A good article that hopefully will evoke some positive responses from the more progressive members of the federal government.

Unfortunately, neither of the two major parties seem to subscribe to the principles of community engagement in developing environmental policy. Back room deals brokered to benefit and bring on-side the CEOs of Australia's gross polluters is still the order of the day.

Only the Greens seem to be interested in charting a bold new course for Australian industry that meets the aspirations and visions of voters who want a cleaner and much more sustainable environment for them and their children.

Kellie you say that "The era of global warming sceptics, environmental exploiters and others who serve as rust on the razor to the throat of Mother Earth must end". Well Kellie, maybe you could take a cool tour to the bushfire zone of zones and report on how green mother earths valley is now. Not necessarily rusty, I would say well and truly dead. Maybe you could come up with some more prescriptions.

An article simply dripping with self-deception, economic illiteracy, and intellectual dishonesty.

To start with, no-one has a right to speak for values over and above human values. You are not God. The issue is not between those whose claims to the use of natural resources are 'anthropocentric', and those which aren't. You too are anthropocentric, princess.

The issue is whether social co-operation in the use a given natural resource is to be based on the principles of life, liberty and property; and those who want to use the same natural resources based on imprisonment and rape, or the threat of it. You stand for the latter group, only your vanity has obscured this fact from your understanding - because underlying all governmental action is the threat of imprisonment and further violation while in prison. So much for your presumed moral superiority.

The value of natural resources is factored into economic decision-making if they are the subject of private property rights. All the environmental problems involve resources which are *not* the subject of private property rights because they are in government or common ownership. You recognise the corruption and ineffectuality of governmental decision-making, and yet you call for more of it! If your rationale were correct, the Soviet Union would have been an ecological paradise. There can be no more wasteful and destructive method of decision-making than to put it in the hands of someone who pays no price for being wrong, and has no proprietary interest in preserving its value – that’s why governments make such hopeless stewards of the environment. Or perhaps the Victorian national parks are your idea of models of good ‘environmental management’?

How do you judge what human values are to sacrificed when you forcibly override consensual co-operation to devote a given natural resource to your preferred use? For example, a thousand million people are now – now - going hungry. Yet the most agriculturally productive nations of the world are restricting production on a vast scale to pander to the desire of the richest people in the world to force vast areas to be devoted for the privileges of a minority to go bushwalking and picnicking - and all paid for under compulsion of course. And you have the gall to accuse others of being selfish and greedy!

So my question is, how do you calculate how many people should die to pay for your economic incoherence? Answer please? How do you figure it out? How do you decide who should live and who should die?

Or don’t your natural resource decisions have economic consequences because you are not anthropocentric – too busy sipping nectar with the gods on Olympia I suppose?

The fact that you don't like the way natural resources are being used does not mean your values are presumptively in the right. Nor does it supply a justification for government to force the issue. All it means is that you who assert the particular value are not prepared to pay for it voluntarily, but claim a right to use violence or threats to force those who don't agree with you to sacrifice their values to pay under compulsion to fund yours.

By the way, what section of the Australian Constitution confers on the Federal government powers of 'environmental management'? It's true that it doesn't exist, isn't it? Please answer this question directly and without evasion of any sort.