Bob, while I admire your motivations, I think that you are on the wrong track!

We’ve got to work towards what is achievable in the short term. A Zero Carbon Australia plan is just simply NOT, within the timeframe that matters.

The thing that we DESPERATELY need to be striving for, with all our collective mental energies, is a sustainable society that is able to step past its current utter dependency on oil.

The major components should be the development of alternative liquid fossil fuels, much of which would be in line with your ZCA strategy, and a stabilisation of our population, quickly!

Getting people activated is all about the motivation. Unfortunately the climate change motive is not going to cut it, either because people don’t believe that it is real or because they believe that Australia can only play a tiny part in the global effort, and with projections in China, India and the rest of the world looking dismal, there is not much point in Oz going at it virtually alone.

But there is one huge motivation for action – our society will suffer enormously if the price or availability of oil changes for the worse, even to a relatively small extent. We are just so precariously positioned with our dependence on oil, and at a price close its current level!

If we could just galvanise people into realising this critically dangerous situation, then we should be able to really put a massive effort into it. If we were to do this, we would be reducing greenhouse gas emissions much more effectively than if we continue to piffle around the edges of the climate change issue as we now are.

A lot of the components of a ZCA would be implemented. But if we just set out to strive directly for a ZCA with climate change as the motive, we’ll achieve next to nothing!

Dear climate change deniers - This is a piece about solutions - you're in the wrong debate, please go back to your aluminium lined bunkers that protect you from the alien rays.

I must congratulate Bob for taking a stance that matches the solution to the massive problem we face. The Zero Carbon Plan is indeed radical, but anyone who reads its amazing detail will see that it is indeed possible - at least technically if not politically (yet!).

No political party in Australia, except maybe the socialist alliance, has yet grasped the scale of change needed to avoid catastrophic, runaway climate change, and it's good to see a party that is in parliament address the ZCA plan.

100% renewable energy in ten years is possible and affordable. It is also essential. It's time we got on with the job.

Of course the ZCA is idealistic and over-optimistic. Of course it's improbable.

It relies on people removing luxuries out of their lives.

People don't want to give up their big 5-room, energy-sucking mansions 40km away from where they work.

They don't want to give up their fuel-sapping V8s and 4WDs which they drive 40km a day (1 person per car please) in slow traffic because the train system is too inconvenient.

People don't want "unsightly power lines".

People don't want to have to actually give up anything for this, so they give climate action lip service without action, or they deny the existence of climate change altogether.

The luxurious lifestyles we live now are ridiculous, yet for some reason we all believe it's a minimum standard of living.

So, the ZCA aims high for sure, but it outlines what is physically possible, not what is realistically possible. But we need to aim high if we are going to achieve anything.

I have no doubt if Christians had as much faith as those believing in this rubbish then they would be able to walk on water. No wonder so much 'science' has lost so much credibility. Even Ms Gillard thinks so as seen by her gathering her 150 citizens. First it was global cooling, then the ozone layer and now global warming. What will be the next 'scientific' scam that robs billions from the taxpayer to fund the fundamentalist loonies.

tcm, "The luxurious lifestyles we live now are ridiculous, yet for some reason we all believe it's a minimum standard of living." quite right, not that I agree with it being ridiculous though it is extreme materialism for many. Mind you we are all competing to improve, it's the human condition.

We've all been brought up by parents who wanted more than they had, for their children - we all strive to give our children the best opportunity and the best we can - otherwise, what is it all about.

So to suggest we go backwards, is simply delusional - we won't and if anyone actually tries to impose that, there will be a heck of a backlash.

Already many people are turning anti-green and eco, sure some people are leaning further towards it too - but each of those groups is becoming harder and harder in their opinions.

We could pollute less, sure, and everyone is open to renewables, but not to the militant tyrannical "turn of the generators" talk or action, before you actually can replace them with a real solution.

Why is nuclear laughable, if the AGW problem is really so great, so immediate, then why do you scoff at one of the solutions? Because it's all about reducing materialism and not climate?

Lip service sure, lots of people agree we should do this or that, but after having worked hard for what they have, or do not quite have yet, to suggest it should all be given up for some fanciful folly that is unproven and then again, only in Australia to affect World warming, is just stupid. That's how most of us feel who are not fanatics either way - we think you are by the way.

You don't have to be a warmist or skeptic to realize that no one cares what happens in Australia, and we make no difference to the world.

You can have your green pie in the sky feelgood finger wagging fun, but don't try to put us backwards, we won't accept it

This is all wonderful feelgood stuff, but Bob of course forgets
that this is a global issue.

So even if Bob and every single Australian, shut down the
power stations, put on a loincloth and became hunter gatherers
once again, it would not make a scrap of difference to
global climate.

With global population increasing at the rate of 250'000
a day, in just 90 days our entire Australian population
would be replaced by another 20 million new consumers,
all burning carbon. For whilst cheap carbon energy is around,
do not kid yourselves that it will not be used by somebody.

Until we get our minds around the ever increasing human
population issue, which the Greens largely ignore, a bit
of Aussie Greens feelgood policy will do little but make
a few dreamers feel better about themselves, with no real
consequences in the real world.