Good piece There will be no real change while Little Johnny is in power.

Congratulations, you've won the award for being the one millionth article on Online Forum about climate change!!

Well done but climate change , global warming what is this speak all about.

Is it about greenhouse gases which have increase over the last 200 years or and the el nino effect.

one should ask these and how they would fix it.
Will signing kyoto make these disapeer, i dont think so.

With our other developing counties in the world they know what is happening but do not wish to start with new technology due to big company profits.
Its about time our government had change and this is up to the people.

www.tapp.org.au
we are after members and candidates who represent the people and not just a political party this is why we are different.

Thank you, Andrew Macintosh, for your detailed history of the Howard government’s changing attitudes to climate change. I do hope that the ALP can do better, but I doubt it.

You certainly highlighted Howard’s “spin without action” on climate change. One thing you didn’t look at is – to what level does Howard actually understand climate change? My guess is that he understands it very little, and cares even less.
Howard, following George W. Bush discovered climate change very suddenly, at the behest of the nuclear lobby.

Howard now is managing, with his usual adroitness, to walk the tightrope – he has to appear to address climate change, so he can sell the nuclear industry.
He has to do as little as possible to address climate change, so as to appease the coal-mining industry. Christina Macpherson www.antinuclearaustralia.com

well well christina

it seems that the greens and labor will take us into a spiraling recession and povety for all.
No coal no jobs no coal no steel, no coal no power, no coal no computer, get the point.

No coal no product if it is closed down which is what the greens and labor will do.

Oh well must be due for another recession that we just have to have.

www.tapp.org.au

No-one's saying we're going to shut down our coal industries tapp. Bob Brown wants us to have a plan within three years to make them obsolete, though that's asking for too much whichever party is in power. Having a plan is to admit sometime down the track we'll need it; the pressure's then on to implement it.

The article's pretty much an accurate summary of the government's approach - highlight the negative economic effects and hope no-one thinks in terms longer than the duration of a bank loan. Have to admit it's difficult to get punters to look far ahead when their heads are stuck in their wallets.

This government's response to climate change is completely one-dimensional. It's all about the economy and nothing about what sustains it. What beats me is the level of ignorance in general about the environment - how can we continue to transfer chemicals from the ground to the air without there being a consequence?

Climate change has been part of this planet's life for aeons, but today we have the chance to do something to lessen the degree of change towards the negative, from the point of view of our immediate future.
We need energy; let's get that energy from as many non-polluting sources as possible.
Sure, we'll continue using coal, but let's include other options; wind, geo-thermal, tidal, solar, thus spread our dependence across many sources.

Not to do it is like being very thirsty, going for a drink, and finding that wine is all that's being sold at that outlet.
Why not go to a shop where you can choose between bottled water, soft drink, milk,fruit juice or any other thirst quencher?

Coal is not the only source of energy!

Bennie, you are so right, right from the beginning of the industrial revolution, we have had greedy man not working in with nature, but destroying it.

Howard is naturally still caught up in this greed, knowing that to do away with King Coal will cause him to lose power.

Maybe it was a canny Nature that caused all natural pollutants like oil and coal to be deeply buried. So maybe what we are really meant to do now is to magnify the heat of the sun to the extent that we will have all the power we will ever need, leaving evolutionary waste products well underground where Nature in its wisdom meant them to stay.

Come on Johnny boy, join up with the Avant Garde fruitcakes as many of our onliners term them. Right through history they have mostly predicted right. Some say even the young Jesus was one. Though not so sure about the later Christians who now seem so mixed up with the mentally backward industrial racketeers......

Andrew, you say that “In the late 1990s and early 2000s, it appeared inevitable that Australia would ratify the Kyoto Protocol and introduce an emissions trading scheme.” This is not true. Around 1996, I persuaded the Borbidge (Coalition) Queensland State Government to support the Kyoto Protocol, on the grounds that (a) the costs to Queensland, as estimated by modelling I directed, would be acceptable if the dire projections proved correct, (b) the short term costs would be low if the most cost-effective measures were pursued first, and (c) we should have much better information on AGW before the Kyoto target period of 2008-12 arrived, and could reconsider. In preparing the Cabinet Submission and fielding (horrified) Commonwealth responses to the Queensland decision, I talked to the Feds’ leading Kyoto negotiators, etc. They were vehemently opposed to any agreement, and were ropeable at Queensland’s decision. There was no prospect of Australia signing the Protocol, Qld was probably the only govt to give it the nod.

You also say that “an emissions trading scheme is intended to raise the price of products that are responsible for the emission of greenhouse gases. The price rise is what provides the incentive for the economy to shift to more greenhouse friendly technologies. This will draw jobs away from the coal industry, but new jobs will be created elsewhere.” This is nonsense. Our living standards depend heavily on trade, on importing and exporting. We are most successful in exporting energy-intensive (and methane-producing) products. If we significantly raise the cost of our energy and energy-using export industries, our exports and living standards will plummet. The dollar will drop heavily, and import prices will rise sharply. Where will the alternative employment be? Even with relatively lower wages, we won’t be able to compete with, e.g., China on cost.

Sadly, I expect such nonense from the Australia Institute, having first rebutted nonsense from Clive Hamilton and Ian Lowe in the 1980s. They’ve gone downhill since

It is distressing to read posts such as Faustino's that assume doing nothing will maintain our present standard of living. Doing nothing will ensure chaos, mass migration of millions, if not billions of humans displaced both economically and physically by climate change. There will be no economy to salvage in thirty years.
It is a fact that every single coalminer could be employed constructing and maintaining solar power generators, that, with existing technology could produce even base load power. A 50 km square of collectors in the centre of Australia would be enough to supply all our needs with zero fuel costs!
If ever there was a case of mass insanity, it is Australia in 2007.

Global Warming this year, Global cooling the next. In time we will all have a good laugh. China and India must look on us as a pack of morons. Many talk about Mr Howard being Mr Bush's bunny and yet the same people fall down and worship the GW High Priests. Never heard so much hysteria in all my life.

The Australia Institute is nothing more than an ACF front. Ask him who pays his salary. And as for the article? Plenty of Ducking and Weaving but all from the Gullible Warmers.

Ybgirp,whatever we decide or do about AGW needs to be based on evidence and understanding. I challenged Andrew on two points; on the first, I have direct, first-hand knowledge which contradicts his assertion. On the second, I know that he is talking nonsense from my years of professional expertise in what drives economic growth. Making points, as he does, which are completely false or fatuous helps nobody. And we are not just talking about coalminers. As Keith De Lacy (one of the few decent ministers in Queensland in recent decades) notes in The Australian today, our exports are dominated by coal, oil, gas and energy-intensive materials such as aluminium, totalling over $65 billion in 2005-06. Our largest non-energy export is beef at $4 billion, which also accounts for large output of the greenhouse gas methane. Without these exports, our economy would be devastated, many people would be out of work.

As for alternative employment: jobs depend on investment, and in Australia much of that investment is from overseas. Investors look for the highest risk-adjusted returns they can get. Few opportunities in Australia which are not currently viable would be made viable by measures which put up energy costs, even with former energy and process workers thrown on the market and a much lower-valued dollar (with consequential high inflation and higher interest rates).

No matter how convinced anyone is that AGW will bring drastic consequences, policies to deal with it must be based on reality. For the record, I’ve been arguing since I first became well-informed on greenhouse issues, around 1989-90, that if we wanted support for anti-warming measures, we should concentrate on the most cost-effective measures, maximising the benefits and minimising the cost; and in my own life I seek to conserve energy with measures such as a modest-sized well-insulated house, a low-consumption car and walking a lot. Currently many anti-warming activists are demanding very costly measures – far worse than a major depression – with little evidence as to the benefits, if any.

PS I meant to add that State and Federal governments have rarely adopted the most cost-effective measures for reducing emissions, they've almost always gone for ill-informed "sound-good" measures, e.g. subsidising ethanol, mandating "green" electricity etc. No sign of much advance there.

A lot of wind bagging, but how much action?
I'd like to know how much each of you are doing to combat climate change/greenhouse gas emissions. I'm definately not perfect. I use a ot of electricity, hey I'm on a computer now, I own a car...and use it. But I do try to turn off lights, and I do ride my bike to my daily commitment, I DON'T SMOKE!
I hear a lot of attacks on John Howard and his efforts in Government, or lak there of, but the fact is, he's there, and someone had to elect him there. Maybe his chopping and changing in regard to his policies is a result of pressure and condemnation. I think there are a lot of things he's done well, not that I'm a supporting voter, and I do support the decisions he has made. For the main reason that he wouldn't have made them hap-hazardly.
Howard would have been put under a lot of pressure from coal industry stakeholders, and yes, they do have a great deal of power. The problem is that this world is run by greed and lust for money, with very little concern for the environment and even human welfare.
I am a windbagger as well, but I do like to hear constructive talk, rather than extremist oppinions.
Charles52