Hooray!
Someone pointing out the obvious. Climate change is like war: an opportunity to rebuild and renew our society. The "costs" to traditional industries are more than made up for by the gains of a brand new one.
Instead of banking and insurance making billions without building, planting or doing anything other than providing middle-aged daycare, our economy could employ people for productive work!
Do we really want to/have to wait for Korea to make Electric cars and large scale solar plants before we do? Or do we have to wait for the BB gen to die off before the current moronic generation of "leaders" moves on?

Hope you've got more than talk to save us, Peter, because according to Google, the Rockefeller et al backed Fed says that the easy trade-off we've had for years between trade and inflation is now over.

As one remembering the Great Depression hope its not true that anything backed by the Rockefellers or Rothchilds, means that when the Big Bang eventuates such families have always saved enough cash to buy back in cheap and multiply.

I say: Everyone should have pulled their heads out of their 'literal arses' a long time ago. Does anyone really believe, that the United States is actually self-governing? It is a government ruled by all the world's secret societies: I imagine I'llget a bunch of slack for this: The truth is not pretty and it doesn't matter who is elected, Obama or McCain, they will be ruled by these societies.
The New World Order is Here
...and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?

Secret Societies Exposed by RIE
"One stepping stone into these secret societies is the Skull & Bones Society at Yale University, as well depicted in the movie "The Skulls". Who's Who of the Elite names all of the members of this shadow government, and reveals where they work, the secret societies that they belong to, and their job titles, so that you can see the stranglehold that they have on our federal government, the mainstream news media, industry, labor unions, universities, foundations, the Supreme Court, and all facets of the financial world. If you want the details of this EVIL effort, take the time to read all of the information contained on this site. If you do, you will never watch the news on TV, or read the news magazines and newspapers the same way that you do now."

WAKE UP AMERICA
"...there is a power so organized, so subtle, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it." --- President Woodrow Wilson. This just a few Secret Societies and information.
Skull & Bones, 1832
It all began at Yale. In 1832, General William Huntington Russell and Alphonso Taft put together a super secret society for the elite children of the Anglo- American Wall Street banking establishment. William Huntington Russell's step-brother Samuel Russell ran "Russell & Co.", the world's largest OPIUMsmuggling operation in the world at the time. Alphonso Taft is the Grandfather of our ex-president Howard Taft, the creator of the Forerunner to the United Nations

http://www.truveo.com/John-F-Kennedy-speech-on-Freemasonic-secret/id/3887487804.
Unfortunately, it's too late for justice, it's too late for truth. For centuries, the United States has continued to pretend it is soverign and self governing. We are not soverign and we are not self governing. We are a bunch of fools, taken in by politicians, the rich, and the 'Mighty, Powerful Pretenders' who have not only ruled the United States, but the whole World, as long as time has existed and men have put pen to paper.

This book and author addresses the issues raised here at least in America.

http://www.we-the-people-book.com

What about saving us from poorly-conceived science, biased 'research' and politically-motivated environmental scare campaigns, like the ones that are well documented here:

http://climatedebatedaily.com/

Oh, and conspiracy theorists too...

Secret Societies are not needed. Great leaders are not needed.

When Michael Costa stood up and said "If we employ these carbon trading ideas, jobs will be lost," he didn't have to say any more. The general population says if jobs will be lost, then carbon trading must be no good. If being more sustainable is going to cost money (even if it might save money in the long term) it is no good. We want money now.

When we hear that the price of electricity will go up, even though its the cheapest in the world, we say "Don't do it." Renewables are "too expensive." Who cares if we will need them someday and they are sustainable. They are "too expensive," end of story. Money is more important than sustainability. Very few understand sustainability. Everybody understands money.

We want an engineering or technological solution so we don't have to make any hard decisions. Lets have carbon sequestration even though it won't work, then we can delay having to make hard decisions.

Bill Clinton said "It's the economy, stupid," and won the 1992 election and carried on for 8 years. Nothing has changed. Elections are won based on who will make us richer. We only make big changes when the Nazi's march through Poland and the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbour.

The environment deteriorates slowly. No Nazi tanks or Japanese bombs.

I love the idea of a massive program for renewables in Australia. Lets go from 2% to 5% renewables producing power by 2012. That would hardly make any difference to the price of power, but it would go up slightly. We could then count on Michael Costa and others to say it was a bad idea.

Ericc,

A few facts. Our electricity is by no means the cheapest in the world. We have coal fired power stations, and the coal costs money, so the electricity is much dearer than hydro systems, where the water comes free. As far as I am aware the cheapest electricity is in Ontario, Canada, where they get 95% of their power from hydro, and the retail cost is around 6 cents per kilowatt-hour.

The other fact relates to renewable electric power. All renewable sources are intermittent, and are only practical on a large scale when you have hydro backup, such as the situation in Germany and Denmark, which can use hydro backup from Switzerland and Norway. Being the driest continent, we don't have much hydro. This limits our ability to use renewable energy, if we want the network voltage to be stable. In current practice the maximum safe contribution to the south-east network from renewables would be about 9%.

The fundamental problem with electricity over the last 125 years is that you cannot store it cheaply. This problem has plagued the electric car industry, as well as the design of power networks. It is interesting to note that John McCain is promoting the idea of offering a $US300 million reward to someone who can invent a practical, light, cheap battery that can be used in cars and power systems.

Thanks Plerdsus. I think you have responded the same way that 99% of the population would respond. Renewables are too expensive. We are used to cheap power and so that becomes a right. Nothing about sustainability because to you and 99% of Australia (and the world), sustainability is not important. Money is far more important.

When fossil fuels run out, we will worry about it. Until then, party on. Our system doesn't cater for saving for the future. Use up everything we have now, get as much cash for it as you can, and worry about the future, when the future is here.

Renewables can be wind, solar, waves, geothermal, biomass, mini-hydro, ethanol, vegetable oils and more. Storage is not just in batteries, it can be making hydrogen when the wind blows, pumping water back up to the dams when the sun shines and more. All these will be expensive and we will leave it up to our children to work out the bugs. It would be easier to start working out the bugs now, when we have plentiful power and we haven't overstocked the country and further stressed our ecosystems and water systems, but that is not the way we have set the system up.

Please tell your children, nieces, nephews, etc that they will have a huge task in front of them, if they want the kind of lifestyle we have had.

WE NEED TO DRILL AND WE NEEDED TO DRILL NOW. WE NEEDED TO DRILL 20 YEARS AGO.
We must think toward the future, both short term and long term. The long term solution is finding alternative sources of energy, those that are economical and sustainable. We must trust in the ingenuity of private enterprise to find our solution, we must not seek government intervention, instead we need to demand that the government simply get out of the way. There have been huge advances in hydrogen and solar energy in the past decade in the private sector. These advances seem to be viable alternative energies on a large scale in the future. However, these technologies are not ready yet. In the mean time we need an economical and viable short term solution. There are three parts of a broad, short term solution: us oil drilling, nuclear power and coal liquefaction.
Domestic Drilling-drilling in areas that are currently off limits due to government regulation. These areas include ANWR (Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge), outer continental shelf, and interior continental areas. This also includes extracting and using oil shale and tar sands.
Nuclear Power- Building more nuclear based power plants, which over its recent history has proven to be a safe and clean alternative to petrol based power.

Coal Liquefaction-a process that's been around for some time. It involves extracting an end product from coal that can be used as diesel fuel and help mitigate the demand of oil based energy.
Ethanol is NOT the answer.It takes more energy to produce corn based ethanol than the ethanol itself produces in return. The government also has placed high tariffs on sugar based ethanol, which has a higher energy yield and is more efficient than corn based ethanol. These tariffs are supposed to help domestic production of ethanol and serve as price protection, which they most certainly do. The problem for us, is we are burning one of our major sources of food to make fuel, when we could be using and promoting a more efficient and cheaper source for ethanol.

"Sooner or later, everyone and everything, sits down to a banquet of consequences".
Within only a few years, OPEC countries will have control over virtually all of the exportable surplus oil in the world (with the exception of Russia's petroleum, the production of which may reach a second peak in 2010, following an initial peak that precipitated the collapse of the USSR). The US -- whose global hegemony has seemed so complete for the past decade -- will suffer an increasing decline in global influence, which no amount of saber rattling or bombing of "terrorist" countries will be able to reverse. Awash in debt, dependent on imports, mired in corruption, its military increasingly overextended, the US is well into its imperial twilight years.

You forgot to mention Haleys comet. I hear it's responsible for at least SOMEthing important...

Good question about Halleys Comet, I couldn't find anything sig. about it except this:
The last perihelion passage of the comet was on February 9, 1986. In March 1986, six uncrewed spacecraft encountered Halley's Comet and produced data that have greatly enhanced the understanding of comets. The comet will return to its perihelion in 2061.Is there any danger from Comet Halley?
"Before anyone understood the nature and orbits of comets, people worried about the effects a comet might have on us. Today we know enough about these objects to provide a reassuring "environmental impact statement.'' Unless a comet physically collides with the Earth (which Halley will be far from doing), these small chunks of dirty ice pose no danger to us. Their effects are on the mind, stimulating our curiosity and kindling our imaginations".