Sunday 9 December 2007

Renewables being given their shot and news from Bali

According to this ABC report worldwide investment in renewables will achieve a record breaking $114b this year.

Despite this, participants in the ongoing UN climate conference in Bali are [depending on their representation] calling for much more significant cuts and again here [science, environmental groups] or taking a more cautions approach in consideration of economic and political fallout [trade ministers and other politicians]. The ABC alone is rife with articles from all perspectives.

Of local interest, New Zealand has already sided with the EU in calling for mandatory cuts of between 25 to 40% of 1990 emission levels by 2020. This call was echoed by non-politically affiliated Australian representatives at Bali, but pushed back by Crean and Rudd along with Canada, the USA and Japan.

But this is the beginning and hopefully just some initial posturing for future negotiations. The diversity of perspective and interest certainly justifies why the negotiations have commenced now for an agreement to take affect in a bit more than 4 years. They've certainly got their work cut out for them.

It would seem, again despite the investment sited above, the world needs something with a bigger punch to meet the emission cut targets while preserving economic security.

Nuclear power packs a wallop.

1 comment:

  1. Considering that Canada is 32.7% above its Kyoto target, and doesn't have a clue how to get its emissions under control, and the ammount of money being spent on wind generation, a technology that is bound to keep the coal mines in business for a long time, and that politicians want to shut nuclear power plants down, and replace them with, you guessed it, windmills with fossil fuel "back ups," we are not going to make 1990, or even come close. What will work will be peak oil, and a lot of people will be buying EVs by 2020. By 2020, we should pretty much have out heads straight about nuclear power, and be beginning the ramp up to replacing all the fossil fuel power plants. Maybe that will be completed by 2040.

    I look for some greater measure of sanity, maybe in 4 years. Right now a lot of people with bad ideas and a desire for attention have taken the stage. We will know that things are getting serious when the egoistic idiots get driven from the stage.

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