Blog fail!

I’m so sorry I haven’t posted in the past month. Only another week before exams are finished! The study is excruiciating and believe me, I’d much rather be musing and deliberating and opinionating on this page then what I’m actually doing right now. So please hang tight, I have plenty – PLENTY – of material coming. Stay tuned for discussion on nuclear power and arms deterrence, the return of big government in the 21st century, the disaster that is the Afghanistan war, and some philosophising on interesting ideas that have crossed my path in the past four weeks.

A little bit of vitriol with your Sunday evening

Here’s an article I wrote for the Monash University student newspaper Lot’s Wife, entitled ‘The State of the University’:

We’ve all encountered the maze that is the Monash University bureaucracy. It’s insidious and it permeates every aspect of being a student at university. Most decisions that have a significant impact on students and the student experience are made within a labyrinth of committees comprised of various university bureaucrats. However – and it is a common symptom of many organisations – once the directions from up high have permeated their way through layers of management and committee structures, the outcomes that result are often substantially different from the original intentions. Monash University does not necessarily practice what it preaches, and the gap between its rhetoric and its actions is often a gaping chasm.

Awareness-raising vs pragmatic change – the battle we don’t need to have

There was a point in late 2006-early 2007, just before Howard got kicked out, when all the stars of the climate change debate aligned and a perfect storm of publicity nudged climate change from the fringe into the mainstream. The constituents of that perfect storm were Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fourth Assessment Report and the UK Government’s Stern report. And thank god for that step change in awareness, because without it we wouldn’t have a Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme in the works, or a 20% by 2020 renewable energy target, or the combined momentum of Australian business, government and community leaders pushing their constituents towards a sustainable mode of living and working.

Life, status quos, degree factories and more

Two of my friends online posted *very* contrasting blog posts a few weeks ago. It’s an interesting case study and it raised a whole bunch of questions, not least because I’ve been contemplating the exact same things they wrote about.

The rhetoric falls short of reality…

The flagship of the State government’s solar power promotion strategy sunk last week. Solar Systems, which was to build the world’s largest solar power station at 154MW in Mildura, was put into administration after capital couldn’t be raised to cover the remaining $50 million of the project’s costs not stumped up by government and China Light and Power. And what was John Brumby’s response?

Premier John Brumby blamed the collapse on the financial crisis, but backed the technology and said the plant could be picked up by another company.

He said the Government would do everything it could to help the project go ahead. ”I don’t think you can make judgments yet about whether this will or will not succeed,” he said.

So, in other words, you’re prepared to let it fail and you won’t put up more money for it. Despite the fact that you are putting tens of millions of dollars into clean coal venture projects which can’t even guarantee returns on their investments because the technology isn’t viable. Good to see you’re serious about changing Australia’s energy mix!

Rallying the masses

So, compare these campaigns:

No points for guessing which ones are the outstanding ones and which one is shit (if you don’t have time to look, 1 and 3 are amazing and 2 is terrible).

Transitioning to a new, low-emissions economy

I was at a conference a few weeks ago at which Peter Batchelor, Minister for Energy in Victoria, spoke. At the end I asked him: “Given that carbon capture and storage (CCS) isn’t yet commercially viable or technologically proven, if it fails to deliver what is your plan B?” He first outlined how CCS was already a proven technology and then went on to talk about four or five other ‘clean coal’ ventures such as coal gasification, algae growing and other such things. I was starting to despair at this point when he (finally) pointed out that gas could be a substitute to coal for energy generation if those previous technologies aren’t effective.

I love beautiful leadership

Overland express

Simon Overland is the new Chief Commissioner of Police in Victoria. This man is amazing.

He was on patrol after receiving an email from a Narre Warren leading senior constable suggesting senior officers were out of touch with street policing and spent too much time in air-conditioned offices.Overland accepted the challenge and worked the afternoon shift on the van with the veteran street policeman, swapping his Chief Commissioner’s insignia for a senior constable’s. He worked as the junior, taking running sheet notes and following instructions from his more experienced partner telling everyone, ”He’s the boss”.

So, he’s humble, he is in touch with what his team members are thinking and he’s willing to show that he listens. Excellent traits to be admired in anyone you find.

Conflict in the Middle East

Israeli settlement plans anger US

The Obama administration was very proactive in making Israeli settlement expansion a key point of difference in their discussions. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not on one side or the other – there is fault everywhere you look, people are suffering on both sides and no party is blameless. So the fact that Israel plans to increase the amount of Jewish settlements in the West Bank has angered the US is not a bad thing. However, the article above stated that

‘Analysts of the conflict say Mr Obama started on the wrong footing by stressing the settlement issue, therefore risking the creation of another obstacle to negotiations and an opportunity for Israel to delay further talks.’

But no – negotiation isn’t always about concessions and playing it safe. Sometimes you need to make a point and pick your battles in order to win the war, and the US making a sticking point out of further settlement expansion is a proactive step. The only way to achieve progress, especially with hardliners in Government in Israel, is to apply some pressure – otherwise it is all just words and no action results. The past six or so years of negotiations between the US and Israel have revolved around whether Israel agrees to a ’settlement freeze’ and the extent to which Israel permits ‘natural growth’ in the existing settlements.

A NY Times article summed up the confusion:

A second senior Bush administration official, also speaking anonymously, said Wednesday: “We talked about a settlement freeze with four elements. One was no new settlements, a second was no new confiscation of Palestinian land, one was no new subsidies and finally, no construction outside the settlements.”

He described that fourth condition, which applied to natural growth, as similar to taking a string and tying it around a settlement, and prohibiting any construction outside that string.

But, he added, “We had a tentative agreement, but that was contingent on drawing up lines, and this is a process that never got done, therefore the settlement freeze was never formalized and never done.”

So, as you can see, soft approaches to negotiation often result in word games and protracted debates about definitions which end up expending energy and delaying the process. Sometimes you need to shake things up a bit, like the US has done, in order to get what you want. It’s not always appropriate, but when it is it can get results.

Preventative health strategy

Government targets obesity, booze

The Government is rolling out a preventative health strategy to target problems like obesity and alcoholism. A Government report stated that ‘about 32 per cent of Australia’s total burden of disease is linked to smoking, drinking, obesity and other preventable health risks.’ So what are the chances that out of the $17 million being spent on this taskforce each year we will end up with a widespread yet ineffective TV and newspaper advertising campaign that does nothing to change entrenched behaviours? I doubt this new watchdog will take anything other than a softly-softly approach. Which, when you see the havoc that smoking and alcoholism is wreaking on families everywhere, is not going to work.

But points to the Government for trying. They just need to generate some real, concrete outcomes.