Regional Roundup

A quick partial regional roundup for the start of the new year – my emphasis added. The Sydney Morning Herald leads off with,

Asian hunger drives coal, oil price rise
SMH, December 31, 2010
Strong demand from energy hungry Asian economies will drive the price of thermal coal even higher in 2011, as wet weather continues to shrink supplies of major global coal producing regions.
Oil prices are also expected to rise in 2011, while analysts have broadly slashed their outlook for natural gas due to an oversupply arising from American coal-seam and shale-gas projects.
Despite concerns about global warming, coal is still the fastest-growing energy source globally, with demand rising three per cent in 2010.
The economies of India and China are behind the surge, offsetting weak economic growth in Western economies that could otherwise have led to a slump on world energy markets.
"On the supply side, Indonesia is playing catch up," UBS commodities analyst Tom Price said.
"They have had very high, unusually high rainfall, well beyond their wet season.
"By the end of the year when the Chinese started restocking heavily on Indonesian coal, the coal just wasn't there."
In December, a severe coal shortage in China forced power cuts in the nation that relies on coal for 70 per cent of its energy needs.
Indian demand for thermal coal imports is expected to grow at nine per cent a year for the next five years as domestic supplies run out.
In Australia, uncertainty surrounding government policy on carbon pricing continues to hang over the energy sector, delaying investment decisions and projects.

Perhaps Lovelock is right and Gaia is striking back with some disruptive possibly climate change induced rain.

The absence of a positive vision

The ABC site The Drum Unleashed has a contribution from Leigh Ewbank, Director of Public Policy at Beyond Zero Emissions. The article does seem a bit of a PR piece for his organization, but at least readers are told that upfront... unlike many of the aggressive posters at the end of the article who sound like one voice. I have never thought it a constructive tactic to win over someone using words like 'incompetent', 'full of dribble', 'stoned tree-hugging hippies','eco-stalinists' etc.

Doom discourse a barrier to climate action
Leigh Ewbank
While it’s important for the public to be aware of the risks of runaway climate change, focusing narrowly on threats and evoking apocalyptic rhetoric, as Melbourne writer Doug Hendrie did yesterday, is not helpful. It might be good for scaring the general public senseless, but does not create the conditions needed to deliver action on climate change. For that we need a positive vision of our future.

The effect of Hendrie’s apocalyptic rhetoric is to disempower the community, encourage scepticism, and relegate climate change to the too-hard basket. Recent research published by the University of California Berkeley supports this assessment: “Dire messages warning of the severity of global warming and its presumed dangers can backfire, paradoxically increasing skepticism about global warming by contradicting individuals’ deeply-held beliefs that the world is fundamentally just” (PDF).