To answer original point: The trees/carbon offsets, in Australia largely come from the Federal Govt’s ban on land clearing native vegetation.

In fact to meet Kyoto all we had to do was stop land clearing in QLD. So our farmers pay for it with lost productivity and land degradation cos they cant establish a proper secessional phase in land that has, through past misuse, gone to woody weeds (acacias etc) and is not subject to a sensible fire regime (its mostly illegal / socially unacceptable to burn off nowadays too) that would otherwise control their growth and stimulate the grassland ecosystems that are the best for depleted Aussie soils.

Carbon offsets are also generated through renewable energy production or changes to current methods that reduce measurable carbon emissions either in Australia or overseas through Kyoto’s “joint initiatives” scheme.

Forestry is interesting. We “sequester” carbon in our trees but largely they are chipped and sent overseas where the carbon is emitted by another country and goes on their carbon account, thus we are offsetting carbon with creative accounting.

Its damm complicated.

With reference to your tree:

What do you do with it once its cut down?

Use it as fire wood? No good carbon goes back into atmosphere

Make furniture / house? Better by a long way as the carbon is locked up and being put to other uses but it all goes back out eventually.

Fundamentally I think its about a massive social change that shifts the mode of production from a straight pipe from factory to landfill to what’s known as industrial ecology

This is where the outputs of one process feed the input of another process, like trees growing over a pond that drop leaves that feed insects that feed fish that die and feed bacteria who feed different insects who pollinate trees who drop leaves that feed insects who feed fish.

You know the circle of life…

Simba one day this will all be yours!

Till then I still want an iPad and I love steak!!!

I’m not a doomsayer, this planet will be just fine once we poison ourselves to death and life will continue until the next organism rises to prominence and it all happens again.

Yeah Geothermal? its being looked into in wa.
Might get more power from Unfamilias farts than any other source though!

what about them "hot rocks"?

ocean hydro power is not a good option currently, rising sea levels will bury it all.

river hydro is not vable with dwindiling rainfalls into current catchment/river systems.

methane plants on sealed tips and natural sources =good

apart from that not too many other options left

Nuclear is so wrong in so many ways let alone maintanance and decomissioning.
You have to look at what is happening in northen Japan to understand what
happens to the worlds nuclear waste.
We have enough trouble shooting a few people into orbit let alone one of the
heaviest materials on earth for density.
Umm let me see didnt a couple of suttles go down in the past thanks to archaic
liquid rocket technology which wont be phased out anytime in the next 200 years.

The spent nuclear rods are scary and completely unstable if not cooled for 5
years using cold ocean water that is pumped and regulated then they are dry
stored in special concrete containers in the mountains or dry areas.
http://library.thinkquest.org/17940/t ... uclear_waste_storage.html
In japan instead of using boric acid they are flushed with ocean water which is then
released back into the ocean.
Spent nuclear rods contain 99 per cent of the total radiation and will go critical
if not cooled properly.

Its corporations brainwashing poor souls into the technology is good when in fact
its the most expensive technology of all.
Even Toshiba is now working on micro-plants for small towns in Alaska and sponsoring
the small town with free electricity.
If you knew how Toshiba does business in these sensitive areas in order to have test
beds youd never consider buying their products down to their laptops and HDD.
There are hundreds of better energy producing technologies that are sustainable could
employ thousands and can be all done here in Australia.
I have a tennis buddy that works for Pacific Hydro as an engineer and its just the
government stopping any forward movement thanks to corporations and major bank interests.
If we dont pay for electricity and utility bills and have all this cash to spend for what we really want do you think the government and the big corps would be happy?
All of a sudden you will get people tired of consumption and looking to evolve and spend
less time working and more time with friends and outdoor or other activities.
The Big wigs cant let that happen otherwise we are not productive human bovine anymore.

Imagine us free to work on our datsuns and spend money developing datsun parts for our community it just wont be right for big wigs if they cannot control our spending.

Nuclear power, yes I believe it is a good short/mid/long term fix.
Many people focus on the problems of the past when it comes to Nuclear power but technology has come a long way since then. As for radioactive waste, shoot it into space towards the sun.

well i eat a hell of a lot less red meat or fish than when i was groing up for those reasons D.

Yes if we just had more sustainable solar and wind fams(currently not sustainable because of the damge on procducing these products for infrastructure and solar panels anre not recycleble once they are damaged or end their supposed 10to 15year life cycle).

this is where nuclear power in the middle of our bast nation would be a good argument once all the mining leaves great big dirty holes of waste lands (not all mining just some of it). it would be a good medium term solution to rid the nation of coal dependant power til solar and windfarms can become more sustainable in the future.

Well said 1000coupe & Ang94541.

Quote:
Environmental plus 99 other things contribute to "it's too expensive to do business in California."
Alot of manufacturing jobs have left the state and the country.
Including mine on April 1st.

some really good arguments there, i think most people want to take the aus govt to just take the lead and do more, not wait for every other country to agree or nothing will ever happen, arnold the governator has shown in california that doing a lot more environmentallty hasnt made that state poor compared with the rest, and similarly some european countries, have done more without going broke.

then a lot of sheeple believe the govt/ politicians must know what they are doing, we are in good hands, without realizing they are all thinking of the next election not the next generation and really can not stand up to big business.

along with that whole beef with beef thing, i heard that 2/3 of the total fishing done is for cat food, for useless and destructive unsocial and useless pets. wtf?

i reckon nothing will change until it has to change however that happens, but on the original point yes i reckon carbon trading is bullshit and wont achieve jackshit even if they ever organize it, when every conference that comes up and then gets forgotten like copenhagen the last, where they could not agree on organizing a shag in a brothel if every one of them had to just chip in a dollar.