Environmental catastrophes will continue to not happen. Nature is remarkably resilient. Furthermore, as we get richer and smarter we will get better at remedying or adapting to natural adversity. [Emphasis added]

But you will note, patrickm, that “remedying and adapting” when the planetary climate system is out of whack is not a walk in the park.

BTW who is saying that we are going to become poor through fixing the planet? Apart John Howard, that is.

is the sort of thing I would have in mind!

You will note that unlike Flannery’s books you may read it free on the net.

Naturally petrol, electricity, and air-fares etc are at issue – or these ‘price signals’ mean nothing and as this is very easy to understand if one is battling, I say that swingers ought to be able to be convinced that the best bet is currently to do nothing that would put their living standards at risk. When in doubt doing nothing is often best.

Can we just be clear about what you think we should do, patrickm?

Nothing, is that it?

Well you all may be right; Tweedledum might get elected. But I believe that the masses just listened to Howard on ‘Work Choices’ and by election time it will not swing votes to the ALP. Howard spoke loud and clear and early and is now moving on to the Budget.

Brian however detects a slight problem from the ignorant working classes and general battlers and is trying to face in both directions at once, loosing all face in the process.

Brian wants carbon ‘price signals’ from the government (for the sake of the planet no less we just have to be fed the medicine) and Brian believes that the ALP will deliver more of them than the ‘denialist’ Howard Government would. No doubt not as much medicine as the Greens would force feed us but nevertheless more than the alternative Tweedles.

In another thread he yells ‘Act now’. What action other than put a price on Carbon. Brian means push up the price of petrol and electricity and water and food etc Force people to use less then sooner or later their living standards will improve again. But first the medicine!

Then in another comment Brian complains that Howard will try to scare the swinging voters with the thought idea that the ALP would do just that!

The big issue of global warming and the carbon taxing (read living standard cutting) ALP is going to start to bite in the face of the twaddle about pricing signals that Paul and Brian are trying to flog.

The battlers will be heading your way with the baseball bat once they twig to what putting a price on carbon will mean for their ability to aspire and struggle to use ‘more for less’ as history has shown humans continuously capable of.

The ALP will be widely seen to be right of the Coalition and left of the Greens after this election. Nevertheless they are only marginally so (accept on the important issue of fighting the revolutionary war against the enemy of all humanity that are conducting their sectarian / racist bombing in ever diminishing circles in Iraq etc.)

He’s promised an Australian equivalent of the Stern report so we can find the best strategies for achieving the necessary cuts. Such a report would also examine the cost of doing nothing, or doing very little.

Howard has discovered that the electorate cares about climate change and, even worse, that the opposition has a reasonably coherent approach to doing something about it. So he is casting about for stuff to do. But at base he believes that if we do nothing then the economy will sail along at about 3% growth, which means we’ll double our wealth every 25 years or so. He’ll do some carbon trading, but since the polluters are in on the design it won’t be enough to make renewable energy competitive.

Stern has told us that if we don’t take the whole thing seriously the economy will most likely go pear-shaped. And that’s speaking only about the economy.

It seems to me we have a clear choice. If you are looking at both from a position where they both look the same, I’d suggest you are a long way from where the action is.

” The Australian Greens said that by putting coal ahead of renewable energy, the opposition leader – like Prime Minister John Howard – remained stuck in the past.

“Every time he mentions climate change, he finds it necessary to reassure the coal industry that they will continue to be protected even while the world changes around them,” Greens senator Christine Milne said. ”

Exactly as I predicted 2 hours ago.

A carbon tax scheme can be designed to be revenue-neutral so that the proceeds of the tax can be redistributed to the taxpayers in the form of, amongst other things, incentives and subsidies for people and firms to adjust to low-carbon behaviour, or abolition of taxes such as payroll tax which discourage employment.

Firstly, if one accepts the scientific consensus on projections of climate change, people will be paying more than the current market price for fossil fuel usage regardless of whether or not measures such as carbon taxes or an emissions trading scheme are introduced. The argument is about who pays, and in what currency: do we make consumers of fossil fuels pay an amount which incorporates the external social and environmental cost of their consumption (and therefore brings it down to a level where the marginal external cost of consumption does not exceed the marginal benefit), or do we persist with fossil fuel, etc., prices which allow emissions to continue at a level which will result in negative externalities whose costs will fall on, amongst others, poor people in developing countries whose access to water will suffer, whose crops will fail and who will be most at risk from increased environmental health risks, natural disasters, etc.

Secondly, the Australian working class consumers for whom patrickm presumes to speak are not interesting in purchasing quantities of factors of production (such as fossil fuels). They are interested in purchasing the goods and services which are produced using those factors of production, and the utility which comes from those goods and services. The family which drives from Brisbane to the Scenic Rim on the weekend does so because they want to see the Scenic Rim, not because they want to consume the X litres of petrol the car will use on the trip. If the price of petrol per litre increases due to a price being placed on carbon, the family will look for ways to travel to the Scenic Rim using proportionately less petrol and paying no more than before for the trip. The whole point of pricing carbon is to stimulate a myriad of micro-economic adjustments like this which will result in the population as a whole finding ways to enjoy much the same level of economic activity and quality of life whilst burning a lot less carbon.