Big Brother is sending you email

Following on from my participation in the Great Australian Internet Blackout, I received a charming letter from Senator Stephen Conroy. OK, it's just a form letter, and he already had my email address from the protest letter I wrote to him. I just wanted to sound important.

Senator Conroy's pitch was simple: to defend the proposed mandatory internet filter. Really, it's the same old claptrap, with plenty of mentions of the children to disguise the hypocrisy. It also fails to address the same questions that we've been raising for years.

Click here to read the whole thing (PDF document, 600kB).

published article: "Peak Oil: Under The Radar"

This article was published in the 2010 issue of Projections magazine, conceived and compiled by Ewan Scott and Nick Petch. Many thanks to Ewan for his consideration, and to Cecilie Corless for recommending me.

Peak Oil: Under The Radar

While climate change has been in our consciousness for over a decade, another pressing issue remains largely untouched by the mainstream: peak oil.

In 1956, a Shell geophysicist called Marion King Hubbert presented a shocking revelation about the state of oil production in the United States. According to Hubbert's figures, oil production in the lower 48 states would peak within 15 years. His colleagues spent 14 of those 15 years dismissing his theory, until U.S. oil production did indeed peak right on cue, in 1970. Production levels have been in decline ever since.

Adelaide Greenies calendar has moved

The Adelaide Greenies calendar has moved to a permanent home on Google Sites:

http://sites.google.com/site/adelaidegreeniescalendar

As a mild inconvenience, the addresses of the calendar subscriptions have changed. The old addresses will be phased out at the end of February, but the new addresses are available right now. See the How To Subscribe page for more information. The links in the sidebar of this blog have already been updated.
I hope people are finding this useful. It's certainly helping me keep track of what's happening. As ever, all feedback is welcome.

Oh, and if you know of any events that you think might belong on the Adelaide Greenies calendar, there is a specific email address as well:

adelaidegreenies [at] gmail [dot] com

The Great Australian Internet Blackout

This blog is supporting The Great Australian Internet Blackout.

From the link: "The Great Australian Internet Blackout is a combined online and offline demonstration against imposed online censorship. We’re collaborating with Electronic Frontiers Australia to make sure every Australian knows why this draconian policy is unacceptable."

This blog will be in a black theme throughout the protest, until 29 January 2010.

HSA delay

Happy New Year to you all. This has been a busy time for me, but hopefully, things will be calming down over the next couple of weeks.

As some people know from meeting me in real life, I have taken a course to become a Home Sustainability Assessor, under the Australian government's Green Loans programme to help householders become more energy- and water-efficient. The process of becoming a HSA has taken longer than I expected, not least of which due to the fact that the police records office, despite my explicit forwarding instructions, sent the certificate of my police check to my home address while I was on holidays. However, with that minor setback behind me, I was set to register with ABSA and get started.

On Friday afternoon, I got a troubling email from Alison Carmichael, CEO of ABSA, some of which I will republish here: