So now we have a choice between a scheme for the enrichment of bankers and a scheme for the enrichment of lawyers. I wonder how those who actually care about the environment feel about it becoming such a popular mainstream issue/opportunity?

Ah yes the "university" of Buckingham. Another link in the world-wide network of let the market rule ideology factories---there is only me and my immediate self-interest.

Yawn.... yet another ignoramus who has credulously swallowed the soundbites offered by denialist blogs and who has evidently failed to bother to learn the basics of contemporary climate science.

Handwaving conspiracy theories accompanied by a series of spectacular logical fallacies... in a word, pathetic.

Thank you Graham, for this refreshing prescription, where choice and societies ability to solve problems at an affordable price will benefit all and therefore does not adversely engineer the destruction of family and individual property rights or tax the community into subsistence.

This article almost makes it imperative that anyone commenting should spend $20 and buy State of Fear by Michael Crichton, a fictional story based in the United States where lawyers were manipulating the climate change hysteria, for private gain.

Climate Change is just one of the manipulations of the system for private gain lawyers have indulged themselves in. The biggest fraud is the transmogrification of the legal system from a civil system with full community participation as a jury, into a communist military system, as used by any occupying army, where members of the community are excluded and all decisions are made by Officers of the occupying forces. We won World War II but lost the peace to a sixth column of lawyers, whose empire has expanded exponentially since 1953.

By 1995 the federal Labor Party had identified the problem, and made legislation to control these home grown terrorists, and called it the Criminal Code Act 1995 ( Cth). Unfortunately the Liberals beat them in 1996, in March and did not proclaim the legislation until the 16th October 2001. Then they instructed the Australian Federal Police to ignore it and not to prosecute offenders. To date they have prosecuted no one. It is time they started. S 268:10 makes it a crime carrying twenty five years imprisonment to make slaves of people, and 268:12 makes it a crime for Judges and Magistrates to find guilt without a jury, and sentence anyone except on a jury verdict.

Senator Fielding is an engineer, and he is asking the same questions, and it is time we seriously looked at the forced nationalization of all property in Australia by the State Governments, and the exercise of illegal judicial power by them. If you choose to look at this website, http://www.community-law.info/ you will see a collection of documents including Kidman, Kable, Lane and Pape, decisions from the High Court that detail the extent of this lawyers scam.

Australia was a common law country and we have had no referendum changing that. Its time the lawyers in Australia woke up to themselves, and admitted their mistakes.

What an obscene load of steaming horse sh!t. This is a GLOBAL problem. Who/where will the people of Tuvalu or Bangladesh sue? The ICC? How will they be able to pay for it.

Your simplistic and idiotic idea is great for the rich west (who caused all the problems) but not so good for poor countries.

You conflate your obsession with individualism into some sort of fantasy world where everyone is equally able to defend themselves via the so called justice system.

Your unbelievably ridiculous suggestion that if A damages B's property they can sue completely ignores the fact that it is ALL of us damaging each others property to some extent. If you use electricity, cars, buy things etc etc you are contributing. How can such contributions be measured and then litigated against? It is just frankly an insane and totally weird argument that you are making and I think you are just spewing sh!t to try and cloud the issue as much as possible. Typical neocon spiv.

Another blinkered, dogma driven, right wing fool who thinks rich people can do no wrong and that anything that interferes with their pursuit of money is a socialist plot. You people suck and the sooner the rest of us stand up to you and your greedy ilk the sooner this world can progress and prosper.