Anti-green, you are so totally hooked into rapid and massive expansionism.

How long do you think that can last?

What good is it going to if it is accompanied by rapid population growth, which you also presumably also support as it would provide the labour for of this growth?

Don’t you think that it is exactly this growth in mining and industry, propped up by still-but-not-for-much-longer cheap energy, that has led to the massive distortion of economies in some places, and the serious negative effects that flow from it??

Anti-green,
They have been mining around Kagoorlie, The Kimberleys and the Pilbara for over 100 years with a few getting very filthy rich .

Have a look at the health and housing of Indigenous people in these areas -it's a disgrace to most Australians, you EXcluded .

It's garbage to say that mammoth wealth creation from usurped Aboriginal Land has given or is guaranteed to them anything substantial in those things we whites take for granted in the future.

Your "wealth" makers are selfish and greedy .

No doubt any export price is a good price for you and your miners, when you get your spoil for next to nothing .

One wonders if you have a concrete backyard - maybe with a few plastic plants from Europe around - but atleast we know what your mindset is .

kartiya jim and Ludwig,

Oh dear chaps I must disagree profoundly with your argument. Clearly life to-day is better, for the vast majority of people on the planet, then it was say a hundred years ago or even ten years ago. This is a fact in spite of your much feared growth in population. Although the mathematics is truly horrendous, there are conditions when the logistic equation for growth can brake down into wild and chaotic oscillations.

Evidence, compare the Dickensian descriptions of life in the nineteen century with life in London today. Think of how modern devices such as washing machines, dishwashers, and so on have relieved the drudgery of much house work.

Please look at trends in vital statistics, decreasing infant mortality rates, increasing longevity for both men and women. Look at advances in medical and surgical science and then tell me man is no better off.

Ok Public Health measures are statistical and represents mean, yes there are exceptions, pockets of poverty. Sometimes big holes of misery are to be found in the overall picture. I do not blame this (unlike the Greens) on technology and/or scientific progress. One example will illustrate my point: The misery in Zimbabwe is due entirely too disgraceful governance.

[to be Continued].

Continued

More good news:
You will have read in to-days paper of the collapse of the Doha trade talks. Clearly, this is not the good news. To a supporter of free trade, the market economy, capitalism etc it is very sad indeed. I put it as an article of faith that the best path out of poverty is trade, industry and technology.

So why talk of good news. The brake up of Doha implies that the chance of obtaining a multilateral agreement on greenhouse policy is Zilch. The threat of a universal carbon trading pact is no longer a possibility.
Further given the somewhat dubious science of greenhouse, industry [freed from the mill stone of a carbon tax] will be able to go ahead and further develop the Pilbara for the benefit of us all.

By all means "Let us get real” anti-green.

First off, please explain how 'Extend the Northern Territory intervention to WA, Queensland and NSW.' would improve the lot of ‘some fellow citizens’ living in the north of WA?

Given the proven neglect and indifference towards the 'fellow citizens' in question by the numerous multi-billion dollar private mining companies exploiting the region plus State and Federal administrations into whose coffers large royalties and taxes are said to flow, who do you think is likely to fund " ... the development of large towns in relation to the Ord and Fitzroy rivers.'?

5. “Provide a reliable and plentiful supply of cheap energy. This means giving 100% support to the nuclear industry.”

Corporate (including government) spin regularly informs us that we already benefit from ' ... a reliable and plentiful supply of cheap energy', ie, the huge reserves of natural gas in the area. (Security of supply to WA's small business and domestic consumers is proving to be an entirely different question however.)

Moreover, as with much of the rest of our 'wide brown land', an abundance of sunshine provides ample opportunity for widespread employment of solar energy capture and use. (Check out what the Germans, for instance, are doing in this regard). Advances in wind power technology are also enabling people worldwide to take advantage of this cheap and extremely safe form of energy.

Nuclear power is neither cheap NOR safe, demonstrated by governments worldwide turning to readily available alternate energy sources and cancelling orders for new nuclear plants.

2, 3 and 8. “Encourage the growth of mining through out Australia … the growth of all industry including smelters for iron ore, Aluminium, silica, Carbon arc furnaces for steel making and so on ... (and) agriculture in the North West such as the Ord

‘Encourage’ is a euphemism for ‘subsidise’. Huge amounts of public money are already handed over - each and every year – to the giant national and foreign corporations through ‘tax breaks, ‘development assistance grants’ and other forms of corporate welfare!

"Let us get real” allright

Anti-green, I notice that you have been on this forum for a long time, about a year longer than me. So presumably you’ve gone over this fundamental difference of opinion with other posters previously. But you have taken my interest, so can I request another go at it here, so that we may explore this very important issue.

I wonder just what it is that we disagree profoundly on, given that we presumably both want to secure a healthy prosperous future for our country and planet.

“Clearly life to-day is better, for the vast majority of people on the planet, then it was say a hundred years ago or even ten years ago. This is a fact in spite of your much feared growth in population.”

Yes… IN SPITE of population growth. If pop growth had been much less, improvements in quality of life would have been much greater, generally speaking.

So now we are getting to the point where population growth is catching right up with us in Australia and rendering even the most massive efforts to increase economic growth and average QOL neutral, by basically channelling the profits into creating the same QOL of ever-more people instead of improving it for the existing population.

Just because population growth has accompanied the resource boom and rapid technological advancement of the last century doesn’t mean that it can continue. There are enormous indications that an almighty economic bust is just around the corner, due largely to our inability to temper expansionism.

It is just ludicrous for the massive iron ore resource of the Pilbara or the Northwest Shelf gas province to be exploited as quickly as possibly…….unless it is used specifically to wean our society off of this growth addiction and onto a stable population / stable economy / much slower rate of non renewable resource consumption / much more renewable resource oriented / sustainable society!

If the Pilbara was to become an industrial sacrifice zone for that purpose, I could condone it, even if it did mean the degradation of the Murujuga petroglyph region and grossly distorted local economies.