A bit of standard casuist logic from green/left. Pity the initial premise is pure bollocks. Latest science in punching serious holes in the global warming scarenario. The ice packs have recently been found to have survived extended periods of much warmer weather in the past so don't expect any "tipping points" within the extended life of your great, great, great, great grandchildren.

Tipping point theory is an intellectual cop-out that enables the venal and the vacuous to speculate far beyond those reasonably probable outcomes based on the facts. And given the numerous other holes in the fabric of climate cretinism, like the way volcanic aerosols from El chichon and Mt Pinatubo have masked the absence of any global warming for the past 25 years, the author is revealed as just another campus bollockshevik on a power trip.

He has forgotten the most important lesson of history. That is, once totalitarianism is made acceptable, the door is opened to the many forms it can take. And only a true fool would assume that his own preference will end up on top, and remain there for long.

Harry G,

I fail to see how the development of the atomic bomb by a liberal democratic government is an argument against liberal democracy. Liberal democracy is not anarchy where the government does nothing - it merely means that decisions on state action are made by an elected government.

The decisive action by the US government to develop a nuclear weapon in a time of war shows that democratically-elected governments are more than capable of taking decisive action when required.

However, Mr Shearman is not simply advocating a big government policy in response to global warming but something far more offensive - the stripping of decision making power from an elected government to an "authoritarian" one - his term. Hence his praise for the Chinese communist regime, which, it should be noted, has killed over 60 million of its own citizens through deliberate oppression or ideological mania - a high price to pay for the banning of plastic bags.

Mr Shearman does not object merely to liberal (ie. small government) democracy but to democracy per se and is a fair subject of vitriol from those whose rights he arrogantly proposes to strip

Isn't it curious how, after all this time, and after all the sorry examples of totalitarian excess and failure, in europe, asia, africa and latin america, we can still be presented with a clown who will try to tell us that this time, under this supposedly new and brilliant rationalisation, absolute power will not corrupt absolutely. [Exit pigs, flying]

But of course, if Shearman seriously thinks the Chinese Junta has done good on plastic bags, can we also assume that they have done just as good by signing up for 34 (yes, 34) new nuclear power stations.

Just watch that one go down with the green/left, like a curried egg fart in a small, slow, elevator.

Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.
Sir Winston Churchill (1874 - 1965), Hansard, November 11, 1947

I would rather boil in my own skin under a democracy than live under a dictatorship run by the climate change zealots.

Duncan73
I did not mean to be arguing against liberal democracy. What I was trying to say that sometimes alternatives may be needed to meet great challenges, especially where liberal democracy was too slow to act, or too cumbersome to act. Putting a man on the moon is another case in point. The US achieved this not by relying on liberal democracy and its preferred modus operandi, but by assuming part of the methodology of its antagonist, and letting centralised government take over. The fact that a government in a liberal democracy can adapt itself to a different approach when needed says wonders for the flexibility of such a system. Without going back and reading the original article again, I thought that the author was saying that a switch to this type of tactic might be necessary to overcome climate change, but the Chinese are in a position to act faster.