This article should be required reading for those preaching the reduction of carbon emissions. You know - the people who use high energy PowerPoint when they would be more friendly to their audience and the environment if they scrapped the computers and bright lights and simply stood out the front a talked to us.

I for one will not give up the use of any so called labour saving devices. Each and every one is an advance and improvement on its predecessor. Just as digital TV and large plasma TV screens are an advance on the older models.

I have no intention of messing around with solar backyard cooking on a cold rainy winter day. Especially, given that the alternative is plentiful clean and green nuclear electricity. What is more the electric grid and its generators (nuclear, coal etc) are all computer controlled.

By the same token it is the duty of the water corporations to provide me with as much water as I can reasonably afford, (I don not care if its origins is dams, underground aquifers, or desalination plants).

The veracity of the Greenhouse Global warming paradigm is predicated by Valerie Yule. As many readers will know this paradigm is under informed attack, as can be confirmed by surfing the internet. It is my strong belief that the so so-called anthropogenic global warming hypothesis is false. Thus, the sooner it is confined to the dust bin of rejected historical theories the better. I have every confidence that the current stock market turmoil and its economic consequence will hasten the rejection process

I completely agree with anti-green, well said by the way, however would ask that all the proponents of the AGW belief, please stop using any form of device or article that can in any way produce carbon "pollution", (as they know it) it looks hypocritical.

I would like to encourage you all live up to your religion's goals and I am tired of all the preaching done by folks who jet around the world, hire huge venues to berate the rest of us, it's your choice, stop bothering us - also stop frightening the children.

Valerie, my mother and grandmother would have been shocked by this, they saw release from boiling the copper (fuelled by wood) and using a mangle to wash clothes, a task that took all day, as a move forward for women - you want to go back to that, you're on your own. Or do you want to pick some middle position with say a twin tub, rather than say a front load, and what type of dryer, that still allows you to feel good but give you some spare time for other pursuits. It sounds like you haven't got the full religion yet?

1. I would like to make clear that I am arguing against BOTH extremes – the unending drudgery of the past, and now the wasteful use of power and resources at times when they are not needed.
Let us use the best of modern technology when it is needed.

For example, I have a small, cheap, movable twin-tub washing machine, but when there is a big household or illness, I use my automatic. I dry laundry outside but when it is wet, I use a clothes-horse inside.
You only try solar cooking when the sun is out.

I am a grandmother who washed with a copper and a mangle, and I blacked a wood-stove, and all that. Gratefully, such extremes of drudgery are gone. But the other extreme, of excessive waste, cannot be sustained.
(And I do find some my own grandmother’s kitchen tools that I still use better than you can import today. Why could we not have such good stuff again?)

2. Regardless of who or what or whether as regards increasing unpredictable droughts, floods, winds, coral bleaching, lost glaciers, cleared jungles, resource shortages, failing societies, economic melt-downs, and other signs of disasters, there should not be ad hominem accusations or misinterpretations of what others actually say. Make connections about these problems. None are single issues. People need not feel preached at, because they have a right to have the information and ideas about what could be done, and make up their own minds. Any life-style can be made a religion, whether consuming or greening. There is common sense, to moderate extremes.
All solutions have their consequences – including what happens to nuclear waste, and what happens when our groundwater is gone, as it is going.

Valerie Yule
An engineer's view -
Aussies mug enough to hand over an extra $10 on power bills have fallen for confidence tricks.
We all should be dedicated towards wasting energy.
Could become a valuable and rewarding hobby if officially supported.

Human/mental energy to each their own.
Milkos once looked reasonably fit - or am I posting too low for an article about 'low technology'?

A massive difference between technology, gadgetry and novelty as there is between complication and successful design.
Clean, sublime, apparently simple, design and manufacturing methodology is what we should be striving for.

I can say that since it is my field and I'm damned good at it.

A personal view is that big industry in Australia is being pushed away from doing what is vitally needed for Aussies by the financiers. (Fat lot of good they've proven themselves lately.)

When SMEs, small innovative and niche businesses are concerned - they're just too big a risk, according to those recently sacked number crunchers, to have even bridge funding for a pre-paid, approved, project.

Numerous projects can be undertaken through, even, handshake networks. The Welsh and Irish, for instance, have done amazing work.

Are policies/initiatives in place supporting that here? On paper, yes. In reality, no.

But to continue y'r theme. Always had a Citicar. It had two wheels and was commonly called a motorcycle.
Don't have one now mainly because of the bad attitude of berserkers in those bullbar equipped, unmanoeuverable garbage cans they call 4WDs or SUVs.

Also have a push mower bought brand new a few years back. It doesn't work.
The petrol powered job does. But I can't afford the fuel for it (my excuse)
I cannot abide sloth and therefore have kept that Briggs and Stratton roaring since about 1974.
But I only use it about twice a year and to hell with what the bloody neighbours think.

I could continue but it ain't worth it while greed and the need to be seen still out-consuming one's neighbours continues to be the big hobby in Oz.

Dear - whoever automatically organises the few words I'm allowed on these pages.
In trying to edit to your ration - I've stuffed up big time -
I copy the orig set here -

"But yes, we all should be as dedicated as possible towards using as little energy as is practicable. Could become a valuable and rewarding hobby if officially condoned".

Still isn't what is needed to be said - but since me and mine are so used to rationing anyway - I suppose it doesn't matter.