Nick,
I suppose the notion of solving climate change without considering the economy has not entered your brain yet. The sad thing is if we don't do as much as we possibly can individually and collectively we won't have a planet capable of supporting an economy, we have approximately 14 years to arrest the slide.If we don't the planet begins to deteriorate which is the best advise from the best and brightest of Earth's scientists.

We can bicker about who does what as you are, or we can embrace sustainable energy in an attempt to save ourselves, the only choices are these, act and exist, or inaction and perish, I know which option I will be backing.

Different fairness criteria provide different results. If you use cumulative emissions the Brits are the worst offenders having invented the Industrial Revolution, but I don't see how a young British child is to blame for the sins of his great grandfathers. There is total national emissions lead by China and the US compared to per-capita emissions with Australia at or near the top. You could have a 'could do better' prize for Indonesian deforestation and Canadian tar sands. Then you have inefficiency, excessive population and offshoring of heavy industry ('pollution exports'). Resource endowments differ so Japan is energy frugal while Dubai creates indoor snowfields with cheap gas.

I suggest everybody starts now putting in a somewhat matching effort. Thus we'll cut domestic coal but help Bangladesh with solar energy. Since Australia exports coal and LNG I think we could also put our export customers on a carbon diet, perhaps with promises of more yellowcake as a sweetener. I'm not confident this will happen. Realistically I think it is more likely that economic downturn, physical shortages and lags in clean technology will achieve the carbon cuts that politicians cannot.

A nicely argued article.

Shonga, what use do you think our efforts in Australia will be if the emissions of the world’s largest emitters continue to grow as they are? If Australia ceased emitting altogether, it would reduce global emissions by about the amount that China’s emissions increase in a single year.

Devising a fair, workable and acceptable way of bringing developing countries into a global emissions reductions regime is the only way we’ll achieve the emissions reductions necessary.

I doubt that “the notion of solving climate change without considering the economy” has "entered the brain" of any serious policymaker trying to devise ways of addressing climate change that will actually work.

If that's the case we all go down together because of our own stupidity.

My greatest disappointment is that in another 100 years. I will not be alive.

I reckon the science textbooks will contain examples of how science misled people into believing that climate change was man made, rather than a part of the natural cycle of this planet.

I suppose I could find a bookie and have my descendants inherit the bet.

There is an obvious and simple way that the developing world can be brought into the cooperative effort to reduce global warming emissions.

The way is to bring in "work for your foreign aid".

However this would not be enough, as global emissions are only a symptom of the real problem, which is the population explosion in the third world.

So, what should we do? Simple. We say to the third world, that if they wish to continue to receive aid, trade and tourism, they must:

(a) Permit a program of education of young girls to be implemented. Education has been shown to be the best way to reduce the number of children a woman has.

(b) Stop forest clearing and similar activities that add to global emissions.

I continue to be amazed that people still entertain the fanciful idea that economic equality an achievable aim. In one way they are correct; it could be achieved by reducing the living standard in the West to that in Bangladesh, but I doubt that voters would countenance that. Any other way is mathematically impossible, as can be realised by noting that for the whole world to enjoy the US standard of living, you would need to produce 550 million barrels of oil per day, when we are struggling to produce 88 (and that is running out).

This idea of equality is obviously powerful; let us hope it is not achieved in the only practicable way.