Mr. Right,

I agree with you completely as far as the Greens are concerned. Their modus operandi was invented by a Sudeten German called Konrad Henlein in 1938. He said: "We must make demands which cannot be satisfied". I have never found a statement which sums up the greens better than this.

As far as Rudd's carbon tax proposals, the electorate will be quite happy with them if they do not have any effect on the electorate's hip pocket. In addition, Rudd will be held firmly to his election promise to keep the price of petrol low, which means no higher than when he came to office. I have seen proposals to implement this which could mean that many electors could make a nice profit out of it as well.

All politicians need to remember one of the basic principles of Australian politics, that people are ready to die for their country, but not to pay for it.

'Rudd and Wong are so paralysed by fear that, for all their talk of transformation, they are clinging to the past. '

Rudd and Wong are beginning to realize (albeit slowly)what a hoax all this gw crap is. They know that when people start paying they will want to know what they are paying for. It is hilarious to see the back down of Wong and Rudd on this issue. If they had not been so naive as to get on board with the Greens in the first place they would not have egg all over their face. As more and more of the gw High Priests predictions are shown to be fraudulent more and more people are waking up to the stupidity of this pseudo science being presented by the likes of Gore, Flannery and Garnaut.

I actually find it quite amusing although many won't when they have to pay more and more taxes to the environmentalist to continue to push their faith and morally degenerate world view.

Thanks Christine. It takes courage to stand apart from the sometimes baying mob (see for example some of the vituperative posts here) and with vision try to implement your own version of the future.

As you can see, Christine, OLO has a number of posters who have all the vision of Mr Magoo (to steal a line from Paul Keating.) The battle to educate them is going to be difficult, especially when that involves challenging entrenched and very powerful capitalist interests.

The eleven lost years under Howard are apparently going to be replicated under Rudd. The Government's green paper is a pathetic joke. We voted for the fire of change and have got the damp squib of conservatism.

The ALP is not prepapred to challenge the rule of capital. A society based on democratically satisfying human need rather than the present mad drive for profit would invest in alternative green energy supplies on a massive scale. The profit system holds us back from doing that.

Now I know this is not the Greens' position, but at least there is one Parliamentary Party raising the issues about anthropogenic global warming in Australia. Thanks for that, Christine and other Greens.

I laughed this morning hearing of a poll which showed that 77% (or similar number) of people polled would be prepared to pay more to help solve GW.

I did not see the poll question but would bet that it did not have "would you be prepared to pay $X extra per week to help solve GW"

Given the howls of outrage over a small increase in petrol over the last few months, I find it hard to believe that three quarters of the population will wear paying money to solve a problem upon which we could throw away our entire nataional income without making any difference.

I predict the political party which goes to the next election with "We will not implement any penalties on the Australian economy without action from the rest of the world including developing nations" will win.

No matter how the chattering classes berate them for doing otherwise, the vast majority of voters will continue to steer clear of extreme responses, and instead go for at best small incremental changes.

Greens, the coal industry upon which this nations prosperity was and is built is here to stay, no government will kill the largest contributer to our national income.

mvs,

I'm not saying that the carbon tax doesn't change the economics overall, just that it doesn't change the economics OF OPERATION in a way that would reduce the amount of time that existing coal-fired generators are operated.

There are two distinct types of decision a power generation company has to make. First is the decision to build the generator, and then there are the individual decisions about whether to run the generator at any given time.

Clearly, no one decides to build a generator if they don't expect to operate it, and they won't build it unless the revenue produced in operation is anticipated to be sufficient to cover the cost of building, plus a bit extra as profit.

But once the generator has been built, that decision cannot be undone. The decisions on whether to run the generator or not depend only on whether the generator produces more income than it costs to run. Gas fired generators cannot push the price of electricity down below the break even point for coal-fired generators, because their own running costs are higher, even after the carbon tax has been included. Thus existing coal-fired generators will continue to be run to their maximum extent until they are worn out.... or until the carbon tax is raised high enough to give gas fired generators (with their lower CO2 emissions) the economic advantage.

Enviromentalists Metamorphisis:

Clobal Warming is caused by CO2 Emissions ....
Climate Change is caused by CO2 Emissions ...
Global Cooling is caused by CO2 Emissions ...

Next stage?

The likes of Milne are content to think the mob will swallow this crap indefinately.

Passy hey wake up ... global warming isn't in vogue with the lefties and greens any more ... they've woken up to the fact CO2 emissions are rising while global temperatures are falling.

And hey socialism and communism lost the cold war a couple of decades ago. Everybody recognises that... well nearly everybody.