Leigh, let us be clear and frank. Green technology will cost jobs, and cost a lot of them. The problem is clear if we look at electricity generation. Wind power advocates say that wind projects generate power that costs 50 per cent more than conventional power. There is evidence from overseas that the true cost is three times that of conventional. Pick whatever figure you want but the problem is that wind power still costs more, and someone has to pay for the additional cost. Economic efficiency will be reduced, so the economy will suffer. You can make the figures look better by costing in some figure for the environment (although the actual damage won't occur until decades in the future - assuming anything does happen), but the immediate cost will be jobs.
Now you can't lie to the electorate at large by trying to convince them that jobs will be created overall. The grim reality is that paying to reduce emissions will cost, and cost big time.
One out for the green lobby is that the economy will still be growing so green jobs means fewer jobs will be created that would otherwise be the case. We will be less rich. A difficult sell, perhaps, but a truthful one.

Insightful article, Leigh.
I think that it was Arthur Calwell who said that "time payment was the death of socialism"- even back in the '50s he was referrring to the sensitivity of the mortgage belt to economic changes.

Being indebted to the max in the low-interest era, the average suburbanite fears interest rate rises more than anything, other than job loss and their political preferences can be manipulated around that fear. Both major political parties now treat the average suburbanite like Pavlov's dog.

Major policy issues of all kinds- other than tax reductions- will suffer the same fate as "climate change" policies.

What to do in the face of overwhelming evidence that large-scale action is required? I doubt that efforts to reduce carbon use will fail without a global, no-exemptions, cap-and-trade. That seems highly unlikely now. Without that, energy efficiencies will just be re-invested in more consumption.

The only other direction is to replace carbon and the only way that will happen if non-carbon fuels (solar, wind, waves, geothermal, nuclear etc) are cheaper than carbon. It is no point saying that these sources are good just because there is no CO2 being generated on-site- it's all generated elsewhere in the value-chain and life cycle.

Will these green technologies become economically competitive in time? There is good evidence that they will. Wind is pretty well there, PVs probably before 2020. Others are in their infancy.

I think that we can get some clues from innovation theory: We cannot reject these alternative energy sources simply because they are presently more expensive than carbon. But it is fair to ask when they might be. There are plenty of good methodologies to determine this- it woiuld, however, require more rationality in the debate than we see at present.

"The most important long-term issue facing Australia is not receiving the priority it deserves. "

Yes it is, it's down the list since it is all projection based .. carbon pollution might, or might not cause whatever. We can all agree on the climate changing, yes it does, always has. If you now want to sell the premis that it will change in a particular way at a certain rate, then you're asking Australians to believe in forecasting - this from a scientific area that is not well known for forecasts, for being involved in grubby cliques to protect interest groups and an IPCC who uses articles out of magazines to try to scare people.

The scaremongery and hysteria has run its course. As you say, it didn't work and I love this one "With all the money, time and resources invested in climate change advocacy, etc"

Yes, so much money spent and still you can't force the crowds to join your madness. So much for framing and messaging, maybe go back to good old marketing and sales principles and stop trying to oversell as clearly has been the case. You had the order, and could not stop selling .. till you all badgered the community into a coma.

Investment in a new grid and new technologies, if the government doesn't commit, then no one else will. In Australia, if you come up with a really good money spinner, you can bet you'll be taxed severely - that's where the big tax grab on miners is heading, wait till the ALP is back in power and see what happens to the banks, they'll be next I reckon. We'll have a socialist at the helm, I cannot believe Australia is going this way, but there you go .. framing and messaging eh?

Why would anyone risk their own funds now, why invest here? The ALP wants it both ways, and it will not work. Who will want to invest in a country that is not consistent in its message and is hellbent on going down the green road, regardless of consequences.

Has anybody stopped to think that the lack of action on climate change is due to the fact that, deep down, the people who have to make the decisions do not believe that there is a need to do anything; that there is nothing to be done?

Alternative energy is talked up; but where is it in reliable forms?

And, don't forget, if Labor gets back in, nothing it puts up in the way of 'action' is going to satisfy the Greens in the Senate. They will vote against whatever the government comes up with because it is not extreme enough.

It's time to get over climate change: to take what comes and get on with life.

Leigh “It's time to get over climate change: to take what comes and get on with life.”

Yes agree....

It is form of hubris to presume mankind is capable of causing global warming

A hubris which is only exceeded by any belief that we can change it.

Lenin said “A revolution is impossible without a revolutionary situation”

The green and environmental movements, having been infiltrated by leftists back in the 1980’s and 1990’s, are simply pursuing the supposed issue of “global warming” (or more specifically AGW) as their “revolutionary situation”

Something else Lenin said

“The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency.”

Taxing people to pay divert their income into an ETS and other pointless myths and fables of a “revolutionary situation” is debauchery in its purest form.

It is arrogant for AGW proponents to say there is already a 'consensus' when they won't discuss any other view. It is so presumptuous of the author to simply assume he and his ilk are simply right, scientifically and morally. Yet this is so typical of the Green left. They dislike Democracy because they can't impose their zealotry on the rest of us.

Yet, Democracy has spoken. The public doesn't believe the 'bad,bad carbon' story anymore and there are a growing number of prominent scientists (including Nobel Laureates) who take the same view.

A CPRS will NOT reduce the amount of CO2 produced. It will only make alternative energies, which are intrinsically inefficient, more competitive by taxing the populous for using the cheap but unpopular oil based energy.

The most interesting part of this whole sorry tale is that the Greens were responsible for preventing us having a CPRS by voting it down.