I would like to know where all the raw materials for the billions of solar panels and wind turbines is going to come from.

Recycling obviously.

But I might be wrong. Could the Green centrists on OLO inform me of the mines (sand, gallium ((bauxite & coal)), aluminium, selenium, cadmium, iron & copper)that they enthusiastically supported for construction at any time over the last 20 years?

I recently read that there is a shortage of the type of sand required in the manufacturing of ICs

Oh, and of course such mines will have to be Carbon neutral since Australia is on a mission to save the world.

Oops silly me, I have done it as well, correction, CO2 neutral. I certainly didn't mean to confuse that black nasty stuff with an odourless, colourless gas whose atmospheric concentration has been rapidly increasing over the last 8 years. While over the same time period global average temperatures have been falling. The same gas that botanists have described as plant food for god knows how long.

Rhian,

In 1930 or even 1950, I would have agreed with you and mil-observer that everything will be right if we help to spread development and just political systems everywhere around the world. Once people have access to family planning and large families don't pay, birthrates will drop to near replacement levels and can be fine-tuned with minor incentives.

In 2008, there simply aren't enough resources to do this. I refer you to the statistics on the Worldwatch Institute and Redefining Progress sites. There is also a graph on p. 10 of the 7/10/07 New Scientist, showing that, with present technology, it would take the resources of 3 Earths to give everyone a modest European standard of living, even with no social inequality. Our agriculture is based on fossil fuels as much as that of the Irish was based on the potato. See this article (originally from Harper's Magazine 2004)

http://agonist.org/don/20070114/eating_fossil_fuels

Then there is the damage to our environmental life support systems. To agree with you, I would have to believe that there is a vast global conspiracy involving much of the world's scientific community and many others. Petroleum geologists lying about peak oil. Hydrologists lying about falling water tables. Agronomists lying about how grain productivity can't keep up with population growth. Biologists lying about extinctions and collapsing fish stocks. Faked satellite pictures doctored to show deforestation, degraded land, and melting ice. Our own government lying about water shortages...

Barry's is an important article (and certainly not because I've been name-checked), but because the dangers of environmentalism are coming increasingly to the fore. What Barry calls "pseudo-left-wingers" (though I think the moniker "left-wing" per se, is currently redundant) are increasingly unchallenged in their political programme - a programme that advocates restraint!

'Restraint' and a sneaky condemnation of humanity are certainly not the most appropriate mindsets best designed to change the world.

The so-called "Green New Deal" being designed by environmental advocates across the world is intended to "employ" people in the undeveloped world as carbon-neutral stewards of their forests. Authoritarianism, psuedo-colonial attitudes to the carbon-neutral Third World amd contemptuous attitudes to one's fellow man in the First World are certainly not the stuff of any left-wing politics that I have ever subscribed to.

In the rapidly ensuing economic downturn, beware mainstream environmentalists who will increaingly follow the logic of their politics of restraint and revel in frugality and the war-economy. The dangers of their localism and parochialism, (their food miles infatuation, for example) will increasingly manifest itself in protectionism with all the political dangers that follow on from that.

Barry is raising a critical issue of some political-historical importance here. Are you for humanity's development, or do you blame humanity's development? If you buy into the latter - whatever provisos you may wish to append to it - development (improving living standards and other material benefits) will always play second fiddle to demands for austerity. If we buy into the environmental argument, we will not have a leg to stand on when living standards are cut; there will always be a higher ethical justification of it being in the interest of CO2 reductions, for instance.

Green advocates will always argue for austerity (which they falsly use as a counter to "profligacy"... in typically moralistic fashion). Those who want a better world for all (whatever "left-wing" label is attached) need to argue for development without prefixes; and that humanity is the source of creativity. Humanity and humanity's dominion over nature - is the solution not the problem.

Divergence: Good that you call "our government" for its lies about water shortages. I hold back on commenting about the other "lies" because there is so much misrepresentation, exaggeration and other distortion in sensationalist media that has already discredited itself on these issues and their implicit claims about "peak humanity".

But the "water shortage" canard is perhaps the worst, because its implications are potentially the direst for subject populations. As a rule of thumb here in Melbourne, the population has risen at least 1 million since the last meaningful development of water infrastructure. Since privatizing the public utilities of water supply, the free-trade cowards and whores of the major parties refer to little but austerity measures - always claiming that it is somehow nature that's working against us - even for this and previous years when rainfall and catchment rose significantly compared to past drought years.

The logic is simple: privatized water seeks profit and enjoys the whore-state's imposition of restrictions austerity as a cover for casual and regular price rises. The private water firms' investors thirst for profit means they cannot countenance any contribution to expanded water infrastructure, despite increased demand, except the most token and dishonest feedback-plunder of public treasure via MORE privatization i.e., PPPs! The major parties' free-trade lackeys just serve such continued looting of public purses.

Good on you AustinWilliams. Austerity is fascism. Note too that so many of the green misanthropes do indeed drive the most offensive and guzzling off-road SUV-4WD cars, while expressing all manner of vicious austerity for developing countries. I personally know one couple so disposed, and I have seen whole suburbs dominated by such nasty green hypocrites. These people are fascists; they are not "leftist" in any meaningful sense at all.

Divergence
I can empathise with your point that it may not be very rational to think that most scientists are liars. However, a significant number of people seem to think that most politicians are liars.

But it is factual that of the 13 existing Climate Change Computer models, not one agrees with another. So, are 13 groups of scientists all liars because they can not verify each others results? Anyone who thinks so would be in a distinct minority. But could it also be that the simplistic label of liar doesn't allow for self interest, taking the path of least resistance, hubris, chasing grants and a tendency of some to be fearful & pessimistic.

It would be true however, to say that scientists who predicted in the early 70s that the world food production would collapse were mostly wrong. At about the same time some scientists were predicting a coming ice-age and they have been shown to be mostly wrong. I say mostly because some parts of the USA experienced snowfalls 11 months of the year in the mid 70s and experienced extended cold periods.

Life is often a bit more complicated than truth and lies.

I am waiting for some truthful statements from OLO Green centrists about some factual instances of mines being accepted as necessary by Green groups.

Or is sourcing raw material for technological solutions to Global Warming similar to the pulp mill, Australians mainlanders are happy to import paper from Finland but view it as immoral to source Tasmanian paper.

NIMBYs and proud of it.

"Since when has it been left wing to be green?" Well Barry, since the left found that their desired redistribution model could be achieved through nefarious other green means, with their lazy political class corrupting statutory instruments based on models which will never work but to soak up large sections of our families earnest wages,property value,and savings.