How unfortunate - there is nothing quite as sad as the myopic selection of facts, thrown together and then used to make a perverse point. It’s unfortunate that such sloppy research gets paraded as insightful comment. This would however be a side note except for the fact the writer is a minister of the Government of Australia and presumably making decisions based on these ill-informed beliefs.

Some examples:

• It’s implied that questioning economic rationalism is attacking enlightenment. What nonsense – there are numerous enlightened social democratic countries with a healthy balance of free market activity and government regulation. For example Sweden and Finland both recognise and actively promote the role of the state in addressing market inequities. Or take the example of the whole of the European Union is addressing what Nicholas Stern called the greatest ever market failure –climate change – by regulating for a price on unfettered use of a previously free resource (the atmosphere). Or Germany which has recently brought in a law to ensure critical business is not acquired by a foreign power, without some checks a balances. And then there’s Australia ourselves. We rejected Work Choices – voting in this current government and Mr Emerson – precisely because it was unfettered unhealthy economic rationalism that was not in our interest.

• Its claimed that deep green bio-fuels result in a 70% increase in food prices. Clearly the bio fuel market is having an impact as is, demand for food (especially meat) in China and India, climate change impacts reducing yield, speculation and drought. But Mr Emerson does not give us the full picture – presumably it would not have suited his argument or he is ignorant of the facts. Neither are reassuring possibilities.

Now I'm scared pt 2 (cont. from below as the word limit cut the post) ...

• And we have the ‘free range’ examples. Some lovely examples are given by Mr Emerson of ‘green washing’ – the making of false claims about products to unfairly market the goods. This sort of free market abuse is precisely why we have government institutions such as the ACCC. It’s a shame that Mr Emerson did not see fit to acknowledge the ACCC’s current work on ‘green’ washing. But as ACCC working on this is at odds with the idea that an unfettered free market is under attack by deep green barbarians (rather than green credibility is under attack from would be unfettered free marketeers) clearly the truth needed to be left out.

What’s truly scary is that the writer, as a Minister, is making decisions for us all . If these decision are based on the half baked logic publicly paraded in this article then we’re all in trouble. Very sad .....

Geez people the article is hardly remarkable. Is that why almost every post here attacks the messenger?

Bluff and bluster seems the order of the day. I disagree with the widespread faith placed in economic rationalism but for chrissakes can't the argument be taken at face value? OLO has morphed into On Line Emote.