Welcome back to ANUZES! We hope you’re excited about the potential of our society this year.

We’d love to see you at our first fortnightly meeting:

4pm Monday 3rd of March (TOMORROW)
ANU Students' Association Conference Room

Come and meet one another, think about what we can do and hear about things happening. There’ll even be food!

RENEWABLES: OUR MOST VIABLE OPTION

Prof. Andrew Blakers
Director Centre for Sustainable Energy Systems
Department of Engineering

Tuesday 2nd October
1 – 2pm
Manning Clark T6

Can renewable energy replace fossil fuels in Australia? Can Australia play an important part in the growing renewable energy industry? The worldwide renewables industry is worth over $100 billion per year and is doubling in size every 20 months. Australia has real innovative strength, especially in photovoltaics, and could play a big part, with environmental, employment and other economic benefits to follow. However policy settings in other countries are far more attractive.

DOWNLOAD THE PRESENTATION HERE: http://www.anuzeroemissions.org/files/CanadellPresentation.ppt

It has lots of useful information and figures.

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE GLOBAL CARBON PROJECT - Pep Canadell
CHEMISTRY T1 (Arthur Hambly) – Bld. 34 (North side of University Av)
NEXT TUESDAY 7 August 2007
1PM - 2PM
http://www.anuzeroemissions.org

Canberra and its big fat footprint

http://canberra.yourguide.com.au/detail.asp?class=your+say&subclass=gene...

CANBERRANS have long been at or near the top of national socio-economic performance indicators like educational attainment, life expectancy, internet access, household income levels and health. We pride ourselves on the quality of our air and water, and the beauty of our surrounds. But there is little cause for self-congratulation in the news that Canberra's per capita greenhouse pollution level (22.9 tonnes) is 18 per cent higher than the national annual average of 18.9 tonnes, or that the suburbs of Kingston, Barton, Reid and Campbell are the biggest greenhouse polluters in Australia.

The Reith lecture series for 2007 touches on climate change and other related problems:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2007/

Global warming. Skeptics and alamists can’t agree. So here is a carbon tax system for them both. Ross McKitrick explains... more»

Contributed by Peter Wood:
Howard makes a big error on climate change

John Howard stated yesterday that

And as my report - that's the report of the experts, not my report - but the report to me on Friday said that to cut emissions by 20 per cent by 2020 you'd have to replace every coal-fired power station with a nuclear power station by 2020 and you'd have to take all vehicles off the roads.

( see http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2007/s1941652.htm )

It turns out that the projections of the Australian Greenhouse Office (AGO) actually imply that replacing every coal-fired power station with a nuclear power station by 2020 and taking all vehicles off the roads would reduce emissions by 28%.

All highly recommended:

John Doerr: Seeking salvation and profit in greentech

Al Gore: 15 ways to avert a climate crisis

William McDonough on cradle to cradle design

What is Zero Emissions and Below?

There is too much greenhouse gas in the air NOW! There is absolutely no advantage in having any more in the air, NOW! Our private targets should be to have no future emissions in to the atmosphere. That's what we really need.
Philip Sutton, Greenleap Strategic Institute

The phrase “Zero Emissions and Below” describes the goal of reducing human greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to zero in order to reduce our emissions below the level of natural sequestration of GHG.

When this point is reached, natural systems will be sequestering more carbon than what is being released into the atmosphere – therefore levels of atmospheric GHG will reduce.