From The Age

These first two focus on Melbourne's recently released "transport plan".

Right track but wrong assumptions
Eddington's report neglects greenhouse emission targets.

Projects that don't make a strategy
Megaprojects, particularly a road tunnel, may not be the answer to transport needs.

$72 million for green energy plan
RENEWABLE energy projects involving solar, wave and geothermal power will receive a funding boost of more than $70 million as part of the first stage of a State Government strategy to tackle climate change.

To put this into perspective the "transport plan" is billed at around $12 billion - mostly for freeways and other such... with a hint of rail (which will probably get dropped).

The planet shows us who's got the power
WELL, what a difference a week makes. Do you remember? This time last week when we were breathlessly counting down to Earth Hour and how proud we all felt for signing up to candlelit dinners and the turning off of all the non-essential lighting that happily burns its head off for every other hour of the year?

Earth Hour was, by all accounts, a tremendous success. Some 40 countries took part including millions of Australians who saved thousands and thousands of black balloon-fulls of deadly carbon dioxide emissions and registered an impressive 11.4% drop in energy consumption in the process. Well done us.

And then we switched all the lights back on and carried on burning non-renewable fossils fuels courtesy of the electricity grid. We'd done our bit for the planet, we'd engaged in a national conversation about acting local and thinking global and the planet, we felt sure, would be thankful for the gesture. Or so we thought. In what can only be described as a masterstroke of timing, the Earth decided to show us a thing or two about sitting in the dark and, boy, did the planet deliver. Just days after we'd banked our Earth Hour carbon credits the so-called "freak storm" that wreaked havoc over Melbourne on Wednesday afternoon certainly said a thing or two about the realities of climate change.

The gale-force winds, dust storms and rain that resulted in widespread destruction and blackouts across much of the state hit with such ferocity that tens of thousands of homes were still without power 48 hours later. And the people, it has to be said, went a little loopy. It was one thing for us to decide to turn off our lights voluntarily for one hour but it was entirely out of order for the Earth to decide it would teach us a thing or two about a sustainable power supply — over several days.