Mea culpa
You were right and I was wrong.
Not all of you. But people like Joe Cambria, Kirk Fletcher, Sinclair Davidson, Jim Fryar, Tim Andrews and Michael Sutcliffe were right all along. You warned me about the ALP. You said the days of Hawke/Keating/Walsh were over. I didn’t listen. Mea culpa, mea culpa.
Before the last 2007 election I suggested that Rudd would be a dull but safe Prime Minister who wouldn’t do much, and so would be fairly harmless. And there were people like Tanner and Emerson in the background to keep the party sane. These weren’t particularly high expectations… but they have turned out to be a massive over-estimate of the quality of the Rudd government. He has been a huge disappointment.
Fisking the Guardian on climate change
When the plogosphere (political blogosphere) was first kicking off in Australia (nearly 10 years ago) one common method of expression was the “fisking” where you include somebody else’s article and intersperse it with your own response. That seems to have gone out of fashion… but being the retro sort of guy I am I thought I’d bring back the fisk in response to the recent “common editorial” coordinated by the Guardian and published in 56 newspapers in 45 countries.
Saving the world on a shoestring budget
Worried about your carbon footprint? Want to save the planet on a shoestring budget? What to do?
You could vote for the ETS at the next election. Apparently it will reduce your emissions by 5%. Or if you have an average size Australian carbon footprint apparently you could fork out A$6.15 per annum and buy the equivalent 5% of offsets from PopOffsets. Or if you seriously want to save the planet from man made CO2 then elliminate 100% of your footprint for just A$123 per annum.
How do they do it? This is what their website says:-
PopOffsets is unique – the first project in the world that, simply and transparently, enables individuals and organizations to offset their carbon footprint by funding the unmet need for family planning and the removal of the many barriers to women who want smaller families.
Our project recognizes the intrinsic links between increasing CO2 emissions, climate change and the world’s ever-growing population.
Research is indicating that providing a currently unmet need for family planning is the lowest cost way of reducing CO2 emissions and climate change – possibly less than one third of the cost of other technological fixes – without any environmental downsides.
Irrespective of AGW and carbon emissions this is a charity that I could readily support. Donating contraceptives to poor women in poor nations seems like a genereous thing to do whichever way you dice it.
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