Ludwig: I'm not so sure the government is best able to handle the problem, or even that it should.

Who would manage it then shorbe?

We sure as hell can’t just leave it to market forces.

I can’t see how we can do it without government control. Afterall, this is exactly the sort of thing that government should be doing, ie – keeping the pressure on us to change our ways, offering incentives and developing a holistic plan.

Ludwig: Well, I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree. Ideologically, I do think this should be left up to individuals/consumers and not government. Practically, governments have been trying to solve all sorts of problems (War on Drugs, War on Poverty, War on Terror) for a long time often with little or no success). I'm not a fan of government, if you couldn't already tell.

But shorbe if we leave it up to consumers, we will just suffer all the same sorts of things that have got us into this mess – the tragedy of the commons, whereby people tend to get what they can while they can, and if some choose to reduce consumption or impact due to some ideological stance, it is only them who miss out, for as long as everyone else or a fair portion of the populace continue exploitative practices. And it is a case of the most aggressive and greedy coming to rule the roost.

No – we just cannot leave it up to the individual.

I agree with you that governments are pretty hopeless. But our whole situation would be much more hopeless without them. It is this quality of government that we should be trying to reform, not a bypassing of government.

Ludwig: I guess I have more faith in individuals and their abilities to regulate themselves and make long term decisions. Do we consider ourselves to be basically irresponsible? Do we consider the people we know to be irresponsible? Maybe you'll answer yes. If not, then why extrapolate to the position that society as a whole is irresponsible?

I don't think that government is the lesser of two evils. Besides which, and this is one of my fundamental problems with democracy, if we don't consider people to be capable of running their own lives or interacting sensibly via the market, why the hell would we unleash them on the ballot where they can do even more damage? If people (as individuals or in groups) are irresponsible, then the idea of them voting seems to be a compounding of that. It seems like an argument for some sort of totalitarian rule, not democracy.

This is the essence of the tragedy of the commons scenario shorbe – that people don’t consider themselves to be irresponsible when they are just trying to feed their families or make a profit. Individually they are not really being irresponsible, especially if they are just doing the same as everyone else around them and would lose out if they voluntarily pulled back. Even in our society where everyone knows about unsustainable practices, I think we would be battling to think of people as being that irresponsible for continuing to do the same old thing for as long as everyone around them continues to do it.

And this is exactly why we need a strong centralised system of governance.

It is essential that our government implement financial incentives to get us off oil. It is essential that they fund research and development of alternative fuel sources and more efficient technologies.

Ok, so some forward-thinking institutes, companies and individuals might get into stuff like this, but if governments push it along, it can only help.

You do make a good point about short-sighted self-centred people (irresponsible if you like) voting. Yes governments do largely reflect the will of the people. But, I would argue that whether or not you consider the people to be irresponsible for maintaining unsustainable practices, you most certainly can consider governments irresponsible if they encourage these practices or don’t work hard to reform them.

So again, I don’t think the people can make the necessary changes, such as those necessary in the face of rising fuel prices, without a lot of help from government. And it is very much a case of lobbying governments to get their act together, rather than dismissing them as useless.

I was pleasantly surprised to hear Kim Beazley this morning have some pretty good stuff to say about the urgency of dealing with rising fuel prices. So I think there is hope that even our old dinosaur parties can very quickly move in the right direction…. and will with just a little bit more prodding.