I'm not entirely sure I understand you, morganzola. (Nothing new there, then...)

>>While I agree that large, rapidly developing countries like China and India have superficially legitimate aspirations to emulate First World living standards, the unfortunate fact is that if they manage to fulfil them, it will be at the very great environmental cost to all other people and living species.<<

First of all, there is nothing "superficial" about China and India's aspirations for their living standards. It is fundamental. What right do you feel that you have as an individual, or Australia has as a country, to hinder their progress in this direction?

Should we not in fact rejoice in their newly-won prosperity? Surely you are not so mean-spirited as to resent their achievements?

And you are of course absolutely right that if Australia does not provide them with the minerals they require, they will find them elsewhere. We will in the meantime sit on our assets, and slowly wither and die.

Long before any effects of whatever-it-is reach us, we will be the poor white trash of the southern ocean, living in humpies and surviving on turnips.

It's called cutting off your nose to spite your face.

@ Pericles:

Oh, I'm quite sure you understand exactly what I'm saying, but you don't like the message, so you're resorting to obfuscation. You're using a particularly mangled version of the notion of equity to try and hide the inescapable fact that if per capita resource and energy consumption in the developing world were to approach current rates in Australia, then we'd run out of non-renewables very quickly indeed and stuff the environment completely while we're at it.

I don't think that anybody in the world is entitled to two cars, three LCD TVs, an air-conditioned McMansion, a swimming pool and annual flights to Europe. Rather, if they want those things they should be made to pay the real cost of them, no matter where they live. We can far more easily achieve equity in standards of living worldwide if we in the First World amend our unsustainable material demands, than by expanding the practices that have created we're facing with AGW.

But you know all this already, and i realise belatedly that you're just playing the usual AGW denialist game, just a bit more subtly than your less intelligent cohorts. If you're still sitting on the fence at this stage of the debate, you're effectively in denial and nothing I could say is likely to persuade you either. So it's just deny and delay again, in which case I'm not playing,

I suppose that's why we ultimately have to have laws to enforce compliance with unpalatable but necessary environmental measures - if the overwhelming evidence in favour of AGW is true, then the longer we delay the more pain people like you will actually feel. Those of use who live more modestly by choice have far less to forego, but you need to be able to imagine a world where living standards aren't measured in exclusively material terms - precisely so that those teeming masses in the developing world about whom you're so concerned can have some hope of achieving improved living standards without wrecking the environment the way we have.

You clearly hold yourself to different standards that those you expect of me, morganzola.

>>...you don't like the message, so you're resorting to obfuscation<<

As a response to the direct questions I asked in my last post, that is a little rich.

>>You're using a particularly mangled version of the notion of equity...<<

"Mangled"?

The question is entirely straightforward: either you accept that other countries have the right to aspire to the same living standards that we have achieved, or you don't. To hedge it with "only if they don't stuff up the environment" is not an answer, it is an avoidance.

>>I don't think that anybody in the world is entitled to two cars, three LCD TVs, an air-conditioned McMansion, a swimming pool and annual flights to Europe.<<

This is so horribly wrong, at every level. You are suggesting that we should put some kind of ceiling on the ambitions of the world's population, in the name of some abstract concept of "entitlement".

It does explain, of course, how you wish to impose "morganzola's law" on Australian citizens. After all, possibly two or three percent of our population meet your criteria, and you clearly resent their achievements.

But how do you suppose morganzola's law would be viewed by the rest of the aspiring classes in China, India, South America and even Africa? I suspect they would have a name for your attitude towards them, and it wouldn't necessarily be complimentary.

Ultimately, the only way in which you could achieve your utopian vision is through some form of super-totalitarian dictatorship, a tenuous form of government that causes violent revolution wherever it is found. All economic progress being made in the world today is through the free market. It would be a difficult task to reverse this, and establish upper limits on what you will allow people to work towards.

And this is merely insulting...

>>If you're still sitting on the fence at this stage of the debate, you're effectively in denial<<

I am still exercising my brain. It is not my fault that others have decided to stop using theirs.

@ Pericles:

Now you're just being obtuse. You've ignored those elements of my last two posts that don't suppport the faux preciousness you're displaying here, including qualifying clauses to the propositions you attack as if I hadn't made them.

The only reason that I think it should cost relatively more for newly affluent residents of developing countries to engage in material excess is that we've demonstrated the damage that such consumption can do to the entire planet, via AGM. It's patently ridiculous to say that we are obliged by principles of equity to facilitate behaviour that we now know is very probably responsible for AGW, even if our best evidence is that doing so will exacerbate the damage that we've already caused.

I think you also deliberately misrepresent my position on entitlement. You present ecologically excessive material consumption as an entitlement of everybody - my position is that nobody's entitled to anything beyond reasonable subsistence, but ought to be able to acquire whatever material possessions they like, so long as these are priced to reflect their real cost in terms of greenhouse emissions and raw materials - as they would be under an ETS such as that into which our proposed carbon tax is supposed to develop.

Your totalitarian allusion is just disingenuous scare mongering. We can achieve the necessary reductions in emissions over time with relatively little pain via an ETS such as I've described, and which is consistent with the Chinese government's own strategies with respect to Greenhouse abatement.

I'm not going to waste any more energy on you with this issue - as I said, if you're not convinced by the mountains of evidence and any amount of informed discussion by climate scientists, then there's obviously nothing that I can say that will shift you off that fence. To use an apposite cliche - you're not part of the solution to AGW, so you're part of the problem, unfortunately.

It might help if you used simple sentences, morganzola.

>>You've ignored those elements of my last two posts that don't suppport the faux preciousness you're displaying here, including qualifying clauses to the propositions you attack as if I hadn't made them.<<

Which ones?

>>It's patently ridiculous to say that we are obliged by principles of equity to facilitate behaviour that we now know is very probably responsible for AGW<<

Ridiculous to whom?

As I pointed out, it means very little to those aspirational folk from other societies whether we sit on our mineral deposits or not. They will simply buy their requirements elsewhere. There's a whole lot of Africa that is yet to be developed, after all.

The only people to suffer will be us. Those warm feelings of self-righteousness won't last very long, I'm afraid, before they start trickling down our smug little legs.

>>...my position is that nobody's entitled to anything beyond reasonable subsistence...<<

Nobody at all? Anywhere?

>>We can achieve the necessary reductions in emissions over time with relatively little pain via an ETS such as I've described<<

Again, who are the "we" in this sentence? You switch around in your personal pronouns in a manner that suggests you believe you have the power to implement any scheme you like, on anyone you feel "needs" it.

Idealism is a wonderful thing. It provides us with goals that are justified on their intrinsic niceness and righteousness. Unfortunately, they so often fall apart when held up to the light of practical solutions.

In my view, none of the "solutions" to AGW stands one instant of proper scrutiny. They are all full of hopeful do-goodery, and completely empty of any semblance of achievable outcomes.

The closest we come to a genuine justification for our approach is that "someone has to set an example". Which, considering the lasting economic damage we are inflicting upon ourselves, is a pretty lame rationale.

"I want you to lay down your life, Perkins. We need a futile gesture at this stage. It will raise the whole tone of the war..." (Peter Cook, Beyond the Fringe)

@ Pericles:

You're perfectly correct, of course. My phrasing and syntax are frequently woeful in comments to Internet forums.

Mind you, AGW isn't a semantic game for me, as it so evidently is for you, and I have no intention of playing. Like I said, you've shown yourself to be part of the problem, not any part of the solution.

I'm sure you'll have no problems finding support here among the 'deny and delay' crowd who dominate this forum whenever AGW is mentioned. Meanwhile, I shall continue to explore positive responses to this global problem with those who are intelligent enough to want to find long term solutions, rather than wasting time dithering with clever dilettantes who are very adept at rationalising and protecting their unsustainable lifestyles.

See you on another topic, perhaps.