There will always be times when we have to temporarily forgo certain aspects of our liberal democracy - in times of war, natural disasters etc. However you need a very very strong case to suggest we need to forgo it to achieve more abstract and long-term goals like reducing fossil fuel dependency. Indeed, *more* democracy would be a better solution - were Australians able to vote on what types of energy utilities were allowed to produce and what sort of energy we'd like to run their cars on, I've no doubt the vast majority would vote for cleaner forms of energy than we currently rely on, even if it cost a little more.

There are governments in the world that can and have acted on Climate Change with true leadership. Unfortnately, Australia's leaders talk alot but very little to show.

Australians overwhelmingly want change, but our leaders of major parties are a timmid lot, preferring to wait for more reports and attend conferences before they take the tough regulatory and expenditure decisions that the situation demands.

Harry G tells us that the US developed an atomic bomb, they got a man on the moon, because of government involvement and government funding. Is there not a good chance, then, that if such funding were made available and the brains of the world put their mind to it, that alternative fuels (even clean coal!) might be developed, and that this in fact might be the only feasible way of gaining success? Do you want to leave it to the oil companies to fund the development? Or do you really think that relatively small laboratories funded by vested interests or philanthopists has the best chance of success?

I think you will find that there are already a whole heap of venture capital companies
working on the fuel story. The last thing that we need is draconian Govts wasting
taxpayers money in huge amounts. Co finance some trial ventures ok, but heading
off spending billions, when technology is moving so fast that what was invented
yesterday, is out of date next week, would be quite foolish.

http://www.news.com/8301-11128_3-9811702-54.html?tag=nefd.lede

is just one smart company going ahead in leaps and bounds.

In today’s press it seems that GM are convinced to have found a solution with
technology developed by Coskata, using waste materials creating ethanol
for around 1US$ per US gallon. There is a feature about it in today’s
Financial Review. I doubt if GM would make that kind of announcement,
if it was not worth examining.

On power stations we also have new technology happening, again through
Venture capital:

http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/Solar-just-got-cheaper-AE74N?OpenDocument

Perhaps Govts should get their arses into gear and for a start, come to some
agreement that all women on the planet have access to family planning, which
hundreds of millions still don’t. Another 80 million extra mouths to feed each
year, is really not helping things. You guys can conserve all you want,
yet it only takes 90 days to replace the whole Australian population with
new babies on the planet, whether these women want them or not. The
Catholic Church has a lot to answer for here, with their obsession for
an ever increasing population.

This is where the left love the doom and gloom of climate change.The evil free thinking capitalists have ruined the planet and therefore the day of Green/Left thinking must rule all our lives.They even suck up to the extreme Islamists,trying to use them as wedge to gain power,ie the anti-religious vilification legislation in Victoria.

There is no dispute in their view, as to the reasons for recent global temperature increases,it is all due to CO2,and any detractors are heretics who need to be silenced.

If ever the Green Gestapo get real power,they will be no different than all the other totalitarian regemes of the past.

Something in this article seems to have inspired an unusually excessive level of angry (almost barking mad) responses.

I think we can afford to lighten-up a little in this case as Prof. Shearman seems to have posed something of a false dichotomy.

Liberal democracies can be just authoritarian as China or anyone else once they have decided that a particular matter is important enough.

Take "national security" for example. Long ago it was decided that the Cold War, international terrorism etc. presented a threat that could not be managed by normal civilian & democratic processes so we created special agencies that existed outside of the regular bureaucracy.
These agencies have been given 'special powers'. Although normally responsible to a minister & a charter these agencies tend to be something of a law unto themselves.
Britains Official Secrets Act for example, is probably one of the most undemocratic pieces of legislation ever drafted.

Given that the scale & urgency of the climate-change issue requires a certain command & control style of management, chances are that it will be only a matter of time before national (& international?) agencies are created and endowed with 'special powers'. They won't be spies necessarily but they will enforce rules & they will need to be beyond the direct influence of lobbyists or interest groups. You won't be able to sue them.

On another level we already have institutions that make policy independently of the elected government - monetary policy for example. The Reserve Bank like the US Federal Reserve is given a charter to set interest rates regardless of the government's specific wishes. It has been agreed that these decisions should be ‘above politics’ (above & beyond short-term vote grabbing that is).

Once it is decided that an issue is ‘above politics’ our liberal democracies find ways of making provisions that are every bit as authoritarian and undemocratic as they need to be (& more).

The era of the green police may not be far away. We can only hope for the best.

Mr Smith