Green Up Moggill

Philip Machanick, Greens candidate, Moggill

Transition Towns Kenmore Candidates’ Debate

18 March 2008

I was pleasantly surprised last year when I heard that the Transition Towns idea had made it to Kenmore. We cannot wait for governments to act in a time of crisis, a time that requires a major transformation.

Much of the failure of governments to act on the need for transformation is a failure of imagination. Someone needs to lead the way by showing what can be done, even if on a smaller scale than a government-driven transformation.

Here I would like to quote Margaret Mead:

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

How major a transformation are we facing? The changes we will need to make over the next years and decades are as big as the changes since the nineteenth century, with its gas lit streets travelled by horse and buggy. The twentieth century changed all that with the development of commercial air travel and the car, with cheap fossil fuels driving not only transport but also the apparently marvelous clean form of energy, electricity.

But that era is fast drawing to a close, and we must be ready for a new era, or we will be left behind as surely as those who believed the horse and buggy was the way of the future in 1909.

This urgency is caused by a failure of imagination that has slowed the pace of change, until we are faced with an increasingly urgent task of coping with carbon emissions reductions, a task on which we are way behind.

Two key issues are converging to drive change rapidly: peak oil and climate change. 30 years after Henry Ford first mass-produced his Model-Ts, horses were still in wide use. That is the natural pace of large-scale change, and we must face up to the fact that this time, because we have been so slow to get started, it will have to be faster.

If we do not try to get ahead of the worldwide current of change, we will be swept away by it. Our fossil-fuel dependent economy will collapse; our coal exports increasingly falling out of favour.

The choice we are facing is as stark as it is real. Get rolled over, or get into the lead.

Let’s see how change plays out close to home as well as for the state as a whole.

Climate change threatens food supply; we know the general trend, but cannot predict precise changes in weather patterns. It is therefore crazy to destroy prime farmland with projects like the Traveston Crossing dam, and coal mines out to the west of us in Felton and the Darling Downs – even more so when the future demand for coal is becoming uncertain. Food supply is also threatened by high energy costs; farmers should be included in energy production through solar and wind farms on unproductive land, and second-generation biofuels production, that does not compete with food supply.

Travel will unavoidably become more expensive, especially with high-emissions technologies. There are two remedies for that in and near cities: improved electrified public transport to reduce the need to drive cars, and better placement of facilities and services to reduce the need to travel. Once you have everyone in electrified public transport, you can clean up the electricity supply. For Brisbane, the Greens propose a light rail system that would bring the city closer to the outer suburbs. We also propose two new solar thermal power plants for the state, as a first step to clean base-load power. Other obvious steps, back in Moggill, include local health facilities and more schools in the outer suburbs.

In an era of expensive energy, we may just score the advantage of rediscovering the concept of community, a neighbourhood where your kids go to school, you go to the doctor, you spend your leisure hours, you get to know your neighbours and the elderly need not be lonely.

What’s more, if we no longer had pure dormitory suburbs – and here I think of the ex-pineapple farms in Moggill – many more of us would work close to home. How good would that be?

In this new world, building roads like the Kenmore Bypass no longer makes sense: we will get around by public transport, and use our cars for leisure. How many people, in any case, like to drive their car in heavy traffic?

Another big source of traffic – and of unacceptable danger to children – is travel to and from school. The dangers of school drop-off zones is one of the most frequent complaints I hear. A comprehensive school bus system would not only take cars off the roads, but make our children a lot safer.

Back to health. There are many good arguments for large tertiary hospitals. You can’t build a team of top specialists unless they have enough cases to keep in practice. On the other hand, the increasing cost of moving people means that small local hospitals make sense. These smaller hospitals would cover emergencies and routine cases, with the big tertiary hospitals covering the more difficult cases. So we propose a small local hospital be built somewhere in this electorate.

The state Labor government has the balance wrong: they are moving the Royal Children’s Hospital to a smaller site, and have no plan for small local hospitals.

For the longer-term, we propose building on our world-class research to develop the clean energy technologies of the future that the rest of the world desperately wants. I’ve worked in top universities and research labs. The talent we have here is right up there. Why then do we allow great innovations in solar technologies to slip out of our grasp, to be commercialized in the US or China? Queensland is the sunshine state and, the state government tells is, the smart state. Why not put these two together and become the smart sunshine state?

One of the things you so often hear is that doing the right thing by the environment is all very well, but where do we find the money?

I have some ideas on that. To fund our little local hospital, let’s draw a line through the destruction of the Royal Children’s Hospital. We could build a pretty good local hospital for a fraction of the $2-billion saved.

To fund a transition to clean energy and to fund the great clean energy research we know we can do right here in Queensland, in our great universities, in the CSIRO right here in our own electorate, I’m eyeing an even bigger chunk of misallocated money. The state government is planning on spending over $30-billion on doubling our capacity to export coal by 2015. How crazy is that? Haven’t they heard there’s a worldwide movement to cap carbon emissions?

Let’s grab back as much as we can of the money that’s being allocated to crazy projects, projects based on a nineteenth century mindset, and use that money to build the economy of the future with real green jobs, jobs in delivering safe, clean, efficient public transport, energy-efficient homes, clean energy and communities we can all be proud to live in.

We don’t need the Kenmore Bypass. We don’t need the Traveston Crossing Dam. We don’t need to redouble our efforts to export coal. We do need to gear our economy, our lifestyle, our way of doing business for the future.

The smart sunshine state. That’s what the Greens stand for.

It is quite bizarre that you can get a TransLink ticket from Nambour to the city, but not from Karana Downs.

Just in case it’s not obvious how bizarre this is, here is a map showing how far Nambour out is:

View Larger Map

And here’s a map to the same scale showing how far out Karana Downs is:

View Larger Map

The city and state governments have seriously dropped the ball on this one.

The Greens plan for Karana Downs is to extend the city Buz network to the area, with connection to the existing 444 service that currently goes out towards Moggill. In the longer term, once light rail is in place, we will provide a feeder service to light rail.

Karana Downs may be a relatively recent addition to Brisbane, but the public transport network is ultimately a state responsibililty and includes many cities and towns that are not part of Brisbane. How hard can it be to get this right?

Another critical area of need in Karana Downs is a High School, which has long been talked about, but nothing has happened. A high school will relieve considerable pressure on the roads as well as building the local community.

The following survey arises out of many opinions I’ve heard while talking to people. There’s a limit to how many people I can talk to, so please let me know by taking the survey what you think.

You can also email me if you want to talk further.

The survey is anonymous with some checks to prevent duplicate submissions.

As always, I value community opinion.

Thanks for all the responses. Watch this space for follow-ups

Why is the Kenmore bypass such a divisive issue in Moggill? Why is finding your way around such a problem for so many people?

We can divide the problem into four parts:

• problems with Moggill Road
• too many people having to travel
• too much of the travel in the same direction
• no alternatives

But first, I’d like to explain why I became involved in the issue.

We are facing an era of great change. Oil prices have only tumbled from record highs because of an economic meltdown evoking memories of 1929. Dealing with climate change will force us reduce emissions. Both forces point to reduced role for the private car. Of course, some people will still have to use cars by the nature of their work, but many others in the new energy economy will mainly use cars for recreation, and use bicycles or public transport for routine travel.

Even without these changes, though, there are good reasons to look at alternatives to building a road as a way of solving congestion. In cities like LA, where building roads was the only solution under consideration, the result is a city full of freeways and traffic gridlock. In cities such as London, Paris, Seoul and Bogota where the approach was to provide alternatives to cars, most people don’t drive, and do not miss sitting in traffic.

Let’s now go on to more detail of the problems and how I propose we tackle the problem.

Problems with Moggill Road

Aside the problem of heavy traffic, Moggill Road has patches that are poorly designed and unsuited to their purpose. A few examples:

• dangerous crossings
• hazardous school drop-off zones such as at Our Lady of the Rosary School
• the poorly designed roundabout at Kenmore State School

It is questionable whether reducing traffic alone would fix these problems; some may even be worse if it were possible to travel faster.

So these problems need to be fixed whether a bypass is put in or not. Unfortunately the bypass appears to be used as an excuse for inaction.

Too many people travelling

Too many people having to be travel can be addressed by putting more facilities and services into the outer suburbs. Kenmore High School is bursting at the seams, with many students from the outer suburbs. If we put in a new high school in Bellbowrie, we would not only cut a lot of traffic, but help build the community. If you have a medical emergency in the outer suburbs, where do you go? You have no options that do not require a long trip. A 24/7 emergency centre that could be upgraded to a full hospital would solve that problem. Add in services and entertainment, and the need for travel would be greatly reduced.

Much of the problem arises from new houses that were put in at Moggill without requiring that the developer include local services. The notion that you can build a pure dormitory suburb in an era of climate change and declining oil supply is crazy.

Much of the demand for more roads therefore arises from poor planning, a problem that must be addressed whether a new road is built or not.

Too much of the travel in the same direction

Because of the shortage of services in the outer suburbs and the poor state of public transport, much of the travel through Moggill is in the same direction. Inevitably, many residents of the outer suburbs who have children head towards Kenmore because that end of the electorate is where most of the schools are. Most residents head in towards the city for work. Someone I met in Bellbowrie leaves home at 6am to be in time to find parking in Taringa, the nearest park and ride train station from the Moggill side of the river.

No alternatives

Public transport in Moggill is abysmal. I’ve had students as close in as Kenmore telling me it takes them an hour to get to Uni by bus. That’s not an alternative, that’s punishment. The big problem with buses on Moggill Road is that they are stuck in the same traffic as the cars. There also is no option to catch the train – unless you are willing to drive in to Taringa or Toowong to find parking.

The problem of no alternatives can be addressed in four ways:

• light rail – the Greens light rail plan will take traffic to the city off the roads, freeing them up for people with no option but to use a car
• a river crossing to the Ipswich line – the exact alignment and nature of the bridge needs further investigation, but giving residents of the outer suburbs the option of taking the train in to the city will also take cars off the roads
• safe bike paths – you wouldn’t think that more bikes than cars have been sold in Australia for the last 9 years, the way infrastructure planning all centres on cars. While there are some excellent bike ways, it is not safe to ride your bike on the roads. We must fix that
• comprehensive school bus system – a country as poor in public transport as the United States has a comprehensive school bus system. School children are picked up reliably, transported safely and dropped off safely at school. The existing city bus system is not adequate; there have been too many stories of children being left at the side of the road.

Why are so many people upset?

Why are some people so upset about the proposed bypass? Because it’s not a little road, suited to a residential suburb. It’s part of a plan to construct a large freeway, many times the length of the initial plan, that will not only cut the suburb in half, but turn it into a noisy urban environment.

Here’s a picture extracted from the Department of Main Roads description of the Moggill Pocket Arterial Road/Moggill-Warrego Highway Connection.

The little red piece on the right is the Kenmore bypass; the blue part on the left is the longer-term plan. The actual map of the complete route is far too big to display on any meaningful scale on a web page. This road will start from the Centenary Highway at Fig Tree Pocket and end at the Warrego Highway at North Tivoli, cutting through Kenmore, Pullenvale, Anstead and Karalee.

Won’t the Kenmore Bypass solve the problem?

So, won’t this new road (the little bit that’s already planned, the Kenmore bypass), solve all these problems? If history is a guide, no. There is a great highway down to the Gold Coast. Developers spotted the easy commute to Brisbane, and put in new housing. That great “easy commute” highway is now a parking lot at busy times.

Putting in this new road will also not address the lack of community development of the outer suburbs, or the over-crowding of Kenmore High School. It will also not address the dangerous school drop-off zones and other issues identified as problems with the road. These things need to be fixed anyway, bypass or not.

It also won’t address the problem of dependence on cars.

Of course some people do need to use their cars, a need that doesn’t go away even in cities with great public transport. But if we can reduce traffic by at least as much as in the school holidays, there is no need for a bypass. And good planning can take even more cars than that off the roads.

What’s more, this is the wrong time to be planning for an increase in use of cars. Oil supply is starting to look tenuous. Climate change not only demands that we use cars far less but that energy will become more expensive.

What will solve the problem?

We would be much better off spending the money that would go towards the Kenmore Bypass and the other roads infrastructure around Brisbane that collectively adds up to many billions of dollars on better public transport, a cross-river connection to the Ipswich line, school buses and safe bike paths.

Of these solutions, school buses could be brought in fastest, and would go a long way towards reducing the dangers of school drop-off zones. As a guide to how soon a crossing to the Ipswich line could be put in, the Green Bridge (now Eleanor Schonell Bridge) at the University of Queensland, carrying buses, bicycles and pedestrians, was completed in six months. Light rail would take longer, but the quicker measures would considerably ease congestion. Constructing a new school and adding local services and entertainment would be an ongoing project. Completion of the Kenmore Bypass, by contrast, would take at least four years, during which time none of the other problems would be solved – and some would still not be solved once it was built.

So not only is the Kenmore Bypass a poor fit to the times, a poor fit to the community and unlikely to solve the problem in the long term, but other solutions could be put in place faster.

That’s why the Greens say No to the Kenmore Bypass

Watch this space for brief reviews of science topics and pointers to places where you can find out more.

If the World is Warming, How can we have very cold weather?
Global warming refers to the long-term world-wide average. Redistribution of energy from one part of the planet to another may make some areas warmer and others cooler. For example, in the northern hemisphere 2009-2010 winter, some areas experienced extreme cold. However, if you look at the distribution of northern hemisphere temperatures, what happened was that the Arctic warmed considerably. Look at the image: the Arctic region shows strong warming, with Greenland considerably warmer than usual (more accurately, less chilly), yet Northern Europe and North America are large local areas of cooling. Possibly this effect caused cold air to move south, but in any case, the cooler overall northern hemisphere in the most inhabited regions has hit the news, a slightly misleading picture when you look at the whole map.

Dead Zones
A dead zone is part of the ocean where oxygen levels are too low (less than 2 parts per million) to support life, or anoxic. Here is a site at Montana State University that provides some information. For more, see NASA’s information on dead zones. Algal blooms can make part of an ocean anoxic. In an extreme case, about 251-million years ago, the oceans became widely anoxic, as part of a mass extinction event at the boundary between the Permian and Triassic though probably that event had different causes.

Life In Your Back Yard
Want to find out if there are endangered species or unwanted alien invaders somewhere, or just check out who or what your wild neighbours are? The federal environment department has a great tool for finding these things out. Click the “Interactive Map“ link, find your area of interest on the map, click Report and use the mouse to drag out a rectangle on the map.

How Green is the electric car?
Electric cars – in the early days of motoring, a mainstream option – are making a comeback, with variations such as hybrids and plug-in hybrids. But how green are they really? Here’s an article with more detail. Check out Tesla’s first sedan. A UK company, Riversimple, has some interesting ideas on how to build an ultra-efficient car using a hydrogen fuel cell. I remain unconvinced of the hydrogen economy because hydrogen takes a lot of energy to produce, but Riversimple has some interesting ideas, like leasing the cars rather than selling them as a way of avoiding the false economy of planned obsolescence.

Smart Grid
Something that will be talked about increasingly is managing energy use more intelligently not only to be more efficient but to fit swings in demand to swings in supply better, as a remedy for the intermittency of some modes of renewable energy. Look out for articles about the smart grid such as this one.

Electric Vehicles
Now that the Obama administration is talking up clean energy, there’s been an explosion of interest in electric vehicles, so much so that rather than summarize articles, I’ll list pointers to them here as I encounter them:

• Willie D. Jones. New Electric Power Train Promises 160-km All-Electric Range—on a Bus! IEEE Spectrum, April 2009

Biochar
Biochar is the idea of burning carbon-containing materials in low oxygen (pyrolysis), resulting in charcoal that can be buried in the ground, improving the soil while sequestering carbon and reducing nitrous oxide (potent greenhouse gas) emissions from the soil. Biochar can also be used to produce biofuels as a byproduct. Here’s a nice YouTube summary of Australian work on biochar:

“Clean” coal
Various projects claim to be cleaning up coal. Carbon sequestration is one of the buzz words. The theory is that you can bury the CO₂ deep underground. In practice, to do so on a significant scale would be very hard. The perceived need for carbon sequestration arises from the incorrect perception that a coal producing country like Australia cannot survive a transition away from coal, a claim that is hotly contested even by former coal supporters. Here are some contrary views:

• Quarry vision: why clean coal isn’t the answer, ABC Radio National, 25 March 2009
• Quarry vision: why coal is no longer important, ABC Radio National, 25 March 2009

• Mining stalwart sees no future in carbon plan, Sydney Morning Herald, 25 April 2009

Some obstacles: worldwide emissions would amount to around 30km³ per year even compressed down to a liquid. One power station would be a lot less but still a vast volume of toxic gas to handle. Pumping it out at high temperature through a high smoke stack dissipates it into the air, and turbulence mixes it into the atmosphere quickly. A cold leak at ground level on the other hand will not dissipate fast, and can kill people in large numbers, as occasionally happens as a result of volcanic processes. Here is a detailed critique I wrote of a “clean coal” proposal for Felton in Queensland. And here is a Coen brothers ad featuring their take on clean coal:

Forest management and climate change
The forestry lobby is big on the benefits of harvesting timber. Cutting down trees, they claim, is somehow good because new growth will sequester even more carbon. The reality is a lot more complex than that; logging old growth is almost always a net loss, and managing plantations for the best overall return on carbon emissions takes careful management. This Forest, Carbon, Climate Myths slide show covers most of the major issues.

Regenerating lost forests
Watch biologist Willie Smits explain how he re-grew clearcut rainforest in Borneo, saving local orangutans – and at the same time creating work for the locals. Ignore the car ads.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Some people think that the hard economic times ahead are a good reason to go slow on dealing with climate change.

Think again.

These are the same people who ran the world’s economy into the worst economic crisis since 1929.

The Queensland economy is heavily reliant on coal revenues. Coal is about 80% of the problem of climate change, and we are a big contributor not only through our own use but our exports. However, coal is not a huge employer. Modern mining is more capital than labour intensive. Less that 3% of all Queenslanders work in mining of any description. Many more work in tourism than in coal. We should be working hard to protect our great environmental icons, like the Great Barrier Reef. We cannot do that without international cooperation. But it is crazy to expect that cooperation if we don’t set realistic emissions targets ourselves.

The next notion is that it is somehow wise to rely on coal revenues, because fossil fuels will be with us for the next 200 years or so. That kind of estimate relies on use at current rates, an unrealistic starting point since we know usage is growing. How much? The authoritative BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2008 shows that energy use grew 2.4% from 2006 to 2007. One of the arguments of the pro-fossil-fuel lobby is that we mustn’t curtail use of fossil fuels because that would be unjust to developing countries, so let’s allow the growth rate to be higher to allow them to industrialise. I’ve graphed three scenarios for depletion of reserves:

• continued use at today’s rate, calibrated to get reserves to zero in 200 years (blue curve)
• continued escalation at 2.4% (red curve)
• escalation of demand at 5% per annum (yellow curve)

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Fossil fuels could run out in as little as 50 years. That’s good cause to pause and think.

What will happen if one of the faster depletion scenarios pans out?

First, long before any fossil fuels disappear from production, we will be subject to wild swings in price, as a combination of supply shortages and speculation push prices through the roof, only ending when the world economy crashes. Sound familiar?

Second, the various types of fuel will not deplete at the same time. Coal will be around a lot longer than oil for example. The trouble is we are increasingly being left with the dirtiest, least efficient forms of fuel. Converting coal into something like oil is expensive and emissions-intensive.

That brings me to the final problem. The faster emissions grow, the sooner we will be forced to make deep cuts. Why? Because in pre-industrial times, natural processes of carbon emission and absorption were in balance. While some extra CO₂ can be absorbed, not all can; about half remains in the atmosphere in the short term. After 1000 years, almost 20% of the excess we’ve emitted will still be there. What this means is that once we’ve hit a CO₂ level that is generally accepted to be the safe limit, we will have to move to world-wide zero-emissions. Anything less will continue to add to the level in the atmosphere. Worse, the biggest sponge of CO₂ is the oceans. Dissolved CO₂ forms an acid in water, and ocean acidification is one more threat to the Great Barrier Reef, already endangered by temperature rises.

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Rushing headlong into maximising coal exports therefore is a crazy approach. We will suddenly find ourselves on the wrong side of a worldwide moratorium on coal use. And if the current resistance to change is anything to go by, we’ll get there only after irreparable damage has been done. What will it take? Loss of the Great Barrier Reef? The collapse of the Kakadu and the Murray-Darling ecosystems?

All of these are not only great environmental resources and Australian icons but much bigger sources of jobs than mining.

What is the alternative?

We need a coherent plan to phase out coal, and to move to renewables. If we wait until the rest of the world moves, it will be like running out of road at a cliff, and pressing the accelerator. Phasing out coal with the big investment we already have in coal power plants cannot happen fast without economic disruption. That’s why a slow phase down has to start as soon as possible. Yet we see no action on that front, nor do we see any attempt at slowing coal exports. On the contrary, exports are being ramped up. Or at least capacity is; at time of writing, demand drops as a result of the worldwide recession were resulting in job losses on the mines.

That brings me to the great opportunity the recession offers. Governments are trying to spend their way out of it. Much of the work in ushering in a new green economy is necessarily labour-intensive. We can install solar hot water on every available roof. We can pump money into research to make new initiatives like hot rocks geothermal and solar thermal power viable. We can start working on a public transport network with mostly electrical vehicles, the better to be able to convert to clean power at a flick of a switch. We can work on making Queensland not just the smart state or the sunshine state but the smart sunshine state.

Wouldn’t that be great? We are already world leaders in sporting achievement and the biological sciences. Why should we not be world leaders in the new energy economy?

Coal is holding us back. We are world leaders in exporting something that, increasingly, no one will want. Why can’t we aim to be world leaders in what everyone is going to want soon: renewable energy technologies? Coal is dirty stuff as soon as it’s out of the ground. Why don’t we keep it there, until we figure out a better use for it – and a way of using it without wrecking the environment? Coal is a complex mix of chemicals, not just carbon. Once oil runs out, we will need a source of industrial chemicals, not just stuff to burn.

If Queensland and Australia are to take their place in the world as leaders, we need to think long-term. And protecting one industry at the cost of all else is not only failing to think long term, it is stupid. Surely we can do better than that.