Anthill Magazine

While in Copenhagen for last year’s climate change summit, Anthill contributor Dave Sag had an opportunity to test drive the Fluence, Renaut’s 100 percent electric car. As Sag reports, the loudest thing about the Fluence is its indicator. But is it a game-changer?

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Dave Sag is in Copenhagen this week covering the COP15 climate change summit for Anthill. This is his first post in the series.

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Okay, this is, for some people, going to be an uncomfortable column to read as I am going to seriously challenge what for many seems like an obvious ‘conventional wisdom’. In many cases it is better for the planet if you offset your carbon emissions than if you reduce them via your own in-house efficiencies. The woman with the fully carbon offset Hummer is probably a better friend to the planet than the man in his non-offset Prius.

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When the Department of Climate Change decided to change the name of the national Emissions Trading Scheme to the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, they really hit on a winner. Yes, it’s a bit harder to say – the CPRS doesn’t roll off the tongue like the NETS. In fact, it sounds a bit like a medical procedure, but it’s a brilliant name change because now the scheme is being referred to in terms of its goals, rather than its mechanism. The new name puts all the focus on what the scheme wants to achieve. The emissions trading scheme is simply the way in which it’s going to be done.

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There has been a lot of criticism of late about bio-fuels and, like many issues, the good technologies are being tarred with the same brush as the bad. And this is a terrible shame, for there are clearly good and bad bio-fuel projects, just as there are good and bad hydro projects. The principle behind [...]

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I was at a friend’s 40th the other night and got into one of those stupid arguments that you sometimes get into with other drunk people, where it’s clear the other person is just spouting all this tired, debunked nonsense about an industry or practice that you know intimately. And yet, because you are both [...]

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Have you ever wandered off a cold and rainy street, through the open doors of a shop into somewhere warm, dry and seemingly a world away from whence you came? Have you ever wondered how much energy that shop would have saved if they’d only closed their doors. Have you wondered why on Earth they [...]

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Previously, I covered how cap and trade schemes provide economic incentives for businesses to gradually reduce their carbon emissions in a cost-optimal manner. I didn’t however, discuss the different kinds of carbon credit schemes or how they really serve to physically reduce atmospheric carbon levels. Carbon credits are simply a receipt for service; that service [...]

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The very best way to reduce your emission of carbon into the atmosphere is to make appropriate behavioural and structural changes so that you physically cease to emit so much carbon. Sounds obvious, hey? But the devil is in the detail.

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October/November, 2007 You’ll no doubt have read about all these businesses that have “gone carbon neutral,” and thought, ‘Gee, that’s great, I’ll go buy their products.’ Scratch the surface of these claims however and, in some cases, a different picture emerges. The first and most primary problem with claims of carbon neutrality is that there [...]

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