CPD

Dr Gunter Pauli | ABC Radio National Big Ideas

CPD — Tue, 15 May 2012 01:02:43 +0000

Gunter Pauli’s goal is to create jobs, achieve multiple benefits and add value to underperforming assets. All with zero emissions and zero waste. Think he’s a dreamer? Think again.

ABC’s Radio National program Big Ideas rebroadcasts inspirational entrepreneur Dr Gunter Pauli’s talk on taking green and sustainable thinking to a new level, with his ‘Blue Economy’. In his talk, co-hosted by Sydney Ideas and the Centre for Policy Development, Pauli outlines his approach to a new type of sustainability that draws heavily from both the natural world and the market place.

The Blue Economy is where the best for health and the environment is cheapest and the necessities for life are free thanks to a local system of production and consumption that works with what you have.

LISTEN to Gunter Pauli’s talk on ABC Radio National Big Ideas

Change can happen faster than you think – help us seize the moment and point to the alternatives. Add your voice to ours!

Sustainable Economy | Farming Smarter, Not Harder

Laura Eadie — Tue, 08 May 2012 02:30:37 +0000

Australia’s land-based economy provides clean air, water, food and fibre – but our soils continue to be degraded by acidity, erosion, urban development, increased climate variability and other pressures. Rising global demand for food, combined with resource scarcity, will make healthy and productive ecosystems increasingly valuable. Managing our land base for sustainable agricultural production, environmental conservation can provide a secure economic future for the industries and communities that rely on healthy landscapes.

The Sustainable Economy team are working hard to ‘dig up’ evidence about how Australia’s land-based economy can benefit from policies to preserve the environment and resources that sustain them. The full report, due out this winter, will look at the value of Australia’s agricultural land and soil to the national economy.

Change can happen faster than you think – help us seize the moment and point to the alternatives. Add your voice to ours!

Christopher Stone | Thinking ahead: a budget for more than this year

CPD — Fri, 04 May 2012 03:29:40 +0000

In his article on ABC’s The Drum, CPD researcher Chris Stone suggests a different way of thinking about the budget, and makes important predictions about budget night media and political commentary which he claims is driving a serious and repeated problem: “A national economy is a lot more like the Titanic than a speedboat; significant changes in direction take a long time. This means that if we think there’s an economic iceberg 30 years ahead, the time to start turning the wheel is now“. Chris goes on to give three examples of issues that probably won’t get a lot of air time on 8 May, but which really should. You can read the article on ABC’s The Drum here.

A number of comments on The Drum’s website raised questions about the assertion that Australians pay less tax than those in the US. Chris responds as follows:

The short answer to this is that the US has a large “social security tax” whereas Australia doesn’t, and so the total amount of tax that Australians pay on their wages is less.

The longer answer is that comparing tax internationally is complex, because every country has a different mix of multiple taxes that apply to wages. For this reason I’m basing my assertion on data from the OECD, which produces some useful reports comparing national taxation. This report gives a good understanding of our position: http://bit.ly/JcKpmc

Because the percent of wage taxes in all OECD countries depends on income and family circumstances, it gives comparative statistics for a number of hypothetical tax payers. Across all these, Australia is in the bottom 8 out of 34 OECD countries in terms of percentage of tax imposed on wages. And in every hypothetical we rank lower than the US.

Change can happen faster than you think – help us seize the moment and point to the alternatives. Add your voice to ours!

Miriam Lyons | ABC The Drum, 26 April 2012

CPD — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 00:10:15 +0000

In this episode of ABC’s The Drum, Tim Palmer speaks with Miriam Lyons from the Centre for Policy Development, Radio 2UE broadcaster John Stanley and economist and contributing columnist to The Australian Judith Sloan. The panel analyse and discuss hot topics such as the Leveson Inquiry, the Australian auto industry, and the HSU scandal.

WATCH the full program on ABC iview here

Change can happen faster than you think – help us seize the moment and point to the alternatives. Add your voice to ours!

Club of Rome | Change the Course

CPD — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 09:04:29 +0000

The Club of Rome “Limits to Growth” study was launched 40 years ago in March, and the Club has launched a major social media initiative built around the analogy of the Titanic disaster of the early 20th Century.

Never before has humanity been better educated, informed and connected, or had so many opportunities to foresee challenges, manage progress and development, evaluate our actions’ consequences and manage them accordingly.

The Titanic has become a symbol of human self-esteem, the fatal belief in progress and the apparent victory of man over nature. The “unsinkable” ship, however, failed on its first voyage. Can we rely on (technical) progress? What role do we want to give to technological innovation? How much hope can/should we have, for example, that technological progress can compensate for the deep human intervention in natural ecosystems?

We have to question the relationship between the urgency of the matter and the lack of tangible consequences of current actions. Do disasters have to occur first before countermeasures are introduced?

The first instalment, with its excellent and thought-provoking animation, including a contribution from CPD Fellow Ian Dunlop, may be found here: http://change-the-course.org/?show=Main&action=MainPage

Further key elements will follow throughout this year, including three new Reports to the Club of Rome:

“2052″ by Jorgen Randers, Norwegian Business School
“Bankrupting Nature” by former European Parliamentarian Anders Wijkman and Johan Rockstrom, Stockholm Resilience Centre
“Future of Tropical Rainforest” by Claude Martin, former Global Chair of WWF

Sustainable Business Australia | Should Australia Embrace the Blue Economy Report

CPD — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 01:06:12 +0000

Inspirational entrepreneur Dr Gunter Pauli was the keynote speaker at the Sustainable Business Australia forum, outlining his vision of The Blue Economy and its wide scope of economic, social, and environmental benefits. Providing the Australian context is a panel of leading thinkers; Rob Coombs, Miriam Lyons, and Ben Waters. The report was prepared by SBA’s CEO Andrew Petersen, in conjunction with Therese Raft and Stephen Lennon from ARUP.

The panel discussed and analysed current Australian industry and business psyche, concluding that we often don’t see beyond what is immediately available or obvious to us. The aim is to move attitudes and practice away from the status quo, and towards more innovation, increased sustainability, and the encouragement of local entrepreneurship.

Download the Sustainable Business Australia report here

Change can happen faster than you think – help us seize the moment and point to the alternatives. Add your voice to ours!

Ian Dunlop | The Future of Energy: The Most Likely Scenario – Emergency Action

CPD — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 00:10:24 +0000

The Future of Energy: The Most Likely Scenario – Emergency Action is a submission by CPD fellow Ian Dunlop as a response to the government’s 2011 Draft Energy White Paper (DEWP).

The DEWP confirms perceptions that the Australian Federal Government is, as yet, unwilling or unable to face up to the strategic risks to which this country is now exposed from the integrated climate change and energy dilemma.

Some key concerns include:

• Climate Change and Energy are inextricably linked. However, the DEWP focuses on energy and makes only passing reference to climate change, implying that it is taken care of by the Clean Energy Futures package (CEFP)

• Addressing climate change will require far more extensive action than is contained in the CEFP, as the government is well aware from the scientific advice it is receiving.

• Peak oil is discounted as a risk, despite continuing instability in global oil markets, the empirical evidence that the peak in conventional oil has passed, our increasing reliance on international supply as domestic refining capacity closes, evidence from reputable bodies such as the IEA, and our lack of strategic oil reserves.

• Rather than making Australia’s energy system more resilient, the DEWP would lead to overextended high-carbon growth with potentially catastrophic consequences.

In summary, the DEWP is wholly inadequate as the basis for Australia’s energy future to 2030 and beyond. It seems unable to move much beyond the old “official future” of our high-carbon, dig-it-up and ship-it-out economic model. It should be withdrawn and a comprehensive, whole-of-government, scenario framework developed which is prepared to “think the unthinkable” and seriously address the need for emergency action to transition rapidly from a high-carbon to a low-carbon economy.

Download CPD fellow Ian Dunlop’s submission The Future of Energy: The Most Likely Scenario – Emergency Action here

About Ian Dunlop

Ian Dunlop was formerly a senior international oil, gas and coal industry executive. He chaired the Australian Coal Association in 1987-88, chaired the Australian Greenhouse Office Experts Group on Emissions Trading from 1998-2000 and was CEO of the Australian Institute of Company Directors from 1997-2001. He is Chairman of Safe Climate Australia, Deputy Convenor of the Australian Association for the Study of Peak Oil, Director of Australia 21, Fellow of the Centre for Policy Development and a Member of the Club of Rome.

Change can happen faster than you think – help us seize the moment and point to the alternatives. Add your voice to ours!

Gunter Pauli | The Blue Economy Podcast

CPD — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 01:11:00 +0000

CPD and Sydney Ideas co-hosted the return of Gunter Pauli to Sydney, for an update on The Blue Economy, a business model that develops socially responsible and sustainable enterprises by linking them with open-source scientific solutions. By presenting tested and proven cases, Pauli challenges us to not simply ‘do less bad’ by reducing emissions, but rather ‘do more good’ by encouraging true regeneration of ecosystems.

Listen to the podcast on Sydney Ideas here

Change can happen faster than you think – help us seize the moment and point to the alternatives. Add your voice to ours!

Taegen Edwards on Post Carbon Pathways | BayFM Spin Cycle

CPD — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 04:21:27 +0000

Taegen Edwards speaks to BayFM’s Karin Kolbe on the recently published report Post Carbon Pathways: Reviewing post carbon economy transition strategies. Edwards outlines the key government policies and non-government projects from across the globe that address climate change at the scale and size that is required. In particular, Edwards promotes World in Transition, a report by the German Advisory Council on Global Change as a key solution, as it sets concrete structures for countering the social and political barriers that seem to be the most constricting obstacle in implementing a full-scale post carbon economy.

Listen to Taegen Edwards and Karin Kolbe on BayFM’s Spin Cycle.

John Menadue & Greg Dodds | Deja vu as Australia returns from smoko for Asian century

CPD — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 01:30:02 +0000

Despite appearances, Australia’s relationship with its trading bloc remains superficial, making little progress in 20 years of ”discussions”.

In the mid-’90s we went on smoko, even as we continued to dig up more of our ores and coal for export. Today, 48 per cent of our exports are fuel and mineral products, way more than most comparable countries. We are dependent on a few markets and a few exports.

In business, only four Australian companies in the top 150 bothered to put in a submission to the Henry Review. Far too many see Asia as customers rather than partners, when trade and investment is about relationships of trust and understanding.

Read the full article in The National Times here

Change can happen faster than you think – help us seize the moment and point to the alternatives. Add your voice to ours!