The pollution of the planet has gained Mother Earth much ground in her fight with man where she has now become the aggressor. We are beginning to feel her wrath.

Despite the glaring biospheric evidence of man-made degradation of the planet, governments and major trade and commerce centres will continue to ignore the warnings in their worship of power and profits. They have already commenced with a scaremongering programme by threatening loss of jobs and lifestyles if we are forced to reduce pollution.

One positive aspect in the near future, I imagine, is that all nations will be so busy attempting to survive the magnitudes of global warming, they will have no desire for wars.

The recommendation of a carbon trading scheme gives me little hope for a reduction in carbon based emissions and is simply pandering to pollutant industries where they will have an opportunity to continue polluting. If we're serious about anthropogenic emissions, then a carbon tax would be more effective where the polluter pays.

The very conservative National Pollutant Inventory advises in 2005-06 Australia discharged to the environment 5,500,000,000 kgs of carbon monoxide; 3,100,000,000 kgs of volatile organic compounds; 1,100,000,000 kgs of particulate matter, 1,400,000,000 kgs of SO2 and 240,000,000 kgs of nitrogen.

All carbon based chemicals, when burnt, convert to CO2.

There are many more pollutants, however, I believe the above figures greatly under-represent the actual amount of these chemicals discharged to the environment.

Despite the concerns over man-made atmospheric CO2, the 2005-2006 emissions reports were as high as the 2004-2005 figures.

Is anyone really serious about this dilemma?

Those who claim we do nothing while China and India resist, present an illogical argument and are frankly, morally bankrupt which places Australia in the same shameful light as the US.

We need to remind ourselves that it was first world countries who instigated the industrial revolution and the resultant, unmitigated pollution of this planet.

In the meantime, the pollutant industries in Australia remain self-regulated and self-monitored whilst polluting with gusto, while their buddies, the sceptics, continue to indoctrinate and exploit the ill-informed masses.

So a few Pacific Islands whose inhabitants have already left will sink, so what. The odd species of butterfly, blah blah blah. That personally doesn't mean much to me, or the security of the globe.

Beyond the hyperbole of Climate Change the terror that will change our planet is banal: Farming will have to change in many areas and infrastructure with it. Food production will be even further from population centers, and, routinely on the other side of disputed borders.

The globe has warmed and cooled in the past, but never to the extent we face now. Most importantly climate change has never occurred with agrarian based economies sliced between arbitrary national borders.

What do the people of Bangladesh do as their incredibly low-lying country sinks beneath the waves? They'll be moving in numbers greater than at the time of Partition.

Regardless of the outbreak of traditional border conflict the displacement of people and upheaval will resemble civil war in many parts of the world.

China is crying out for their fair chance to produce the gasses that power the economic miracle, but if global warming displaces millions in cities like Shanghai pollution will be the least of their concerns.

This call to understand the broader policy consequences of warming is timely, and it would seem inevitable that John Howard will formulate a complete response in the next few weeks. It would be reckless to ignore.

Good posts here. What is fightening is climate warnings were made in 1970s, presumably based Al Gore style data from earlier decades. Nothing happened. The Polician Caste just didn't listen. Catch is, Politicians are still at the helm. Unwise monkeys. See no warnings Hear no warnings. Speak no warnings.

If McDonalds were to stop advertising, today. There would be a carry-over effect from past campaigns. It might take a few years, before, people don't think about Makkers, say, once a week. Likewise, the process of rapid Asian development in the post-colonial period, after Vietnam, might still not have been fully felt. Likewise,the East China pollution belts, from the past decade, could have set in motion events, we are "yet" to experience.

The economic transformation of high population, developing countries is problematic. If, we in First World were to plateau emissions,the contributions to global warming by the newly developing economies, would be additive on the foundation we have stabalised. Chasing economic advantage now, in global terms, could be like sending iron ore to Japan, before WWII. Ulimately, we could be feeding a process to our own detriment

Standard operating procedure for articles of that ilk.

It really is becoming quite tedious, such patronising condascension. It invites same. That you insist on blatant appeals to emotion with extrapolated doomsday scenarios,driving the whole thing with a theory. A grand theory it is, no doubt.

You guys always go for the classic logical fallacies that udermine your credibility. The most popular ones in this discussion are personal attacks like ridiculing opposing views (my favourite route too) and the patently illogical premise that a view gains credibility by the weight of experts whom agree with it. 2+2=5 is not a better arguement, than 'maybe it equals 4', because 1 billion are saying the former and a few are saying the latter. Columbus, was a minority view afterall.

People know when they're being spun and WE DONT LIKE IT. It invites contrarianism.

Do yourselves, us and the world a favour by dropping the pretext (prolly a ruse for left wing proponents to asssert control over devices of capital... politics, whatever).

Try appealing to the obviously GOOD sense of pollution reduction. Afterall who wants to breathe black air, drink black water, let the gardens and the forests die and picnic on concrete slabs painted green. ITS INHUMAN.

Try painting a POSITIVE picture... for a change. That would be refreshing. There are many things being done and that we can all do to quitelt bring about our own green revolution without the vested interests having a bunch of laws and measures to beat another bunch of vested interests with.

Some (many?) of us can see you PLAYING POLITICS. It looks very bad, that you should reduce something so important to the cynical world of politics. It be a CONTRADICTION and you shoot yourselves in the foot.

Of course, do not dare to take it one step back and deconstruct the vapid, banal, materialist, consumer driven existence, devoid of any real meaning that is driving pollution in the FIRST place.

That would be too inconvenient. Maybe Al can help ya there.

“terror as the most likely cause of mega-death.”

Terror actions have never generated significant death tolls. Sure a few hundred here and there, things like the French Revolution or acts of deliberate genocide produced reasonably high death rates, where the state becomes subordinate to a vicious and ruthless regime, Hitler’s Nazis, Stalin’s Communism, Pol Pots Communism or what has happened in Botswana and other parts of Africa from time to time.
But “Terror” in the context of terrorists, who tend to be isolated and without the authority of government office, rarely accounts for more than a few hundred, 9/11 possibly representing one of the largest headcounts for a “terrorist” outrage.

“If climate change is human-induced, then the solutions can and must be found within our collective resources and wisdom.”

Even if climate change is not “human-induced”, there may still be human solutions. Interestingly, I caught a snippet on TV today about a Mega volcano under Yellowstone National Park in USA which, if it were to erupt as it did previously, is likely to cover half USA / Canada with Ash and produce a catastrophe sufficient to alter the entire weather pattern of the earth for centuries and possibly destroying mankind in the process. The interesting bit of the commentary was, the eruption is 20,000 years Overdue. Seems to me we are living on borrowed time and whatever humankind can or cannot do is going to be pretty pointless eitherway.

Plerdsus, well said,
If we address / remove the burden of human population, the “human-induced“ environmental issues disappear.

I think most of the pissing in the wind which is going on these days comes from different scientists trying to see who can write their name in largest letters on the wall of fame, which possibly explains why some many of them are male scientists, the females being anatomically challenged, when it comes to wall writing.

Oh and “carbon credits”, if the world is to go along a path of “carbon trading” and all the other “pseudo-economic bulldust” I want to see how the process can pass any test of “mathematical integrity”.

So we get another bozo trying to link Hurricane Katrina to "Gullible Warming". And lets all trot out the usual devices of the inveterate sleaze. Wars will not be fought over climate change, they will be fought over climate ideology. Just as every other mass murdering psychopath has done his hideous work for ideology.

The chances are that the next Stalin, destined to massacre 40 million eco-kulacs, or destined to take us all back to environmental year zero, is out there right now, googling his prejudices, fine tuning his hatred of sceptics, building his anger at their supposed sabotage, and quietly developing his thoughts on a final solution.