Act Now

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I will start this off with a positive and congratulate the Sydney City Council on the trialing the following measure.

“Motorcycle and scooter riders will be able to park for free in Sydney's CBD and the inner suburbs under a Sydney City Council trial program.Motorcyclists will still be expected to park in designated areas and comply with any time restrictions. The 12-month trial also includes new anchor points and locking rails for motorcycles in untimed parking areas.The council is also trialing on-street charging points for electric scooters.”

A true step forward in dealing with carbon emissions in a proactive manner.

However, this alone is not enough, we need to go ahead with a congestion tax, or the best solution is to close the city for all traffic bar public transportation between the hours of 7.00am and 7.00pm.

Politicians are all presenting ideas piecemeal which will not work, what they need is to present a package that works. Of course this requires an upgrade of out public transportation in Sydney instead of throwing money into systems that are failures, but as long as we don’t have a productivity link to these politicians they get as much as failures as they would if they succeeded.

That will also allow for more bicycle couriers in the city, electric vehicle transportation(taxis or PublicRapidTransport) in the city, the use of pushbikes, electric scooters, even roller blades for getting around the city by those who are employed there or there for shopping.
This will cause a huge reduction in emissions in the city, and have the additional benefit of improving the fitness of many working there.

If city building owners were encouraged to introduce alternate measures such as solar panels etc, they could produce a large percentage of their electricity requirements this way and by intelligent use of area around surface railway lines solar farming could be instigated in conjunction with converting trains to generate their power through installing solar panels.

This is a simple solution, although one with initial significant upfront costs, before savings would be seen. If this measure was aimed at saving money alone, then change may never occur. Of course though, this is only one part of the equation, the saving in the production of fossil fueled electricity will be significant, and still we have not needed a Emissions Trading Scheme which is based on a European model.

In order to encourage these measures the Federal Government will need to come to the party and develop a scheme to assist with the conversion to solar power and provide a loan which can be recovered in a way that will make it an attractive prospect to actually make the conversion with these terms. This is not looking after the rich, this is being proactive in developing ways to lower emissions.

Since I started this campaign, I have seen a number of politicians that have been mooting parts of my proposal, which although encouraging, is frustrating that they do not see the big picture.

Now is not the time to approach this little by little though, it will achieve very little and lose all momentum, we need an all encompassing plan to reduce emissions and provide cost savings to Australians.

To assist people getting into massive debt the Government implemented the First Home Owners Scheme. What we need now is a similar measure aimed at helping households convert to Alternative Energy, the difference here is the Government can either recover the monies through an agreed to figure through personal tax over ‘x’ years or recover the debt from the sale of the home, whichever occurs first.

Another area I was pleased to hear being looked at was the conversion of schools to solar, this seemed to need at least one school converting through their own funding, then the Government seemed to be attracted to the idea. The best part of this idea is during school holidays the schools can actually produce income through on selling of the energy produced by them back to the grid.

Then we have street lighting, telephone boxes, sports oval lighting Government buildings all of which can be converted to alternative energy, and as icing on the cake, many farmers that cannot make a go of their farms due to drought etc, could become Solar or wind farms selling on to the grids or just leasing the land to grid providers to install their own wind or solar farms, a win - win for these farmers, who will not need to sell their farms or require government help.

So what are the drawbacks, the initial cost of course is a drawback, this is where the Government needs to show the way and provide a scheme to help all. The one thing they must not do is limit it to socio-economic groups, instead make the repayment terms match the financial circumstances of people. This will ensure we all convert and this is a must to ensure a national action plan that will show the world Australia is able to address the hard issues as well as the easy.

So why isn’t it being considered well firstly ‘a politician is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain.’ Therefore they get scared when the clouds start building, they may need to tighten their belts in order to fund these conversions.

Secondly, they are so tunnel visioned and focused at introducing an Emission Trading Scheme, that they cannot see that there is a not only a better way, but a way that contributes to all levels of Australia society.

What we must do is get the message out that there is a solution to a number of current issues, ie. Climate change, emission levels, hard financial times, high taxation.And we expect politicians to do what is right for Australians, rather than their own aspirations or what other world leaders are doing.