Now it's cool to be carbon neutral

It's fashionable to take highly visible action on greenhouse, says environment writer Matthew Warren

The public debate on climate change is fracturing. Abstract and global v tactile and personal. Kyoto v the Toyota Prius. Climate change is the motivation for international agreements and global frameworks, but in the gap between awareness and substantial action has blossomed a new retail and commercial fashion. Carbon is the new black.

If it weren't for television, many of us wouldn't know what a power station looked like. But we are now part of an alarming and earnest UN-scale debate on intergenerational changes in energy generation, on the morality of China building a new coal-fired power station every week while millions sit in the dark in India and Africa waiting for theirs.

The essence of climate change is a debate over how to deliver against colossal targets to cut invisible gases by staggering quantities over decades. It leads to talk of fantastic plans to capture and store billions of tonnes of liquid carbon dioxide kilometres under the ground, or of solar power plants kilometres wide and long, new global stock markets buying and selling carbon credits, whatever they are, and the lure of fortunes to be made by the clever, offset by the threat of broadacre misery for the seemingly inevitable losers.

Last year public awareness on climate change lit in Australia. Nearly a year on and the concern is turning into impatience. In this temporary hiatus between populism and policy, there is a boom in households and businesses that want to make statements about their concern. In a vacuum of real market and policy signals we are happy to invent our own urban myths. Fortunes are being made selling the fashion of climate change.

Hybrid petrol-electric cars are on the rise in Australian cities, with sales more than doubling in the past year driven mainly by fleet buyers, although they still represent less than 0.5 per cent of total new car sales. The Prius hybrid engine car has been a big hit for Toyota since its reintroduction in 2003. It outsells the rival Honda Civic hybrid by a ratio of about two to one, even though the Honda is $3000 cheaper.

But, then, the Honda looks just like a Civic. The Prius's unusual styling sets it apart from other cars on the market and tells the world that the owner has paid about $10,000 extra for the cachet of driving with environmental impunity. Honda Australia spokesman Mark Higgins says the Prius's sales strength is in business and government fleets, where brand recognition on the environment is on the rise. "One of the major reasons people buy the hybrid Civic is that people want to do their bit for the environment, they want low emissions, low fuel consumption, and they don't want it to stand out from the crowd," he says.

British supermarket chain Tesco has signalled it is thinking of introducing food miles labelling on all the products it sells as a response to climate change. The idea is that food that has been imported thousands of kilometres will have made a much greater contribution to greenhouse gas emissions than locally produced foods. The scientific basis for this claim is much less certain. The full life cycle of foods includes primary production, preparation, packaging, retailing and disposal. Preliminary research by Australia's food processing industry in 2003 suggests transport is among the lowest contributor to greenhouse.

Incorporating the full cost of greenhouse into energy prices would be the simplest way of demystifying this claim. But why wait? At an international conference of science journalists, Roger Short from the University of Melbourne called for an end to cremation to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Instead he suggested everyone be buried upright in a cardboard cylinder beside their favourite species of tree. During cremation the average male body produces more than 50kg of carbon dioxide as it is heated to 850C for 1 1/2 hours. It's about the same level of emissions as a dozen cars attending the funeral. Should they be banned, too?

Solar panels and hot water systems are the Prius of household energy systems: modern, energy saving, expensive and highly visible. Rooftop solar panels to augment domestic electricity consumption start at about $12,000 a house; solar hot-water systems cost about $3000 but have a much better payback period. Most state governments have introduced hefty rebates for their installation: the Greens think they should be mandatory and Labor leader Kevin Rudd has promised to increase the subsidy for household solar panels.

But a study by McKinsey&Co on the technology pathway to reduce greenhouse gases has identified the first, and cheapest, solution is neither of these pricey options. It is insulation. About 2.5 million homes in Australia are still not insulated, most of these rental dwellings. Insulation is a relatively cheap and simple change that could cut 27 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. Insulation Council president Dennis D'Arcy says the problem with insulation is that it is too cheap and simple. "Insulation is very cheap compared (with) these other solutions and it has been around a long time. There's nothing new or bright and shiny about it," he tells Inquirer. "Gizmos are visible and are very obvious signs that you are doing something. That seems to excite people a little more and they seem to excite governments. If you insulate a suburb of houses, who knows you've done it?"

In the present market of high visibility on climate change action, companies, the AFL and even newspapers are declaring themselves carbon neutral, although energy experts and academics are concerned the market is moving too far ahead of the regulations needed to police it. And there are signs some buyers may not understand what they are buying.

Carbon markets consultant Cheryl Bowler from Energetics says the term carbon neutral should be based on a full life-cycle assessment of a company's or household's operation, but in some cases it is being interpreted selectively. "It's probably more a case that (the term) is being used naively because people aren't aware of what their carbon footprint is: they calculate just their energy-related emissions , but they can be leaving out a large proportion of what they are responsible for," she says.

The fast-moving retail greenhouse market has already experienced problems with claims about the definition of green and renewable power. Regulators had to tighten key rules and definitions in the national greenpower accreditation scheme after it was found some retailers were exploiting loopholes to sell zero-cost green energy to householders from sources such as the Snowy hydro scheme.

Since the start of this year retailers have been required to source a minimum of 10 per cent accredited greenpower from new generators to stimulate investment in low-emission energy sources. "The language becomes a little murky for a general consumer to determine the difference between renewable power or clean power or renewable energy," Deloitte energy expert Lorraine Stephenson says. "If you are getting offered something for nothing and it relates to new renewable energy, then you have to be a little suspicious."

Associate professor in energy systems at the University of NSW Hugh Outhred is concerned about the validity of credits generated by schemes such as NSW's greenhouse gas scheme GGAS, which continues to generate credits for demand management and efficiency gains in electricity generation as emissions continue to increase. "In NSW we have this implausible situation where each year we get a report on how well the scheme is going and yet in the fine print emissions continue to increase," he says.

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`Marrying' Rajneeshis breaching Australian immigration laws

The Immigration Department of Australia is investigating a number of Aussie followers of the Indian guru Bhagwan Rajneesh for alleged sham marriages. A commune of the disciples of the controversial Indian guru, also known as Osho, at the scenic beach town of Byron Bay has attracted Australian authorities' gaze for breaching immigration laws.

A New South Wales resident had claimed in a recent newspaper article that several members of the Rajneeshite sect, known as `Sanyassins', have been intermarrying just to get Australian permanent residence. David Honeycombe of Bangalow had made the claim in his article in The Australian spurring the department of immigration and citizenship into investigating the small community.

According to the news article, most of the 2000-strong Sanyassin community members living in Byron Bay town region were born overseas. The list includes all the five directors of the Mullumbimby-based Sanyassin-owned company Melaleuca Properties. Three of the eight directors of another Rajneeshite commune Osho Mevlana Foundation, according to the newspaper article are also foreigners. Now all the Sanyassins are under the immigration investigation thanks to the media attention drawn by Honeycombe's startling claim.

He is reported to have contacted a Byron Bay police officer after hearing guests at a Sanyassin marriage joke about flouting Australian immigration laws by marrying fellow Rajneesh disciples. "The attitude of the police was that they weren't the slightest bit interested," David Honeycombe was quoted as saying by The Australian.

"They seemed to be more interested in not upsetting the locals," he added. Federal immigration Minister Kevin Andrews had reportedly said that allegations of sham marriages were viewed "very seriously" by the government.

"The department will undertake an immediate investigation to determine if there are any irregularities in the Byron Bay area," the Minister's spokeswoman said in a statement. "Anyone with information should contact the department of immigration and citizenship."

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Philistines of relativism at the gates

Universities should provide access to the best art and literature, write John Hookham and Gary MacLennan

A TIME comes when you have to say: "Enough!", when you can no longer put up with the misanthropic and amoral trash produced under the rubric of postmodernist, post-structuralist thought. The last straw, the defining moment, came for us when we attended a recent PhD confirmation at the Queensland University of Technology, where we teach. Candidate Michael Noonan's thesis title was Laughing at the Disabled: Creating comedy that Confronts, Offends and Entertains. The thesis abstract explained that "Laughing at the Disabled is an exploration of authorship and exploitation in disability comedy, the culmination of which will be the creation and production (for sale) of a six-part comedy series featuring two intellectually disabled personalities.

"The show, entitled (Craig and William): Downunder Mystery Tour, will be aimed squarely at the mainstream masses; its aim to confront, offend and entertain." (Editor's note: the subjects' names have been changed to protect their privacy.) Noonan went on to affirm that his thesis was guided by post-structuralist theory, which in our view entails moral relativism. He then showed video clips in which he had set up scenarios placing the intellectually disabled subjects in situations they did not devise and in which they could appear only as inept. Thus, the disabled Craig and William were sent to a pub out west to ask the locals about the mystery of the min-min lights.

In the tradition of reality television, the locals were not informed that Craig and William were disabled. But the candidate assured us some did "get it", it being the joke that these two men could not possibly understand the content of the interviews they were conducting. This, the candidate seemed to think, was incredibly funny.

Presumably he also thought it was amusing to give them an oversized and comically shaped pencil that made it difficult for them to write down answers to the questions they were meant to ask. The young men were also instructed to ask the locals about whether there were any girls in the town as they were looking for romance. This produced a scene wherein a drunk Aboriginal woman amorously mauled William.

Capping off this reality show format, the candidate asked Craig and William on camera what they would do if a girl fancied both of them. When William, a sufferer of Asperger's syndrome, twitched and was unable to answer, the university audience broke into laughter. Then Craig replied: "We would share her." This, it seems, was also funny for the university audience. They had clearly "got it".

It's worth noting that William's condition may make it difficult for him to understand the subtexts of social interaction. AS sufferers struggle to read facial expressions and body language and are often unable to predict what to expect of others or what others may expect of them. This leads to social awkwardness and inappropriate behaviour. Hilarious, huh?

Much was made at the seminar of the potential for all humour to offend and of the ancient nature of the tradition of mocking the disabled. But the purpose of humour is not just cruelty. The butt of a joke usually has some undeserved claim to dignity and the funny incident takes him or her down a peg.

Humour undermines the rich and powerful, and it can be politically subversive. But we don't think it's funny to mock and ridicule two intellectually disabled boys. We think we, and the university, have a duty of care to those who are less fortunate than us.

At the seminar we were told there was a thin line between laughing at and laughing with. There is no such thin line. There is an absolute difference that anyone who has been laughed at knows. We must admit with great reluctance that at the seminar we were alone in our criticism of the project. For us, it was a moment of great shame and a burning testimony to the power of post-structuralist thought to corrupt.

It is not our intention here to demolish the work of Noonan, an aspiring young academic and filmmaker. After all, ultimate responsibility for this research rests with the candidate's supervisory team, which included associate professor Alan McKee, the faculty ethics committee, which apparently gave his project total approval, and the expert panel, which confirmed his candidacy.

To understand how we have got into this dreadful situation, one need go no further than reading the series of interviews with some of the great figures of popular culture published in the journal Americana. These interviews are remarkable in that they all follow a similar narrative: the young professors who burn with a passion for popular culture take up a position at a university where they come up against the dragon of high culture. They risk life and career to slay the dragon by publishing articles on popular cultural phenomena such as TV soap operas. This, then, is the story of the heroic age of cultural studies, when teachers of cultural studies forced the academy and the schools to broaden their horizons.

As academics who have published articles on The Simpsons and Deadwood, we warm to these tales of derring-do. However, it is vital that one recognise that the heroic age of cultural studies is long past. The dragon of high-culture elitism has been well and truly slain.

What holds centre stage is not a critique of how popular culture provides - in the words of scholar George Lipsitz - the "links that connect the nation, the citizen subject, sexuality, desire and consumption". What we have instead is the reality that cultural studies is in the grip of a powerful movement that we call the radical philistine push. It is this same movement that has seen the collapse of English studies and the consequent production of graduates who have only the scantiest acquaintance with our literary heritage. It is also undermining the moral fabric of the university.

Let us be clear: we are not blaming students. In our line of fire are the academics who have led the assault against notions of aesthetic and moral quality in cultural studies. This has taken the form of a direct attack on those who do not celebrate every offering that comes out of the maw of corporate culture. We are all supposed to wave our rear ends and become cheerleaders for rubbish such as Big Brother and Wife Swap. Lest the reader think we exaggerate, let us turn to the views of McKee, the enfant terrible of the post-structuralist radical philistines within the creative industries faculty at QUT.

In the university newspaper, Inside QUT, he was reported as saying: "Teaching school students that Shakespeare is more worthy than reality television is actively evil" (italics added) and in his "ideal world programs such as Big Brother would be at the centre of thecurriculum". In a similar vein, John Hartley, Federation fellow and the founding dean of the faculty, has claimed there are similarities between Big Brother and Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew in that both explore issues of marriageability. Of course there are similarities; almost all stories deal with the quest to find a mate. But, in any comparison between Shakespeare and Big Brother, what counts are the differences, not the similarities. In Shakespeare we can point to, at the very least, the complex and sophisticated way in which the text is shaped, formed and structured. Every aspect has been deliberately crafted so that no feature is superfluous.

But by elevating Big Brother to the level of Shakespeare, the radical philistines have taken the high culture v low culture distinction and inverted it. Low culture is the tops and anyone who so much as refers to high culture becomes the enemy and is subjected to the politics of abuse and exclusion. This is what has led us to Craig and William: Downunder Mystery Tour.

And now, when we say that in civilised society it is repugnant to mock the disabled, most academics in our field appear to disagree with us. When we say it is morally wrong to laugh at the afflicted, our colleagues seem indifferent to the truth of this statement. Presumably for them it is just our "narrative". They can take this position because in the postmodern world there are no theories, no knowledge and no truth; there are only narratives, fictional stories, all told with bias.

Yet we and almost everyone outside of the cultural studies ghetto reject this moral and epistemological relativism. If we are to take meaningful political action, if we are to act morally, if we are to teach our students how to live, how to act in an ethical fashion and how to make progressive and powerful art, then we need to be able to determine what is right and what is wrong, what is true and what is false.

Is there an alternative to the moral relativism, the schlock aesthetics and the dumbing down of the postmodernists? Yes, but to transcend the position staked out by the new philistines would require a commitment to aesthetic and moral education. The aesthetic component would once again undertake the task of cultivating and improving aesthetic taste and judgment. That means providing access to the best that has been written, painted, said and filmed. This aspect of the curriculum would necessarily be anti-relativist.

There are dangers and difficulties here, but the present situation is one where educational institutions are beset with wilful ignorance and culturally the ruling slogan appears to be "the grosser the better". This is nothing less than an offence to the human spirit.

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Wanna bet this destructive knowall is a Leftist?

There's no such thing as right and wrong you know and we see here that he was a "root cause" believer and a believer in not being judgmental

A Sydney doctor who conducted a bizarre experiment on up to 800 patients by offering them unlimited access to prescription drugs has been banned from working in medicine. Dr Steven Goodman used his patients as "guinea pigs" in a dangerous and unfounded treatment program, the NSW Medical Tribunal ruled this month. He was found guilty of "abhorrent" professional misconduct and struck off the medical register.

The GP and two colleagues, who studied together at Sydney University, followed an ultra-liberal drug treatment theory that transformed a "normal suburban general practice" in Redfern into a drug den, where all 800 patients were addicts. At least two patients, including a 16-year-old girl, died while under Dr Goodman's care at Redfern Street Medical Centre.

The approach was based on addressing addicts' behaviour and inner-feelings, rather than restricting drugs, in a bid to develop a trusting relationship. He frequently prescribed "massive" doses of highly addictive sedatives, including Valium, Temazepam, codeine and the anti-depressant Zoloft. One patient received 75 pills on an almost daily prescription, accumulating to 6400 pills over four months. When approached by The Sunday Telegraph at his Sydney home last week, Dr Goodman refused to comment.

Before her death, his 16-year-old patient had confided she felt suicidal after becoming homeless and addicted to drugs. She asked for his help with detoxification. Instead, he prescribed her with a steady cocktail of powerful sedatives, including Valium and Temazepam. There was no evidence that he offered any counselling, specialist referrals or warnings on the effects of the drugs she was taking, the tribunal found. "The 'best efforts' of (Dr Goodman) was to prescribe large amounts of drugs to a young girl who had told him that she thought about killing herself," the tribunal's report stated. The girl's body was found in a boarding house bedroom, surrounded by empty packets of prescription drugs and methadone.

In a similar fate, the other woman patient had told of suicidal thoughts before dying from an overdose. Dr Goodman's notes reveal she was "in tears, (saying) my life's not worth anything". But he continued to prescribe huge doses of drugs. A further 28 patient examples were included in the case lodged against Dr Goodman by the Health Care Complaints Commission - but he admitted even more of his 600 to 800 patients had been prescribed drugs to the same level.

Dr Goodman was defending his drug treatment theory as late as October last year, according to the tribunal. "We decided we were the experts," he said. "We decided we knew better." Dr Goodman left the Redfern centre in 1999 and worked at the Chullora Medical Centre and Majors Bay Medical Centre.

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