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The Forum > Article Comments > Getting the sheep off our backs: a new green agenda for our cities > Comments

Getting the sheep off our backs: a new green agenda for our cities : Comments

By Edward Blakely, published 19/7/2011

The Greens agenda is an urban agenda for our nation.

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By all means develop a knowledge society to replace the good old tall poppies, she'll be right, dig it up and ship it out mentality.

But we also desperately need to look after and repair the natural and farming environments or we'll have nothing to eat and a very unpleasant place to live.

It's there for the Greens to do, if they expand their vision a bit.

Very narrow viewpoint.
Posted by Geoff Davies, Tuesday, 19 July 2011 8:21:16 AM
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Don't hold your breath professor, it ain't going to happen.

David
Posted by VK3AUU, Tuesday, 19 July 2011 9:50:31 AM
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The most important thing the Greens could do to increase the liveabilty of our cities would be to stop growing the urban population - otherwise we are in a constant game of catchup since we are building new infrastructure and we still need to maintain the old. Since, very broadly, 2% of infrastructure needs to be replaced every year, then with a population growth rate of 2% (which doubles our population in 35 years) we need to be building/turning over 2+2=4% of infrastructure every year. This means that our infrastructure costs are DOUBLE what they would be with a stable population and the functionality of our cities is degraded since we evidently cannot meet that requrement.

This essay was also written in total ignorance of Australia's and the rest of the world's increasingly precarious food supply situation. Australia cannot feed double its population in a drought year (under current fossil fuel and nutrient supply conditions) and our food production will almost certainly fall as oil supply diruptions are highly likely to hit within the next four years. Food supply problems are exacerbated by any increase in population size and it is exactly the population issue that the Greens have become so hopeless on (since their agenda was captured by the disenfranchised Labor left and they became more a party more interested in socialist social issues rather than the environment that underlies all current and future prosperity).
Posted by michael_in_adelaide, Tuesday, 19 July 2011 9:53:48 AM
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“In every respect, the Greens are set to move the nation to a place it has to go.”
In every respect? Far from it: They are self-delusional in regard to the most fundamental of all - the impossibility of continuous, unending, growth. This growth will eventually incur overshoot, causing collapse of all those other “respects” which are dear to them.
Focus upon cities is not enough. Cities cannot function indefinitely in the absence of healthy and productive landscapes - the well-being and cohesion of both are a fundamental necessity. Urban “vertical farms”, back-yard and balcony gardens, etc are not conformable with high-density planning; light-rail and other traffic passivation techniques along dense-living corridors are not unanimously accepted by urban planners as a panacea for city problems.
In fact, regardless of schemes mooted for belt-tightening on present living standards and social cohesion, water supplies, and agricultural production - whatever annual percentage improvement to these can be made, an impossible challenge exists if population continues to increase (as it presently does) at a greater exponential rate.
The Greens have a long history of avoiding potholes along their road of good intentions. When they face up to the reality of growth in all its aspects, and accept humans as part of nature rather than separate from it - their credibility should improve; and provide real separation from the incumbent political fossils.
Posted by colinsett, Tuesday, 19 July 2011 12:29:15 PM
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Greens held 12% of the vote at the last federal election.
I do not think they bettered that in NSW.
It was my unhappy task, as a lifelong ALP member to, not man the booths, and not vote for my party.
A third of our membership did the same.
At this, our historic low/shame/self contempt, greens failed to improve.
Right now, greens have power only by riding on Labors back.
Conservative may stop ,giggling now.
Abbott put a list to the greens, in his desperation to rule, not unlike Labors deal.
So Labor, under the weight of Murdock's control/riding orders to coaxing of Abbott, is staggering.
[In fact greens have we are told 13%?]
Are we to consider the greens can make policy's and see 88% of Australians introduce them? why.
Again, dreadful bloke that I am.
Why are more Australians, my guess more than 50 of Labor voters and 90% of conservatives not being heard.
Not contempt not fear just reality both party's must not preference them ever again.
Tell me the Marickville council in Sydney the mess in Tasmania is not evidence of why we must confront them.
Posted by Belly, Tuesday, 19 July 2011 12:31:29 PM
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The need to 'get off the sheeps back' is hardly new. A century ago commentators were remarking on the stupidity of sending wool to Manchester and buying jumpers back. Now we send raw materials to China and Japan, and buy manufactured goods back.
Will we still be able to afford to do this, in a post peak oil world?
In a world where energy supplies are rare and precious, manufacturers will need to be close to supplies, both of raw materials and of energy.
We know it's coming, but still we do nothing.
Posted by Grim, Tuesday, 19 July 2011 12:32:27 PM
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The previous was an unpaid Advertisement for the Australian Greens.

By all means turn Australia into a completely Urban Country. Then we starve, die and the polution goes to Zero.

All too simple really , What a Master Plan !
Posted by Aspley, Tuesday, 19 July 2011 12:42:55 PM
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Silly me. I thought it was satire.

Yet there are all these people taking it seriously.

"The Greens can help us face the real facts of the nation."

Just so long, that is, as it doesn't involve anything to do with earning a living, or contributing to the economy. The "real facts" of the nation are that we, as individual citizens, will be dependent for our prosperity on our mining industry for the foreseeable future. As yet, there is nothing that can remotely take its place in a timeframe that will mean anything to our children during our or their lifetimes.

That is a "real fact".

Without employing either wishful thinking or mindless sloganeering, would anybody care to contradict that statement?

"A Green agenda to date has been against things and not for them"

So true, so very true. This places them in a difficult position, as the transition from negative to positive is never easy. And in the case of the Australian Greens, may even prove to be an insurmountable hurdle. Thankfully.

In truth, I cannot see the Greens promoting policies that are designed around the welfare, economies or development of our cities. To date, they have been fixated on preventing or stalling any project that is even remotely useful or beneficial. Given the sporadic outbursts of urban Greenery that so far have been visible - I live in Sydney, by the way - I can't see any initiatives that even remotely approach the writer's proposition.

Nah. It was satire, wasn't it, and I have been sucked in.
Posted by Pericles, Tuesday, 19 July 2011 1:22:07 PM
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Some interesting ideas there, but it's all a bit platitudinous isn't it? While I obviously agree that the Greens' outlook is more positive than that of the 'major' parties, they can't do anything without the support of at least one of them.

Also, the article apparently comes across to some people as if it is an official Greens position - which it is not. Greens policy with respect to mining, logging and agriculture is rather more nuanced than the caricatured version that Blakely presents.
Posted by morganzola, Tuesday, 19 July 2011 2:14:41 PM
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@ Pericles:

I thought it was satire at first too, but obviously for different reasons than you.

With respect to your observations about mining, I agree that our economy is overly dependent upon it, to the extent that phasing out the mining of coal will cause real economic and material pain, particularly to those organisations and individuals who have been hitherto profligate in their consumption of non-renewable resources. No doubt about it, if you measure living standards in purely material terms you're going to suffer in the decades to come.

There could have been less suffering had the world acted earlier than now on AGW, and there'll be more if we don't - and it has absolutely nothing to do with Greens' policy. The Tweedledumb and Tweedledumber of Australian politics have been running the show, and between them have been able to achieve pretty well nothing except spread FUD on the one hand, and earnest handwringing on the other.

The Greens are little more than messengers and catalysts with respect to policy and legislative initiatives. You're appalled that your lifestyle is unsustainable and is about to become very much more expensive unless you amend your profligate habits. It won't be the Greens who'll be implementing the inevitable, since they're highly unlikely to achieve majority support in the short term, if ever.

On most topics I respect your analysis, but when it comes to politics what you have in common with the crassest Tea Party types is a propensity to go after the messenger - in this case the Greens - rather than to actually countenance the unpleasant probability that they're substantially right.

It's a real shame, because the energy you waste on personal negativity is energy that's not being directed towards mitigating a painful future, regardless of whether the Greens even exist.
Posted by morganzola, Tuesday, 19 July 2011 2:16:54 PM
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Stick with me please, I may not be as of topic as some think.
My thoughts about the greens have been developing over the past 3 years.
I first saw their refusal to pass that version of paying for climate change in Rudd's time as, well leave that.
I noted Browns not wanting to preference Labor, and his Triumphalism on gaining the nine Senates seats.
I had always, yes always, understood and feared the impacts of the policy's they have in their own web page.
And the ones many from within the party add, in open comments
In short I believe, totally, they can, at best, push Labor in to opposition.
Maybe after reading the thoughts and well wishes,sarcasm too from the last contributor, in my thread below.
I say thanks for the well wishers.
But please I understand what I write, I know I can be wrong,but do some of my detractors?
Maybe I am not the average contributor, income/education/inclinations.
But I truly think, yep true, the ALP is victim to over emphases of its failures and refusal to closely look at Abbott/Murdock/Howard's blind stupidity behind policy's so destructive they have to be non core.
Not fragile no hidden reasons look at the level of insults from csteel and Ammonite.
Have I the right to think the greens are a dead weight on my country?
Or that given the increasing nature of insulting comment, once the property of the tea party right, makes .
I will post less and for a time not in general comments.
My fear dislike of the greens was made by them.
This working class Aussie shares the view of most such, they defame the word conservation.
Labor is bleeding, it must come to understand more votes are lost to conservatives than greens it clearly shows in any poll.
Posted by Belly, Tuesday, 19 July 2011 5:01:40 PM
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I think this article falls into the Lucky Country trap of belittling primary industries. This has occurred in the past due to the decline of the importance of these industries in industrialised economies, and then the plateauing of demand for commodities in post-industrial economies. However demand swung upwards with a range of countries undergoing economic development. Assuming this process continues there will be continued strong demand for resources as infrastructure is built followed by demand for agricultural products by the growing global middle class.

The economic synergy between town and country has been known of for hundreds of years. The development of towns leads to more capital and technology available to increase the productivity of the country which enables more commodities to be available for the towns to continue to develop. This process is vital to any Green agenda of the development of environmentally sustainable societies as it is the process by which deep structural change to economies and societies occurs. Ignoring the nuts and bolts of the economy to focus on the desires of their fairly small inner city Leftist voting base will render their policies largely superfluous in long term development.
Posted by machina, Tuesday, 19 July 2011 5:29:47 PM
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"In every respect, the Greens are set to move the nation to a place it has to go."

The author, like some many other innocents, is about to find out what the Greens are really about -- and it is not tree hugging.

The only apparent direction that the Greens want Australia to go is backwards, starting with the economy-damaging carbon (dioxide) tax.
Posted by Raycom, Tuesday, 19 July 2011 11:15:24 PM
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Michael_in_adelaide and colinsett are on the mark with their comments about population growth.

Amazingly, the author doesn’t mention it, and the Greens are just failing completely to address this all-important issue.

Any green agenda that doesn’t include methods to reduce population growth and achieve a stable population isn’t worth the paper it is written on, especially in this country which has rapid growth with no end in sight and very powerful forces wanting to keep it that way.

Surely it has to be all about balance. That is: balance between the demand on our resource base and environment and the ability for them to meet this demand, in an ongoing sustainable manner.

It is silly to talk about a green agenda for our cities, as though it was to be done in isolation from country areas. Food, minerals, etc that supply our cities come from the country, as does most of our export income. It has all surely got to be part of the same agenda.

When the Greens take the growth issue seriously, they might themselves be taken seriously by a much larger portion of the populace that currently dismiss them as misguided no-hopers. Afterall, just about every voter in the country can see the problems with continuous population growth, whether they be traffic congestion, water restrictions, urban sprawl, loss of natural habitat, overfishing, etc.

When the Greens embrace population stabilisation and hence genuine sustainability, then they will be set to move the nation to a place it has to go. But certainly not before that.
Posted by Ludwig, Tuesday, 19 July 2011 11:47:47 PM
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In debating Australian Politics we often resemble Morris Dancers at a rock n roll fest.
It will not be Greens Labor or Conservatives that move Australia to a place it needs to be.
As always it will be voters.
Greens are stagnating,it may ruffle feathers but they do their best work, for Conservatives.
If not massive growth for them now when?
We Condemn them and Labor.
For setting the same carbon reduction target as Tony Abbott.
We make outrageous claims, unfounded ones, about a big new tax.
But ignore the conservative policy, very firmly, is to charge not emitters but tax payers.
Given the inability to see Conservatives lack of real policy's, Labors frozen refusal to again change leaders.
And the flat earth view Greens are going any place we are a nation needing as never before open and honest debate on our future in politics.
Posted by Belly, Wednesday, 20 July 2011 9:04:16 AM
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Again, morganzola, we find the enormous gulf between idealism and practicality.

>>I agree that our economy is overly dependent upon it, to the extent that phasing out the mining of coal will cause real economic and material pain, particularly to those organisations and individuals who have been hitherto profligate in their consumption of non-renewable resources.<<

Those "organizations and individuals" include vast swathes of the Chinese population. What right do you have to decide whether they have been/are being "profligate"? Why do you consider it ok to take it upon yourself to determine whether their economy grows to the point where their citizens enjoy the same standard of living that we have created here over the past century?

You are perfectly describing the dog in the manger. You decide that we are unhappy the way our natural resources being used, so other folk can't have any. Yah boo sucks.

That's not a very mature, world-citizen view, is it?

>>No doubt about it, if you measure living standards in purely material terms you're going to suffer in the decades to come<<

Ok, I'll bite.

How do you measure living standards, morganzola?

And I mean "measure". No abstract waffle about clean this or dirty that - real measurements please. Because if it can't be measured, it can't be managed.

>>...when it comes to politics what you have in common with the crassest Tea Party types is a propensity to go after the messenger - in this case the Greens...<<

Nope. It's the message they deliver that concerns me. I would say exactly the same thing if Greens' "policies" were espoused by any other political party. Except that being closer to the mainstream - i.e. 88% of Australians - neither would dare put out such economically destructive proposals.
Posted by Pericles, Wednesday, 20 July 2011 3:17:00 PM
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I like sheep. They taste nice when you roast them. And their wool is very warm in my doona. They also have good skin that goes well in my babies cot.

I dont like Greens. They dont taste nice when you roast them. They dont have warm skins that you can use for babies cots...and their hair is all greasy and doesnt keep you very warm at all.

I dont really like the city either...there are too many Greens there.

I do like farms. They have lovely farmers living on them that plant trees and fence off creeks. They also spend a lot of time worrying about willow trees and rabbits and foxes and erosion. Sometimes on weekends they go out and work together to fix these things with a club they call landcare.

Usually you do not see many Greens fixing those things because they are too busy in the city drinking coffee and worrying about how bad the farmers are with their nasty sheep.

I dont like rabbits.
Posted by Nervous Nellie, Thursday, 21 July 2011 6:29:23 AM
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@Pericles:

With respect to your concern for the Chinese, I assume that you're aware that only a relatively small proportion of the coal used in their in their industry comes from Australia - indeed, they produce most of it themselves. Also, I thought it was clear that I was referring to the profligacy of Australians, who infamously create more greenhouse emissions per capita than anybody else in the world.

You also misconstrue (intentionally?) the reasons that the Greens want to phase out coal mining.  It has nothing to do with self-interest and everything to do with placing global sustainability ahead of material excess.  We (as in First World developed nation-states) are largely responsible for having created over the past couple of centuries the industrial greenhouse emissions that are very probably the cause of Anthropogenic Global Warming.  Mining and burning coal for energy is one of the principal global causes of greenhouse emissions, and as a producer of coal Australia has a global responsibility to cease supplying the direct source of much industrial carbon dioxide.  

While I agree that large, rapidly developing countries like China and India have superficially legitimate aspirations to emulate First World living standards, the unfortunate fact is that if they manage to fulfil them, it will be at the very great environmental cost to all other people and living species.  I agree that we have no right to dictate anything to China, but I don't see that there is any moral problem in phasing out trade in material that is known to harmful to the environment, both in its extraction and its use.

If we recognise that our own material living standards are ecologically unsustainable, it would be hypocritical in the extreme to continue to profit from supplying the raw materials for greenhouse emissions. In short, you misrepresent the Greens - which seems to be a common element in pretty well everything you write about them.

[cont]
Posted by morganzola, Thursday, 21 July 2011 8:39:10 AM
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I'm not entirely sure I understand you, morganzola. (Nothing new there, then...)

>>While I agree that large, rapidly developing countries like China and India have superficially legitimate aspirations to emulate First World living standards, the unfortunate fact is that if they manage to fulfil them, it will be at the very great environmental cost to all other people and living species.<<

First of all, there is nothing "superficial" about China and India's aspirations for their living standards. It is fundamental. What right do you feel that you have as an individual, or Australia has as a country, to hinder their progress in this direction?

Should we not in fact rejoice in their newly-won prosperity? Surely you are not so mean-spirited as to resent their achievements?

And you are of course absolutely right that if Australia does not provide them with the minerals they require, they will find them elsewhere. We will in the meantime sit on our assets, and slowly wither and die.

Long before any effects of whatever-it-is reach us, we will be the poor white trash of the southern ocean, living in humpies and surviving on turnips.

It's called cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Posted by Pericles, Thursday, 21 July 2011 12:47:08 PM
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@ Pericles:

Oh, I'm quite sure you understand exactly what I'm saying, but you don't like the message, so you're resorting to obfuscation. You're using a particularly mangled version of the notion of equity to try and hide the inescapable fact that if per capita resource and energy consumption in the developing world were to approach current rates in Australia, then we'd run out of non-renewables very quickly indeed and stuff the environment completely while we're at it.

I don't think that anybody in the world is entitled to two cars, three LCD TVs, an air-conditioned McMansion, a swimming pool and annual flights to Europe. Rather, if they want those things they should be made to pay the real cost of them, no matter where they live. We can far more easily achieve equity in standards of living worldwide if we in the First World amend our unsustainable material demands, than by expanding the practices that have created we're facing with AGW.

But you know all this already, and i realise belatedly that you're just playing the usual AGW denialist game, just a bit more subtly than your less intelligent cohorts. If you're still sitting on the fence at this stage of the debate, you're effectively in denial and nothing I could say is likely to persuade you either. So it's just deny and delay again, in which case I'm not playing,

I suppose that's why we ultimately have to have laws to enforce compliance with unpalatable but necessary environmental measures - if the overwhelming evidence in favour of AGW is true, then the longer we delay the more pain people like you will actually feel. Those of use who live more modestly by choice have far less to forego, but you need to be able to imagine a world where living standards aren't measured in exclusively material terms - precisely so that those teeming masses in the developing world about whom you're so concerned can have some hope of achieving improved living standards without wrecking the environment the way we have.
Posted by morganzola, Friday, 22 July 2011 8:06:00 AM
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You clearly hold yourself to different standards that those you expect of me, morganzola.

>>...you don't like the message, so you're resorting to obfuscation<<

As a response to the direct questions I asked in my last post, that is a little rich.

>>You're using a particularly mangled version of the notion of equity...<<

"Mangled"?

The question is entirely straightforward: either you accept that other countries have the right to aspire to the same living standards that we have achieved, or you don't. To hedge it with "only if they don't stuff up the environment" is not an answer, it is an avoidance.

>>I don't think that anybody in the world is entitled to two cars, three LCD TVs, an air-conditioned McMansion, a swimming pool and annual flights to Europe.<<

This is so horribly wrong, at every level. You are suggesting that we should put some kind of ceiling on the ambitions of the world's population, in the name of some abstract concept of "entitlement".

It does explain, of course, how you wish to impose "morganzola's law" on Australian citizens. After all, possibly two or three percent of our population meet your criteria, and you clearly resent their achievements.

But how do you suppose morganzola's law would be viewed by the rest of the aspiring classes in China, India, South America and even Africa? I suspect they would have a name for your attitude towards them, and it wouldn't necessarily be complimentary.

Ultimately, the only way in which you could achieve your utopian vision is through some form of super-totalitarian dictatorship, a tenuous form of government that causes violent revolution wherever it is found. All economic progress being made in the world today is through the free market. It would be a difficult task to reverse this, and establish upper limits on what you will allow people to work towards.

And this is merely insulting...

>>If you're still sitting on the fence at this stage of the debate, you're effectively in denial<<

I am still exercising my brain. It is not my fault that others have decided to stop using theirs.
Posted by Pericles, Friday, 22 July 2011 1:58:18 PM
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@ Pericles:

Now you're just being obtuse. You've ignored those elements of my last two posts that don't suppport the faux preciousness you're displaying here, including qualifying clauses to the propositions you attack as if I hadn't made them.

The only reason that I think it should cost relatively more for newly affluent residents of developing countries to engage in material excess is that we've demonstrated the damage that such consumption can do to the entire planet, via AGM. It's patently ridiculous to say that we are obliged by principles of equity to facilitate behaviour that we now know is very probably responsible for AGW, even if our best evidence is that doing so will exacerbate the damage that we've already caused.

I think you also deliberately misrepresent my position on entitlement. You present ecologically excessive material consumption as an entitlement of everybody - my position is that nobody's entitled to anything beyond reasonable subsistence, but ought to be able to acquire whatever material possessions they like, so long as these are priced to reflect their real cost in terms of greenhouse emissions and raw materials - as they would be under an ETS such as that into which our proposed carbon tax is supposed to develop.

Your totalitarian allusion is just disingenuous scare mongering. We can achieve the necessary reductions in emissions over time with relatively little pain via an ETS such as I've described, and which is consistent with the Chinese government's own strategies with respect to Greenhouse abatement.

I'm not going to waste any more energy on you with this issue - as I said, if you're not convinced by the mountains of evidence and any amount of informed discussion by climate scientists, then there's obviously nothing that I can say that will shift you off that fence. To use an apposite cliche - you're not part of the solution to AGW, so you're part of the problem, unfortunately.
Posted by morganzola, Friday, 22 July 2011 2:45:53 PM
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It might help if you used simple sentences, morganzola.

>>You've ignored those elements of my last two posts that don't suppport the faux preciousness you're displaying here, including qualifying clauses to the propositions you attack as if I hadn't made them.<<

Which ones?

>>It's patently ridiculous to say that we are obliged by principles of equity to facilitate behaviour that we now know is very probably responsible for AGW<<

Ridiculous to whom?

As I pointed out, it means very little to those aspirational folk from other societies whether we sit on our mineral deposits or not. They will simply buy their requirements elsewhere. There's a whole lot of Africa that is yet to be developed, after all.

The only people to suffer will be us. Those warm feelings of self-righteousness won't last very long, I'm afraid, before they start trickling down our smug little legs.

>>...my position is that nobody's entitled to anything beyond reasonable subsistence...<<

Nobody at all? Anywhere?

>>We can achieve the necessary reductions in emissions over time with relatively little pain via an ETS such as I've described<<

Again, who are the "we" in this sentence? You switch around in your personal pronouns in a manner that suggests you believe you have the power to implement any scheme you like, on anyone you feel "needs" it.

Idealism is a wonderful thing. It provides us with goals that are justified on their intrinsic niceness and righteousness. Unfortunately, they so often fall apart when held up to the light of practical solutions.

In my view, none of the "solutions" to AGW stands one instant of proper scrutiny. They are all full of hopeful do-goodery, and completely empty of any semblance of achievable outcomes.

The closest we come to a genuine justification for our approach is that "someone has to set an example". Which, considering the lasting economic damage we are inflicting upon ourselves, is a pretty lame rationale.

"I want you to lay down your life, Perkins. We need a futile gesture at this stage. It will raise the whole tone of the war..." (Peter Cook, Beyond the Fringe)
Posted by Pericles, Saturday, 23 July 2011 3:15:54 PM
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@ Pericles:

You're perfectly correct, of course. My phrasing and syntax are frequently woeful in comments to Internet forums.

Mind you, AGW isn't a semantic game for me, as it so evidently is for you, and I have no intention of playing. Like I said, you've shown yourself to be part of the problem, not any part of the solution.

I'm sure you'll have no problems finding support here among the 'deny and delay' crowd who dominate this forum whenever AGW is mentioned. Meanwhile, I shall continue to explore positive responses to this global problem with those who are intelligent enough to want to find long term solutions, rather than wasting time dithering with clever dilettantes who are very adept at rationalising and protecting their unsustainable lifestyles.

See you on another topic, perhaps.
Posted by morganzola, Saturday, 23 July 2011 3:52:24 PM
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I thought the Greens were the topic du jour, morganzola. Indeed, for the whole month of July.

>>Mind you, AGW isn't a semantic game for me, as it so evidently is for you, and I have no intention of playing.<<

To classify my questions as "semantic games" is a cop-out, and you know it.

If the Greens are ever to become a relevant political party, they will need to face up to some of the inherent contradictions in what they purport to stand for, and the ability to put the policies that stem from these beliefs, into action. Hiding your head in the sand every time someone points out the consequences of the current crop of Green ideas is not going to help.

Idealism is a necessary part of one's mental make-up. It feels good, and righteous, and... worthy, somehow, to be able to lecture your fellow-man on how they are "protecting their unsustainable lifestyles", all the while offering nothing but hair shirts and penury in exchange.

We are living in the most fortunate continent on this earth.

Right here, right now.

Yet all I hear from Greens is how we should not share our riches with the rest of the world, but at the same time allow anyone to move here from another less fortunate land; how we should ban Free Trade and instead raise tariff barriers to "protect our industry"; how we should discourage science from finding more efficient ways to grow food; how we should not develop nuclear energy; how we should stop people from driving their car by taxing them out of existence, and so on and so forth.

And at the same time, they want to close down the IMF, the World Trade Organization, the World Bank and presumably any other international financial organization it feels uncomfortable with.

All I am asking is that instead of simply mouthing these platitudes, someone - like you, morganzola - actually starts to articulate what, they believe, will be the concrete results of putting some (or, heaven forbid, all) of these "policies" into force.

So far, no luck.
Posted by Pericles, Saturday, 23 July 2011 8:21:40 PM
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In my naive survey of highest maximums and lowest minimums, out of the readings for the eight capitals across ten years, today's summaries show:

Highest Maximums in the decade 2001-2010: one (Darwin, 2010)
Lowest Minimums in the decade 2001-2010: one (Darwin, 2007).
Net in favour of Maximums in 2001-2010: nil

But live in hope :)

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Wednesday, 27 July 2011 5:17:10 PM
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