More Personal Carbon Offsetting

A year ago I looked into offsetting my GHG emissions from, and detailed my experiences with First Climate.This month I wanted to repeat the process, but for a smaller volume of offsets. This made First Climate, with whom I was otherwise happy, inconvenient, as, to quote them:

the reality is that our key focus in the Australian market is at the corporate/wholesale level and as such we are unable to provide alternatives for transactions via our Frankfurt trading desk, which can only be achieved via international bank transfers.  As you highlighted this obviously presents a problem for retail buyers seeking to make purchases of less than $500 which fail to trigger the threshold for most banks.

I believe that it would be best if in these circumstances we refer you directly to our retail channel partner The Carbon Reduction Institute (http://www.noco2.com.au), who is more than capable and willing to assist in this regard.  CRI are recognised as one of the best carbon offset retailer in the Australian market.

I called the CRI, registered my intent to purchase six tonnes of offsets, and waited for a call-back. After a week, I chatted with a bloke I play football with who happens to work at the CRI, and a few days later he took over my query.

The easiest way to purchase offsets from The Carbon Reduction Institute is via their online calculator: https://secure.noco2.com.au/?Calculator

Though the CRI essentially just deal with First Climate, they won’t sell Gold Standard Verified Emission Reductions under volumes of ~100t. However, the will sell Verified Carbon Standard offsets. The differences – and more about the CRI’s offsets – are explained in this guide [PDF]; also useful is Carbon Offset Watch’s independent rankings of offset providers.

I wasn’t as impressed with the CRI as I was with First Climate. Next time I’ll probably try Climate Friendly, as they sell Gold Standard VERs.

Martial Naming

I used to think the kids who called me “Martin the Martian” were idiots, but given Martin’s provenance from the Roman god of war, Mars, and that god’s association with the blood-red planet, I guess it was an etymologically perfectly valid association.

Not that they knew that. Jerks.

Shedding Light on Fluro Myths

In my one-man quest to improve my office’s energy efficiency, I turn the air-conditioning on warmer, set timers, and switch appliances (e.g. printers) off when no-one is using them. One day of my office-mates – from a different division, it should be noted – queried my behaviour, claiming it would take far more energy to restart/turn on appliances and lightbulbs than I was saving by turning them off for a few hours. In fact, he claimed to have read that if you turn fluorescent lightbulbs off more than once a day, you can’t leave them off long enough in those 24 hours to save more energy than you’ll spend turning them on again.

Poppycock.

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The Fundamental Question on Asylum Seekers

Australia’s dog of a policy on asylum seekers – at least, those arriving by boat – appears set to be a continued topic of political discussion this year, so I’d like to echo the sentiments of Guy Rundle as expressed just before Christmas:

The Australian asylum seeker discussion is wrongly framed. As signatories to the Refugee Convention, we have a categorical moral imperative to allow any potential refugees that reach our shores to claim asylum; this is their right.

However, the policy debate revolves around whether we can

“wholly negate someone’s rights (that we have explicitly promised them), in a situation where their life and freedom will be wholly annihilated indefinitely, all as a strategy for dissuading unknown future persons from making a possibly perilous journey.

By that definition we are using the ‘deterrent’ — the people locked up for years on Manus, Nauru, in Malaysia, or god knows where — as a means to a utilitarian end. It is a clear use of human beings in their totality, as means to other ends, and cannot in any sense ground a moral policy.

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Pulling Carbon Offset Figures Out of the Air

Measuring just the running costs isn’t the best way of accounting for the environmental effects of air travel. Taken in combination with the vast difference between the apparent abatement costs for our airlines and the cost of carbon internationally, I’m highly sceptical of the efficacy of the carbon offsets our airlines offer.

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Australian Carbon Price Legislation Passed

The Senate has just passed the primary piece of legislation for the carbon pricing mechanism.

Well done, Australia :-)

IETA GHG Market Report 2011

The 2011 report on the state of greenhouse gas markets by the International Emissions Trading Association begins with a chapter on Australia, of which I am the lead author.

The report is available online.

Still Not Famous

Today, on Twitter:

GemmaBajgar1409: Oi, follow me ? :) I’m aussie to. :L hehehe. I’ll follow back.

Me: Yeah, that’s not how this works. Be interesting, then I’ll follow you.

GB: lame.

Me: *shrug* it works for me. How is propositioning random people going?

GB: no idea what that word means. :L how’d you get so many follower’s. You’re not even famous. :L

I’m still wiping the tears off my keyboard.

Adelaide Conversations

I was in Adelaide for a dance event, and perhaps it’s the proximity to Hindley St – which is replete with strip clubs, massage parlours, and pokies venus – but the event courses with stories of encountering seedy types at night or seeing drunk girls urinating in the gutter. This year’s highlight story was the “Adelaide in a nutshell” sighting of a girl in a tight dress vomiting in the driveway of a church in the early evening.

My own experiences with the locals were less putrid, but still a little disturbing. On Sunday afternoon I sat outside the Adelaide College of the Arts on a bench with other dancers and munched a muesli bar. A greasy-haired young man with stained Fila tracksuit pants, beaten-up runners, and fading pimples came and sat next to me. He was clearly not a dancer; rather, he was the type of fellow retail staff keep their eye on if they spot him entering the premises, just in case.

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Details of the Clean Energy Future Package

The Clean Energy Future legislation is lengthy and boring, but it’s important: these 18 bills (and a few more to come in the first half of next year) lay the framework for what will be the primary driver of Australia’s attempt to mitigate dangerous anthropogenic climate change – assuming they pass, of course. This post is a summary of some of the CEF’s nitty-gritty details.

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