It was a good weekend. For the first time in a while we had a few minutes to kick back with the newspaper. Here are a few of the stories that caught our eye.
Holden Commodore Australia’s top polluter
It turns out Australia’s favourite home made family car is also the most expensive to run and the costliest to the planet, closely followed by it’s not quite identical twin the Ford Falcon. This is according to the Australian Government’s green vehicle guide which you can see here: www.greenvehicleguide.gov.au
In case you needed another sign that the times they are a changing, consider this. The Commodore has long been a favourite of Government fleets yet now, by their own reckoning, it is on the nose. At the same time Toyota, with the support of the Government, is investing big money in a hybrid Camry car plant (see the article here), another fleet favourite, and Holden has announced they will have a hybrid Commodore on the road by 2010 (story here). All of which proves that when change starts it moves fast.
Oh yes, and one more thing. For all those who use safety as an excuse to chew on the gas today’s Used Car Safety Ratings Report tells us that neither big nor expensive means better and you can get a top safety rated car second had for around $5000.
77% support climate change action
For all the pollitical posturing and naysaying it’s encouraging to see that 77% of Australians support Kevin Rudd’s move to introduce a carbon trading scheme ‘regardless of what other countries do’.
At this point we felt warm and fuzzy as we recalled the words of an Olympic hopeful in another article that we have now misplaced. She said something like, ‘true courage isn’t just stepping into the unknown yourself it’s having the charisma and foresight to lead people in there with you’.
Qantas to reintroduce cigarette sales
Do people want companies to be more socially responsible? The answer is a resounding yes if this article is anything to go by. Apparently under the pump (excuse the pun) from higher fuel prices, Qantas has ordered staff to start displaying cigarettes pride of place at the top of the duty free trolley and got themselves a roasting for doing so. Even more about it here.
Of course that’s only three of the stories. What is probably more telling is just how many other stories there are concerned with sustainability, green and corporate ethics…three things that simply didn’t get reported a couple of years ago.
In that sense we can’t help but be emboldened by the fact that people are taking a big interest in these things as well as reminded at how we saw the same rise in news stories and reportable happenings when the internet was young. And look how that changed the world.
