It’s already cheaper to put solar on your roof in Australia than pay for electricity from the grid.
(via Solar PV – it’s cheaper than you think - reneweconomy.com.au : Renew Economy)
Source: reneweconomy.com.au
Good news.
(via Global grid parity for solar PV by 2015: DuPont : Renew Economy)
Source: reneweconomy.com.au
New research finds the mining boom is partly responsible for a decrease in international visitors, reinforcing concerns about impacts on Queensland’s tourism industry.
The full extent of the mining industry’s persuasive power over the media was revealed in an exchange between the Greens’ Senator Larissa Waters and Dr David Gruen, executive director of the Macroeconomic Group at Treasury. After years of hearing how the mining industry creates three indirect jobs for every person directly employed the Senator asked Dr Gruen whether this was indeed the case. His answer was as simple as it is heretical. According to Dr Gruen, ”In a well-functioning economy like ours, with unemployment close to its lowest sustainable rate, it is not the case that individual industries are creating jobs, they are simply re-distributing them … there really isn’t a multiplier.
How were the big banks affected by the global financial crisis? (Australia)
But a benign future is unlikely to transpire if we all continue living in a dream world where growth knows no bounds, where debt can be repaid with more debt, and where natural resources are assumed to be endless.
Alarm bells are ringing. Wake up to the post-growth economy.
so many thinkers, politicians, academics have all signed up to a deadening pragmatic consensus and our thinking has been boxed into a dead end of technocratic managerialism.
After reading the projections for the likely impact of the carbon price between now and 2050, I began to wonder if Dr Seuss actually might work at Treasury. While there aren’t any ten-footed lions, Elephant-Cats or Tufted Mazurkas, there are certainly plenty of heroic assumptions, interspersed with ludicrous notions.
IT’S no secret that mining is big business. Australian Bureau of Statistics figures released last week listed the mining sector as having the biggest profit margin of any Australian industry at 33.4 per cent. In the financial year ending 2010, mining companies earned $1.06 million a worker again, higher than any other industry.
Fuelled by the industrial revolutions in India and China, Australia’s boom is bound to continue to grow for at least the next three decades. Eventually it will end. If we are smart, we will have something substantial to show for it.
A nation-building policy that develops the jobs and industries of tomorrow with the proceeds of our industries today seems like a good way to secure future prosperity.
In a sneaky and not-so-subtle attempt by the mining companies to weasel their way out of contributing their fair share to the community via the minerals resource rent and carbon taxes, the industry is pouring huge investment into developing a narrative about how much mining companies give to Australia. The latest multimillion-dollar tax avoidance campaign by the big mining companies tells us that mining companies are engaged with their communities, including developing infrastructure in regional communities responsible for creating this immense wealth. If this were the real story of mining, the streets of mining towns would be paved with gold. They are not.
Instead we have mines operating across Australia supported by regional communities without adequate schools, roads or hospitals, and lacking other vital social infrastructure. Local workers have been replaced with fly-in, fly-out workers, separated from their families, which has led to an increase in drug and alcohol abuse, violence, rape and depression. The real story of mining towns is that mining companies long ago abandoned their policy of investing in the very towns that create their vast profits.
Use mining boom to support future
by Tony Maher, President of the Construction, Forestry, Mining & Energy Union
Source: theaustralian.com.au
Americans have been watching protests against oppressive regimes that concentrate massive wealth in the hands of an elite few. Yet in our own democracy, 1 percent of the people take nearly a quarter of the nation’s income—an inequality even the wealthy will come to regret.
Source: vanityfair.com
The owners and managers of the trillions of dollars invested to fund our retirements have been able to pretty much ignore climate change up to now.
They have largely dismissed it as a “known unknown”, as our columnist Phil Preston described it, to be addressed at a point in the future. Only a few have finessed a small portion of their portfolios to take advantage of emerging opportunities.
However, a landmark report completed by asset consultants Mercer and 14 global super funds with $2 trillion invested between them, suggests that the current approach to managing risk is completely inadequate given the likely impacts of climate change and the technology and policy response.
The report suggests that traditional methods of managing risk – such as bonds and defensive equities – will be insufficient, and may even cause returns to decline. And it suggests that asset owners will need to migrate up to 40 per cent of their portfolio towards “climate sensitive investments” to capture the upside. These include property, infrastructure, private equity, timberland, agriculture land, carbon, broad and sector focused sustainable equities and unlisted assets in the energy efficiency and renewable sectors.
