Linking greenhouse, urbanisation, public transport and business emissions

Problem
Reduce energy usage by getting more people onto an efficient public transport system.

Issues
- Australians are entrenched in personal vehicle use.
- Public transport is currently seen as unattractive due to quality, availability and reliability of service.
- Public transport seen as too big an issue and is not linked to suitable incentives
- Majority (I think) of personal vehicle use is to/from work

Solution
Include employee/contractor work related travel in business related emissions calculation when determining "carbon tax".

Reasoning
- Puts direct pressure onto business economy which has the most established systems for change and interaction with govt departments at all levels.
- Encourages businesses to hire locally and/or create incentives to reduce individual vehicle usage.
- May result in a return to business towns (areas created to house employees of a big business) or at least business transport networks to make up the shortfall of public transport.

Negatives
- Some businesses will lump costs directly onto employees without supporting a change in their location/behaviour/needs.

Travel fuel efficiency

passenger fuel efficiency
http://www.lafn.org/~dave/trans/energy/fuel-eff-20th-1.html

facing the problem of decreasing the desire to travel
http://www.lafn.org/~dave/trans/energy/travel_less.html

Shame he has made a lot of unsupported statements, was looking good otherwise.

Political observation - our farmers are screwed

On hearing that farmers may get another 5c/? from supermarkets and that the expected resulting increase to the consumer would be ~50c, I started idly searching for some facts.
No real luck so far but this did turn up regarding the effect of US govt policy on food production which is long, but well worth a read.
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=5923

There's this which shows mark-ups on fresh produce in Ireland which may be representative(?)
http://www.finegael.ie/news/index.cfm/type/details/nkey/31982/pkey/653/

Some debate from NSW parliament which lists mark ups of a few fresh produce items.
http://www.anzacatt.org.au/prod/PARLMENT/hansArt.nsf/V3Key/LA20000607021