Bureau of Statistics advised in the year to 31st July 1998, cars were driven 173 billion kilometres on Australian roads (14,900 km or 4,325,000 times around earth for each registered vehicle). 80 per cent of cars are passenger types and account for three-quarters of distance travelled. Freight vehicles travelled 36 billion kilometres.

Growth in GHG emissions from road transport is projected to be seven times higher than all other types of transport between 2010 and 2020. Passenger vehicles’ contribution to GHG transport emissions is 60%, commercial vehicles 38% and other 2%.

Industry Reporting to the National Pollutant Inventory reveals that motor vehicle emissions of carbon monoxide is the second highest in the nation with an estimated 2 billion kilograms, metal ore mining 4th highest, electricity generation 7th highest and coal mining, 12th highest.

Electricity generation is the highest emitter of NOx (5 hundred million kgs), motor vehicles, the 2nd highest (340 million), and metal ore mining the 3rd highest.

Motor vehicles emit the 2nd highest emissions of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and metal ore mining is 4th.

Metal ore mining is the highest emitter of particulate matter (PM10) in the nation and electricity generation, the sixth highest.

Motor vehicles are the second highest emitter of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) second only to biogenics.

Carbon based chemicals burn to CO2. CO elevates methane and tropospheric ozone prior to oxidizing to CO2 etc etc.

Despite my obvious differences with the Greens on their evaluation of the potential contribution of renewables, of those parties likely to be represented in the next parliament, I regard them as the only one whose conduct suggests an insistent desire for public policy to be based in conceptions of the public interest I’d share.

Well put, Fran.

Really, a 25% reduction by 2020 ought to be a dealbreaker; so should the principle of no compensation/all permits to be auctioned; transport, forestry and agriculture should be in straight away; indicative price of CO2 of at least $AUS85; maximum of 15% emissions offsets from REDD credits offshore and only with an approved auditing model

The Greens have a choice: Set out good policies that, while not the party’s preferred position might form the basis of negotiation with the ALP, or basically cave to whatever the ALP wants.

Option 1 means that if the ALP came to the party and they can get Xenophon on side (a 50/50 bet I’d say) then there is an outside chance of a miracle if one coalition Senator (or Fielding) fails to turn up without a pair, something that has happened before. It also means that the two parties can comfortably go to a Double Dissolution with good policies which will be put through after the election. On top of this the Coalition will be stuck with the climate change deniers lable, something which will be electoral death in future decades. In the meantime whether the ALP comes on board or not this helps shift public perceptions of the issue and what can be done. On top of this, if the ALP and Greens had a strong agreed position which went down in the Senate by one or two votes it would provide a clear boost to Copenhagen, where the Australian delegation could argue they’d have something good through next year, post DD.

Option 2 means that there are still not enough votes to pass the thing through the Senate without the Liberals, and if the Liberals come on board the Greens are unnecessary anyway, so it achieves precisely nothing, other than to undermine critiques of the policy for the future.

You can call option 1 posturing if you like, but it looks to me like its got a few things in its favour. What exactly is there in favour of Option 2? Or is Steve 1 actually advocating a third position – that if you don’t have the numbers to pass something you have a duty not to enter into the debate at all?

I really sincerely hope you are right Danny!

Mobile phones have been a fabulous growth industry over the past decade, as you say. The mobile manufacturers and service providers have made an absolute mint. One might wish a similar rosy future for the manufacturers of household green technology…

Mobiles have probably saturated their market now. After all, how many mobiles does a man need – one holster on each hip? Duelling mobiles at 20 paces? Nokia et al will get less frequent purchases from upgrades or failed old units, so future profits from mobiles will probably depend on usage rather than purchases.

Maybe those mobile salespeople can retrain for solar PV and BlueGen sales? Would they be sufficiently cool, techy subjects for switched-on Gen Y’s?

More particularly, in comparing mobiles to solar PV or BlueGen, we have a different style of product I suspect. Not being any kind of gun marketing type, I nevertheless think that the technologies are not close cousins. Mobiles are cheap accessories which give added lifestyle features over the alternative technology (landlines).

Solar PV and BlueGen (for example) are substitutes for a high carbon emissions technology. Their added features (low emissions and self-sufficiency) may not be on the cool dude “must have” agenda?

We may need that myth and guru thingo that is being discussed on the other thread (Economics of 350 ppm).

I would of course be ecstatic to be proven wrong, and find ubiquitous home generation in a decade!

RE: Christine’s bills and amendments: lest there be any confusion, from Myriad’s links, that the Greens have only come up with their own vain bills, which haven’t a hope of getting up, and dummy-spat the actually possible avenue for making an actual difference by putting up actual amendments to the govt’s actual cprs bill: the Greens actually are doing that too.
Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Bill 2009 : Amendments to be moved by Senator Milne on behalf of the Australian Greens
Taking up Elise’s (72) dubiousity that anything can go from 1% to ubiquity in just 10 years: from memory, Christine made reference in her recent Press Club speech to how she was an early adopter, (maybe even the only parliamentarian with one then), of mobile phone technology when it first started, how they were then the size of a brick, and I daresay in the hands of much less than 1% of the population. A bare decade later, there are more active mobile phones in australia than there are people.
So maybe it is possible to get to there from here.

Despite my obvious differences with the Greens on their evaluation of the potential contribution of renewables, of those parties likely to be represented in the next parliament, I regard them as the only one whose conduct suggests an insistent desire for public policy to be based in conceptions of the public interest I’d share.