Australia we are told produces 1% of the worlds green house gases.
If we produced nil would it change anything?
If the world adopted our range 5 to 15% it would make a great difference, or would it?
Chances are at least half the world will adopt a rang not unlike ours.
But will India?, China, is the hysteria we are seeing from protesters going to achieve anything?
America, now about to be under the leadership of some one bound to real change will cut gases by more than our total outlets, just a start?

Belly,
Climate change is a natural occurrence and there 'aint nothin' we can do to alter it.

So the amount we reduce our emissions by is totally irrelevant.

More important things to spend money on. Utter waste of time, energy and money.

im failing to see how gearing up industry to build YET more cars etc will reduce carbon?
china is slowing down[us etc[thus less energy is burned, so a natural reduction of 5 percent right there globally ,just by doing nothing

then the grants of permits is an absurdity[the big poluters get a 'passcard'[as turn bull[into what] would say

if govt was serious it would stop the price of petrol from falling too low[think if people started driving again] high prices keeps them off the road[but were not paying real prices , as the powers that be bring russia/chaves and them arabs back into line by revealing just who controls the price of gas[and everything else]

kevin you need to have high petrol prices to reap in the fuel; excise levie[thats the way john did it]screw the peasants [how are we going to get them into the streets if gas keeps comming down, and you keep giving them more cash]

global warning became climate change
[now gore is saying the us deep freeze is a sign of global; warming [lol]

anyhow kev put his cards on the table [and his first opening bid is 5 percent [whats turncoat's[sorry bull] going to do [same as john , do the numbers then do what the masters tell him to do

we arnt meant to lead in this [one percent that we produce of the total is nearly nothing[the greens think to have the running [but what will the libs do ? ,the wisest way is a conscience vote[once its in they only need a midnight sitting to change the tax rate]

either way the greens cant vote against it

and the libs cant afford to be seen opposing it
so they got their new tax

[debate over]
kevi wins with a lay down misare

the dealing is done

Well I find my self in the middle of those two posts, I do not fully agree with both of them.
Rudd, no way because he leads my party, seems to me to have taken the only path he could.
Self interest is driveing some in this debate, and others protest for protest sake.
Can anyone see humans giving up the motor car?, or shuting down our air conditioners in hot summer weather?
I am a conservationist, truely, but some tree huggers have no links to reality and blacken the name.
Farmers via the all over the shop national party, the voice of the mining industry till just lately say tree growing will take farming land?
No wonder we get conservation mixed up with extremism.
Some coastal forest is a failure, trees that suport little life and are not even value as fire wood, could see usable forests grown, usable forest timbers, if we use such land we improve that country.
More trees we grow the better, why not on land we do not use now for anything.
Our national target can, if the world takes it up be first step, to ask us to contribute more given our over all output is one percent of the total is dumb.
As some sit for hours in stalled cars on the NSW Pacific highway in Holiday traffic look on the southern end at the dead country, produceing nothing, tell me lifting the lands value with sewage recycled and growing useable native trees is not worth while.

Belly and all.
Good observations,
As someone who does volunteer bush care for a council including collecting seed and growing native plants for regen in my back yard. (Almost a full time job.)
I share your views on zealots of any flavour. Contrary to common myth Zealots rarely achieve anything it takes a reasonable approach and real work.

Regardless of the truth of Global warming (sic) common sense tells us that we can't continue our profligate life style for ever without adverse consequences. I ask what will GW matter if we’ve polluted everything, destroyed our good soil etc. Expecting Science to solve all issues is a naive and selfish ask.

The hardest people to deal with are “good” (sic) citizens who don’t care about anything except their own immediate satisfaction made worse by lack of rational planing and ignorance.
Belly, I agree 5% of 1% is moot but it’s all the associated changes in wasteful living that WILL make the difference if we really sensitise to the environment.

BTW I’ve never seen a piece of bush that was a waste and not supporting real, important natural life. It may not be obvious but it’s there.

In my own degraded bush I have seen if quiet and still enough some amazing wild life e.g. when weeding the small robins/wrens etc watching with interest, move away and they swoop for a exposed meal.
One hot day I nodded off and awoke to find superb blue wren perched on my chest directing his family savaging around me.
While searching for groundcover seeds on hands and knees about the same time each day for about a week. I looked up for some reason and saw two white fluffy goshawk nestlings watching from a previously assumed abandoned nest. The Next day my Bush care supervisor brought a camera but the chicks refused to show. He left they popped up to watch me. They had been habituated to MY presence. I watched the normally secretive goshawks feeding and house cleaning etc.

Belly

^Can anyone see humans giving up the motor car?, or shutting down our air conditioners in hot summer weather?^

You are not thinking clearly.
Electric motor cars are not a problem.

Air conditioners are not needed at all.Each night is colder than is comfortable and each day is hotter than is comfortable.Variable controlled ventilation can make your building any temperature between the cold and hot with only the small energy consumption of an intelligently controlled air pump.The thermal mass of the building retains the temperature when the outside is too hot or too cold.