Charge Up in Sydney

Leading the way, with support from the Sydney City Council, my home town Sydney, now has its first commercial electric charging point. And while this particular pole, managed by ChargePoint, is for the exclusive use of GoGet car share group, it is hoped that over time, more of these will appear in Australian cities for the use of electric car owners and car share groups.

And with green power being supplied to the charging posts, that means driving is powered by wind and sun.

Organisations such as the Alternative Technology Association, now have some members actively seeking to convert their cars to electric. Many others like myself are awaiting the manufactured fully electric cars which are expected to start arriving in Australia in 2011.

As a typical Sydney driver, 95% of my driving is for trips less than 50 km, and living centrally, I use a car only three times a week. So bring on the electric cars, electric charging posts, and car sharing which are all definitely part of my low carbon future!!

Pic of CarCharging in Glebe by Mary in Glebe 25 May 2010

My Earth, Your Earth, Future Eaarth?

At this time of year, Sydney has this wonderful writers festival where authors come to discuss and be interviewed about their most recent works, and so I ventured out yesterday to see Bill McKibben, environmental campaigner, co-founder of 350.org and author of several books, including his most recent work Eaarth.

Actually, Bill spoke less about "making a life on a tough new planet" which is the theme of his book, and more about the social changes that are happening and the inequalities of a changing environment, where the greatest impacts are often on those who live the lowest carbon intense lifestyles. Bill spoke about needing new metaphors to help everyone get their heads around what is happening, and about developing a new framework for understanding the world.

And with all the buzz of the renewable industries, it is sobering to revisit why these changes are so important and so urgent, and to commend those like Bill who become involved and take on the daunting task of setting global goals and campaigning for our Earth/Eaarth which he does with his group 350.org.

We can all only speculate what lies ahead for us in the next few decades - what we do know is that we need to consider the big picture, and to re-think how we can share one unique and beautiful planet. As someone once said, "if we rented the earth like an apartment, then we are in definite danger of loosing our deposit bond". But unlike an apartment, we have no where else to go.. so let's clean up the place, stop digging up the floorboards, work out how to limit the size of our global group, and discover new ways to share this earth-dwelling that work for everyone, not just a privileged few. And just maybe, we could rediscover ourselves in the process.

Pic of Bill McKibben taken by Mary 23 May 2010