April 17, 2012 – 10:24 am
The Fairfax press reported yesterday the Victorian Government is considering a proposal to abolish the mandatory 6 star energy rating for new houses and renovations, and replace it with a voluntary industry code. This morning however, The Age reports the Premier, Ted Baillieu, has done an about-face and ruled out any change. If the Government really [...]
April 13, 2012 – 10:27 am
If we could significantly increase population densities and get many more people out of their cars and into public transport, we’d go a long way toward making our cities sustainable. We’d almost be there if we could generate most electricity from renewable resources. Or so you might think. Yet the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) disagrees. [...]
Earlier this week I watched the Four Corners story, Against the Wind, on the alleged health impacts of wind turbines and came away wondering just what the point of the program was. Based on what I saw, my clear impression is there’s no issue here – there’s simply no hard evidence of the supposed health [...]
Given Australia already has a large excise tax on petrol, exempting automotive fuel bought by “families, tradies and small businesses” from the Gillard Government’s carbon tax is not the disaster some would have us believe. Australia has a minority government so compromise was inevitable – two of the independents, Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott, wouldn’t [...]
The Productivity Commission’s new research report, Carbon emission policies in key economies, has important implications for the way emissions are managed, but it also has some key lessons for urban and transport policy (and other areas of policy, for that matter). The report should remove any doubt that a price on carbon is far and [...]
One of the themes I’ve consistently emphasised when discussing looming threats like peak oil is that policy responses must take account of the adaptability of markets and consumers. Drivers will respond to higher petrol prices by, for example, travelling less, changing to smaller fuel-efficient cars and moving to more accessible locations. Manufacturers will respond by [...]
Herald Sun journalist Andrew Bolt glosses easily over the potential negative health implications of the troubled Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear reactor in Japan. He says too much emphasis is given to the Chernobyl disaster because, contrary to received wisdom, he maintains only 65 deaths are associated with this accident. But there’s more to it than that. These accounts [...]
I regularly hear the argument that there’s no point in Australia putting a price on carbon because we’re so small it will mean jack shit at an international level. We’ll suffer the pain, so the argument goes, for no gain. Australia is one of the world’s highest emitters of greenhouse gases on a per capita [...]
Giant US department store chain Wal-Mart has some interesting initatives to promote sustainability and public health that the likes of Coles, Woolworths and Bunnings should be taking note of. My interest in Wal-Mart was piqued by a large number of hits The Melbourne Urbanist received last month from the US on a piece I wrote [...]
By Alan Davies
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Also posted in Miscellaneous
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Tagged Andrew Winston, Coles, department store, food bank, food miles, Harvard Business Review, Lisbon, supermarket, sustainability, The Huffington Post, Wal-Mart, Woolworths
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