In another piece today Julian Cribb asks why the public are cynical towards academics – well here’s a great example. It’s yet another “environmental” article which article fails to recognise basic economic reality, and never questions the morality of an elite dictating how the rest of us must live.

It may come as a surprise to Sharon Beder, but insofar as governments desist from interfering in their businesses, car manufacturers compete for customers in a market. They are not free to set any price and profit level they like, as implied by claims in the article. Instead, they react to the demands of customers – and if they don’t, they go out of business.

The reason certain vehicles sell better and are more profitable is not because of some evil plot to destroy the world through greenhouse gas emissions, but simply because those vehicles are what their customers want.

However, in common with all environmental fundamentalists, Sharon Beder looks at the world through Marxist glasses. She sees nothing wrong with determining what customers want through imposition, not choice, and thinks car manufacturers operate in the same unaccountable way.

All of that aside, this article also reinforces the silly idea that all changes in the environment are bad, and caused by the activities of mankind. How is it that an academic, supposedly well-educated, can hold such a narrow view? Our environment, which incidentally includes us, is subject to far greater forces than man could ever hope to master – forces which we don’t fully understand, and which will continue to change the climate in dramatic ways for millions of years whether we produce greenhouse gases or not.

About the only way we are going to stop a global catastrophy is to change the government of this country away from economic rationalist thinking. It a shame we can't ship people like Winston, and similar ones in government, off to another planet where they can fiddle with their bank statements while Rome burns.

There is no reason to believe that leaving businesses up to their own devices is going to solve these environmental problems. Indeed there are many counter-examples that show that it has not worked to date: salinity, the wretched state of our rivers, dessertification, species extinction, coral bleaching, and of course the devastation that will now ensure with increasing temperatures. Environmental mishaps are increasing in scope and severity.

I hear you Winston.

Reduced emmissions and restrictions as mentioned will mean delaying the race to find alternate sources.

And the race is on. In te years we will be driving using fuel cells, not too efficient mind you though so as to keep us at the servo, as long as there is a sufficient business model with revenue to be made, we will be looked after.

The fuel fad will undergo what the tech age did in the early 90's, and our environment we are not the master of.

A meterite could hit us at any time so know that we are not the almighty conquerers of the planet.

Sharon's on the money. As farm kids we learned to conserve resources carefully. No hardship involved at all really.
Why wouldn't you? Stewardship was a word used with pride.
Cycling or walking to work each day along a suburban thoroughfare, I see hundreds plant the foot at the green light and slam the brakes at the last possible moment before the red, just a few metres down the road.
What peculiar animals we are! This behaviour still amazes me after decades of observation. Reminds me of sheep.
(OK as individuals, but as a group .......)
I see dozens more examples of pointless profligate energy wastefulness each day in my limited urban life. Until there is a change of attitude amongst the masses, resources will be squandered with crazy disregard of future cost.
(24 houses in our street. 17 four-wheel drives, one tow bar.)
It's been fun to imagine my old farmer father as a (Winston-style) Marxist for I'm sure he'd agree with Sharon too.
He'd have used the word "conservative".

Big business is not alone in ‘denying’ global warming. There is so much conflicting argument and contradictory evidence, that the whole thing has become a yawn. Even if there is any truth in global warming, people are fed up with hearing about it.

The greenies have been crying wolf for too long, ensuring total apathy about the whole thing. The CSRIO is cutting back on alternative energy research and concentrating on ‘clean coal’ for industry. The CEO is reported as telling “The Australian” of 31/1/06 that we are heavily dependent on coal, and there would be no change in the foreseeable future.

As for cars, the major manufacturers are in big trouble already, and they are hardly likely to want to add anything to the price of a car. Mitsubishi is likely to be out of manufacturing in SA soon, and GMH is a lame duck.

We need to hear form people who can do something, not social ‘scientists’ who merely criticise and haven’t got the faintest idea of economics, business or what it takes to run a country

Sharon Beder is dead right about government being stupid if they really believe big business will just do the right thing.

But much more alarming are those environmentalists, such as Jonathon Porrit (UK) who was widely reported in Australian media last week. Capitalism is the only show in town, he said and if we can't work with them then the show is over.

If you can't beat them join them, is the usual refrain, but you would have to be at your wits end to believe the capitalist economy will solve the enormous problems it has created - of its own free will.

That's the day when pigs will really fly.