DELWP fails consumer choice on electricity plans and greenhouse gas emissions

The Victorian Department of Environment Land, Water and Planning provide a website to compare gas and electricity plans. But a problem with this website is it prioritises solely on price. Some people like myself would like the option to compare plans on social and evironmental utility - on the level of greenhouse gas emissions.

Compare electricity in Victoria? DELWP need to do better with this website on comparing energy offers. It fails to empower Victorian consumers in how to maximise reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in their electricity bill plans.

https://compare.energy.vic.gov.au/

Letter to Peter Khalil MP on gas lead recovery announcement for Australia

Dear Peter,
I hope you and your family are keeping well during these pandemic times. I am occupying myself with a thousands small jobs from the local to the international on climate advocacy. I appreciate your confidence in speaking up in recent months, and in debating Dave Sharma with Patricia Karvelas on international policy areas.

I am writing to you in your role as my Federal MP for Wills, on the Government gas lead covid recovery announcement by Prime Minister Morrison..

I write as a Victorian voter, a parent and grandfather being very concerned about increasing climate change and as a person who has attended 4 UN Climate Change conferences (COP21, COP22, COP23, and COP25)

I am very concerned about the “gas-fired recovery from COVID-19” as announced by the Prime Minister Scott Morrison today (September 15).

Zero net emissions targets and climate action plans need to be reflected in 2040 Hume Council Horizons Vision - Submission

My submission to the Draft City of Hume Horizons 2040 document to Hume Council. Quickly pulled together with 24 hours notice and submitted an hour before the midnight deadline. The Hume 2040 Horizons document can be read and tracked through the engagement process.

Pandemic Ponderings: Cooking with gas: fugitive emissions, indoor pollution and Covid19

This article was originally published at my Linked In Blog on June 10, 2020.

Why I transitioned from cooking with gas to an electric magnetic resonance induction cooktop, a story about gas, fugitive emissions, indoor pollution and now the Covid19 virus.

One of the incidents in 2017 that started me on this whole journey was smelling a gas leak in my front yard. I called the gas company and when they attended, sure enough a leak was detected on the network side of my connection. They fixed the leak. This is fugitive emissions adding methane to the atmosphere, a greenhouse gas 86 times more powerful than carbon dioxide over a 20 year timeframe. These leaks are ocurring throughout the distribution network.

Aviation growth disrupted, time for a moratorium on airport expansion, reassesment of aviation climate impact

IATA forward projections for aviation due to the pandemic

There should be an immediate moratorium on the Melbourne Airport 3rd runway design and construction due to aviation forward growth projections being now out of date due to the impact of the Covid19 pandemic.

Melbourne Airport today (14 May) put out a notice they are still committed to building the 3rd runway.

"However, our public exhibition period and community engagement activities for the Draft Major Development Plan will be postponed as we adhere to current strict social distancing measures."

Melbourne airport failed to include any business risk management plan in their latest Airport Masterplan on high impact low occurrence situations such as black swan events (such as the pandemic) or forseeable but unlikely impacts such as increased climate regulatory action by government, or building a high speed east coast rail network for competition. This was poor risk management. (see Climate Action Moreland 2018 submission to the Melbourne Airport Draft Masterplan)

The International Airline Industry in a press release on 13 May forecasts that due to the pandemic domestic travel may not recover till 2023 and international long haul aviation 2025.

The pandemic is already changing recreational travel behaviours in the short and medium term, and business travel will also be less in future as video-conferencing reduces need to travel while also reducing travel expense to business.

Add to this growing concern and action over climate impact of aviation when we need to be reducing emissions. The need for the 3rd runway based on prepandemic travel projections should be reassessed.

The airline industry also want to remove international quarantine measures as rapidly as possible, replacing with temperature and other health checks in a layered approach.

As up to 50 percent of Covid19 infection transmission is asymptomatic or pre symptomatic, these checks will almost certainly fail to be enough in preventing continued spread of the Corona Virus.

Mass Aviation enabled the rapid global spread of this virus in the first place. Opening up international aviation without quarantine or a vaccine is highly problematic.

Brian Pearce Chief Economist for IATA in his 5 year projections provided this chart. I suspect even this projection by IATA is very rosy forecasting showing a V rebound when consumer confidence will likely take much longer and with airlines subject to much more regulatory action over emissions as the climate emergency comes to the fore again as we learn to live in post pandemic times.


Sources:
IATA press release, 13 May 2020, Don’t Make A Slow Recovery More Difficult with Quarantine Measures
https://www.iata.org/en/pressroom/pr/2020-05-13-03/

Guest Post: The smoke from autumn burn-offs could make coronavirus symptoms worse.

I felt somewhat vindicated when this post appeared at The Conversation warning of hazard reduction burns smoke during the early pandemic. Correlation links had already been found between covid19 severity, increased mortality and higher levels of pollution.

See: Pandemic ponderings: Indications that High levels of Air Pollution exacerbate Covid19 spread (virus may be airborne) (March 26, 2020) and Pandemic Ponderings: US study finds Air pollution link to Covid19 deaths (April 8, 2020)

The smoke from autumn burn-offs could make coronavirus symptoms worse. It’s not worth the risk

MomentsForZen/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND

Don Driscoll, Deakin University; Brian Oliver, University of Technology Sydney; Courtney Alice Waugh, Nord University; Marcel Klaassen, Deakin University, and Veerle L. B. Jaspers, Norwegian University of Science and Technology

Pandemic Ponderings: US study finds Air pollution link to Covid19 deaths

New research from the Harvard School of Public Health highlights a possible causal link between PM2.5 particulate pollution and Covid19 deaths.

That is, areas in the US with higher levels of PM2.5 particulate pollution have statistically significant higher rate of Covid19 deaths.

The aggregated data strongly suggests a link, while the researchers suggest more research is needed down to the individual patient medical data level to positively confirm the link.

The New York Times Lisa Friedman has reported on the study in an article titled New Research Links Air Pollution to Higher Coronavirus Death Rates.

Pandemic ponderings: Indications that High levels of Air Pollution exacerbate Covid19 spread (virus may be airborne)

First published as a Linked-in Blog post on March 26,2020.

While we all hunker down in physical distancing with Covid19. I have been chasing up reports on preliminary research by Italian scientists between high levels of Pm10 and Pm2.5 air pollution particulates increasing intensity and spread of Covid19 based on their research in northern Italy. 

I intially followed a link from a CMCC climate observatory (strong science reputation) post What Science Has to Say About the Coronavirus – Climate Crisis Connection. A Press Review (An excellent article by the way)

I came across a linked Italian news report dated 18 March reporting on a preliminary study by several Italian scientists regarding Pm10 and Pm2.5 particulates exacerbating Covid19 intensity and spread in northern regions of Italy. I documented this in my facebook timeline post with an english translation.

Nordic Countries pursuing short haul electric aviation at COP25

It’s a flying Shame – Nordic efforts towards Sustainable Aviation, December 13.

I attended this presentation at #COP25 in Madrid which entailed a video hookup with a panel of people in Stockholm.

Attitudes are changing to flying, given the level of emissions it causes. This is especially the case from people who use an ethical and value-based model to drive their behaviour.

Biofuels are being investigated, but there are biomass limits to use of these fuels, and they do not address climate impacts at high altitudes. Electric short haul flight is a realistic possibility in the next 10 years, and the Nordic countries are actively pursing this.

Climate change and the Victorian bushfire crisis

The science and warnings for this Bushfire crisis were well known and ignored. This was criminal negligence by our political leaders of the highest order.

See my twitter thread on #bushfires to Darren Chester MP interview on BBC on 30/12 #climateemergency

Nationals @DarrenChesterMP (Gippsland) on BBC on #bushfire emergency "Whether they are worse in years to come is a debateable point I suppose. One of the challenges we have is trying to reduce fuel loads in the months leading up to the summer period"

I call bullshit #Auspol 1/10