Urban NRM News will be taking a festive season break and will be back in your inbox/reader in January. Thank-you for your support and best wishes to you and yours for the festive season and the new year.
Bruce Boyes
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The Australian Government has released the White Paper Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme: Australia’s Low Pollution Future. The paper outlines the final design of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme and the medium-term, target range for reducing carbon pollution. This paper follows from the Green Paper, released in July 2008, which canvassed options on the design on the scheme. It takes into account the outcomes of a broad consultation and input from more than one thousand submissions.
Join in Earth Hour at 8:30pm Saturday March 28 2009!
In 2007, 2.2 million people took part in the world’s first Earth Hour in Sydney Australia. Just one year later, 50 million people in 370 cities and towns, in more than 35 countries worldwide switched off their lights for Earth Hour.
Earth Hour 2009 aims to reach more than one billion people in 1000 cities around the world, inviting communities, business and governments to switch off lights for one hour at 8:30pm on Saturday March 28 and sending a powerful global message that we care enough about climate change to take action.
Brown Power Heritage takes a humorous look at the future of coal-fired power.
By signing up to the Harvard University Clean Energy Project, you can contribute your computer’s idle time to assist vital renewable energy research.
The Clean Energy Project uses computational chemistry and the willingness of people to help look for the best molecules possible for organic photovoltaics to provide inexpensive solar cells, polymers for the membranes used in fuel cells for electricity generation, and how best to assemble the molecules to make those devices. By helping Harvard University search combinatorially among thousands of potential systems, you can contribute to this effort.
When idle, your computer will request data on the project from the project’s server. It will then perform computations on this data, send the results back to the server, and ask the server for a new piece of work. Each computation that your computer performs provides scientists with critical information that accelerates the pace of research!
The Clean Energy Project is one of the projects you can assist with on the World Community Grid.
The National Urban Water Governance Program at Monash University, in collaboration with the International WaterCentre is hosting a series of 2-day workshops in Feb 2009 focused on Creating Water Sensitive Cities in Australia. Participants will hear from leading water, climate and social scientists, urban designers and industry practitioners about the water related challenges and opportunities currently facing our cities. They will also have the opportunity to share their views and collaborate with other professionals in creating the vision and strategy for water sensitive futures in Australia. Outcomes from the workshops will be presented to the National Water Commission and other government officials in the form of detailed recommendations for local and national urban water policy development and implementation. For more information and to register, go to www.urbanwatergovernance.com
The WaterRight Gardens web tool, funded by the National Water Commission through the Raising National Water Standards Program, will help households apply just the right amount of water for their individual garden needs and local conditions.
This online resource can tell Sydney residents how often and how much to water, as well as when to stop watering because of rainfall or seasonal weather changes. It includes postcode-specific advice and popular plants species, and can determine the specific watering needs for different parts of their garden, depending on its plants and soil, wind and shade conditions. It shows residents how to maintain a healthy garden whilst avoiding wasteful and unnecessary watering.
The website can also be used to help design water efficient gardens, thanks to an informative series of fact sheets and guidelines. Links to the Sydney Water Plant Selector Tool will allow people to make plant choices best suited to local Sydney conditions.
Read the media release or access the web tool.
The United Nations Climate Change Conference is taking place in Poznań, Poland right now. Poznan can’t be “just another meeting.” Let climate decision makers know that the world is watching what happens. Join people from around the world and submit photos featuring your eyes. Poznan must result in a commitment to a fair and ambitious climate deal at next year’s UN climate talks in Copenhagen.