It's more fun to quibble and quarrel with Online opinion articles. But sometimes you just can't. Mary Jenkins has set it out perfectly - the need for a global outlook on a the global crisis of the warmimng planet.

Kyoto - warts and all - is the beginning.

What an impact little Australia (little in its relatively tiny population) could have, by signing up to Kyoto, getting behind the emissions reduction program in an intelligent, job-creating way, and showing the USA that they are globally isolated in their government's fossil fool policies!

Unfortunately, the Australian government is similarly run by fossil fools.

It is little comfort to people of intelligence aand imagination to ponder on the future's verdict on John Howard. He will surely be seen as the worst Prime Minister in Australian history - one who sycophantically followed George W Bush into wars and the promotion of global warming. The hypocrisy of touting nuclear power as a climate solution will be another obvious legacy of the Howard reign.
Christina Macpherson www.antinuclearaustralia.com

Great article, Mary Jenkins!

... and great post ChristianMac!

It's galling that environmentalists are now damned by Bush and Howard for not immediately falling in line behind their nuclear power 'solution' to global warming, when they both denied the threat existed for years have caused the world to have lost many years of valuable time in confronting the global warming challenge by their sabotage of the Kyoto protocol negotiations.

Whatever we may think of Kevin Rudd, we must not lose the opportunity to resoundingly cast John Howard into dustbin of human history for his crimes against the environment and future generations.

Other articles of interst on OLO are NSW Greens upper house member Lee Rhiannon' "Coal plans expose Labor's climate change flaw" at http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=6394 http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=6394

and Peter McMahon's article "Back to basics: averting global collapse" at http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=6345 http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=6345

John Howard did not just "sycophantically follow" the US leader into reneging on global warming commitments -- the Australian delegation to Kyoto made great progress in undermining the agreement altogether, arranging land-clearing-related concessions and promoting differential instead of uniform emissions cuts for developed countries.

The process is well-documented in Clive Hamilton's book, _Scorcher: The Dirty Politics of Climate Change_:

http://webdiary.com.au/cms/?q=node/1957

and in Guy Pearse's _High and Dry_:

http://highanddry.com.au/

Welcome as electric efficiency is in the home, it cannot make a major difference to Australian greenhouse gas emissions because homes are responsible for less than 15% of Australia's electricity consumption. Most Aussies produce more CO2 driving than at home, and many of us make more whilst flying than both put together. It is industry which contributes the lion's share of our carbon emissions, particularly aluminium (which uses almost 20% of our total electricity consumption, more than all homes put together), mining and aviation. Shopping centres and office buildings also use more electricity than homes.

Government action is *required* before Australia can seriously cut its greenhouse emissions. Fortunately once we bite the bullet it will not hurt anyone very much, with the exception of the aluminium industry and (if carbon dioxide capture and storage turns out to be prohibitively expensive, which my guess is it won't), the coal mining industry especially in Victoria.

Since our aluminium smelting industry basically only exists even today thanks to massively subsidised electricity (paid, in practice, by all other electricity users), losing most of it would not hurt the Australian economy much overall, though the money saved would of course have to be directed to finding new jobs for aluminium workers and bauxite miners. Alternatively we could continue part of the subsidy as a tradeable carbon emission permit, giving them an incentive to find low-carbon smelting techniques.

You have raised some interesting points xoddam.

I would be interested to see a more detailed analysis of the economics of aluminium production. If some poltical party (perhaps the Greens?) could put the arguments against the Aluminium industry cogentty and suggest alternative employment for the workforce now engaged in aluminim production, this issue could gain some traction.

It's rankling that Howard has largely been let off the hook for having delayed for sao many years action necessary to confront the threat of global warming.

A few days ago US President George Bush even had the effrontery to rebuke those who did not embrace his nuclear power 'solution' to global warming as being indifferent about this issue.

The Aluminium industry had the spotlight on it in 2002 by Hal Turton for The Australia Institute.
TAI.org.au
Discussion Paper 44
The Aluminium Smelting Industry market power, subsidies and greenhouse gas emissions