John Le Mesurier, I think that you have entirely missed the point about why so-called direct action will fail.

It is primarily because the motivation is weak. Well, weak compared to another very strong motivation which just about everyone seems to have turned a blind eye to.

This motivation is the great urgency to wean our society off of our utter dependency on oil. If our government, be it Labor or Liberal, would just grab hold of this with top priority and impress on us the great danger of remaining hooked oil if the price of the stuff rises even to a moderate extent, let alone if supplies were to become short, then our efforts to develop alternative carbon-neutral fuel sources would be greatly increased.

Our success in reducing greenhouse gas emissions would be MUCH greater than if we were to continue fiddling around the edges of the issue of climate change and pretending to be taking direct action.

I’ve said this quite a few times now on this forum, but there just doesn’t seem to be a lot of support. Some support, yes, and no strong detractors, but for some unknown reason it just doesn’t gel with peoples’ sense of urgency, which I’m afraid I just don’t understand.

The great motivation is to prevent our society from severely fracturing, with massive economic disruption, unemployement, civil strife and severed supply lines, which could so easily happen if the price of oil rose even moderately.

This is a vastly more cogent motivation than that related to the tiny part that Australia could play in global climate change by reducing GHG emissions.

Please see this general thread: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=3836