We have had tax incentives for solar and wind for a long time and they have been renewed. Utilities are required to buy excess power in many areas, not all, but they also charge extra for the special meters [because relays and diodes are so expensive].
It will take a while for them to figure out that the goal is to reduce carbon emissions, not move them around. The “incentive” for business would be not getting charged for emissions.
Florida floats on natural gas, but they still use coal-fired power plants. Tell me that makes sense.
In your system you can change governments whenever you get torqued, we have to wait. We wouldn’t need the entire impeachment process if we could just hold an election and kick the bums out all at once.
Liberals have gotten cowardly, and dependent on business. Maybe they’ll realize that their “benefactors” are the ones who created this mess we are all in and we can see a return to real liberal values in government. This centrist crap has gotten very old.
]]>Rudd is also in trouble for several other things. People are not amused here. Like the people who elected Obama, the people here that elected Rudd expect him to do what he was elected to do. Unlike American’s generally, Aussies tend to show their displeasure once it reaches boiling point in serious ways and rapidly. After a decade of Howard, people were only just beginning to move down to a simmer. Rudd is making some bad miscalculations and will regret it.
NOT happy campers over here!
]]>We have had a lot of rain in the last few years and the problem has been remedied, but another hurricane will bathe everything in salt water picked up from the Gulf and bayous. That increases the salt in the soil for a year after the fact and causes the delayed death of trees and plants.
Once the land heats up you can expect the winds to come out of the South, which is the normal situation here – out of the North at night, and out of the South in the afternoon.
It’s obvious that a national water distribution system is necessary, but every federal system is infected with the same tension between the two levels of government. We’ve talked about it before.
If you have to remove salt anyway, it makes more sense to just stick the inlets in the ocean and let the water on the land do it’s own thing. That will certainly take care of the drought problems.
]]>They predict rain late next week… but even the weather guy on the news didn’t seem to believe that. This is now our driest start to a year recorded in 150 years.
Sth. Australia is happy because a lot of flood water from Qld. has finally made it’s way there. Coincidentally, the size of the area in Qld. flooded is about the size of Sth Aus. A recent report stated that dryland salinity is now a big problem and threatens at lest 6 of our major water catchment areas due to salt water seeping into the water table because of much reduced rainfall. They expect that the cost will increase water treatment by about $50 mill/ year over the next 50 years. They also expect that at least 15% of irrigation systems feeding farm land will be affected by increasing salinity.
]]>