Oo the contrary, Labor hasn't done enough to protect the planet for Howard's grandchild. Many Labor voters are turning to the Greens in frustration at Garrett's silence and Rudd's pandering to forestry and uranium miners.

Many people are frightened by Howard's pronouncements that unless we get substantial rain in the next 2 months the producers in the Murray Darling Basin will get no water for stock, orchards, dairy. As the MDB produces more that 40% of Australia's food Howard's pronouncements indicates a fivefold rise in food prices and Australia will have to import basic food stuffs.

Now many people believe that we are running out of oil and if you watched SBS on Tuesday night you would have been aware that there is a body of opinion that we seriously run short of oil in 2013.

If there is anything in this scenario then Howard has fallen asleep at the wheel, and we must act now to secure our food supplies now and into the future. we may have to subsidise family farmers to stay in production so that when transport costs rise we can still eat.

Michelle Grattan said that Howard was making mistakes in the detail of his pronouncements on the water situation in the MDB. Those mistakes have caused panic and shaken confidence in the economic outlook. Yeah, I have calculated CPI figures in the past and I don't believe the current CPI figures.

Good article, which certainly puts into perspective Howard's hysterical ranting on the issue in recent days. It also implicitly supports the Greens' 80% target.

It's about time we got real about the absolutely necessary - if drastic - measures that we need to take if our kids and grandkids are going to inherit a planet that will sustain them.

billie...Howard doesn't have any grandchildren...thanks for recalculating those CPI figures I have passed them on to Pete for use in his next budget. Please wake John up.

I agree with you CJ Morgan absolutely necessary and drastic measures are required. Please leave your car/s out for collection tomorrow. Make sure doors are left unlocked and keys are left in the ignition. Let me know your collection address. Thanks

I'm increasingly wondering if we'll have to voluntarily cut household energy use because the politicians seem incapable of introducing formal schemes. Cutbacks all round might see pollies themselves taking fewer trips by chauffeur driven limo from the marble palace to the airport. With or without carbon taxes or emissions caps it seems certain that both fuel and electricity prices will rise. If above-average rain fails to materialise then food prices will also go through the roof. That in turn will see AWDs left on the driveway and airconditioners turned off. So the emissions problem might partly solve itself but not in a nice way. Within a decade or so we might also wonder if we can do without as many politicians.

We can cut energy usage from coal fired in less than five years but hey what would i know

just a commoner who should leave politics to those who know all.

know how to suck up to the party say the right thing and not voice and opinion.

well you dont need to be a greeny to see that the alp are hypocrites with opening another uranium mine. They have tunnel vission and not really thinking about the peoples and australias future but just their own.

www.tapp.org.au

“At this point, Australia’s political and business leaders shouldn’t be debating about whether we can “afford” to cut emissions by 60 per cent. They should be discussing how best to achieve the target.”

NO! They should be discussing how to achieve sustainability.

Bugger climate change. It is too big to handle. It is a monumental distraction to the thing that we should be putting our hearts and souls into – learning to live without constantly expanding and within the resource and life-support systems that this continent can provide, with big safety margins.

Part of this process would be to prepare for peak oil, or more particularly for rising fuel prices that will cause the price of everything else to rise and our economics to radically change. Another huge part is to head towards a stable population.

If we did these two things, we would be addressing greenhouse gas emissions much more effectively than if we tried to address climate change in isolation and within the same old continuous growth paradigm.

If Rudd was to espouse the urgency of sustainability, and really take the whole subject up to the community, he would probably receive overwhelming support…. and he would set Labor up as a very different alternative to the Libs.

So it is certainly not a matter of Labor going feral in the hunt for green votes. It is a matter of them basically pretending to be a little bit green, while fully intending to continue taking this country down a track that is strongly unsustainable and hence on the road to ruin.