With increasing proof of Global Warming, most of you anti-greens by now should have disappeared into your plastic ersatz caves. You who refuse to take lessons from history about an Avant Guarde in touch with an Almighty who cares for nature even more than humankind.
You so much like the neo-cons whom before the mess in Iraq sought for regime change for not only the Middle-East, but for any Islamic nation that did not conform to the neo-con/Israeli backed American Way.
The only lessons from history the above combination can truly take is the worn-out one of the Promised Land, which the Israelis backed by oil hungry imperialist America still have an inborn belief in.

However, such religious faithfulness has become so clouded with unjust reasoning - that a coming attack on Iran, followed by the occupation of Iraq, could see not only the rest of the ME involved but all the world.

As a still active farm company director, much of his retirement spent in the social sciences, part of it overseas gaining Honours in Third World Problems, reckon one has become a bit like a sporting umpire looking for global fair play. And possibly as one expects you anti-Greens to say, a true left-wing loonie fruitcake.

Now a story of how a little bush town was saved by a few early wheatbelt greenies. In the steam-train days, low-lying Buntine was an important railway water stop with 1300 hundred acres of sloping timbered terrain acting as a catchment for a large covered railway dam. But when diesel power came to replace steam on the rail, there came the natural urge for the railway catchment to be sold and cleared for agriculture.

Farmers all ready to pay deposits on the future farmland became angry when two farming family daughters and three other sons attending the new Dalwallinu high school, protested to the government that clearing the dam catchment would turn the low-lying Buntine town area into a saltlake. The protest proved successful but with much disgust from farmers. No need to tell the end of story.

"It means everyone will need to pay more attention to their daily lives. Health, domestic activity, work, play, socialising and political participation will all be transformed by the new rules. Everyone will need to become more responsible in how they do things, how they relate to each other and how they spend their money."

Wow, can hardly wait for the mass collective exercise sessions and party broadcasts from Al Gore on how I must relate to people and spend my money. And Tippy's compulsory videos on domestic activity and healthy organised play. Picture North Korea run by Martha Stewart.

1. If Howard had come forward 10 years ago and announced that he was taking action on climate change, resulting in big increases in fuel and electricity prices, he would not have been returned at the next election. Governments that lead in advance of public opinion run huge risks that the public will reject them through ignorance, so I personally have no problem that Howard is only now acting on GHG emissions and climate change.
2. It has taken 200 years of fossil fuel burning to get us to the precarious position we find ourselves in right now. Why does anyone think that we must have the solutions worked out and presented to us before the next election? And where is the evidence from other global problems such as ozone depleting substances that problems that are decades in the making can be solved overnight?
3. Peter says "There just isn’t time to let markets work this out". In fact, markets are the only mechanisms that have a chance to work out the solutions to our GHG emission problem, assuming that the world's governments do what Thatcher and Regan did, namely, provide a set of rules within which the markets must operate.
Bernie Masters

A good article Peter,

However, as with all good intentions, being green, reducing consumption, putting in tanks or driving super economical cars will all mean absolutely nothing unless the Australian and world population falls rapidly.

No amount of scrimping and saving or good intentions will make one iota of difference in the long run. We cannot save enough or reduce consumption enough to maintain our quality of life and make way for the increase in population.

With all our knowledge and scientific endeavour our dumb government (of either persuasion) still has an immigration policy set to increase the population. Our children's quality of life will continue to fall unless we all realize this fact.

If this is the case how can we expect to help raise other countries quality of life to what they, or we, consider to be acceptable

“In fact, markets are the only mechanisms that have a chance to work out the solutions to our GHG emission problem, assuming that the world's governments do what Thatcher and Regan did, namely, provide a set of rules within which the markets must operate.”

Bernie, isn’t this the same as saying that governments have to work it out? And that they specifically have to control markets and the business sector in order to do it?

Markets can’t work it out, for one simple reason – the profit motive, which demands ever-bigger market shares…which works strongly towards encouraging continuous population growth…. which works directly against overall GHG emission reductions.

Any business that is wise enough to see that the protection of a healthy future market is more important than growing that market now, will be out-competed by more aggressive short-sighted companies.

No, it just cannot be left to market forces. Strong government regulation is essential.

Ludwig: history has shown that complex issues which have their solutions determined by market forces need to have rules set via a partnership between government and industry/business. The rules need to be strict and enforced, but they also have to make economic, practical and effective sense or else they will ultimately fail. The USA created a sulphur dioxide trading scheme which worked well and achieved the desired reduction in SO2 emissions (although Europe went down the regulatory path which worked just as well). The world solved the ozone layer depletion problem by developing a partnership between government and industry/business. Now we have to solve the GHG emissions problem, knowing that there is no such thing as a world government and that the huge future emitters like China and India will need to be brought in voluntarily, not forcibly, to whatever scheme is created.
The reasons why markets have been shown to work (with governments setting the basic rules and enforcing them) is precisely because the profit motive is what drives 99% of people to do what they do. When push comes to shove, the really important and long-lasting decisions are made for economic reasons more than for altruistic ones.
Population growth may be something that industry/business wants to happen but it's simply not happening in most of the developed countries of the world and, on present trends, global population will stabilise somewhere between 2030 and 2050, with the planet's population declining thereafter.