I used to think Malcolm Turnbull had a few brains but it seems the price the Liberal Party demands on joining is a dumbing down to the lowest common denominator, namely one John Winston Howard.
One day Malcolm will look back on this period with shame and if he doesn't look back he will certainly be reminded of it when he puts his hand up to be Prime Minister.
One thing is certain though, he will take no notice of anything that is posted here.

Meanwhile all Mr Turnbull's detractors keep flying in aeroplanes, live it up in hotels, flush their toilets use their laptops to post to OLO. What a bunch of hyprocites we are.

runner you may fly, watch a plasma TV screen and live in a mcmansion but speak for yourself sunshine

Mr Turnbull you say "To mitigate the impact of this climate change the world needs to massively reduce those emissions in the course of this century."

Wrong. The world needs to massively reduce those emissions now. Please cease procrastinating in your zeal for profits for yourself and your mates in the big end of town.

I see your grand plan to mitigate CO2 includes "deforestation", no mention of renewables and no mention of regulating the big polluters, the mining industry, which is totally out of control.

Currently, at least one town is forcibly having to relocate because of hazardous chemicals emitted by the big miners. Others are having to endure the dumping of tonnes of mercury over their communities. Another is suffering from lead contamination.

Dangerous hydrocarbon and other hazardous stack and open cut emissions are being inflicted on communities without mitigation or any pollution prevention control. Uranium workers have been contaminated from being supplied radioactive drinking and bathing water.

In addition, your government's "recycling" programme to encourage unregulated industries to incinerate waste oil as a fuel, with untested and unknown substances, permeating peoples homes and surrounds and contaminating the environment, reveals a totally irresponsible government.

One big mining operator in Australia is raping and pillaging the lands of 7 other nations, exploiting their resources and destroying their ecologies. Is this what you describe as "economic progress."

Mr Turnbull, it is well known, you and your government are not au fait on environmental or public health matters.

You don't really think the people of this nation would trust you to safely regulate and monitor a nuclear reactor, do you?

Good luck on your return to the corporate world, Sir. Close the door on the way out, please.

Incandescent light bulbs indeed!

Mr Turnbull,

It is so disappointing to me to see intelligent people forced to spout such a feeble party line. Maybe it sounds strong when you are preaching to the choir, but - - - I don't believe you have your ear to the ground.

I suggest you learn a bit (or a lot, or have one of your policy wonks learn) about HT Odum and the concept of energy and materials flow and embodied energy. These ideas are the real-world substrate on which economic explanations and mechanisms operate. To ignore them is easier than ignoring the law of gravity, in the short term, but the chooks are coming home, inexorably, to roost.

Two interesting applications of Odum's work are to be found at:
http://www.iwr.usace.army.mil/inside/products/pub/iwrreports/96r04.pdf
and
http://www.epa.gov/nheerl/publications/files/wvevaluationposted.pdf

A more general article about embodied energy and HT Odum's method of energy flow analysis can be found at:

http://www.energybulletin.net/6224.html
from whence this quote, from author and energy policy enthusiast Sholto Maud:

" ... it seems that those without emergy [embodied energy] literacy will not only find it hard to participate in the sustainability discourse, but will also be unable to evaluate suggestions and alternatives that address the sustainability of environmental management techniques, energy technologies, and policies in response to Energy Peak challenges."

Alright Malcolm, so Australia is doing some good things on the climate change front. Thank goodness for that. Let’s hope we ARE on target to meet our “Kyoto target of 108 per cent of 1990 level emissions by 2008-12”. By crikey we’d want to be. If we can’t make these very easy improvements to our absolutely profligate production of CO2, then we are just deadbeat dead losses.

The real test will be the next phase; beyond 2008, when large further reductions will be demanded, but the easy reductions will be behind us.

Believability that the Howard government can and will do this is just not there in the populace. In other words, you’ve got no credibility Malcolm.

That’s one thing, but there is a much bigger problem; The Howard government’s lack of address to overall sustainability. You as environment minister should be pushing for a holistic sustainability change as solidly as anyone can.

Again, in the absence of this, you’ve got no credibility.

Of course a fundamental part of this is an end to population growth.

I mean, how absurd is it is facilitate an ever-increasing number of fossil fuel consumers and greenhouse gas producers in this country while at the same time trying to rapidly decrease these things?? If there was a very tangible and significant gain for our quality of life in doing this, then there might be some merit in it. But there isn’t. Far from it.

When you start espousing population stabilisation and genuine sustainability, then the first little bit of credibility might start to adorn you.