mark coultan,in a smh op-ed today, mentioned that the labor premiers were on record as being unwilling to undertake any greenhouse reduction activity that would cost them votes. space presumably precluded him substantiating that claim, but i accept it until contrary evidence is presented.

i do so because that's the way parliament works: pollies don't work for the majority, they work for those special interests that elect them. the only group that cannot be accommodated is the majority.

this means that a society that does not have citizen initiative will always be bled by special interests, and when the needs of society as a whole means starving some special interest group of it's perks, pollies will be extremely reluctant to take this action.

if you are not a member of some group that is getting more from society than it is contributing, you should be interested in getting democracy. that's most of us, who provide the money that pollies divert to their mates.

the impending environmental catastrophe should make the case for democracy obvious to all who are not dining with pollies, or at least don't have one on auto-dial.

btw, not every yank is a climate change denialist, here's one who may be getting alarmed:

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/11/19/georgia/

DEMOS it is a fact Australians are very much fix it but not on my back yard people some times.
In the case of the NSW government, tied, warn out unresponsive and lost are some claims even I lay at their door.
But has the opposition got a plan? have they in NSW earned a chance? not yet but maybe soon.
NSW is doing very little to help in this area laws about use of more ethanol have been put in place little more.
Remaining in power overrules using that power for the common good every time.

Does anyone else find this video as alarming as I do?

Melting Arctic Sea Ice:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMQ21p93JZc

Not that alarming Steel. Its only a relatively short period of time to take an average over to start with. What was the minimum cover in 2006 (higher or lower than average)? Could have been caused by atmospheric temperature, or warmer currents (it is sea ice remember). And finally, it demonstrates nicely that the polar ice melt (particularly in the artic) has little impact on sea water levels. Where the ice melt is over land, then that is a different kettle of fish (additional water into the system and all that stuff). I'd be more interested in ice levels over the south pole, given that much of this is over land and has potentially more impact on sea levels.

on one hand people waffle on about Howard not signing the (purely academic) Kyoto protocol & on the other hand they make heroes out of & adore people who contribute so much to greenhouse gases.. Signing the Kyoto thing doesn't do jacks..t for the planet & neither do car racing, boat racing & all the those rev-head "Sports". As long as there's a Dollar to be made, the environment will always stand on the #2 pedestal in the race against sanity. Peter Garrett who was one of the worst noice polluters now wants to do "something" for the environment. Probably just another one of his Jocular comments. Look at the huge "recreational" fishing industry. They even formed a party in aid of an activity which destroys so much for fun. All this "sport" is promoted by their own TV programmes. We need to do work on reducing the level of stupidity in so many people first & then we have some hope of working for the environment instead of against it.

They actually formed two parties, though no-one seems to know why. Plenty of fishermen are not prepared to touch either of them.