China Leads The World

When it comes to emissions, there's a lot of talk about China. Perhaps too much talk. What isn't talked about as much is their progress on renewable energy.

The New York Times says in 2009 China overtook Denmark, Germany, Spain and the USA to become the world's largest wind turbine maker - as well as being the world's biggest maker of solar panels. Now I get Obama's recent comments about not wanting to be in second place.


Oh, and you know those "green jobs" that are often talked about. In 2008, China reached 1.12 million people working renewable energy - and that's going up by 100,000 each year. "You have to move fast with the market" says the president of Vestas China. "Nobody has ever seen such fast development in a wind market."

Our Choice - Kids' Edition

Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth was very good at explaining the whole climate change situation - and just how severe the problem is. His new book, Our Choice outlines the things we (as a society) can do to avoid the consequences of climate change.


All the library copies were on-loan, so I took a look at the young reader's edition. It is a very comfortable read - a chapter for each of 15 technologies and strategies we can use. Each chapter is around 10 pages, and is very informative - without baffling the reader. It reads a bit like a year 8 science book - but with lots of great photos and diagrams.

State of the Union

Repower America put together this package of energy-related highlights from this year's State of the Union address by the president.

e2 Series

Morgan Freeman narrates this great series of energy reports into different energy stories. Community windfarms in the US; poorer nations using renewable energy; the possible future of cars ... there are many examples of how becoming more sustainable in our energy use also helps our economies.


Episodes are also available as webcasts from the e2 website. I highly recommend this series. It's theme is very well summed-up in the pre-amble at the beginning of each episode.

Was it a conscious decision or a momentary lapse of reason? How did progress take priority over humankind?
Could harnessing the world's energy that allowed our ascent, now be the lynchpin of our downfall?
It's about facing what seem to be insurmountable challenges and seeing them for what they really are - opportunities to reinvent and redesign.

50 Tips in One

50 Ways to Help the Planet is a collection of little ideas that are easy to do. Some of them save money, most of them save energy, and all of them play a part in reducing greenhouse emissions.


There's also a well-designed desktop background with all the symbols on it.

Mark Lynas - Quotes

I was re-listening to ABC's Science Show which interviewed British climate change author Mark Lynas. He has a great way of summing up the situation in a few quick sentences. About Australia:

Australia is a case in point of a country that could transform itself onto solar power - in the blink of an eye, essentially. It's got huge areas of landmass which are essentially unproductive for agricultural pruposes and have wall to wall sunshine for most of the year and they're just lying bone idle - and yet you're busy burning coal. I mean nothing could be more insane.

And about the climate change situation in general:

It's not as if we're completely stupid. I mean we have all these scientists out there telling us what we need to do. We have all these sociologists and politicians who know how to do it. And yet somehow we're still staring at the headlights like a startled rabbit.

Journey Through Climate History

The ABC have recently put together a timeline of climate history, which is very user friendly. Hovering over a timeline icon brings up a summary. More info can be found by clicking the icon.

Some events are temperature and CO2 measurements - and you can see them change as you move through the timeline.

Public Enemy No 1

That's the moniker given to carbon in this documentary that was recently on SBS. It's a great introduction to climate change as well as looking at some of the solutions.


In one part they interviewed one of they guys that helped on the Stern report, looking at how much climate change would cost the economy if we do nothing about it. The answer? 5,500 billion dollars.

I guess this is why people are starting to realise that a good economy relies on a good environment.

Here's One Tonne!

I've previously shown what one tonne of carbon dioxide looks like. But i like this demonstration - captured by environmental photographer Gary Braasch.


Remember, each year in Australia we release the equivalent of almost 30 of these for each person in the country!

Nick Stern on Climate Change

In 2006, Sir Nicholas Stern was commissioned by the UK government to do a analysis of how much climate change will cost the British economy (known as the Stern Report). In the lead up to Copenhagen, the ABC broadcast a speech he gave in Britain. [here's the mp3]


At the start he gives a quick summary of climate change. He explains what a 5 degree increase means. Humans have never seen it. It was 30 million years ago. Humanity has only been around 200,000 years. Even a 3 degree increase hasn't occurred for 3 million years (still before humans). He sums it up as follows:

...what we can now see is that the risks that we run are not small probabilities of something unpleasant, they're big probabilities of something catastrophic."

The Hottest Decade

Yesterday i showed the 2009 climate. But for me, this is the scarier graph:


The red line is the year-by-year temperature (and 2009 is the 2nd hottest ever) but it's the grey bars that make it super-serious. They are the decade averages, and since the 1940s, each decade has been warmer than the last, with the 'noughties' the warmest so far.

2009 in Australia

In Australia we have a couple of traditional new year events emerging. One is Australia having an amazing win in the cricket. Another is the Bureau of Meteorology announcing the previous year's data. This is Australia in 2009.


The small blue areas were cooler than average last year. White areas were about average. Yellow indicates warmer than average. Orange means last year was in the hottest 10% of history. Deep orange areas had their hottest year ever.

Dr Seuss on Copenhagen

OK, it's not the actual Dr Seuss, but the guys from the Now Show put together this poem about the goings-on at Copenhagen last year. Obviously, there's no visual - it's a radio show.


There's lots of funny bits throughout, but it ended like this...

...and decided decisively, right there and then
that the best way to solve it's to meet up again
and decide on a future that's greener and greater
not with action right now, but with something else later.

Help for Renters

Sometimes it can be tricky being a renter. We'd like to install solar panels, solar hot water, water tanks etc, but we can't. However, i have discovered a good booklet of tips that renters can do to save money and the environment.


The Renter's Guide to Sustainable Living has actions for each room of the house, shows which ones might need owner permission, and gives advice for communicating with landlords.

Bedtime Story

Apparently this ad caused a bit of a stir in the UK for its potential to scare children. It was suggested that it only be shown after 9pm. I can't help but think that if a mere story-book-ad about climate change is too scary for children, then perhaps we should be doing more about the real-life climate change these children will face (rather than complaining about ads).

By the way, there is an accompanying website called Change how the story ends.