I've joined a U3A class that takes as stroll through the Australian National Botanic Gardens once a week to learn more about the gardens and the plants. I was delighted and surprised to discover Sturt's Desert Pea, Swainsona formosa, growing; it's difficult to cultivate outside natural central Australian desert environment as it's prone to disease.

Although Swainsona formosa is a perennial, the ANBG has to regrow them each year from seed, as they do not survive the frosty Canberra winters.

Swainsona formosa is a symbol of Charles Sturt University, where I studied theology.

In the Boston Globe (10 Feb 2011) Havard economics professor Edward Glaeser provides a welcome boost to my inner-city green credentials. In "Why, if you love nature, you should move to the city" he describes a study of energy use for households with standardized size and income. The study found that households in areas with more than 10,000 people per square mile average 687 US gallons of gasoline per year, while households in areas with fewer than 1,000 people per square mile average 1,164 US gallons of gas per year.

A standardized household in Boston's urban core emits about 6,700 fewer pounds of carbon dioxide from burnt gasoline than an equivalent suburban household.

There are also differences in electricity and home heating between cities and suburbs, mostly because suburbanites have bigger homes, even holding income and family size constant. On average, electricity use is 88% higher in single-family detached homes than in apartments in buildings with five or more units.

Glaeser and his colleagues estimate that, all told, the standardized suburban household in the Boston area produces almost six tons more carbon dioxide per year than the standardized urban household.

Of course, Canberra people can enjoy nature and the inner city at once!

Editorial in a series Penny and Pound Foolish

On Climate, Who Needs the Facts?
Published: March 4, 2011

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

PRESIDENT'S F.Y. 2010-11 REQUEST: $2.3 MILLION
HOUSE VOTED: $0

The IPCC is the leading international scientific body studying climate change. Despite criticism—much of it manufactured by climate-change deniers—the panel has for more than a decade provided rigorous and balanced information to policy makers to help guide their efforts to prevent and mitigate the potentially disastrous effects of global warming.

Regrettably, politics trumps science among House Republicans, who recently voted to zero out this country's extremely modest $2.3 million annual commitment to the IPCC. The bill also slashes spending on a half-dozen domestic programs that study the causes and effects of climate change.

The budget for the Energy Information Agency—which gathers information on energy production, consumption and pollution—would be cut by one-sixth. Small but vital Interior Department programs that measure the impact of climate change on animal, plant and fish species and their habitat were reduced and in some cases nearly wiped out.

We have already pointed to devastating amendments to the budget resolution that, unless reversed by the Senate, will undermine the Environmental Protection Agency's authority to regulate greenhouse gases. The bill would also make it impossible for President Obama to meet his promises to help poor countries save their rainforests and deploy clean energy technologies, also essential for addressing global warming.

Mr. Obama asked for $400 million for the World Bank's clean technology fund, $95 million for the bank's program to prevent deforestation and $90 million for its program to help at-risk nations cope with the effects of a warming planet by, for instance, developing drought-resistant crops. The House's answer in all three cases: zero.

An appalling performance. But the worst of it was the House's apparent belief that wishing away the evidence will eliminate the problem.

The Australian's editorial yesterday (9 Sep 10) finds it hoist on its own very dangerous petard.

Julia Gillard has shown us that she can do process. Now the Prime Minister must show us she can do policy. The challenge for the new minority government scrambled together in Canberra this week will be to move beyond appeasement of the Greens and independents and prosecute the reform agenda Australia needs.

Fair enough, as far as it goes. But neither the Greens nor independents seek appeasement. They also seek action on a substantial reform agenda—an agenda that, thankfully, differs from that of the The Australian.

Yet it is not obvious to us that the Gillard government has a vision for our future. Nor is it clear what the Prime Minister herself stands for. Three years of Labor has evinced no coherent policy framework, no synthesis of economic and social goals, no narrative for the nation. This is the first challenge for Ms Gillard as she seeks to prove her legitimacy and earn a mandate from her skin-of-the teeth retention of the prime ministership. She must define her government in a way that she failed to do during the election campaign and in a way her predecessor Kevin Rudd was unable to do during his term in office.

But then the Oz does a dummy spit.

Greens leader Bob Brown has accused The Australian of trying to wreck the alliance between the Greens and Labor. We wear Senator Brown's criticism with pride. We believe he and his Green colleagues are hypocrites; that they are bad for the nation; and that they should be destroyed at the ballot box. The Greens voted against Mr Rudd's emissions trading scheme because they wanted a tougher regime, then used the lack of action on climate change to damage Labor at the election. Their flakey economics should have no place in the national debate. We are particularly tired of Greens senator Christine Milne arguing that "green jobs need a real green economy to grow in". What on earth can she mean?

That The Australian does not know what Senator Milne means displays shallowness and ignorance that should not be part of a national newspaper.

It is astonishing that a paper that once aspired to be a national journal of record declares in advance a permanent "hypocritical" bias.

Everyone has an opinion about the outcome of last Saturday's election. I think the The Guardian has it about right in its editorial (23 Aug 10):

No doubt something will be bodged up, but in the longer term Australia needs political renewal. A choice between one party that persists in throwing away its advantages and another that persists in ignoring critical issues is not much of a choice.

There were and are other choices.

In this election, neither the Labor Party nor the Liberals told us where they would lead Australia and what to them is good, civil and a healthy society. They spoke of a sound economy but say little of the purposes it should serve. The parties had just one goal — to not loose. There was been little courage, no brave ideals. Ms Gillard says we should not be afraid of the future, but her party behaves fearfully, fuelling frustration and resentment from the haves and the have nots alike.

Chaos and collapse do not loom because neither Labor nor the Coalition won outright. We need not panic. Better to take a deep breath and relax a little. The 24-hour news cycle asks that all is rushed, but Australia will not be harmed by a few weeks of careful government-building. Quite the opposite.

Political theorist Tim Soutphommasane concludes (The Guardian 22 Aug 10) that if Labor is forced into opposition, it "would be punishment for a term of wasted opportunities and political incompetence." It wasn't so much failure as a government that brought Labor down, but it's political incompetence.The Coalition has been politically better more astute, but would it make a good government? I think not.

The Age observes that the three rural independents, Tony Windsor, Rob Oakeshott and Bob Katter, form "a conservative constituency that has become deeply alienated from the Coalition parties [and] adhere to a kind of agrarian socialism that typified the Nationals when they were known as the Country Party." That's no bad thing. It may, curiously, give them some sympathy with the Greens who are deeply concerned to preserve Australia's farmlands and food growing capacity.

Of the 4.9 per cent swing against Labor, the Coalition got only 1.4 per cent. The Greens got the rest. The Greens have been brilliant in their election achievements, because they have good ideas. Will the new government learn from those ideas?

In the election, the ALP primary vote fell from 43.4 per cent to 38.5, down by nearly half a million. Yet the Coalition vote went up by just 1.4 per cent. More than half a million extra votes went to the Greens. The election result is a move to the left, not the right, yet both major parties had moved to the right in their policies.

Richard Denniss, Director of the Australia Institute is right to find (The Age 24 Aug 10) that the election result, "is actually quite simple to interpret. Australia's voters do not think that either the ALP or the Coalition deserve a mandate to form a government in their own right." The ALP and the Coalition have paid the price for lack of courage on big issues.

"One explanation for the election being so boring, and so unsuccessful for both the ALP and the Coalition,"Dennis says, "is that the so-called major parties were determined to talk about minor issues."

Australia is blessed with honest and hard-working politicians, but we are cursed with a moribund parliamentary system that hides from big issues such as climate change, population and income distribution. Some of the best debaters in the country have been trained to "stay on message" whenever a microphone can be seen, rather than speak like humans. It's banal.

It's also offensive. And the voters have returned the compliment.