“Kevin Rudd was right to say that tackling climate change is the greatest moral challenge that we face--.”
Actually, the greatest moral challenge is accepting that we are part of this planet’s biological and physical processes, not divorced from them.
Just as proliferating biology two billion years ago changed the earth’s atmosphere from oxygen-poor to oxygen rich - killing off many species and enabling the development of new ones: so it is now with human proliferation. The world’s (and Australia’s) numbers have been propped up by an ever-increasing capability for mining biological and physical resources rather than living in harmony with them.
Human-induced planetary change is catching up with us fast: Resource depletion (fish stocks, agricultural soils, forestry, fisheries, etc.) and pollution are becoming unsurmountable problems. If we are to take appropriate steps, as Richard Denniss says we should in relation to the most immediately pressing and dire one – climate change, we are still not off the hook. Ever-increasing population and economic growth in size will quickly invoke natural, and dire, consequences detrimental to society and our species.

Colinsett
Who’s “we”?

You presume to speak on behalf of everyone in the world do you, including all the people who disagree with you, and those who prove you wrong?

On the one hand you say “we are part of this planet’s biological and physical processes”. On the other you say “The world’s (and Australia’s) numbers have been propped up by … mining … resources rather than living in harmony with them.”

Well are we part of the biology and physics or not?

Should the individuals of species two billions years ago have curtailed their use of natural resources so as not to pollute the atmosphere with oxygen?

Why does a different standard apply to human beings?

But if it does, then you yourself are the one saying we are apart from nature.

People are using natural resources to increase their vitality, reproduction and enjoyment precisely because they are part of nature, and who are you to tell them not to?

By the way, if the globe cools, should we ‘tackle’ that with a whole lot of new taxes too? If not why not?

Answers please?

Richard
“The Rudd Government seems to be concerned with symbolism over substance on the issue of tackling climate change.”

Surprise surprise.

The interesting thing is that Rudd seems to have managed to equally alienate the people like Greenpeace who are totally in favour of political action on global warming, and the people like me who are totally against it.

So it’s not about symbolism per se.

It’s about milking this for all they can so as to benefit themselves first and foremost, and and secondly to benefit those political blocs they think they can bribe for votes

The hoped-for grand international coalition of governments agreed on a necessary global warming policy is right now collapsing into a welter of unprincipled grasping and special pleading such as we are seeing in Australia, Britain, Germany, China, Russia, India, Indonesia, the USA … you name it.

What is certain to happen instead is thousands of piecemeal measures by governments everywhere, utterly incoherent, in the form of hidden taxes, subsidies, handouts, and privileges for special interest groups.

The result will be an enormous international industry, an entire vampire economy of exploitation and junketing for lawyers, bankers, spivs, carbon futures traders, the special interests like Exxon who sponsored the whole thing, derivatives speculators – every kind of legal mafia.

(And what were the original objections again? Doh!)

The irony of it is, by parasitizing productive activity, we will actually be wasting far far more natural resources, doing more damage to the environment, and reducing the ability of society to respond constructively than if no political action had been taken in the first place.

Thanks, chumps.

You’re so clever and moral.

Good article. The problem with the trading scheme is that businesses can evade their responsibilities for reducing their emissions by buying the right to pollute. It is this blind faith in the efficacy of the free market to produce fair outcomes that is at the heart of many of our problems.