You are right to discuss some of the shortcomings with the way the Index is constructed. I think it's so flawed the ACF should hang its head in shame and embarrassment. This critique discusses some other flaws:

http://melbourneurbanist.wordpress.com/2010/06/16/is-darwin-really-australias-most-sustainable-city/

What are we to do?

Once upon a time, we had the Domocrat's fairy commune down at the bottom of the garden, where we could consign this type of beetlejuice. Now we have nowhere.

Come back girls, we miss you.

Bob,
we had a PM who was deeply committed to doing something about emissions.
You and your party would not work with him and voted down the ETS.

Why, when you had the chance to do something positive, even if you thought it was not enough, did you act so negatively.

The Greens and the Liberal about face cost us a PM that was prepared to do something. JG urged the dropping of the ETS because of the political BS that the greens and Libs carried on with.

I think you missed an opportunity to work with someone who is committed to climate change, Kevin Rudd, and now are prepared to do a deal with a PM who will act on it only if it is ok by the polls and the backroom boys. Of course Tony Abbott thinks the whole lot is crap, so you have really contributed to Australia moving back about 15years on action against climate change.

I lost a lot of confidence in the greens over this. To me this is similar to the actions of Meg Lees of the Democrats, whose support of the GST saw the demise of the party in subsequent elections.

Oops, I posted in the wrong thread. This was meant for the Bob Brown article. Perhaps it has a certain relevance here too as little is being done to encourage the soft city dwellers into being more considerate of the environment.

<< This would be a good time for sustainability to enter the nation’s political debates. >>

That's got to be the understatement of the century Peter and John.

It is gravely, dismally and pathetically unfortunate that genuine sustainability is being bypassed in this election lead-up, let alone not being treated as one of the highest priorities, especially after Gillard's initial comments on a sustainable Australia.

Whatever shortcomings there might be in the ACF Sustainable Cities Index 2010, we cannot escape the fact that within our cities and indeed our whole country we are living in a grossly unsustainable manner... and that we are going to come unstuck big-time if we don't get our collective arses into gear !! !!

For our aspiring Prime Ministers to completely miss this, or at best to treat it extremely superficially, is gravely, dismally and pathetically unfortunate and irresponsible.

Oh yeah, I said that.

But by crikey, it needs to be yelled from the rooftops!

Come on Ludwig mate. I'm sort of in agreement with you, but you do go on.

You sound like the priests of doom who reckoned England would run out of wood, because so much of it was being used to build ships of the Royal Navy.

So what happened? They used steel of course.

If we run out of oil, we will have to have lots of horses pulling carts delivering those plasma TVs.

Lots of horses, lots of horse dung to burn, to cook our dinners.

No problem mate.