we can put food into hungry mouths," Zoellick said. "It is as stark as that."

Many countries put the blame for the food crisis squarely on the increased production of certain bio-fuels that use food crops as an alternative energy source.

The United States, Europe and other regions have boosted their production of bio-fuels in recent years to reduce their dependence on imported oil and cut greenhouse-gas emissions that contribute to global warming.

Indian Finance Minister P Chidambaram called on industrial nations to cut off all subsidies for such bio-fuel production.

"In a world where there is hunger and poverty, there is no policy justification for diverting food crops towards bio-fuels," Chidambaram said. "Converting food into fuel is neither good policy for the poor nor for the environment."

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the World Bank's sister-lender the International Monetary Fund, acknowledged the impact of bio-fuels was a serious worry for many developing countries, and said that some ministers had labelled their production a "crisis of humanity" in informal talks.

"It shows how strong this concern is," Strauss-Kahn said in a press briefing with Zoellick after the bank's Development Committee meeting.

Strauss-Kahn also warned that the food crisis threatened to derail all progress made in reducing poverty in Africa and other regions.

"All what has been done can be destroyed very rapidly" by rising food prices, he said.

Zoellick warned last week that the food crisis could set back poverty reduction in the world's poorest nations by seven years.

British Chancellor of the Exchequer Alastair Darling said that a key element of Sunday's meeting involved how to "mitigate the negative impact of high commodity prices on the poor in particular."

He called for a "fully coordinated (international) response to the market turbulence and commodity prices."

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown this week sent a letter to his Japanese counterpart urging that the food crisis be a central focus of the Group of Eight industrial nations summit in July, which will be hosted by Japan.

Hundreds of thousands of people are facing starvation, and 33 countries are threatened with social unrest, the World Bank said this week.

The World Bank on Saturday promised a 10-million-dollar grant to subsidise food in Haiti, where a week of riots led to the sacking of the government of Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis.

Nigerian Finance Minister Shamsuddeen Usman called on the World Bank and international community to "urgently support" efforts to meet the food needs of the most vulnerable people, the majority of whom are in Africa.

April 13, 2008 | 8:09 PM Comments  0 comments

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Economics and Climate Change in Australia
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very interesting article, though i am concerned about the clean coal stuff.

cameron

+++++

Going green for cost of a phone call
http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/going-green-for-cost-of-a-phone-call/2008/02/14/1202760494380.html

Marian Wilkinson Environment Editor
February 15, 2008

FOR the cost of a daily local phone call, Australians could cut their greenhouse gas emissions to the same ambitious levels now being considered by the most advanced European countries, an economic study has found.

The report by the management consultants McKinsey and Company, advisers to some of the world's biggest corporations and institutions, says that by 2020 Australia could cut its greenhouse emissions to 30 per cent below 1990 levels for a cost of less than 80 cents a day for each household - or $290 per year. Over the same period household income is expected to rise by more than $20,000 per year.

The cuts could be made without a big technological breakthrough or dramatic lifestyle changes, the report finds, and by 2030, emissions could be slashed up to 60 per cent.

"This is not daydreaming. This is a fact-based analysis aimed at setting the goal posts," one of the report's authors, Stephan Gorner, told the Herald.

The report, An Australian Cost Curve for Greenhouse Gas Reduction, pre-empts the Federal Government's own studies on the cost of cutting greenhouse gases by Ross Garnaut and the Treasury. Professor Garnaut is not due to release a draft of his report until June and yesterday the Treasurer, Wayne Swan, said his department's modelling would not be available until then.

The Rudd Government has consistently refused to set its 2020 target for cutting greenhouse gases until it receives the Garnaut report. It has committed only to a 2050 target of cutting emissions by 60 per cent from 2000 levels.

The McKinsey authors have briefed the offices of the Treasurer; the Climate Change

Minister, Penny Wong; and Professor Garnaut on their report, which stresses the need for urgent action to achieve the cuts.

"Significantly reducing Australia's greenhouse gas emissions is achievable and affordable but requires rapid action", the report concludes. It notes, "The scale of changes required is substantial."

Mr Gorner, who came to McKinsey's Sydney office from Germany, rejected suggestions that the report was too optimistic but said: "You have to act now to make it happen".

"There are likely to be winners and losers," he acknowledged

The report investigates more than 100 opportunities to cut greenhouse gases across the economy, including stepping up investment in wind power, increasing regulations to slow land clearing, using tougher regulations to lift energy efficiency, speeding up new technologies through tax breaks and subsidies, lifting fuel efficiency standards, increasing the use of biofuels and increasing the use of renewable energy.

Reducing emissions in the building sector, cutting emissions from air-conditioners, hot water systems, lighting and appliances will be the most economic way of cutting emissions because the savings to the consumer will pay for the changes, the report finds.

The heavily polluting power industry will need to radically cut its emissions, which are soaring. Without any new action, Australian emissions are set to rise to 127 per cent of 1990 levels in 2020 rather than fall.

Controversially, the report assumes that clean coal technology will be commercially available for coal-fired power stations by 2030, and two-thirds of the industry will be using it. As yet there is no clean coal plant in commercial operation. The report acknowledges that, without clean coal, the cost of slashing emissions by 60 per cent by 2030 will increase by almost a third.

Alternatively, the use of renewable energy will need to increase greatly.