Footnote:
Said canal, would support several brand new thorium reactors, and or, solar thermal power plants, or some combination of both!
This would allow a natural progressive migration from the cities, and brand new industries to follow or lead?
The left over salt load from various new agribusinesses, i.e., would support things like light metal smelting, Magnesium and titanium, which we have lots of!
And support brand new niche industries, like 3D printing, which by the by, can use titanium, to create jet/rocket engine parts and so on.
Thorium is currently a waste product of rare earth processing, we have lots of that as well!
Rhrosty.

<< We do need to grow, but in a sustainable way. >>

Rhrosty, we do need to develop a sustainable society. Then once we have confidently got ourselves on the right track towards it, we could accommodate some extra growth (expansion in population, infrastructure and everything else that goes with it), if we can do it without compromising the all-important sustainability imperative.

<< What we need are leaders with both courage of conviction and virtually unlimited future vision. >>

But it simply MUST be a future vision based on a paradigm of sustainability, and NOT one based on growth as the overriding priority.

Oh, Ludwig, Ludwig. What an embarrassing rant.

>>‘Real’ GDP!! What an extraordinary concept! So there’s real GDP and there’s ?ordinary or perhaps unreal GDP ?? How on earth does ‘real’ GDP differ from whatever other form of GDP there might be?Is it somehow a better measure of growth and/or prosperity? Or is still just as fundamentally flawed? I think it is pretty clear that it is still just as flawed as ?unreal GDP!<<

In the time it took you to write that sentence, you could have discovered that the "real" part is what you arrive at after taking inflation into account.

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/realgdp.asp

Otherwise, you would be left with a raw dollar figure that includes inflation, which is not particularly useful.

>>GDP includes all sorts of things which really should NOT come out on the positive side of the ledger, such as economic activity generated by smoking-related illness, or by floods and earthquakes, or by continuous population growth, all of which does NOTHING to improve the lot of the average citizen.<<

What a crock.

Illnesses create work for nurses and doctors, who then spend their wages at the corner store, keeping Mr and Mrs Chang in business, who then spend their profits on educating their children, causing employment for teachers, who then etc. etc. Floods and earthquakes siphon money back out of the insurance companies, into the hands of builders, whose labourers spend their wages down at the corner store and so on.

>>What we desperately need is to slow the increase in the demand for everything right down, so that the supply side can catch up.<<

Really? You are assuming that everyone else is like you, and is content with the lifestyle they have, and are also prepared to accept the slow and steady decline in the future that your prescription dictates. Unfortunately for your model, there are still many people who would like very much to improve their lot, live in better accommodation, have overseas holidays, choose their children's education and so on.

For that to be permissible, we need to continue to allow our economy to grow.

Croc099,

Carbon pricing will not change the climate nor deliver benefits in terms of climate damages avoided. Read the link I gave to understand why.

Can you explain, objectively, why you advocate renewable energy? What are your objective criteria, e.g.:

Energy security
Energy supply reliability
Energy quality (e.g. voltage and frequency control)
Cost of energy
Health and safety
Environmentally benign

Renewable energy is a poor option for meeting these criteria. So why do you advocate it? The reason most of RE proponents advocate it is emotive and/or ideological, not rational.

Peter, none of those things on the list. I actually agreed with you that the local initiative will have little effect on the global production of carbon effluents. I stated that I tend to look at the investment in the newer technologies as the marginal price of fossil fuel energy approaches the renewable thresholds. It is a mostly untapped market at the moment. Many other industries are leaving our shores so business investment in other industries is needed.

Croc099,

I suggest there are two serious misunderstandings in your comment. Carbon pricing will succeed, anywhere, for the reasons explained in the submission No.2 linked in my first comment. It is an enormous waste of money. It is seriously damaging our economy and will damage all economies that try it.

"the marginal price of fossil fuel energy approaches the renewable thresholds."

That is flim-flam and gobbledigook. Any government impost to favour renewable energy damages our economy. The Labor-greens carbon restraint policies are costing us $20 billion a year. Renewables can achieve nothing of significance. They are an enormous waste of money, and a massive distraction from pragmatic policies.

And to ignore, reject, avoid or not understand the requirements of the energy consumers, as I listed above, suggests you lack an understanding of the basics.

If we want to meet all the requirements that energy (actually electricity) consumers want and need, and also want to cut global GHG emissions, then the solution has to be economically rational. That means, governments and utilities will select the technological options without government incentives.

The only technology that is capable of achieving all the requirements and large global CO2 abatement as well is nuclear power - with small, low cost units that are suitable for all countries and regions. To achieve that, we need to advocate removing the impediments that are preventing competition in development of low cost nuclear power plants.

One early win would be to raise the allowable radiation limits to levels that are justified on the basis of evidence - as simply and well explained here: http://home.comcast.net/~robert.hargraves/public_html/RadiationSafety26SixPage.pdf . That step alone would greatly reduce the cost of nuclerar power (over time), reduce fear, and boost development, commercialisation and competition.