The pollies are going to have to burn the midnight oil (P. Garrett MHR included) on the question of offsets. A few places where I have dipped into the 400 or so pages of draft ETS legislation it has said 'offsets are disallowed'. So I dunno if there is a glitch somewhere. If you add tree planting to 'clean development' offsets you find they are generally exaggerated, mistimed, unverifiable or an accounting fiction. Yet places like the Netherlands have a policy of avoiding 50% of emissions cuts through offsets. No wonder it's getting warm in here.

The second punch to add to recessionary production cuts in fossil fuels is depletion. Even under business-as-usual credible commentators say crude oil will decline globally 30% from 2008 to 2015. Some say China can't get the quality of coal it needs. However global warming could still continue after fossil fuels just by methane release and less light reflection from polar snow. It would be good to get world coal production figures by say 30/6/09 to compare with the previous year but the stats are usually slow in coming.

The government's ETS scheme looks like going the same way as the Alcapops law. Why? Failure to adequately consult come to mind. Rudd decided not to engage the Greens and Independent senators in drafting the legislation, preferring to play bluff with the Opposition. Is it any wonder the bill is being torn to shreds?

The government has yet to take the bold policy decisions that would result in the conversion from coal to large-scale renewable energy supplies. After a year in power, we are yet to see a national feed-in tarrif that would see solar massively taken up by home owners and businesses. Instead we see blind faith in unproven and high risk CO2 sequestration solutions to appease powerful vested interests.

Back-room sweet-heart deals with recalcitrant gross polluters have made their carbon credits worth little more than Zimbabwe dollars in their value for money.

All up, the government has failed to take the tough decisions and will end up looking like a scrag on a rock in Copenhagen.

For once there is some sort of agreement. All efforts to limit carbon dioxide emissions are a waste of time, in part because they require political will that is just not forthcoming. Nor is there any real hope of cleaning up power plant emissions in the short term. Wind farms, as one correspndent notes, are also largely a waste of time and money.

The only realistic solution, if you bleieve the science, is adaption. But there is a curious blindness among some of those who mention adaption, in that they push for population reduction as approach. Forget it. There is not a ghost of a chance of getting a population reduction in Australia - not this side of the 22nd century, anyway.

What to do? Well, sorry as a long term fix (for carbon in Aus at any rate) you are looking at spending big on ways to clean up existing power-generating technologies. No I'm not talking about burying carbon. This is to nominate one area of practical action. Adaption to higher population is also possible. All this may be highly unpalatable to the activists but it is politically feasible. the bulk of the solutions proposed by the activists, on the other hand, are simply not going to happen.

I said it to him many years ago when he first came to me for career guidance. "Son," I said "get into carbon trading".

It will be the biggest money-spinning rort the world has ever witnessed. And the kicker will be, that it will accomplish precisely nothing in terms of "saving the planet".

The true picture is contained in the article's penultimate paragraph.

>>Ironically, the only thing that looks like slowing, and maybe even reversing emissions, is the greed of bankers and the blindness of politicians like Bush; but it does so by causing misery and poverty world-wide.<<

"Reversing emissions" in any way, shape or form, and substituting them with a cleaner and more durable form of energy, will inevitably cause "misery and poverty world-wide"

To imagine that a solution will suddenly, magically present itself, one that will be simultaneously embraced by governments, polluters, energy barons and consumers alike, is a pipedream of mythic proportions.

The ugly truth is that our post-democratic system is entirely unsuited to solving a problem of this nature and magnitude. Only a government that is irrevovably committed to a switch from planet-destroying to planet-saving energy technology, and one that is able and willing at the same time to enslave entire populations to its will, has half a chance of bringing it about.

We have created societies around the world that are fundamentally resistant to change. Even when/if there is a majority that believes in the drastic changes in our lifestyle that we will all need to subscribe to, they will have to live with a constant stream of objections from people who don't believe.

They will do so, of course, under the flag of freedom. Which is why hard-handed dictatorship will inevitably be the only viable means to this particular end.

Not looking forward to it.

And the lost and the left still think they can sell this global warming malarkey. Ask businesses who do not rely on government favor, employment or revenue to generate jobs about this cockamamy con job and then check your reality. There is plenty of budding Henry Fords out their, but none of them work for or rely on government except demanding urgently to get off their back before they can employ any more of your children in constructive enterprise which generates something we all need.

You are wrong, Q&A. The population problem can be solved quite quickly. Nature has a method which involves four horsemen.