Online Opinion - The new politics of the global energy crisis

Global warming and peak oil are but two of the aspects of the global energy crisis. Measures to cut carbon emissions, such as an ETS, along with peaking oil and gas resources will see all energy costs become increasingly volatile with a general and continuing upwards movement. The world economy will have to shift out of its heavy reliance on cheap fossil fuels and drastically cut energy usage as it attempts a transition to new energy sources.

Car Advice - Volt rollout in selected states, Buffett predicts all-electric by 2030

The billionaire recently told a class of business students at Rice University, Texas, that he believed in just 20 years time every new car on the road would be electric, in response to a question about peak oil theory and the decline of oil production.

Voxy - Southern Alps Climate Forum

Greg Marshall, a key driver of the event stated, "The goal of the forum is to find practical solutions for the community in order to prepare for the problems that loom ahead such as Peak Oil. Climate Change is inevitable and without adapting now we will be forced into changes that could have severely adverse effects."

Scoop.co.nz - Speech: Katene - Govt Vehicle Procurement Bill

The Maori Party has supported all previous legislation that seeks to address the dual crises of peak oil and climate change.

Within this, the Māori Party is committed to ensuring tangible outcomes, in the national interest, in respect of four areas.

First and foremost, we want to relieve the burdens placed on whānau and assisting whānau to adapt to climate change.

Weekly Times Now - Climate-change refugees

"This is our family's response to the impending challenges of peak oil use and climate change," he said.

[.....]

Charlie and Fay will also expand their home so their adult children can return in the future.

"We want to be entirely self-sufficient and have a closed system with nothing coming in or going out," Charlie said.

"We will produce all our own food, water, power and manage our own waste.

Northcote Leader - Darebin generation Y’s plot revolution

A passion for the environment has motivated Northcote’s Kat Lavers, 27, to create a permaculture (wholly sustainable) design for her garden.

Coming from a long line of gardeners - her grandfather grew vegetables in England during World War II - she felt the need to create a truly sustainable environment.

She said she saw increasingly more young people taking up gardening, whether for environmental reasons or purely leisure.

“I would like to think it’s because people are more aware of climate change and peak oil issues, but I think Jamie Oliver’s back to the vegie patch approach has promoted it too,” Ms Lavers said.

Architecture and Design - Melbourne 2030 will be "transport chaos": Professor

“Urban sprawl is the inevitable result. The government then responds by building motorways to provide mobility.”

“That way will not work in the 21st Century with its pressing challenges of global warming and peak oil.

Crikey - Worst. Editorial. Ever.

The most ill-judged editorial in the history of your publication? You really think it “extremely commendable” to maintain a “sensible silence” on Australia’s population policy. And that to do otherwise is somehow “fingers over the race … button”. In the 21st century?

We can take as given, then, that you’ll now become sensibly silent on the likes of: climate change, peak oil, endangered ecosystems, water availability, global food security, pandemic disease, failed states, basic sustainability. Because over-population lies at the core of each. That’s before we get to housing affordability, groaning infrastructure, and the ballooning foreign debt that any effective responses must incur.

Australia.TO - The Pending Collapse Of The U.S.A.

We can continue to live our daily lives watching TV and the advertisements that lull us into a false sense of security that everything is well, or we can start making provisions to deal with the calamity that lies ahead. We can provision staples, use alternative energy sources to heat our homes or assist us in heating them, and we can start talking with each other and get to know the neighbor that lives across the street that you have never talked to.

I’m really not an alarmist, but I see the merit of what so many scientists are predicting. Not only will Peak Oil stop economic growth, but climate change according to a UN report will bring desertification to 70% of the planet by 2025. Maybe petroleum peaking out is in reality what may save our planet. Maybe a return to simpler ways to live and work will stop the CO2 emissions, but I don’t think so. Third world countries are surpassing the industrialized countries in carbon emissions by burning coal.

TVNZ - PM warms to climate change talks

He once said there was a 5% chance he would go to a meeting of world leaders striving to save the planet, now John Key has warmed to the idea.

The Prime Minister says it would have sent the wrong signal by staying away from climate change talks starting next week in Denmark.

National Business Review NZ - Climate change skeptic seizes control of Australian opposition

The Australian Liberal party has a new leader with Tony Abbott ousting Malcolm Turnball in a ballot this morning by one vote.

The Australian - Rudd signals start of the Abbott attack

The Prime Minister has also accused Mr Abbott of espousing "magic pudding politics" by claiming Australia could tackle climate change without the market-based solution of putting a price on carbon.

The Australian - Higgins hopeful in climate-change push

LIBERAL Party anxiety over Saturday's by-elections was on clear display in the nominally safe seat of Higgins yesterday, with Peter Costello returning to familiar hustings and local candidate Kelly O'Dwyer issuing a last-minute mail-out to voters to assert her views on climate change.
After a tumultuous time in Canberra, which Mr Costello described as a "tough week", the Liberals are facing a dramatically altered political landscape and genuine threat from the Greens in Higgins, in Melbourne's inner east, and Bradfield on Sydney's north shore.

Pollster Malcolm Mackerras is tipping the Greens to take Higgins, a seat comfortably held by the Liberals since the electorate's 1949 inception and won by Mr Costello in 2007 by 7 per cent, and for Bradfield to be decided by preferences.

Greens leader Bob Brown made a sweep through the two electorates yesterday. In both seats, the Labor Party has declined to run and the Liberal candidates are determined to campaign on local issues and distance themselves from the goings-on in Canberra.

ABC - Top climate scientist hopes Copenhagen fails

The scientist who convinced the world that global warming was a looming danger says the planet will be better off if next week's Copenhagen climate change summit ends in collapse.

James Hansen, considered the most distinguished climate scientist, says any agreement to emerge from the meeting will be so flawed that it would be better to start again from scratch.

The Australian - Economy to ride a second wave of China stimulation

THE Australian economy is set for another free kick as the Chinese government is expected to sign off on a second stimulus package after its annual Central Economic Work Conference to be held in Beijing at the weekend.