The Australian government has the ability to set the direction for restructuring the Australian economy towards a more sustainable model that will enable generation Y's grandchildren to live decent lives. Instead of supporting the development of solar technologies, both federal and state governments are subsidising existing industries adn overseas corporations.

Governments need to govern Australia for current and future generations of Australians.

Why did the NSW government give the care flights contracts to Canadians when the Australian operators were established as world best practice?

Why don't state governments install solar panels on all government buildings? Think of all those schools that put power back into the grid outside school times.

Why does the federal government pay research subsidies to the coal industry for a very dodgy technology like geosequestration.

Why do state and federal governments permit logging in old growth forests and replace the boidiversity with monoculture, aren't they aware of the devastation occurring in the Canadian lumber forests of British Columbia and Alberta. Whats with the Tasmanian Devil cancers showing up in Tasmanian platypus. What are the local forestry practices?

Why do we permit the importation of fresh foods from China? What happens when the Australian growers have been forced out of business by low farm gate prices and the oil shortage really starts to impact transportation costs?

Climate change has and always will affect the price of fruit and vegies. It has been that way since Adam and Eve existed. Harping on about the Aussie battler when anyone who breathes can get a job is a bit rich.

The continual scare mongering from enviromentalist who continue to predict doom and gloom (what happened to the whole in the ozone layer that was going to destroy us all by now) leaves me highly suspicious.

Every honest person knows that any affect that Australia has on climate change is very minute in the context of the world. Why then does Dr Mc Neil feel the need to have a cheap shot at Mr Howard. It seems to easy to sit in an ivory tower and predict the future. I would love to see the predictions from 20 years ago and see how accurate those predictions were.

One thing you can be sure of and that is the climate will continue to change day by day. We will have earthquakes, floods, fires and everyone will interpret them through their own rose coloured glasses.

runner,
surely you're not suggesting that people with a job are not battlers, ask you local Woolworths check out lady how her finances are going, the console operator at your local service station, then wake up to yourself. Billie, I agree solar, hydro, etc should be used by all governments to give the community a lead, which is what leadership is all about. We have very little time 10-15 years to turn things around, and with any problem, if you don't even acknowledge it, you won't fix it. Perhaps as the globe slowly deteriorates, and the rich realise that they haven't yet found another inhabitable planet, things will heat up at a faster rate than global warming.

It’s drawing a long bow to link our present drought directly to climate change, or AGW, as the author implies in his article. I agree that solar energy has great merit as a non-polluting energy source (modern cells have an energy payback period less than 2 years), but it wouldn’t matter what Australia does, it won’t change the big picture. Assuming AGW is causing recent warming, unless the whole world acts together, our climate will become hotter anyway.

Robg - all scientists at the CSIRO and Weather Bureau think that the increasing frequency of drought in southeastern Australia is directly attributable to global warming.

Billie

and increasingly HUMAN INDUCED Global warming is being questioned as the computer models are found lacking and other more influencial factors (e.g. Sun's magnetic field) are being investigated.

SO if AGW is not so much factor then not much we can do about it. I mean we cannot help the other planets (Mars, Saturn etc) which are exhibiting global warming at the moment.....

But maybe we are wrong.....or maybe not.