State Budget – Conservation Council SA nails the issue…

couldn’t be said better than this below… (from here)

The Conservation Council SA is once again disappointed to see the complete disregard for the environment in the 2011/12 State Budget.

In the Treasurer’s budget speech there was not a single mention of climate change, not a word about the environment, no reference to sustainability. As Australia’s climate policy chases its own tail and our emissions continue to grow, the legacy of this inaction will manifest in our ecosystems and our natural resources.

These systems are not invincible, they operate within fixed biological parameters. As the climate changes, we will see threats to many of the natural systems and services that underpin our state’s economy. Yet the budget that articulates our priorities for action conveys absolutely no sense of this. We’ve got great targets like Lose No Species, but how can we possibly expect to achieve these goals while environmental spending continues to decline?

Spending on the environment has been on a downward trajectory for the last four years, now accounting for only around 2.5% of our state’s total expenditure. Similarly, staffing in the environment and water portfolios continues to drop, with over 350 FTEs lost in the last three years.

This is a woeful undervaluing of our natural heritage, which provides the ecosystem products and services our primary industries and lifestyles depend on.

Weekly Roundup #1: June 4 to 11, 2011

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Weekly Update #1

Events in Adelaide
On Sun June 5 2000 people attended the Say Yes rally in Victoria Square/Tarndanyangga. See ACN’s analysis here.
On Weds June 8 Tim Flannery and 4 other Climate Commissioners took part in an extended Q and A in Elizabeth. See transcript of ACN’s interview with Tim Flannery here.

National Climate News
June 4 Australia National University reports that, following death threats to its climate scientists, it has beefed up security. Sigh.
June 7 Treasurer Wayne Swan released Treasury figures on the impact of a carbon tax on the switch to gas (which isn’t nearly as “low carbon” as it needs to be)
June 9 Productivity Commission report on other countries’ mitigation strategies and policies released.

Australia is to be blessed with a return visit in July by denialist posterchild Chris Monckton (famously brutally taken down by Prof John Abraham). Sadly, he’s only doing NSW and Queensland.

International Climate Politics and other (un)natural disasters
Bonn – the UNFCCC zombie staggers on. You could say “bite me” to it and it would be like being savaged by a dead sheep.
In “Pope Still Catholic” news, Reuters reports

“BONN, Germany (Reuters) – UN talks have run out of time to meet a December 2012 deadline to put in place a binding successor to the Kyoto Protocol on curbing greenhouse gas emissions, the U.N.’s top climate official said on Monday.

“To decide new targets with equal legal force to Kyoto, countries would have to ratify them in national parliaments, said Christiana Figueres, head of the U.N.’s climate secretariat.”

3 June BBC An international research group called “The Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security” (CCAFS) predicts large parts of South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa will be worst affected.

8 June via Climate Spectator LONDON (Reuters) – China’s carbon dioxide emissions rose 10.4 percent in 2010 compared to the previous year as it surpassed the United States as the world’s biggest energy consumer, data released by BP on Wednesday showed.
China’s emissions from energy use totaled 8.33 billion tonnes last year, while global carbon dioxide emissions grew 5.8 percent year-on-year to 33.16 billion tonnes, energy major BP’s annual Statistical Review of World Energy showed.

Other reading and watching encountered
June 4 Richard Glover of the Sydney Morning Herald wonders how to make sure that today’s denialists are identifiable twenty years from now, when they’ll be denying today’s denialism, if you see what he means. Will doubtless be denounced by denialists as a Nazi/thought police stooge etc etc. (Hat-tip to Brave New Climate’s twitter feed)
Really good piece on the media/spin cycles and general frantic-ness at the failed estate blog
June 6, Michael Grubb (a senior UK climate policy wonk) asks “Has the nation lost its confidence when it comes to climate policy?”
June 7 Indaily (Adelaide site) reports on research into quietening wind turbines.

Barbie ain’t green… (h/t Kym)