What I don't get is Why we will have to buy overseas carbon permits (credits) in the first place; and Who we are going to buy them from anyway?

As things stand at the moment, I understand that with our forests and agriculture Aus is virtually carbon dioxide Neutral! And greenhouse Neutral. So, what's our problem?

How many other countries have a smaller carbon footprint? Africa, South America and maybe a few parts of Asia? So, which countries will have greatest need to buy carbon permits? USA, China, India, Europe, Japan? Will there be enough credits available to go round? And, at what price, and with how much verification? And, are the big polluters going to participate fully in the first place?

The major polluters will have no option but to either go (increasingly) nuclear or invest enormously in renewables. (Or, to purchase increasingly scarce offset permits, or just opt out.) We, on the other hand, have an opportunity to invest modestly in renewables, matching increases in our further industialisation, and still remain virtually carbon neutral. No need for Aus to go nuclear at all, as long as we don't try to get too big - and population management will be key, as well as avoidance of increasing industrialisation too rapidly or extensively.

I think we have been sold a pig in a poke, making ourselves big guys in the international climate arena, and setting unnecessary carbon reduction targets for ourselves while the big polluters laugh behind our backs.

We need greater honesty and transparency in the whole climate and carbon debate, and I hold our current government at fault in selling us down the river on an absolute fiction.

Geoff,

"If you fully understand the true life-cycle cost of producing power you will discover that the energy returned on energy invested is actually negative. No nuclear plant on the planet has a full life cycle (including decommissioning and storage of waste) that is economically positive. Do some in-depth research and you will find the truth."

The Second Law Of Thermodynamics is a bitch ain't it?

Australian politicians have the brains to make themselves richer than their fellow Australians while making their fellows PAY and WORSHIP them in sundry order. Yet the same politicians cannot grasp the Second law of Thermodynamics(2LT).

I term this selective blindness. And with the blind leading the gullible we are all surely lost unless the inevitable PHYSICS solution is understood!

Given the 2LT and OIL running dry, in terms of future energy and indeed the peaceful future of the human race:

* There can be only ONE *

HOT ROCK GEOTHERMAL