Rudd's 2020 ideas summit - April

Discussion in 'The big picture' started by Tamara, Feb 3, 2008.

  1. Tamara

    Tamara Junior Member

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    I hope they've invited Bill and Geoff!

    Love T
     
  2. urbanpermasuccess

    urbanpermasuccess Junior Member

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    ideas summit

    Give each of the participants a copy of David Holmgrens book "Pathways to a sustainable future". I hope they treat each of the issues as part of an integrated system rather than individual parts isolated from each other.

    Mark
     
  3. Tamara

    Tamara Junior Member

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    hmmm. Perhaps intro to permaculture? I couldn't get into David's book. Perhaps its just me...
     
  4. Michaelangelica

    Michaelangelica Junior Member

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    1. Start "Future Funds" for worthwhile educational, agricultural, environmental, medical and educational objectives
    These funds could only use 50% of their income in any one year.
    Thus becoming self sustainable.
    This would be away of using the budget surplice without it being inflationary.

    2. Reduce or eliminate the excise on diesel and petrol (See switchgrass thread
    https://forums.permaculture.org.au/ftopi ... -asc-0.php
    for a detailed pro and con discussion of this).
    Excise is redundant, inappropriate in such a vast country as Australia, and is regressive hurting the poor and those in rural areas most.

    Removal of this tax will make everything cheaper thus reducing inflation and then interest rates.
    Reduction in Government expenditure is too slow and will not stop inflation.

    3 Bring Reserve bank under Treasury/Government control as it is in the USA.
    Continual increase in interest rates will result in our own "sub-prime crisis" and be the "coup de grâce' for farmers.
     
  5. jackie

    jackie Junior Member

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    Re: Rudd's 2020 ideas summit - April

    I agree they should all have a copy of Davids book. Or better still is he going? All policy makers and community leaders need to read it. I loved it couldn't put it down.
     
  6. ppp

    ppp Junior Member

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    Re: Rudd's 2020 ideas summit - April

    Michaelangelica

    1) setup "future funds" -- yeah, ok, good idea, I agree they are also non-inflationary
    2) Reduce / Eliminate excise on diesel and petrol. ARE YOU SERIOUS? I as much as the next person don't like the price, but I think the current prices might start to change behaviour and decisions. INCLUDING making people ask government for public transport, people thinking living near transport is a good thing etc. I think that removing excise on fuel would be a crime. People already consume too much petrol and diesel. I DO think, however, that the money should be directly and totally used towards renewable energy projects such as removing tax on biodiesel, building solar power stations, building new rail lines.
    3) OH NO, take the reserve bank away from an independent highly intelligent organisation and give it to the poloticians?? FAR OUR this is the WORST suggestion ever. Increasing interest rates will not create our own sub-prime crisis. It was, in fact, brought on by the US continually REDUCING their interest rates to encourage consumption. For far too long, people have been CONSUMING too much, increasing interest rates is a way of brining that back under control.

    PPP
     
  7. Michaelangelica

    Michaelangelica Junior Member

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    Re: Rudd's 2020 ideas summit - April

    The CPI is a self-fulfilling prophesy
    Many commercial & domestic rent increases and commodity prices contracts include an increase in CPI

    What do you think is FUELLING this?
    I won't argue the case for lower excise on fuel ( not GST) i have already done this on this forum ( see link given)

    How is it that China can get a 9% + growth while we chug along at 3%?
     
  8. ppp

    ppp Junior Member

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    Re: Rudd's 2020 ideas summit - April

    Um, you have obviously had a similar discussion before, because I think you're answering those questions, I didn't mention CPI.

    china is growing at 9% because there are LOTS of people who have very little and want, and on avrage are getting 9% more.
    In Australia, on the other hand, we already consume ALOT. I don't want us to consume 9% more! The worst houses in Australia are veritable mansions by world standards (visit africa for example, even in relatively rich South Africa).. The chook yard I just built from recycled materials is bigger and better than alot of houses I saw in Africa.
     
  9. sgsonter

    sgsonter New Member

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    Re: Rudd's 2020 ideas summit - April

    What a great opprotunity the 2020 conference focus gives us to raise visibility for Permaculture.

    Permaculture legitimately addresses many of the 2020 conference areas of identified concerns. I think that if we could convince permaculturalists to contribute to a national “letters to the editor” writing campaign identifying the advantages of Permacculture, it could be very effective right now.

    With the newspapers full of news of worldwide food shortages in Asia we have a great opportunity to explain to the general public that this is caused by;
    - rising oil prices crippling industrial (i.e. fuel energy based) monoculture food production
    - bio-fuel incentives diverting agricultural production
    - loss of soil and arable land

    Given all this, people will be very receptive to the idea of low-energy Permaculture abundance.

    I think the Federal government should have a Permaculture policy, possibly even a Permaculture Ministry!!
    The government can weigh the return of investing a small amount in;

    – incentives for people to grow their own food locally and share surpluses in their community

    – incentives for councils to replace footpaths with sustainable, designed perennial gardens that capture water and energy and care for soil.

    – incentives for primary producers to switch to diversified, vertically integrated Permaculture

    – incentives for communities to produce and market;
    - gourmet local food unique to their bio-region
    - high value locally processed fabric, textiles etc
    - renewable materials derived by sustainable, Permaculture production

    This “enabling individual action” approach fits well with the current political fashions and we could enlist very valuable allies.

    Does PRI have any plans in this area? If so I’d love to help co-ordinate Permaculture Graduates and other Permaculture friendly people to take advantage of this opportunity. If nothing is currently planned, I’d love to take on the task of making it happen…

    Simon
     
  10. Ojo

    Ojo Junior Member

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    Re: Rudd's 2020 ideas summit - April

    Prime Minister Rudd, we cannot avert our eyes from the basic fossil fuel facts, or the consequences for life on our planet of ignoring these fossil fuel facts. If we continue to build coal-fired power plants without carbon capture, we will lock in future climate disasters associated with passing climate tipping points. We must solve the coal problem now.
    https://www.energybulletin.net/42162.html


    Carbon dioxide escaped naturally from Lake Nyos in Cameroon in 1986. A colourless and odourless cloud of carbon dioxide bubbled up from the lake during the night and rolled down the valley, asphyxiating about 2000 people. This is unlikely to happen in the areas chosen for sequestration unless there was a surprise earthquake as occurred in Newcastle in 1989.

    The largely publicly funded $40 million pilot geosequestration plant near Nirranda in the Otway Basin was opened two weeks ago to assess the risk of leaks and the potential of the gas to corrode the porous rock that will house it. Federal Energy Minister Martin Ferguson said at the opening: "We are a fossil-fuel dependent economy and our major export is coal. In my opinion, we will see at some point in the future new coal-based power stations in Australia. There is no alternative."

    The pilot plant will operate for two years. Melbourne University scientist and member of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, David Karoly, said it would be a 100 years before it was clear that geosequestration was effective.

    In a report for the Co-operative Research Centre for Coal in Sustainable Development, five CSIRO energy technology researchers in 2005 predicted that the cost of electricity from concentrated solar thermal plants would be competitive with coal-fired generation in five to seven years. The report was suppressed by the Howard government while hundreds of millions of dollars were allocated to "clean coal" research and solar thermal initiatives were driven overseas.

    Compared with the prospects for base-load solar power, coal-fired power with geosequestration is too expensive and too late to be a solution to carbon dioxide emissions.
    https://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/e ... 82995.html

    Tillage and soil carbon are negatively related. The greater the tillage, the less soil carbon. No-till systems build soil organic matter, which is about 58 percent carbon.

    but any system that reduces tillage substantially can increase soil carbon.
    https://www.montana.edu/wwwpb/pubs/mt200404.html
     
  11. Michaelangelica

    Michaelangelica Junior Member

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    Re: Rudd's 2020 ideas summit - April

    Howard already gave 60 million to the biggest (?) oil company in the world-Chevron-Mobile to "sequester" CO2 buy pumping it back down the holes it is drilling in the Gogon Gas Fields (AKA National Park?) in WA.
    The CO2 apparently comes up with the gas.

    A much better sequestration strategy is widespread adoption Terra preta gardening/farming methods (which includes no tilling to preserve SOM -as you suggest).
    The charcoal used should preferably come from pyrolysis of waste and the energy and water therefore harvested either as electricity or bio-oil.

    This is mainly happening in the USA who not only have mandated large bio-fuel content of fuel but also give very high an inappropriate subsides to agi-business for corn production.
    Until Permaculture becomes universal; produce will have to be transported to market. That will demand some kind of bio-fuel until we can invent a better way (hydrogen).
    At the moment truckles are refusing to carry some low value agricultural crops to market ( ie late season mangos from Townsville to Sydney.) A one way intercity trip in Australia can now cost c $1500.00 in fuel. (Brisbane-Sydney)
    So what do you think is putting up food prices?
    Could it be the 40-50% tax the government has on fuel?
    A tax that goes up every time the Singapore price increases?


    I can't even get my local council to stop spraying Table drains and "footpaths" with Roundup. I am not even sure they are spraying with the "frog friendly" (?) Roundup Bioactive (?)

    How about some education for adults and children?
    Teaching kids how to garden. Why is this not a compulsory subject in schools?
    Why aren't schools brimming over with interesting and kid-friendly plants?

    How come ecology is not taught, so we can learn our place in the biosphere. That everthing we do has an effect on the environment.

    There are so many things wrong and so little time.

    It is a pity the conference was only our "brightest minds" that's not how Churchill won WW2.
    We need some cunning, clever, iconoclastic,creative,funny, mad, adventurous,rude, autistic,asperger's and dumb but passionate ones too.
    Was Dick Smith invited?
     

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