Blog - Dan Cass and Company

Greens - Labor deal

2010-09-01T09:59:42Z

This press release was released by Greens Leader Senator Bob Brown this morning.

Australian Greens, Labor commit to agreement for stable Government

The Australian Greens and the Labor Party have signed an agreement to ensure stability for Labor in Government. The Greens will ensure supply and oppose any motion of no confidence in the Government from other parties or MPs.

Labor will work with the Greens to deliver improved transparency and integrity to Parliament and pursue policies that promote the national interest and address climate change.

As part of the agreement there will be regular meetings between the Prime Minister and Australian Greens Leader Bob Brown and newly-elected Lower House MP Adam Bandt.

“There will be a Climate Change Committee resourced as a Cabinet Committee, an investment in dental health care in the next budget and completion of a $20 million study into High Speed Rail by July 2011,” said Australian Greens Leader Bob Brown.

“The agreement includes a wide range of measures. These include:

· A Climate Change Committee

· A full parliamentary debate on Afghanistan

· A commitment to work with the Greens on dental health care investment

· Completion of a $20 million High Speed Rail study by July 2011

· Legislating for truth in political advertising

· A Leaders’ Debate Commission

· Establishing a Parliamentary Integrity Commissioner

· Establishing a Parliamentary Budget Office

· Restrictions on political donations

· A move toward full three year governments

· Specially allocated time for debate and voting on private members bills and a fixed and fair allocation of questions for Independent and minor party members in Question Time

· Referenda for constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians and Local Government

· A commitment for reform to provide above the line voting in the Senate

· Better processes for the release of documents in the public interest in both Houses of Parliament

· Access to relevant departments, including Treasury and Finance & Deregulation for Greens election policies.

Zero vision for a nothing election

2010-08-13T14:46:00Z

This is the worst Australian election in living memory, according to most observers. Both the Labor Government and the Liberal-National Opposition are saying almost nothing of any value.

The good news is that the informal parts of Australian democracy are not dead. Civil society is free and people can show leadership in their thinking and organizing. My clients are shifting the debate, not standing around complaining in this election.

Last night Beyond Zero Emissions had the Sydney launch of their roadmap for giving Australia 100% renewable energy by 2020. I wish I could have been there.

Several hundred people attended. It was chaired by the ABC’s Quentin Dempster and included a panel of other heavy-hitters:

Hon. Bob Carr – Former NSW Premier
Hon. Malcolm Turnbull – Federal MP for Wentworth
Senator Scott Ludlam – Federal Senator WA
Allan Jones MBE – Chief Development Officer, Energy & Climate Change, City of Sydney

Read the great story by Ben Cubby from the Sydney Morning Herald today.

Watch today’s long story on ABC24’s Midday Report with BZE Director Matt Wright.

HotHouse : cultural power and climate globalism

2010-07-27T15:34:41Z

I am in Sydney this week for work and it is lovely to be back.

The HotHouse Symposium on climate and culture at the Sydney Opera House this week is excellent. I have been a distracted by some calls with clients and a long breakfast with a journalist this morning but here are some initial impressions.

Climate globalism is the situation we all face now, in every part of our already globalised world. It is the realisation of climatic interdependence, where we need every nation to move to renewable energy and conservation if we are to save the global climatic commons.

It is also a nascent realisation of cultural interdependence, in which we use the innovation and learnings made elsewhere as resources for our own work.

Cultural campaigning is the most interesting development in climate politics. The formal (institutional, governmental) politics of climate change is broken, for now. In the absence of a global scheme to slash emissions, the most power to shift is coming through cultural activities that change how we make, do, live and think.

Some of the speakers:

Jill Bennett, Director of the National Institute for Experimental Arts, set the scene for us. She explained that the HotHouse project will be ranging across the established contemporary arts, experimental edges of artistic practice, creative industries such as architecture and design and philosophy.

Tony Fry, Director of Team D/E/S and professor at Griffith University, opened up a philosophical space to think about climate change and culture. He made some complex points about the history and meaning of climate change. He takes the position that global environmental problems including climate change are symptoms of deeper causes inside our beliefs and shared culture, including our being.

Fry asks us to become cultural producers, rather than consumers, to make provocations which speak the truth of things. He says climate culture should destabilize perception of normality and break new cultural ground.

Natalie Jeremijenko is an artist in NYC, who addressed us via videophone. Her practice is brilliant and amusing. She says that global-scale problems are inherently insoluble and even invisible to us. She turns ecology into a health issue, running Clinics that measure environmental health and intervene in the environment in tangible, localised ways.

Jeremijenko has ‘Impatients’ come to her clinics, to speak about the health of their communities. These people are then able to participate in art works that are activist moments that research and verify environmental degradation. In one work this might involve sensors in a river that measure chemistry and fish movement, transmitting this information by flashing lights on buoys or by SMS to people who see the work. In another work she had robot dogs light up and cry out for attention, in response to air pollution.

Hou Hanru is a curator and wit. He wants curators to resist the Culture of the Spectacle in which Cities have become brands, which use art, sport, architecture and other mass cultural efforts. He did not get anywhere near the end of his talk, where he would have explained his own work, but he did show other works which were provocative.

One example of a work that ‘disrupts’ for Hanru is Thomas Hirschhorn’s Musee Precaire Albinet. Young people built a little ‘museum’ made out of cardboard and wood inside another building. They then installed some art works by major modernists including Beuys and Duchamp.

I will report more later today or tomorrow, distractions notwithstanding.

Response to Julia Gillard Climate policy announcement, or why baseload renewable energy is the keystone in the bridge to a safe climate

2010-07-23T11:01:15Z

This was also published by the ABC on the Drum today.

Everyone is in agreement already that Labor’s climate policy announcement this morning was remarkably weak. The Citizens Assembly idea is ‘wishy washy’, as one of the vox pops on AM put it.

However, to be honest, PM Julia Gillard is right that there was no community consensus for the ETS. There is a consensus on climate change and taking immediate action to stop it, but not on the idea that it can be solved by a complex, abstract financial mechanism which involves paying billions of dollars to big polluters.

There was begrudging acceptance in the community that the ETS might work. People thought that if the Government, experts and environmentalists said it was good, then it must be. But there was no more than a few percent of people who had even a rudimentary understanding of carbon trading and a carbon cap on big polluters.

So what can be done?

I think that what the public needs and what the Government needs are the same – a big, renewable energy, baseload power station for Australia to be proud of.

It is clear from focus groups done in recent months that the picture of a solar plant tells a thousand words and generates deeply positive responses. Conversely, pictures of a coal station such as Hazelwood generate unanimously negative responses.

By way of comparison, what does a ‘carbon price’ conjure up in the public imagination? We run the country on coal. How can we replace that with a ‘carbon price’?

We also hear from electoral campaigners in marginals that they have recorded unprompted, positive awareness of Abbott’s ‘direct action’ climate approach. People want to see the concrete poured and the solar towers built, not more talk and abstract measures.

The Government needs to step out of the fog of elitist, complex policy mechanisms and just build some big baseload solar stations. They will look impressive on the evening news. They will prove that renewable energy can run the economy.

Nothing less than that can ever lead to a useful consensus at large, nor inspire inner-city voters who are flocking to the Greens.

Only weeks ago, President Obama announced multi-billion dollar loan funding for solar thermal plants. Labor can use this to justify an even relatively modest spending initiative to fast-track a few plants, with electricity storage on site. Once we have built even a few of these facilities, it will start to become economically efficient to scale up very fast and start shutting down coal plants.

Barack Obama and the Labor Government would of course face criticism from the climate complainers on the far right and in the coal industry. One simple retort that will work on the evening news is that the advice to develop solar thermal baseload comes with the authority of US Energy Secretary, Nobel laureate Steven Chu.

If the Government plugs baseload renewable energy into the grid, it would earn green, business and academic endorsement, because baseload is the obstacle to a clean energy transition, here and in every country of the world.

The big policy announcement today is that Labor will build new coal power stations. I cannot think of a more decisive slap in the face for the key environment groups and Climate Minister Penny Wong and a big win to Opposition Leader Tony Abbott, Labor’s Resources Minister Martin Ferguson and the coal industry. This might just spark a protest movement on the scale that Australia has not seen since the Franklin Dam days and all end in delay, economic risk and lost opportunities.

If PM Gillard is serious about using her Citizens Assembly, then it has to be asked the right questions. A debate about climate science will never end. A debate about how to build renewable energy baseload power would be useful.

It is not clear yet what the business incentives part of the announcement really means at this stage, but it could be useful for driving energy efficiency.

PM Gillard announced $1billion over 10 years for a smart grid, that can deliver renewable energy. This is good but will have to be increased many times over, because high voltage power lines are expensive and the distances between the cities and our best solar and wind regions are vast.

Picture the climate challenge like building a bridge. We are on the shore of the past, where fossil fuels powered the world. The other shore is our safe climate future. To get there from here we have to build a bridge.

The keystone of that bridge is renewable, baseload electricity. All the other stones have to be put in place eventually, but without the keystone, the bridge cannot stand.

My political intuition tells me that this keystone is also the most important factor missing in the public enthusiasm for climate action. Lets win over the public and put the keystone in place, without delay. Until we start to do this, everything else is commentary.

Saving the world, one thought at a time

2010-07-08T22:34:06Z

I put a lot of effort into planning this business because I wanted to try something new. The objective was to find some ways to cut through with the green consulting model and reflect this in everything, right down to the visual identity.

Whether you visit this blog or brief me as a client, I hope to provide some solace in a fragmenting world. The last thing I want is to compete with advertising and social media trends.

Whether or not we succeed is impossible to judge yet, but I am having fun.

The asterisk and quote above is one of the unique design elements that Piers Greville and I came up with. Piers did all the visual identity and was brilliant and creative to work with.

My main reference for researching these quotes was Geary’s Guide to the World’s Great Aphorists, by James Geary (Bloomsbury, 2007).

When we launched in March the star quote was

“Imagination decides everything.” Blaise Pascal (1623-62)

We hope that the star quotes fulfill a few functions, across digital and printed media:

They are a reference to mood quotes and Twitter, but instead of changing several times a day, they change every few weeks or months
Each one is a quote that is useful to anyone who is ‘on the same page’ as us but may come across otherwise to denialists or others who do not matter to the business
Some quotes are contemporary and some might be ideas of mine but most will be by historical figures
The letterhead carries the star quote in a small overprinted box within the offset-printed contact pane. Here’s the artwork but obviously it is protected intellectual property, so you will ask before copying it, right?
Aphorisms are an instinctual intelligence that is witty and serious, layered and honest, deep and quick

If the visual identity works as intended, then it will convey optimism; that we can think through the climate crisis and articulate a better world, clearly, one thought at a time.

Great art day

2010-07-03T23:50:19Z

I had a great art day today. DAMP took part in SUPER MARKET at Gertrude Street gallery, curated by Kim Brockett.

My personal highlight was Kim bought one of my Yet boxes. This is my first art sale. (It was the one containing the Sirena Tuna in spring water).

From the DAMP point of view I think we should have been swapping our work, in keeping with the other art groups involved.

It was a huge success overall. The audience was diverse and it was very busy for most of the afternoon. I spent most of the time on a rug on the footpath where DAMP had our art stall. But I made some time to take part in the other works:

Smashed some of the giant cookie map of Melbourne’s CBD, by Sibling architecture etc collective
Chatted with the Hotham Street Ladies. I got a photo of them by Tina Inserra, a cup of tea and the gossip about Mel Gibson’s outburst in return for a recipe (Hot Summer Soba) and the beginning of a conversation about how to do a business plan.
As You Were Saying got three statements from me of something I would like to see happen and in return I got their painting of one: analogue Facebook in real life

SUPER MARKET was a one off but lots of people said they wanted it to happen again. It was part of an event series around Always Moving (A performance laboratory in several parts), a group exhibition curated by Jared Davis, which continues until 17 July.

My collection of desire

2010-06-20T16:44:26Z

When the City of Melbourne set up the City Library in Flinders Lane, I was asked to nominate 50 books for a Collection of Desire which was purchased by the Library.

I was happy to contribute a list because I love books and support the idea of free lending libraries. The Melbourne Library Service has Libraries in the CBD, North Melbourne, East Melbourne and Docklands as well as a home service for people who cannot commute easily.

For my Collection of Desire, I tried to select 50 books that I thought people would enjoy borrowing and which convey something of my values. The collection also has a proudly Melbourne flavour.

What would you add (or subtract) to the list?

Fiction

Jorge Louis Borges Labyrinths
Italo Calvino Invisible Cities
Peter Carey Illywhacker
Arthur C Clarke Islands in the Sky
Douglas Coupland Generation X
Simon Crump My Elvis Blackout
Louis De Bernieres Senor Vivo and The Coca Lord
Umberto Eco The Island of the Day Before
Dave Eggers A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Ben Elton Stark
Richard Flanagan Death of a River Guide
Adam Ford Man Bites Dog
Charles Frazier Cold Mountain
Rene De Goscinny Asterix at The Olympic Games
Herge Destination Moon
Melissa Lucashenko Steam Pigs
Shane Maloney The Brush Off
Mervyn Peake Gormenghast
Maurice Sendak Where the Wild Things Are
Zadie Smith The Burned Children of America
Robert Louis Stevenson The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

Non-Fiction

Douglas Strong * Dreamers and Defenders*
Ulrich Beck Risk Society
Jorge Louis Borges & Eliot Weinberger (ed) Selected Non-fictions
Michael Cathcart Manning Clark’s History of Australia
Noam Chomsky Deterring Democracy
John Clarke The Great Interviews
Groff Conklin The Omnibus of Science Fiction
Peter Dombrovskis Wild Rivers
Farallones Institute The Integral Urban House
Hamdan Fouad Greenpeace: Changing the World
David Goldblatt Social Theory & the Environment

Understanding Rudd's fall by looking back to his rise

2010-06-24T14:57:59Z

Today’s Labor leadership spill is a bit less of a shock if you remember how PM John Howard was defeated by Kevin Rudd in the first place. The Your Rights At Work campaign won the 2007 election, Rudd’s contribution was not to lose it.

I have been saying for three years that the victory was more due to the Unions than Kevin Rudd, something that some media have tried to write out of history. The Unions did the heavy work of ‘reframing’ the economy in terms of ‘working families’. Rudd just had to read from the song sheet and look like a safe technocrat, which he is.

Think back to the same-same positioning that Rudd adopted in relation to Howard. He just minimised risk and snuck into the Lodge under the radar. I acknowledge that Rudd was smart, focused and tireless, but when did he build a national political vision, like a leader should? His vanity articles in the Monthly were the exception that proved the rule.

What brought down the Coalition Government was the shifting allegiance of ‘Howard’s Battlers’. My sources in the Unions were saying in 2006 that the shift was happening and it was being caused and measured by the grassroots campaigners of Your Rights At Work. I see no reason to think they were mistaken.

During the long lead up to the election campaign proper, it was not Rudd who was on the phone every morning deciding on the tactics that mattered. The daily grind of Your Rights At Work in the elite media and at the grassroots was led by others, including of course Greg Combet at the ACTU.

In this context, it is not that surprising that the Unions chose Julia Gillard over Kevin Rudd, nor that Labor caucus has followed. Gillard has shown she knows how to be part of a leadership team within a large campaign machine. Rudd was unable to negotiate or collaborate with his own staff and Ministers, let alone industry or the Greens.

Gillard and her close union networks in Victoria and NSW know how to run a massive election campaign and unlike older generations of the Labor/Labour left, they are slick media operators. That is the winning combination which Labor needs to keep Tony Abbott on the Opposition benches.This makes Gillard our Obama in the way that Rudd could never be.

The other lesson of all this is that movements do matter. Contemporary media-mediated life seemed ready to evaporate into Tweets of nothing in the naughties. But real people and grassroots organising made a difference in Australia 2007 (and in America with Obama) and may do so again this election.

At the 2007 election it was the union movement first and the climate movement second. I think that the next election should belong to the climate and clean energy movement and that this will include many in the union movement.

That could make for interesting dynamics in both the suburban/regional marginals (Labor-Coalition) and the urban marginals (Green-Labor).

The renewable energy industry and climate movement should seize the moment in these next days and weeks. Gillard should be shown that Labor can regain some of its green sheen by making substantial election promises: a modest, simple, electorally-saleable carbon tax and industry policy for a just transition from coal to renewable energy, starting with even one power station – Hazelwood.

Media launch of Zero Carbon Australia report in Canberra

2010-06-23T15:24:58Z

This was also published by the ABC on The Drum.

Adrian Whitehead is the only environmentalist I know who has ever harboured credible ambitions to be a paratrooper. We campaigned on forests together in the early 1990s when Adrian was in the Army Reserve. He approaches defence of the nation and of the planet with a consistent moral clarity; if something is valuable and under threat, then you have a duty to protect it.

Due to weak knees and other joys of impending middle age, Adrian never did make it into 3 RAR. But he did start something heroic. Adrian co-founded Beyond Zero Emissions (BZE) with current Executive Director Matthew Wright.

Adrian’s reasoning was that since greenhouse gases pose an unacceptable threat to the planet and our civilisation, we have to plan an industrial economy that does not cause the release of greenhouse gases. This was too radical for the mainstream environment groups, so he started his own.

Fast forward to June 2010 and BZE is calling for a national debate on its zero emissions plan. More than 40 engineers, scientists, editors, designers and others have volunteered several thousand hours of time to research and generate the best emissions scenario this country has ever seen.

I decided to donate my time to help BZE communicate the plan inside the political beltway, to the wider community and specialist audiences such as think tanks, technical disciplines and industry.

Yesterday was our first big test. A dozen of BZE’s mainly volunteer team launched Zero Carbon Australia 2020 in Parliament House Canberra. As always, I was optimistic but worried.

Would we be able to take Canberra back from the mob that former Liberal advisor Guy Pearce called the ‘Greenhouse Mafia’?
How might we shatter the group think of a press gallery that have bought the myth that renewables cannot deliver reliable, ‘baseload’ electricity?
Could we induce the Prime Minister and Opposition Leader to debate going the full Monty – 100% solar, wind and biomass energy for Australia?

Here are the key episodes from our 15 hour day. You tell me what you think we achieved and what we need to do next.

7:05am – Jennifer Macey from ABC Radio Current Affairs phones me to say that she wants to file a story for AM but can not get through to BZE Director Matthew Wright or Professor Mike Sandiford, Director of the University of Melbourne Energy Institute. I give her the mobile numbers but worry that it is too late in the morning and that the Afghanistan helicopter crash will push us from the bulletin. #lose

7:20am – We read Tom Arup’s preview in the Sydney Morning Herald and it is very good. #win

9am – The Drum publishes our first salvo in a little online debate about zero emissions (or as the Bard might have said, some ado about nothing). #win

10:10am – We are still missing a carload of our team, including actor Tom Long, who is supposed to be the celebrity at the Media Conference, which starts at 11. It is taking too long to get everyone processed through security. The coal lobby never has this problem because they can draw on perhaps a hundred accredited lobbyists, who may come and go as they please. BZE has me. We meet Greenpeace CEO Dr Linda Selvey and her advisors, lining up for security passes. I am relieved that all our boffins are wearing suits for the occasion. #suits #stress

10:45am – Tom Long is in the building, with a box of the reports. I rush around the Press Gallery to remind the media about the Media Conference, hand out the reports and introduce Tom to a few key journalists: Malcolm Farr (Daily Telegraph), Heather Ewart (730 Reportland), Chris Uhlmann (ABC TV’s new 24/7 News channel), Bernard Keane (Crikey) and Tim Colebatch (the Age). Government briefings are occupying Paul Bongiorno (Network 10), John Breusch (Australian Financial Review) and I can’t find Kieran Gilbert (Sky News). #win

11:00am – Senator Milne, Professor Sandiford and Matthew Wright are in committee room 2S2, ready to start the media conference. We have news cameramen from ABC and SBS, Tom Arup, AAP and ABC Radio. The AYCC and Union Climate Connecters happen to be lobbying in Canberra today so 25 of these activists crowd into the room. Senator Xenophon and staff arrive. Senator Troeth is missing. Were we meant to confirm with her? Who has her number? We can’t find our running sheet or MC’s notes. #losers

11:05am – Senator Troeth arrives, the cameras switch on and Matthew Wright starts, without notes. The media conference goes smoothly. But who is the man sitting with the media, who nobody recognises, who is taking detailed notes and wearing a lobbyists pass? #clockwork

11:25am – I call Shane McLeod, Executive Producer of ABC Radio’s The World Today to see if there is any chance of getting the dumped AM story up for noon. He is planning to and I pass this on to the ABC reporter in the media conference. She races back to the Press Gallery with the recording. #drama

11:35am – Senators Milne, Troeth and Xenophon want a photo with Tom Long, Professor Sandiford and Matthew Wright. I pull Wright away from an interview with AAP reporter Cathy Alexander. Tears well up in her eyes and she storms off. After the 30 second photo session is over, the Senators rush off and I send Wright and the lead author of the report to run after the reporter. They brief her for 10 minutes but she persists with some key misunderstandings (which she will put in her story). Tom Long goes to talk to her, to sooth her feelings on our behalf. #soapopera

11:45am – Prime Minister Kevin Rudd walks past with Housing Minister Tanya Plibersek. One of our team wiggles past the media and staff scrum accompanying the PM and hands over our report. #win

12:00pm – Team meeting, lunch and coffee at Ozzies, the only cafe in the restricted zone at Parliament House. We assess the morning and plan the afternoon. Various other VIPs wandering the corridors are intercepted and given the report, including Treasurer Wayne Swan and Evan Thornely (CEO of Better Place). I come across Simon Sheikh, National Director of GetUp. #shmooze

12:30pm – Tom Long, Matthew Wright and BZE’s media guy Leigh Ewbank come back to the Press Gallery to hand out more reports to domestic media who did not attend the media conference and to the international wires, such as James Grubel (Reuters). Our team is amazed that all these media outlets are there in one place and accessible to anyone with a lobbyist’s pass. Leigh says that if we were being filmed racing around the labyrinth having 20 second conversations with journalists, dodging wandering advisors and equipment, it would be ‘very Westwing’. #democracy #adrenalin

12:40pm – Tom, Matthew, Leigh and I crowd around someone’s iPhone to hear ABC’s The World Today, relayed from a radio in Melbourne. Shane has run an excellent piece by Jennifer Macey, with grabs from the media conference spliced in alongside her morning interviews and intro. #venividivici

1:20pm – More coffees at Ozzies. Tom Long starts to write an opinion piece for the Herald Sun. Leigh calls Triple J. We ask the University of Melbourne to write an opinion piece with Professor Sandiford, for the Age. Mark Ogge from BZE starts on an opinion piece for the National Times. Resources Minister Martin Ferguson and his Shadow Ian Macfarlane walk past and are given the report. I am getting annoyed that AAP has still not filed a story as it should have by now. Several activists are dispatched for a quick round of lobbying before Question Time. Matthew and lead author Patrick Hearps have a long coffee chat with Dr John Daley and staff from the Grattan Institute, #coffee #contentisking

2:30pm – Tom Arup calls to say someone has taken his copy of the report. We have run out of spares. Two of the team are sent to run off more copies. We have almost done an 8 hour day. I start to hand out chocolate covered coffee beans bought specially for the occasion, at Jasper Coffee, across the road from BZE HQ on trendy Brunswick Street, Fitzroy. I realise I should have checked to see they are organic and fair trade. Senator Milne’s Tim Hollo wanders past and looks overworked, so I give him a whole pack. He perks up and rushes off to write two media releases. #overstretched #beans

3:29pm – AAP publishes Cathy Alexander’s piece. It says ‘Going Green’ would ‘cost $1200 a year’, as if this is an attributed quote. Using ‘Green’ as a proxy for climate action is partisan, to make us look bad. Senator Milne is not mentioned, to make the Greens look bad. It says that Senator Troeth launched the report herself and weaves Malcolm Turnbull into the story, to make the Liberals look bad. It misses the point about renewable energy and baseload completely, making the whole BZE approach look bad. #fail

4:30pm – We are consulting an environmental economist, to help us formulate the case against the silly $1200 figure. I feel bad because I was the one who forced BZE to reduce the $370 billion total package into a media-friendly figure. More chocolate covered coffee beans. The extra copies of the report arrive. Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner walks past looking so dejected that nobody realises he is a VIP and he misses out getting a copy of our report thrust into his hands. #firstdogonthemoon

5:30pm – Tom Long has missed his flight. A car load of our team starts driving back to Melbourne but we still take up two tables at Ozzies. Icecreams and cakes are ordered. Two comrades introduce me to John Sutton, National Secretary of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union, who almost acknowledges my presence. I goad him in a friendly way, trying to convey that even though he runs the Union who represent all the industries BZE seeks to close down, we should be civil to each other. He ignores me more emphatically. #solidarity #sugar

6:00pm – I go to meet Darcy, the youngest staff baby in Minister Plibersek’s office, whose parents, advisor Darrin Barnett and Dr Emma Lawrence, are friends of mine. Darcy is oblivious to the AAP story and doesn’t dribble on my new suit. I eat more chocolate covered coffee beans. The Minister comes into her office and I sense that refusing to hand the cute baby to the Minister for the Status of Women might be perceived as gauche in some quarters and may be bad for my career. #kissingbabies #protocols

6:30pm – Dinner in the swill pit (staff dining room). Cook makes us vegan stir fry, which is not on the menu. An email to AAP Sydney is written, to correct the mistakes in the article but it is too late – the mistakes are now reprinted all over the web and repeated by SBS TV News, who did not send a reporter to the media conference and are relying on AAP to get the story right. #beer #epic fail

7:00pm – I rush off to the airport. Origin Energy CEO Grant King walks past and…. #beinginthewrongplaceattherighttime

9:30pm – Conversations are had with AAP. Copy is changed. Corrections are issued. More conversations are had. Phones cut out speaking to the car driving to Melbourne. #fail

11:22pm – AAP reissues story, with all the inaccuracies corrected. SMSs are exchanged. Emails checked. Organic cocoa drunk. Ugg boots put on. #hope

Halliburton dumps US Congress and oil spill plaintiffs in legal deepwater

2010-06-17T13:21:10Z

This was also published by The Punch.

President Obama’s administration and BP’s critics in Congress will be keen to read the Montara oil spill report that Mr David Borthwick, AO PSM gives to Australia’s Minister for Resources, Martin Ferguson today.

Mr Ferguson has been a staunch defender of the operator of the Montara facility and a proud booster of the oil industry generally. It is surprising then, that Australia is not one of the 17 countries who have offered to help clean up the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, according to the US State Department (Although BP has used some Australian resources in the clean up.)

Minister Ferguson is under pressure to release the Montara report quickly, because of the the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. The Minister’s office has said that he needs ‘a few days’ to read the report, after which it will be put in the public domain.

As Crikey reported Halliburton built the concrete wellhead on both BP Mississippi Canyon 252 well (MC252) in the Gulf of Mexico and the Montara Wellhead Platform at the West Atlas site in the Timor Sea.

Halliburton ranks number 2 among oilfield services companies globally and was ranked as 310 in a Fortune 500 listing, with revenues around US$18 billion. The company is best known for allegations of nepotism, corruption, human rights abuse and overcharging the US military, through its subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR), which it sold in 2007. KBR was the business division responsible for military logistics support.

Halliburton’s Tim Probert (President, Global Business Lines and Chief Health, Safety and Environmental Officer) has told the US House Committee on Energy hearings that there was no connection between Montara and Deepwater, but his wording is a matter of some concern.

When Probert was asked if Hallliburton was involved in cementing the Montara wellhead and whether this is relevant to the MC252 failure he replied with an interesting qualification, “We were involved in the well cementing. But what we do know from the public testimony is that a 5-month period elapsed between the time the cementing was completed and that the well control issue took place. [emphasis added]”

Probert continues but the gist is that he refers only to the ‘public testimony’ that his company gave to the Montara inquiry. My understanding is that he was appearing before the House on the basis of his ‘sufficient knowledge’ of technical issues, not merely his ability to inform the House about information already on the public record in another country.

This is curious, because if Probert was confident that there was no connection between Montara and Deepwater, surely he would state this simply and unconditionally. By restricting his assurance to only the public evidence, it raises the question of what other evidence exists.

Accordingly, US plaintiff lawyers will want to get themselves copies not just of the Montara report but of two other sets of documents. The first set of documents consists of the transcripts from the Inquiry plus various emails, technical reports and other documents submitted to the Commission that are public and can be downloaded from the website. A quick search reveals that Halliburton is cited in 70-120 of the publicly available documents.

The second group of documents have been partially or fully suppressed, through the power of 8 Non-Publication Orders. For example, one partially suppressed document (NPO 19 March 2010.pdf) is from a Halliburton service unit called ‘Cementing Services Global’. It is a chart showing activity steps and oversight approvals for the set of tasks ‘Perform Primary Casing Job’. Most of the document has been whited out.

It may be that Halliburton continues to tell US authorities only what it has already put on record about Montara. In this situation, the Deepwater case will spill over into Australian courts, in pursuit of Halliburton.

I am supportive of US plaintiffs seeking justice wherever it takes them, but the proximate responsibility for these disasters might never be adequately determined by US or Australian courts.

Large oil spills and other crimes against our global commons are properly the domain of an international court of the environment, as I have written before. An ICE should have appropriate territorial reach and powers of investigation and sanction.

Postscript 11:00pm Minister Ferguson’s media release about receiving the report came out this afternoon.

It remains to be seen if there are prosecutions as a result of the spill or even whether the Minister will release the whole report.

The Minister says

The Inquiry was not about attributing blame – it was, and continues to be, about understanding and learning the lessons from Montara.

I am concerned that the Minister sees responsibility and learning as an either/or choice.

Wouldn’t it be better to both learn how to prevent future spills and also punish those persons and companies who are legally responsible for the leaking of oil and gas into the Timor Sea, from 21 August to 3 November 2009?

Good free, technologies for consultants, big and small

2010-06-16T18:28:47Z

Here are some great free technologies that will be useful not just to consultants, but to anyone who wants to find files, grab web content or share videos.

I have decided to use Vimeo rather than YouTube or other free video sharing sites. It has better usability and was the leader in video quality although I do not know if that is still the case.

The idea is to post anything made by us and also content collected or excerpted from other sources. These will all be put on the Dan Cass & Co Channel. Goodbye, free to air TV, hello narrow-casting.

Meanwhile, in other technology news, I am one of more than 37,000,000 people who use DownThemAll. It claims to be the “first and only download accelerator” built inside Firefox. I find it faster and easier to organise files, especially when you are getting lots of files from one source.

For example, recently I wanted to send all the public submissions and other documents from an Australian Government Commission of Inquiry to a law firm in the US. Firstly, I used Google to quickly list all the pdf files on the relevant domain and list them 100 at a time, for easy reading. Secondly, I used DownThemAll to quickly select and download all 80 files that are publicly available.

Another great Firefox add on is Screenshot Pimp. This creates a right click menu for readily downloading a whole web page, the visible part of a page or a selection. It is good for getting a selection of heterogeneous content such as images and captions that are coded messily or in an obstructive way.

I also find Pimp vital when doing branding and design work. I can quickly make images of the relevant part of a site’s layout to send to the designer, after adding comments on the design elements I admire.

Zero Carbon Britain: the race is on

2010-06-16T17:59:53Z

I think that the tide in climate policy is turning down a new avenue. After 20 years of a policy race to the bottom in Australia, the USA and at the UNFCCC, a new generation of activists are pushing a stronger and credible agenda. The race is on to draft the road map to take a developed economy to zero emissions, that is 100% domestic emission cuts, within the medium term.

A new scenario was launched in London today, which charts how the UK can get to zero emissions by 2030. Zero Carbon Britain is a project of the Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT) in Wales. (See an old video explaining their approach.)

It has a good write up in the Guardian already.

Australia is hot on the heels of the UK, with our own, more ambitious scenario which will start to be published on Tuesday 22 June.

Zero Carbon Australia is a project of Beyond Zero Emissions, one of my Pro bono work clients. The Stationary Energy Plan chapter will be launched by a cross-party panel in Parliament House, with subsequent chapters on the other sectors of the economy.

Request for help - how to visualise complex climate policy information?

2010-06-15T18:22:23Z

I have been working with an intern who is doing a great research project on the future of carbon markets and now we have some complex information that needs visualization. The essay draws on a deep literature survey and interviews with some very big players, both supporters and critics of carbon markets.

Sally Etherington is finishing up her studies at Monash University. She is determined to save the concept of ecologically sustainable development, which has become emptied of meaning and energy over the past twenty years. Sally is completing a Bachelor of Commerce/Bachelor of Science double degree, majoring in Economics and Geography & Environmental Science and also finishing up a Diploma of Modern Languages, in Indonesian.

The research essay Sally has been doing with me is about the key international climate policy instrument, the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). It is central to the Kyoto Protocol and the longer term framework treaty that enables the Protocol, the UNFCCC.

Sally’s essay has identified 12 problems with the CDM, which need to be solved if we are to continue to put carbon markets in the centre of international climate law. She has also identified 8 solutions.

The question is how to map 8 solutions against 12 problems?

It is not a simple set of relationships because some problems can only be partially solved, some solutions only relate to one problem and so on. There is no consistent or simple relation between solution and problem.

I’ve been thinking that a Sankey diagram could do the job for us, but I do not know how to make one.

Do you have any ideas to share? Do you know a designer who will work with Sally to explain this very important set of issues?

I am keen to find a solution for Sally because I believe that good Internships are vital for the next generation of sustainability leaders.

My art TV interview on DAMP, APT6 and cooperation

2010-06-14T22:46:04Z

For two years I have been in an art group called DAMP. Our biggest coup so far was being selected for The 6th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, in Brisbane over the last summer.

Andrew Frost covered the APT6 for ABC TV, in an Artscape special, The Art Life at Asia Pacific Triennial. Andrew interviewed three DAMP members: Nat Thomas, Kylie Wilkinson and I. Andrew also blogged about the interview and my beard.

ABC TV ran a show on February 16, 2010. Currently you can watch it on the ABC’s arts portal. It may not be there for ever, so you can watch a bootleg of DAMP’s interview here. I do not think the ABC will mind, as it is only an excerpt, but I am sure they will tell me if they object!

Climate Politics: the final installment of the Deakins

2010-06-12T18:51:01Z

Hundreds of people lined up tonight in the hope of getting a seat to the Politics of Climate Change, the final of the Deakin Lectures 2010. This is a great sign because it shows that the the public will to think through the problem has not been killed by the denialists nor the Copenhagen debate nor the ETS back-flip of the current Australian Labor Government.

Here are some of the key points made by the speakers in their presentations or in response to questions:

Baroness Valerie Amos, British High Commissioner to Australia and former Minister.

Climate concern in Britain is not a partisan issue: all parties support climate action as does the mainstream business lobby
UK accounts for about 2% of global emissions, about the same as Australia
a carbon price is important but must be accompanied by other measures, including education, industry policy etc
consumer choices depend on good information especially inspiration about the ways they can change their lifestyle
Copenhagen created a ‘dynamism’ for change, so it was not a complete failure

Malcolm Turnbull, MP, former Minister for Environment and Water Resources and former leader of the Federal Opposition.

we have every resource available to meet climate challenge except leadership
PM Rudd did not have the courage to take on climate change and call a double dissolution on his ETS
Opposes a feed in tariff because it is a subsidy to particular technologies, rather than a perfectly (economically) rational emissions reduction measure
Rudd did use the ETS as a wedge against the Opposition although it was based on the previous iteration, of PM John Howard
a carbon tax is simpler but the level of emissions is not defined as under a cap

Here is my recent take on political conservatives and economics.

Nick McKim, Leader of the Tasmanian Greens in 2008, and Cabinet Member (for Treasury and Employment, Climate Change, Attorney-General and Justice, Education, and Economic Development).

we have 2 choices as a species:descend into conflict or take strong action, cooperate and share the solutions
determined to show the leadership that is talked about
Governments everywhere are running behind public sentiment, for example, we are spending 10-100 times more on roads than on sustainable transport
we all have to play a role with our vote and civic voice

Mark Dreyfus, QC, MP and Chair of the Australian Labor Party’s National Policy Committee.

the politics of climate change has cost Opposition 3 leaders
the Senate Greens are to blame for not passing the ETS
we need to avoid making the perfect the enemy of the good, focus on the negative and allow partisan positions to frustrate progress
citizens need to advocate for action

Tim Flannery, curator of the Deakins.

the most popular presentation to the Deakins so far was Professor Tim Jackson’s, on ways to decouple prosperity from economic growth
Victoria still allows logging of old growth forests, which are the most carbon intense in the world

You will see from the video, when it is posted on the Wheeler site that the crowd atmosphere was more positive to politicians Turnbull and McKim than Dreyfus.

The most interesting question was from man who asked Tim Flannery whether we are focusing too much on carbon and not on the ultimate drivers of global change. The second most interesting question was whether the Greens proposal – backed by Garnaut – for a carbon tax is worth supporting.

Planet.Art : a new model for art, climate change and cultural power

2010-06-11T13:26:18Z

Over the past 18 months I have been having some interesting conversations about climate change, culture and the future of the traditional model of international art exhibitions, such as the Venice Biennale or Germany’s Documenta.

I see the conversation as a philosophical investigation and also a political process, a step in Cultural campaigning. We need to use culture and political economy in tandem, to generate the clean energy transition.

Planet.Art is the name I have given to the model or approach that we are discussing. The punctuation and capitalisation is supposed to convey two ideas:

The Planet is our context or base and we are destroying it. Artists and curators, like all people, should at least acknowledge this reality, even if their practice is not deliberately environmental
Art is ongoing or open and does not have to be determined by the environment and how we think about it

I have been lucky enough to talk about Planet.Art with some people I admire, who know much more than I do about art and culture. Here are some of them:

Ross Gibson: artist, academic
Felicity Fenner: curator, academic
Jan Bryant: academic, critic
Marcus Westbury: writer, event maker, cultural advisor
Kevin Murray: writer, curator
Sam Bower: Green Museum director
Lianne Rossler: designer, climate activist

If you want to know more about the idea you can download an essay here. It was commissioned by Eyeline, an art magazine based at the Creative Industries Faculty of Queensland University of Technology. It is a review of environmental works at the 6th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, in the context of the Planet.Art conversation.

My Godot question to James Cameron and David Blood, about green capitalism

2010-06-09T11:28:07Z

Everyone who attended the Deakin Lecture on ‘Greening Capitalism’ last night would have come away feeling inspired by the climate action happening elsewhere and depressed by Australia’s backwardness.

The international guests were James Cameron (Executive Director of Climate Change Capital) and David Blood (Senior Partner of Generation Investment Management). They explained the ways in which investors are making money by cutting emissions in a range of markets and technologies.

Listening to David Blood and James Cameron, it was clear that low carbon industries in other countries are profitable as well as beneficial environmentally. So why are Australian Governments are doing practically nothing to create the shift to a new economy? Perhaps the answer is that the political economy here is dominated by the old resource sector, which has intellectually corrupted our economic debates.

I thought it was an excellent session and was pleased when a question I had submitted online was read out:

There was never any chance that we could negotiate a global agreement to slash emissions, within a free-trade model that says every nation has to move in unison. 20 years of UNFCCC failure is the evidence.

While we wait for international agreement for a global carbon regime, what are the best ways that nations can implement strong local carbon taxes with trade protection to prevent capital flight? How can nations decarbonise while waiting for Godot?

The question provoked a great 8 minute response from James Cameron and John Daley (Chief Executive Officer, Grattan Institute. You can watch it here.

When the moderator, Nick Rowley, read my question out, James muttered ‘brilliant’. I’m not sure the question was brilliant but it is apposite because it attacks one of the key arguments that big coal uses to undermine climate action.

The coal industry and its supporters in the major political parties say that Australia cannot ‘go it alone’ on climate change. They claim that the only economically rational approach is for every nation in the world to negotiate a global carbon price (in international law). This would allow a frictionless free trade in carbon-adjusted goods and services, just like in economic theory.

My question says that waiting for this perfect global carbon market is like waiting for Godot but the metaphor is not to be taken too seriously. In Beckett’s play, the notion of the wait is a way of speaking about something eternal in the human condition.

James said that climate change is an existential threat but unlike the God(ot) threat, it is physically, caused by our actions and getting worse daily. Australia can no longer afford the tragicomic ‘luxury’ of sitting around in existential pain, bemoaning the failure of the Kyoto Protocol.

If you do not have time to watch the video, these are the key points which were brought up by my Godot question:

it is legitimate for nations taking climate action to protect their industries against cheaper imports from nations which are not taking equivalent climate action
Australia can have a carbon tax along with adjustment taxes on imports to protect our industries
Australia will benefit economically from a carbon price as a result of innovation and new exports
our economy will become more efficient and resilient if we swap from fossil fuels to renewable energy, because it is free and constant

Bicycle joys of Melbourne

2010-06-07T18:53:11Z

One of the joys of moving back to Melbourne is getting back onto a bicycle. Sydney roads felt too fast, crowded and dangerous. In the several years since I last lived here, bike culture has become a pillar of the City’s identity.

I have been excited recently to see bike share stations appearing around the CBD. There are 10 stations and 100 bikes in service so far. By way of comparison, the Parisian Vélib' scheme, which is the world’s largest, apparently has 16 stations for every bike we have! (According to Wikipedia; 20,000 bikes and 1,639 stations, or 1 every 300 metres through the centre of Paris).

Whether in Paris or Melbourne, biking connects people to each other. In the long run it will save energy and other resources but it immediately humanizes an urban landscape. It makes me part of the City. It demonstrates how a sustainable life can be better than the energy-bloated lifestyles that fossil fuels generate.

For my new vehicle, I chose an Onya 8 by Allegro Bikes, because it is a local company. I bought it from Human Powered Cycles, in Northcote. The Humans are a friendly, knowledgeable bunch. There is a good workshop out the back where you can get anything serviced, from the most dilapidated to the most chic thing on two wheels. They also run a cafe on the premises, of course.

Funky reuse is valued by many cyclists in Melbourne. The bikes I see around include a variety of DIY, punky, el cheapo contraptions. Friends buy vintage frames and lovingly restore them, resisting the tyranny of rust and obsolescence.

When my niece wanted a bike this Autumn we built two at the Bike Shed co-op, at Melbourne’s venerable eco-education park, CERES. It cost us $50 dollars in parts. We spent about 12 hours at CERES over three weekends being guided in the repairs by the Shed’s volunteers. We met great people and had a lovely time of it.

Malcolm Fraser update

2010-05-26T12:59:02Z

The big news today is that former Australian PM Malcolm Fraser has resigned from his own party, the Liberal Party.

I have rewritten my blog post on the Liberals and the new version was published on The Punch just now, including reflections on my dinner with Mr Fraser.

The main point I am making is that liberal and conservative politics in Australia has hopeless intellectual leadership. Climate change requires them to shift so they should take the opportunity to reinvent and compete in the policy space left open to them by the ALP’s lack-lustre commitment to climate reform.

"War Crimes Trials, Solemnity and the Problem of Evil"

2010-05-26T11:54:08Z

Gerry Simpson is my brother in law. This is the text of his Inaugural Professorial Lecture at the University of Melbourne, entitled “War Crimes Trials, Solemnity and the Problem of Evil”.