Divergence, why "dangerously naive"? I'm quite familiar with Diamond's Collapse and various other similar texts warning of a reliance of technological development. But I'm not *relying* on it, just pointing out that the only path forward that is not going to result in overwhelming amounts of human misery and death is to gradually move away from our current technology usage, towards new technology and new usage patterns that can provide similar quality of life, without the same environmental cost.
Given the enormous amounts of money to made from new, cleaner technologies that are able to sustain high living standards, and the fact that there are no known physical barriers to achieving such technology, I think my confidence that we will achieve success with this path is reasonably well placed. But I'm certainly not going to pretend that it's going to be all smiles and roses: there will be much human misery and preventable death along the way, mostly among the poorest nations, and there will be those that protest every little necessary change to their lifestyles. Almost any other position to me seems dangerously pessimistic and despairing.

P.S. I think we can both safely ignore MichaelK.

Anglo-racist stupidity is a sure pass to ignore a reality, which looks de facto like a clean piece of a toilet paper in a cubicle filled over a head with excrements, not always of a royal origin.

Anyway, a royal stuff stinks anyway. Enjoy.

Dickie “Col Rouge. Perhaps you have not been in this country long enough to realise that Australian states have also been governed by the conservatives.”

I assumed your claims to illegal pollution were pertinent to today. I reflected the fact which, unfortunately, prevails today.

So unless you are claiming that you were speaking in the past tense, I would suggest you are just “blowing it out your ass”.

Now back to the real issue which underlines what you are actually whining about.

Your complaint revolves around the dereliction of duty on the part of public servants, who are, obviously being under-administered by the governing body, being the state parliaments, all of which are presently run by socialists.

This issue is the same as the negligence of the Church of Rome which, instead of exposing, excommunicating and seeking prosecution of pedophile priests, covered up the corruption and thus proved the churches unfitness to claim any right to act in the name of God.

I see no difference between a state government neglecting statutory obligations and a church neglecting its moral obligations.

I have no interest in offering excuses or defenses for those individuals or corporations who break the law or abuse children.

but I reject totally, your assertion that the problem is with the offender when it is clearly with deficiencies in government policing.

Your hissing fit “know the difference between a VOC and a sock.”

Well I know this, if it came to finding a solution to anything, I would at least be addressing the source of the problem.

You would obviously be pissing your efforts out the window in a relentlessly pursuit of the symptoms, not the cause.

Wizofaus “safely ignore MichaelK.”

That is something which I too resolved to do some months ago. His post only display his inadequacies with their debilitating attempts at satire, excruciating grammar and his strangely inadequate representation of retardation.

My dear Col Rouge

It's not difficult to understand your commonplace profanities, generally postulated by the semi-literate when they begin to lose face.

However, the inane sophistry within your argument to defend corporate vandals has thrown me.

For instance, you claimed that:

"I repeat my view, all corporations operate within the laws as they are enforced by the state authorities in whom we, the electorate place our trust (in dickie’s view unwisely)"

Then:

"I have no interest in offering excuses or defenses for those individuals or corporations who break the law or abuse children."

Children aside, are you conceding there are corporations who conduct their operations in an irresponsible manner - pillaging and plundering our fragile environment and beyond?

May I now presume that you have actually perused the links I have placed on OLO?

Professor Shearman is to be congratulated. He is the only author whose writings I have accessed who clearly warns that this nation is ignoring the dire situation of its environment and at its peril.

Estimates of industrial stack emissions in this country, I believe, are drastically underestimated.

How can the National Pollutant Inventory, in all seriousness, officially estimate the emissions of dioxins and furans when the majority of companies are not required to test for them and the few who do, generally monitor and report only once a year.

Companies burning untested, unregulated hazardous waste oil as a fuel, (a federal government initiative) over unsuspecting communities, often operate their kilns with very poor or incomplete combustion. Departments of Environment are aware of this and choose to look the other way, however, so does the company who knowingly far exceeds the recommended international levels of 0.1 nanograms per cubic metre for dioxins and furans.

Australia has ratified the Stockholm Convention to address the hazardous release of persistent organic pollutants (POPS), and to eliminate or mitigate where possible, the release of the heinous dioxins and furans into the atmosphere. Various papers on dioxins and furans have been circulated by the Federal government. To date it has been all talk and no action.

contd.......

Contd......

Australian governments "regulate" by issuing guidelines. Guidelines are unenforceable.

Industry aligned governments frequently fail to include conditions in a licence to pollute. Breaches of the Environmental Protection Act are then rendered unenforceable if they are not included in a licence - or so we are told by senior bureaucrats.

I have witnessed licences belonging to pollutant companies which state "Nil" under the Conditions section. Therefore, it appears that companies are free to pollute without fear of prosecution.

The current out of control, self-regulated pollutant industries and a healthy environment make poor bedfellows. Consequently we can no longer have both.

We citizens must make a choice.

And it appears that Arnie Schwarzenegger is a little more au fait with anthropogenic climate change than our chattering Federal and State governments and their associates.

Are we to continue with our silence whilst our "democratic" leaders and their industry associates procrastinate whilst profiting from the "fruits" of a booming economy (predicted to last for at least a decade) and without regard for the ecological consequences?

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/20/washington/20epa.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogi

Ratifying any international treaty means a little for practically addressing environmental issues as a way natura occurs could sustain law (and agreements), not vice verse.

So, is democracy enough for still picking out produce from over a globe while importing own pollution worldwide?

Surely, NO.