Malcolm,

Existential threats, such as climate change, can require actions that are not in the short or medium term interests of the current economy. Did we hesitate to take action in WWII because it might damage the economy (let alone threaten a few miners or forest cutters' jobs or shave some % off economic growth)? Of course not - because the lives of our families were at stake! The threat is just as real now - only insidious since we will not die tomorrow but our children will in a few decades from starvation.

You - and even your "opposites" in the Labor party will not have addressed sustainability issues and the threat of climate change until you stop economic and population growth. Of course, you will never do that because it brings the whole circus tent crashing down. (In the meantime, until the inevitable crash, you will make fatuous arguments about "decoupling" growth from environmental impacts as you lead us over the cliff.)

Shortages, such as of oil and water, and pollution, e.g. CO2, are all at the core, the product of population growth. All efforts to ameliorate climate change are for nothing if the population growth question is not addressed. Indeed, you, Costello, and the rest of ignorant politicians and economists are leading us in the opposite direction - over the cliff.

Thank you, michael_in_adelaide, for returning us to some reality after the absurd, boring, arrogant propaganda of the (Turn)bull to which you respond.

I notice too that Mrs Turnbull is on the editorial board of OP. Any conflict of interest anywhere here?

Oh, so why are are solar experts having to go overseas to get support ? Why aren't we leading the world in well-funded solar, wind and geothermal technology? Why does M. Turnbull try to pretend that there is such a thing as "clean coal" - what a joke ! Why does he preside happily over the destruction of rivers and aquifers by the big coal companies ? Why ?? Because the Federal government, like the government of NSW, is a creature of the big mining companies. Turnbull even refuses to see a NSW delegation who want to tell him about the imminent destruction of fourteen more rivers in NSW by mining operations. He simply does not want to know about it. He talks the talk but can't walk the walk, and this is becoming more obvious the more he blusters on.

I have always suspected that many people on the "right" of the culture wars divide would have preferred to be stand up comics--except they somehow ended up as politicians. Or perhaps as their followers/apologists that infest the "right" ring media---print,radio, TV and the blogosphere.
That turpentine chap who writes "essays" for this forum is a classic example.

Yes Michael, I couldn't agree more. With neither the Coalition or Labor doing anything about population growth or making a real and determined effort against Global warming or our reliance on rapidly depleting oil supplies (something which Labor has been strangely silent about), maybe it would be best if the two parties and their 'look-alike' politics joined together to form the "Lemming Party" and whilst I realise the story of Lemmings jumping off a cliff every 7 years is a furphy, surely it's not too much to ask that the "Lemming Party" takes a leaf out of Walt Disney's story book?
Strange how our plutocratic Coalition Government has suddenly jumped into the Global warming debate. Pity it hasn't thrown up some workable ideas instead of creating an opening for the PM's very good friend Ron Walker and the whole nuclear option which we WILL have should the Coalition be returned to power. I heard John Howard on a television interview one night saying that electric cars would not become part of the solution to lowering CO2 levels because "they would create too much unemployment!" When asked for finance to fund the development of new solar cell technology, he shunned it, but Brittan quickly enough snapped it up.
Labor is little different. I read where Morris Immea made the grand statement...."No use saving the World if we ruin the economy doing it!" What an idiot! I wrote a letter of protest to the fat slug's department, but received no reply to this date of writing.
We need a party in power who will address the coming crisis with a little more dedication than the present two party system presents.

And what a joke nuclear power is! Here is a report from a group in Oxford saying that there is only sufficient high grade uranium ore left in the world to power nuclear reactors AT CURRENT USE RATES UNTIL 2034!:

http://tinyurl.com/2v2prr

So with the world "rushing" to increase nuclear power, when they build their reactors there will be nothing to run them on.

The only "comfort" in all of this is that, if my children are to starve, then they will do it alongside Turnbull's and Howard's starving grandchildren. The wealthy won't be able to buy their way out of this one. We all breath the same air, we all need the rain, and we all go down together.