Brendan Condon's World Environment Day address - as broadcast on the Beyond Zero radio show, 6th June.

This morning on Beyond Zero we are interviewing Adriana Downey, Technical Manger at Best Energies. Her company is involved in pyrolysis, synthesis gas and biomass waste management. These provide benefits such as reduced waste, cleaner energy, improved soil quality and carbon sequestration; potentially music to our ears here at Beyond Zero.

Keith Lovegrove addresses the Melbourne based Beyond Zero Emissions group's Energy and Climate Solutions forums.

We speak to Arnold Goldman, Chairman and founder of BrightSource Energy which designs and builds large scale solar plants. He was the chairman and founder of Luz (loo-sh) International which designed and contructed, financed and operated the world's nine largest Solar plants in the Mjoave Desert.

The Reality Report interviews Philip Sutton of the Greenleap Strategic Institute and coauthor of a new report called “Climate Code Red: the Case for a Sustainability Emergency.” The report reviews disturbing new data and scientific understanding of climate change, explains why existing institutions have failed to respond adequately to the problem, and outlines an appropriate response.

Beyond Zero Emissions interviews Dr Lukas Van Zwietan senior research scientist of the NSW Department of Primary Industries (DPI). Who is working hand-on with soil research focusing on Bio Char (Terra Preta de Indio / Agri Char)

Beyond Zero talks with S. David Freeman, head of the Los Angeles Port Authority and former head of the largest U.S. utility company, the Tennessee Valley Authority.

The Reality Report interviews Philip Sutton of the Greenleap Strategic Institute and coauthor of a new report called “Climate Code Red: the Case for a Sustainability Emergency.” The report reviews disturbing new data and scientific understanding of climate change, explains why existing institutions have failed to respond adequately to the problem, and outlines an appropriate response.

We speak to Wieslaw Maslowski about his prediction that by the summer of 2013, we will have completely lost ice cover in the Arctic. Dr. Maslowski says that the complete loss of summer ice may actually happen sooner. The concern we have at Beyond Zero Emissions is that without moving to near zero emissions and drawing down atmospheric carbon as soon as possible, this could cause the irreversible melt of Greenland leading to 5 metre sea level rises this century.

Interviewing Dr David Mills former Sydney University academic now solar entrepreneur with US venture capital he has founded Ausra, a California based company that develops zero carbon utilities scale solar thermal power plants.

Beyond Zero talks with Tim Flannery about Terra Preta (bio char), his experience as 'Australian of the Year' and the current political climate.

It's been recommended that Australia reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 90 per cent by 2050. Matthew Wright looks into his crystal ball to see what life would be like. "Fast and frequent light and heavy rail account for 70 per cent of travel. Just like in the 1930s, trams and trains are now within 500 metres of most homes in cities like Melbourne and Sydney. By 2020, a massive rail network using the latest engineering is rolled out across our cities and major urban centres."

We talk to Professor Johannes Lehmann about Bio Char

Ken Caldeira talks to Beyond Zero Emissions about his latest study on zero emissions as soon as possible being the only safe target for our policy makers, our public and the planet.

As well as already committing to all new housing being zero carbon from 2016, the UK has announced that all new homes are to be Green rated

Beyond Zero Radio show spoke to James Hansen the world's leading climate scientist about his call for CO2 emissions stabilisation at 300-350ppm, well below todays 385ppm.

Australia's power industry is the highest polluting in the world on a per capita basis, according to new research.

In California, Australian solar thermal company, Ausra is set to build a solar thermal power plant producing 177MW of power on an area just 1x1mile. If Australia had a 50x50sq km patch of land installed the same way we'd have a significant amount of capacity - 170,000MW or 170GW. To give an idea of that scale, the Australian state of Victoria is provisioned with around 8GW of power.

Experts say the ice retreat is likely to be even bigger next summer because this winter's freeze is starting from such a huge ice deficit. At least one researcher, Wieslaw Maslowski of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., projects a blue Arctic Ocean in summers by 2013.

We've heard the stories about he Arctic's rapid melt, which could see it ice free by 2020, as opposed to the previously pessimistic assesments that showed this possibly occuring by 2050. Now NASA has released a study that shows a similair situation occuring in Antarctica. At the same time we should be aware that a rapid melt of the Arctic circle, will bring warmer water to the north pole which is adjacent to Greenland this will cause even more rapid melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet. According to NASA's James Hansen, in a report that didn't include the reality of what's now apparent in the Arctic circle we are looking at 2-3metre sea level rise by the end of the century.

Former University of NSW researcher David Mills, now working in Silicon Valley will release a paper shortly showing that 90 percent of the entire United States Energy needs can be delivered by concentrating solar thermal power.

Dr Keith Lovegrove from ANU spoke to the packed house at the Zero Emission Conference in Melbourne. Dr Lovegrove explained Concentrating Solar Thermal or CSP technologies and how they could provide electricity for competitive electricity prices across the world, and especially in Australia.

4 protesters have locked themselves onto a conveyor belt, halving production from Victoria's biggest coal fired power station that supplies 30% of the states power, the dirtiest power supply in the developed world.

Protesters from the Huon Valley Environment Centre and the group Still Wild Still Threatened have climbed onto the roof of Gunn's head office to highlight concerns over the company's proposed pulp mill. The three activists were escorted from the roof by police.

UK Environment Group, 'Plane Stupid' has launched in Australia through a series of actions aimed at a number of players in the Australian airline industry, including Qantas, owner of budget short haul carrier Jetstar, and a number of travel agents including Flight Centre, which is growing its business at record levels while growing Australia's greenhouse gas emissions at record levels.

Hot on the heals of billionaire oilman Boone Pickens announcing a 4000MW wind farm in the Texas Panhandle, Texas' biggest power company TXU has just announced it will build a 3000MW wind farm in Briscoe County. What's What is more, there are requests for more than 28000MW of new wind capacity, in Texas. At the end of 2007 Texas will have 4500MW of wind power. Many of the projects are expected to use storage technologies such as large scale compressed air.

"Why fast action on climate change is needed" James Hansen - NASA - Goddard Institute for Space Studies Presented to the "Target Zero" Conference, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia on 30 June 2007 Transcript of presentation I'd like to point out that there's a large gap between what is understood about global warming and what is known about global warming. I mean, what is understood by the relevant scientific community and what is known by the people who need to know, and that's the public [and] the policy makers. Part of the reason for this is that the climate problem differs from previous global pollution problems in the sense that we don't see the effect immediately upon the emission of the gases, partly because of the . . . thermal inertia of the ocean, which is four kilometres deep and has a response time of several decades before we see 50 or 60 per cent of the equilibrium response. So there's more global warming in the pipeline due to the gases that are already in the atmosphere: about half of that effect is still to occur. ...

THE GREAT Global Warming Swindle, airing tonight on ABC television, is sending a shiver of excitement through those for whom global warming is somewhere between a bad dream and a dangerous plot. Can we breathe a sigh of relief and forget climate change?

James Hansen opened the Zero Emissions Conference to a full house at RMIT University yesterday in Melbourne, Australia.

Adelaide Councillor Susan Clearihan is after an update on what is required for the council to become carbon neutral, and also how far they have progressed with their current plan. She foresees various opportunities to reduce the council's carbon footprint further, reducing the need to offset which should only be done as a last resort.

New, more effective ways of evaluating a site's wind power potential have come to the fore. LiDAR technology is now being used to better assess the viability of wind sites.

A company in the USA has released a LED drop-in replacement for standard fluorescent tubes. LEDs are the very low power high efficiency lights that are also used for indicators on consumer electrical devices, and flashing lights for night time safety on bicycles.

In 2006, 18% of global investment in energy was in renewables. This trend is expected to continue in 2007 with around $85 billion likely to be spent. It's fantastic that a fifth of energy investment is in renewables and, with the new market signals from the USA and Europe, this is likely to grow. This puts the money invested in the old steam age fossil fuel industries at significant risk.

It's nice to see Google following Yahoo's lead, for a change. The search and mapping and e-mail and calendar and office app and advertising darlings announced, earlier this week, plans to be carbon neutral by the end of the year, following the examples of Yahoo! and Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. Google will continue to invest in alternative energies such as solar and will purchase carbon offsets. The company will also invest in projects like methane capturing and burning. An in-depth list of Google's footprint-reducing plans can be viewed on the company's corporate website.

New Zealand's Prime Minister, Helen Clarke, has announced her country's plan to go 100% renewables. Currently NZ has 374 MW of wind power which means that, when combined with existing hydro, NZ already sources 75% of its energy from renewables. If NZ expands to 3 times this amount, or around 3700 MW of wind at a cost of around $6 billion, and uses demand management, reduction and energy efficiency measures, the country could have a 100% renewable power sector. Putting this in perspective, an oilman in Texas just announced he will be building a single wind farm of 4000 MW.

Toyota has just sold their 1 millionth Prius and General Motors is busy telling everyone that they will introduce their plug-in hybrid electric vehicle called the Chevrolet Volt by 2010. Meanwhile Peugeot says they will release hybrid versions of their high efficiency turbo diesels by 2010, at a price competitive with the Prius. The Peugeot would save a lot of fuel over a Toyota Prius on long trips.

According to a US Department of Energy study, the US power grid can power 180 million cars, or 85% of their current fleet. With a massive upgrade of public transport, the fleet could easily be below this number, and therefore all cars in the US could be powered by electricity. Of course, unlike in their study, we would power the vehicles by renewable sources such as wind power and solar energy.

Texas oil tycoon believes the next energy boom is in clean energy, and is proposing to invest $6 billion in a 4000 MW wind farm. Interestingly, around 3 wind farms of this capacity would power Victoria in conjunction with upgrading the grid, introducing smart meters, control and monitoring across the grid, parallel gas to back it up, energy efficiency and demand management.

Brisbane City Council has announced that their transport fleet will go carbon neutral within one year. Beyond Zero Emissions would like them to do the same with all their operations. We also call on them to change all purchasing to hybrid electric, purchase renewables to power this and have them converted to plug-in hybrid if possible.

Customers of a small Californian utility were outraged at a plan to sign a 50 year supply contract for coal power. The plan has now being rejected. Californian Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was amongst those who objected to the plan. California has now made it law that no new contracts or renewals can be signed with a coal company inside or outside of California to supply electricity to Californian customers unless it is with yet to be proven partial carbon capture and storage technologies. Australia should follow California's lead and ban any new coal stations that don't include partial carbon capture and storage technologies.