FOR a man who has spent almost his entire adult life engaged by the politics of war and international affairs, Gwynne Dyer presents a most unlikely greenie.

Thus far, environmental debate has served to stereotype environmentalists as bicycle-riding vegans or hybrid-driving executives with a penchant for locally produced organic produce and solar electricity.

But while Dyer is passionate about the need for us to clean up our act, don’t expect to see his pointy beard and weathered face beneath a “Save the Planet” placard anytime soon.

Read my interview with Climate Wars author Gwynne Dyer.

TRIED a a couple of those new carbon-neutral beers recently and have to say, rather liked it. This, however, isn’t saying much as when it comes to beer - if it’s got bubbles and hops in it, I’ll drink it.

But it did cause me to conclude that while beer produced more responsibly is good, it’s better to have a an environmentally-friendlier beer company, than just green beer.

GREENPEACE’S latest attempt to lobby the Government over its Emissions Trading Scheme.

CARDBOARD coffins and native trees as gravestones. Death - it appears - is going green.

YOU can’t turn on your solar powered TV or flick through a magazine (recycled paper and soy-based ink) without one advertiser or another telling us what’s green about their products.

So here’s a quick guide - adapted from a previous version I put together - to help you sort the green from the greenwash.

# Don’t be fooled by own-brand green logos. Only trust those from independent organisations. Environmental Choice Australia is one. NZ’s Green Tick is another.
# Beware of science waffle. The environment is a complex issue but products should clearly state why it’s a green option.
# Diversionary tactics are common. A label might brag about one aspect of the product, but what about the rest of it?
# Remember words like ``green’’, ``eco’’, ``natural’’, ``clean’’ and “organic’’ are worthless unless they are backed up.
# Images of trees, oceans or mums running through green paddocks on packaging don’t mean anything.
# Some companies will offer to “offset’’ carbon in exchange for a purchase, which is great. But it is better to be sustainable in the first place.
# Recyclable is good. Made from recycled material is better.
# The greenest shopping option is often to resist the marketing completely and make no purchase at all. 

NEWS out that points to a future for electric vehicles in Australia. A power company and an investor have struck a $1 billion deal to provide hundreds of thousands of recharge points in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.

SO the Federal Government has started to spend its $3.1 billion wad of cash to buy back water allocations across the Murray-Darling basin and already attempts are being made to brand the exercise as a waste of taxpayers money.

The ABC’s Four Corners programme though revealed it to be something much braver than an exercise in grabbing water.

The Murray-Darling river system - and the irrigators who made millions from its water with licences literally given away by previous Governments - is an embarrassing mess. The ABC show revealed a veritable dog’s dinner of unsustainability. In one of the driest continents on earth, it enabled Australia to grow, among other things, cotton - one of the thirstiest crops of all.

What the Government is doing - in my view - is a brave attempt to right some past wrongs. Hindsight is a wonderful thing but it can also deliver some painful truths.

This should not be seen as an exercise in buying back water. It’s an attempt to reclaim something for nature, biodiversity and the environment which should never have been taken in the first place.

LINE up your anti-leftist arguments, your accusations of utopian idealism, analogies of communist repression and ready your copy of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. Prepare to throw.

Because there are some very sticky dilemas emerging out there in the world of rising GDPs, fiscal policies and economist’s graphs displaying strong year-on-year growth.

Like a hit squad of diabetic-destined kids in a fast food store, we’ve continued to consume and expand on the presumption that there’s an infinite supply of burgers, chips, milk shakes, fizzy drinks and ice-cream.

Now some are making strong arguments that it’s time for a complete rethink on global economic policy - if you like, a thorough refurb of the fast food outlet - that no longer has growth (or to continue the analogy, a vomitous sensation in the stomach) as the yardstick for success.

IS green the new gold?

In the past, when financial sectors have started to go weak at the knees, investors have turned to a bit of bullion for some financial security. But it looks like green - or more specifically any company that tackles climate change as part of their business - could be the new fall back commodity.

According to HSBC, these companies registered US$300 billion in revenue last year. In the wake of all the financial doom and gloom, one firm in the UK that develops carbon emission reduction projects in developing economies announced pretax profits of £194m.

A poll commissioned by the Climate Institute here in Australia backed up this sentiment, finding that more than half of people wanted their superannuation investors to put their money in green measures.

The UN says the crisis will see countries ramp up their environmental commitments, rather than the opposite - as some commentators have previously predicted. Early evidence of this coming from the UK Government.

AUTUMN temperatures in the Arctic are at a record 5C above normal, according to the Arctic Report Card 2008.

The report, which also records the continued reduction in sea-ice blamed for the rising air temperatures, says 2007 was the warmest on record for the polar region, “continuing a general, Arctic-wide warming trend that began in the mid-1960s”.

This graph from the Arctic Report Card charts the rising temperatures.

CLIMATE Change Minister Penny Wong has re-iterated that the current crisis in financial markets should not delay Australia from implementing a carbon trading scheme.

Here are some excerpts from her speech to the London School of Economics. For those interested, a podcast should be available soon.

These events have given rise to speculation in some quarters that now may not be the best time to try and conclude an international agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The Australian Government’s view is that the risks of delaying remain greater than the risks of acting on climate change. It is precisely because of concern about our future economic prosperity that we must address climate change now. There will never be an easy time to make the transition to a low-carbon economy.

But we know the longer we delay, the higher the costs. And delay inhibits our capacity to grasp the substantial opportunities that will come from making this transition.

ONE trillion dollars or so (what’s half a trillion between friends?) so far lost in the credit crisis might sound like a lot but one study commissioned by the European Union suggests we are losing more than that every year through ecological destruction.

Lead author Pavan Sukhdev, a Deutsche Bank economist, says:

So whereas Wall Street by various calculations has to date lost, within the financial sector, $1-$1.5 trillion (US), the reality is that at today’s rate we are losing natural capital at least between $2-$5 trillion every year.

British columnist George Monbiot had this to say:

The financial crisis for which we must now pay so heavily prefigures the real collapse, when humanity bumps against its ecological limits.

A NEW study from scientists at Queensland’s James Cook University may have thrown a spanner into hopes that replacing beef with roo meat might help to cut Australia’s greenhouse emissions.

Because Euan Ritchie and Elizabeth Bolitho predict a temperature rise in the north of Australia of just half a degree will be enough to impact their habitats and, in turn, shrink the range that kangaroos currently cover. This, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Working Group Two report into Australia, is within the range of warming already experienced since 1950. A two degree rise will shrink their range by half.

The authors say:

Our study provides evidence that climate change has the capacity to cuase large-scale range contractions and the possible extinction of one macropodid (kangaroo) species.

WHEN you’re sitting on a huge lump of cash there’s always the chance that - in a moment of weakness or excited anticipation - you’ll just conclude “Oh X$%#@ - let’s just spend it’’.

So that’s what Kevin Rudd did yesterday in an attempt to stave off a recession and get people spending money and that’s probably what the majority will do when they get the cash. Cue a scramble for the sales catalogues.

Policy makers have called it an “economic stimulus package” but you could also call it an “emissions stimulus package” such will be the rush to consume products and services produced - in the great majority of cases - unsustainably.

As Professor Andrew Griffiths points out, climate change won’t go away, but the credit crisis will.

NOW prepare yourself because this will shock you to the core, but a lobby group including individuals from the resources and coal industry are asking Queensland Premier Anna Bligh to tell Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to dump plans for an emissions trading scheme.

The Queensland-based Carbon Sense Coalition is a group made up of lots of mining and resources consultants, a drilling engineer, an “internet browser” from California, an ex science teacher who “actually taught biology, chemistry, geology and physics” and an emeritus chairman of the Australian Mining Hall of Fame.

They put forward their manifesto on their website, linked here for your amusement. Here’s a bit of it.

We believe carbon dioxide plays a wholly beneficial role in our atmosphere. It is NOT a pollutant, nor does it drive global warming.

So it appears the group has a better understanding of the role of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than thousands of internationally-recognised climate scientists. Let’s hope Anna and Kevin see sense and drop the Garnaut Report and the IPCC and instead turn to the Carbon Nonsense Coalition.

Apologies for the sarcasm, but that’s what a week of leave does to you. I’ll be better tomorrow.