Friday, October 14, 2016

Why support light rail and the electrification of transport.

If we want to address climate change with the seriousness it deserves, we should electrify transport. The ACT Light rail project shows leadership in this direction: it will be Australia's first zero-pollution public transport system.

In a recent article in Vox, “The Key to Tackling Climate Change: Electrify Everything,” David Roberts cites a growing expert consensus on what is called “environmentally beneficial electrification.” He says that there is a two-pronged strategy for deep decarbonisation:

1. Clean up electricity

2. Electrify everything.

The ACT is well on the way to doing (1). It is leading Australia in the effort to decarbonise the electricity supply, with a goal of 100% renewable energy by 2020. We know how to do this. What we don’t know how to do is how to decarbonise engine fuel. You can buy offsets, which have problems in themselves, but you can’t make the fuel itself greenhouse-friendly. Even if you make biodiesel from the waste oil from takeaway fish and chip shops, you are still emitting CO2 and other nasties.

If you electrify transport, the job of reducing greenhouse gas emissions for transport is much easier: you can plug into the 100% renewable energy of the ACT grid by 2020, and you immediately decarbonise a considerable part of Canberra’s carbon footprint, in one of the most car-dependent cities in Australia, making the new ACT light rail line Australia’s first zero pollution, zero carbon emissions public transport system.

The Paris Declaration on Electro-Mobility and Climate Change states that "Limiting the global temperature increase to below 2 degrees Celsius requires changing this transport emissions trajectory, which involves the development of an integrated electro- mobility ecosystem encompassing various transport modes, coupled with the low-carbon production of electricity and hydrogen, implemented in conjunction with broader sustainable transport principles."

Currently Australia's transport emissions trajectory is not reducing at the pace needed for a safe climate. Transport in Australia emits 16 per cent of Australia's polluting greenhouse gases per year, over 90 Megatons. Diesel vehicles- such as conventional buses, trucks and 4WDs - are the fastest growing fuel type for all vehicles in Australia. Yet diesel fumes emit CO2 and CO, and have the added problem of being a Group 1 carcinogen according to the World Health Organisation.

There have been many promising developments in electric bus technology that are prompting rapid adoption of this mode of transit due to vast fuel savings over the lifetime of the bus. The Greens policy to transition ACT's bus fleet to 100% electric is a good step in the right direction. Internal combustion engines are less than 30% efficient. Add to that the energy cost of transporting fuel from the other side of the world.

Yet buses do not have the transformative network effects that light rail has. Light rail has become the "backbone" of systems such as on the Gold Coast and Glenelg extension (SA), where in both cases there was much scepticism before their construction. Light rail attracts more people out of their cars than buses: there is a section of the population that simply will not use buses whereas they will happily use rail modes of transit.

Energy is also lost from friction between rubber tyres and the road. It's smoother and more efficient to have tracks connecting steel and steel. This is why many people find rail-based journeys more comfortable and preferable to road-based transport, especially if they spend their commutes reading or working on handheld devices or a computer.

While some have argued that to address environmental concerns, Canberra should focus on improving cycling infrastructure, my experience riding my bike each day to work gives a strong hunch that this is necessary but not sufficient: for most people cycling is not an all-weather mode of transport: less than half my colleagues who cycled did so during the Winter. Furthermore, cycling is less inclusive than light rail for elders, disabled people and young children.

I am very proud to have been part of community campaigns in Canberra for the ambitious climate change targets that it has today. The ACT has shown what a pathway to renewable energy looks like that doesn't break the bank, being the only jurisdiction in Australia where electricity prices decreased by an average of $80 per household in 2015. These targets dovetail very well with an ambitious public transport policy of light rail that both Labor and the Greens have adopted, which several environmental groups advocated for.

In 2008, the Conservation Council of the ACT advocated for light rail for the ACT election, commissioning an animation of what a light rail journey down Northbourne Avenue would look like. I helped build a 3 metre-long light rail model, which members of Climate Action Canberra would carry above our heads and take to climate change protests in 2008-10. We would get many appreciative honks from passing motorists as we walked down the median strip towards Parliament House, prefiguring a future in which light rail formed a backbone of Canberra as Walter Burley Griffin intended.

We are now much closer to that future than we have ever been for a very long time, and I hope people register the significance of what the ACT government is doing. Canberra will be the first in Australia to have 100% renewable-powered public transport, showing other cities a pathway out of their smog: it is clear that electrification holds a similar kind of promise of a brighter future as it did for my grandparents’ generation.

Saturday, May 07, 2016

Meeting my local federal member about the Trans Pacific Partnership

Meeting with politicians in my opinion is a bit like debating. In moderation, it's worth doing because it sharpens up your thinking and communication skills, refreshing your understanding of an issue. Yet if you do it too much you can come to accept the internal assumptions of the activity, encouraging you to become more scheming in your methods and beliefs about people, thinking that the instrumental goal of moving people's position is more important than anything else.

It's been over ten years since I've seriously sat down and scrutinised /campaigned against free trade agreements, so preparing for this meeting revived some of the old passion. I was reminded of the importance of educating and mobilising the public and holding politicians to account on these extremely important issues. Hopefully this blog post explains a little of what I learned when I did a bit of research for the meeting.

Julie Owens, Labor member for Parramatta and my local member is a very approachable person, and someone who is less of a hack than many politicians.

As a former spokesperson for the independent record industry she also is familiar with the issues surrounding copyright laws and the impact that demands to extend copyright can have on creativity and innovation (such as those in the US Free Trade Agreement which allowed drug companies to extend patents to 25 years, increasing the cost of drugs shouldered by the Australian government pharmaceutical benefits scheme by delaying generics manufacturing).

Owens expressed considerable concern about the investor-state provisions in the TPP. She said that after the election Labor will be reviewing Australia's participation in all trade agreements that include investor-state provisions. [I find this surprising as the tone of Penny Wong's media statements on trade agreements tend to be upbeat in relation to trade agreements, endorsing their broad intention, giving an impression that she thinks they are generally good and only need minor tweaking around the edges. Also I wonder about the exit clauses of these agreements and whether there are penalties for exiting]

This is great to hear but it also reveals a weakness in Australian campaigns against the multilateral and bilateral trade agreements: they have been lopsided in focusing critical analysis on the danger of corporations suing governments (investor-state dispute provisions), to the detriment of broader analysis of the agenda of these trade agreements since the 1990s, which is about tying governments' hands fiscally and politically from initiating broad reaching policies that seek to limit, direct or restrict the activities of corporations, or to preference the local scale or to government-owned industries in procurement or similar government decisions.

While Australians rightly celebrate the successful defence of Australia's plain packaging tobacco laws after a challenge brought by Hong Kong via investor-state provisions from a bilateral 1993 Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement, the win was obtained at great cost to the Australian citizen, engaging a small army of lawyers, and may still cause a "chilling effect" in which policy makers may think twice before implementing legislation which for example limits the power of the sugar industry over advertising or dietary guidelines. Furthermore, this victory - while an important symbol as Australia's first in investor-state disputes- appears to be a drop in the ocean in the broader scene of trade disputes.

The more common enforcement mechanism in trade agreements is a tribunal in which governments make a complaint about another government's laws.

There are four other countries that have similar complaints in the works against Australian plain packaging legislation via state-state disputes processes: As Croakey reports: "Currently Australia is facing disputes by Honduras, Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Indonesia over tobacco plain packaging, using the state-to-state dispute settlement mechanism of the World Trade Organization." Australian citizens will again have to shoulder the legal cost for this defence.

The US Trade Department has a large section entirely devoted to initiating international disputes on behalf of their corporations.

In February the US won a dispute versus India on solar panel manufacturing, that will potentially cost the Indian solar industry US $100 billion, and will cost the Indian people jobs which are being generated on the back of a Domestic Content Requirement that requires the solar panels to be in part manufactured in India.

India currently has a similar installed amount of solar capacity to Australia: almost 5000 MW, and is rapidly expanding capacity as part of their "Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission" policy: Their ambitious 2022 target (decided in 2009) was previously 20000 MW, but now they have supercharged this target, aiming for 100 000 MW (or 20 times the current installed capacity) by 2022.

We can see in examples such as this ways in which the goal of addressing climate change in a way that prioritises generating local jobs can conflict fundamentally with international trade agreements. Thus movements seeking transformative change in solving climate change or other deep-rooted social issues must prioritise also analysis and mobilisation against international trade agreements in order to pursue their goals.

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[I also heard from a friend yesterday that recently leaked information about the TPP suggests that the disputes mechanism will apply retrospectively to any legislation- not just new laws- I haven't had the time to check up on this.]

** At the end of the meeting, Julie Owens agreed to come along to an election forum on June 14, 7pm at the Commercial Hotel in Parramatta.**

Wednesday, March 02, 2016

Affordable public transport to Sydney Airport


A Melbourne friend recently asked me how to get to and from Sydney airport cheaply by public transport. If you don't mind a ten minute walk, there are regular bus services along Botany Road to Redfern, where you can easily transfer to trains to other parts of Sydney. Botany Road is located to the East of the Domestic Terminal, and as long as you walk towards the East (preferably NE), you will hit it, then you can catch a bus heading North to Redfern:
Here is google maps
Preferably buy an Opal Card beforehand, which you can usually purchase at convenience stores and news agents.
Catch the 309 or 310 or the Metrobus M20 (M20 ends up on the Pacific Highway, North Shore via the city, and as it is limited stops you need to go to the bus stop at the intersection with Elizabeth Avenue for this one- only catch this one if you have an Opal Card).
These buses are very regular.
Timetable for 309, 310: http://www.sydneybuses.info/routes/309_20151004_tt.pdf
Timetable for M20: http://www.sydneybuses.info/%3C/p%3E%3Cp%3E%3Cwbr%3Eroutes/20_map.pdf
Please download the most up to date version here
Make sure you ask the bus driver to let you out at either Redfern or Central. In both cases, you will be located East of the train line so you can find the station by walking West.
You can also catch the 400 from Burwood, which arrives directly at the airport, better for disabled people, but it takes much longer.
Happy travels.