Canberra

We spent all day Thursday in and out of meetings in Canberra, so Ididn't get a chance to take that many pictures or see that much.We did have some meetings at Parliament which was pretty nice and was able to snap a few pictures on the way in.

The most interesting part of the day came in the meetings, when people would figure out that I was from the U.S. and would then talk about the Presidential campaign and how excited they were by the prospect of Barack Obama becoming our next President. Completely unsolicited and they launched into without knowing if I was a supporter or not.

There was also a bit of scrambling going about because something called The Garnaut Report was coming out the next day. The Garnaut Climate Change Review has been commissioned by Australia's Commonwealth, state and territory governments to examine the impacts, challenges and opportunities of climate change for Australia. In the report he basically concludes that if meaningful action isn't taken by 2020, that we are basically up a certain type of creek without a paddle.

My favorite quote:

"The most inappropriate response would be to delude ourselves, taking small actions that create an appearance of action, but which do not solve the problem."

In the 537 report (I have some light reading to do) he discusses the importance of carbon trading, compensating low income resident's for high energy prices, setting a carbon price and the need to get developing countries such as China locked into an greenhouse gas emissions agreement by 2013.