Gee, Peter Mc Mahon, I don’t know where you get this optimism for the Greens. I can’t see any of it, and I am a former Qld Greens state candidate.

They just seem to be bungling along in the same old fashion, addressing side issues and just completely missing the big-picture critical sustainability stuff.

I think that Labor has got a vastly greater chance of winning power, if they could just see fit to address peak oil and related sustainability issues with the conviction that they need. You might say this is a bit like recommissioning the Titanic. Well maybe it is, but I’d still say that there is a better chance of it happening than the Greens suddenly becoming true environmentalists!

As for the Democrats, I agree, they are history. This was made patently clear by that terrible couple of discussions I and others had with Senator Andrew Bartlett on OLO recently, in which he showed himself and the Democrats to be no more than a third pea in the pod of antisustainability future-eating continuous-growth blind-eye-to-glaring-resource-problem puppets of big business!!

“The central environmental problem is of course global warming.”

NO IT IS NOT!!

The central problem is sustainability! That will be a major issue well before the really bad effects of climate change manifest themselves.

The first really hard lesson about sustainability is about to take a huge chunk out of our big fat backsides…. and that is continuously rising fuel prices and all its side effects.

THIS is where the true political opportunity lies – with the party that takes on board the huge significance of the peak oil shock and resolves to take a really full-on approach to making the transition out of the fossil fuel era as smooth as possible

The greens are against vaccination and pasteurisation? And since when is genetically modified food a public health advance? Put your silly straw men away "anti-green". And yes, our environment is better now than it was at the turn of the century in some ways, because we are "greener" than we were then. It doesn't prove your argument, it refutes it.

The Greens might succeed because the rural/urban divide means that Landcare groups closer to the environment than any campaigning hippie will not be heard. As a certain Labor man said before the last election... "if the Greens gain the balance of power, then we might have to agree to some of their crazy policies"... those few policies are causing havoc for many, and I can only hope that this article's predictions are incorrect.

On an aside, the Greens would have difficulty getting a good vote in a generally conservative society, unless they too move towards the centre.

antigreen
I never said that the Greens are never going to make a usefull contribution to the environment.

I said they would stall at the point of achieving power because the party, and indeed the whole Green movement, has no experience of power - only protest.

This does not mean that they cannot build new strategies and directions as new possibilities arise. The question is - will they?

And anti green - perhaps you are confused about where you are. The 1858 great stink was in London. In this country in 1858 the air, water and soil was pristine and clean. Today it is significantly polluted.

Survival and economic necessity will bring about real change in our behaviour towards the environment,not some weak kneed ideology driven by a communist mentality.

Just saying we told you so on a singular issue does not give the Greens the high moral ground to Govern all our lives.

The Greens view of the world is just too narrow to accommodate the diversity of thought and philosophies that make the world such and interesting place.

For years the greens screamed blue murder at the mear mention of the word DAM. Now that the water supply to their surburbia habitat is under minor threat there is not a murmur when a huge new dam is to be built to supply them.
If it was to do something useful, such as supply agriculture, the screams would be deafening, but, of course, the lawns of Brisbane are much more important than thousands of acres of prime farming land, & the people who live & work on it.
The only thing the greens will ever contribute to the country is an unpleasant background noise.