The big switch
By Bruce Key, member of Wodonga Albury Toward Climate Health (WATCH) Saul Griffith is an Australian inventor, entrepreneur, engineer and author of a number of books aimed at reducing emissions so that the earth remains liveable. His most recent book is The Big Switch which describes the wonderful assets that Australia possesses and how to use …
Hydrogen, panacea or pitfall?
By Alan Hewett As we move, albeit tardily, towards a clean energy future, hydrogen has been hailed as a major solution to reducing global emissions, halting climate change and creating employment. What is hydrogen exactly? Well, it is an invisible, colourless and odourless gas that burns cleanly and is the most abundant element in the …
Innovate to Regenerate
By Kirsten Coates What would Australia look like by 2030 if we simply listened to the needs of its people? Imagine what a high-speed rail network connecting regional areas and cities would look like! Imagine what large scale wind, solar, battery and hydrogen projects would do for hundreds of thousands of employees and imagine the …
Driving less to reduce carbon emissions
By James Sloan Whatever “net zero” carbon emissions really means and whether we can achieve it and keep global warming to 1.5° by 2050, depends to a large extent on individuals in wealthy countries like Australia making sacrifices to the way we live. Threatened by global warming, most of us agree on the importance of …
Decarbonising our transport
By David Coleman For Albury to play its part in combatting climate change, supporting clean and green transport throughout the community offers the best ‘bang for buck’ actions Council can take. Everyone’s health and prosperity will improve enormously if we slash the harm transport causes. The transport sector contributes 21% of New South Wales greenhouse …
Generating electricity
By Bruce Key, member of Wodonga Albury Towards Climate Health (WATCH) It is common to hear wind turbines described as blots on the landscape. In addition, solar farms are often criticised for taking up large areas of agricultural land, implying that the land is taken out of production. These criticisms have some validity, but to …
Live lightly and save money
By Bruce Key, member of Wodonga Albury Toward Climate Health (WATCH) For some people, the phrase living lightly implies a spartan existence and additional costs. This need not be so. Take for instance the obvious example of solar panels. The payback period is only a few years and thereafter you save money on your electricity …
Why We Don’t Need Electric Cars but Need Less Cars
By James G Sloan Some people think electric cars are a partial answer to climate change. They are not. We need fewer cars not different cars. Air quality is not the only problem. Moving to all-electric cars, to the extent they replace existing petrol cars, is positive but inadequate. Our urban road system will have …
When less is much, much more
By Chris McGorlick These holidays I had the great pleasure of baby-sitting 8 baby quails for a week. Tiny, fluffy and adorable, they would spend their days scrambling over each other, scratching, exploring or huddling together for warmth. Remove one from the group, however, and instantly they would start screeching distress. Clearly, they relied on …
The value of a garden
By David Thurley Every year in late January or early February Albury will experience a number of days where the temperature is in the high 30s or the low 40s and we are challenged to keep ourselves and our pets cool. What do we do? The first thing we do is reach for the switch …
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About Living Lightly …
Living Lightly is a column in the Border Mail newspaper on Wednesdays featuring local stories about sustainable living.
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