“I don’t see how we can have our cake and eat it” sounds to me like it’s positing a dichotomy:
have/eat.

But I’m a very simple soul

I agree that the nation has to decide its reasearch priorities, just as it had to in 1950, 1970, and 1990.

cheerio

Oh don’t be silly!

It’s not “either/or”, with research money.
Thousands of projects are proceeding around the country AS WE BLOG. In agriculture, biotechnology, population studies, chemistry, all kinds of engineering, physics, energy storage, energy savings, pollution reduction…. And there’s privately-funded research too.

Governments can set priorities, and they can fund some areas generously, but that doesn’t mean that all other research STOPS DEAD. Hundreds of Ausa
tralian scientists, engineers, mathematicians etc collaborate with colleagues overseas: they may therefore piggy-back on projects largely funded through overseas sources. Private, government, aid agencies, philanthropists,….

I think we should try to make it work, but assume that it won’t, so that we also have a Plan B, if that makes sense. If it does work, we’re ahead, but if it doesn’t we’re still OK.

It sounds like a nice way of hedging our bets but I don’t see how we can have our cake and eat it too in this instance. At some point, we have to decide where research money is going – where we are going to put our resources. Besides, who decides if it’s ‘worked’ anyway? According to what criteria? (And the questions are not just rhetorical – I would like to know how this new body plans to answer them)

not sure I entirely agree about nuclear vs coal, but he does make a compelling point or two via that analogy, while not deflecting from what is the obvious third way, ie renewable energy.

This is an area where the effort has to have DOZENS of complementary components: energy saving, re=newable thechnology, etc

To say the coal industry is a major polluter is a truism: but how do we get from where we are now, to a better future? That’s a hard question. Suggestions welcome – just leave them in the little box over on the wall over there.

And anyone who thinks there is a single answer, don’t bother putting your bit of paper in the box.

How much the Australian taxpayer should put in is another question. It can be argued that we have an interest in the industry, which is our largest exporter at present.

What I find strange is the expectation that we can prove a negative in double-quick time:

“If it’s going to work we need to know quickly. If it’s not going to work we need to know even more quickly,” Mr Bourne said.

I think we should try to make it work, but assume that it won’t, so that we also have a Plan B, if that makes sense. If it does work, we’re ahead, but if it doesn’t we’re still OK.

To mix a couple of sporting metaphors, it’s horses for courses. Some feel more comfortable playing without the ball.

Perhaps Garrett is biding his time, toeing the line, hoping to build capital to one day finally do something really worthwhile. Perhaps. But if so, I fear he’s mistaken in the belief that that strategy will work.

As far as WWF and CI go, it’s too early to tell, but history doesn’t suggest that they’ll achieve much by getting so close to government if they have to water down their principles so much to get there. What they are calling for here today is appalling – more government funding for a multi-billion dollar polluting industry,when that industry already receives the lion’s share of funding. They know that the consequence of that will be less funding for renewables and efficiency, which, if implemented now, could start cutting emissions now. It’s a lose lose situation.

What’s the point in getting the ear of government if, once you get there, you only tell them what they want to hear???

It’s an obvious question, and a good one. But the answer isn’t as clear cut as you might think.

By abandoning the polluter pays principle, WWF and the Climate Institute should be seen to have abandoned any remaining pretence of being part of the mainstream environment movement.

If the WWF and the CI have the ear of Government, are negotiating with other peak bodies and political stakeholders, and are in a position to put their environmentalist programmes into policy, isn’t it the Greens who are on the outer of the environment movement?
I’m myself more sympathetic to your Party’s point of view, but it’s an obvious question.

Spiros, it’s absurd to say this is about my / Christine’s / The Greens’ / anyone’s taste. It is far more fundamental than that.

Ken Miles. No. The only possible impact of this is to take the pressure off the government and the coal industry in their push to slow down action to reduce emissions. We would not have attacked it and raised the stakes so high if what they were doing could be seen as positive. There is no possible environmentally beneficial outcome from what WWF and CI did today.

No, Spiros. Organisations which abandon one of the central tenets of environmentalism cannot be called environmental organisations. If they do, they will do irreparable damage to the cause.

Maybe they just care more about actually helping the environment than scoring ideological points?

Anyway, who made you the philosopher-king that could decide who is or is not an environmental organisation?

SPLITTERS!

This thinking is straight from the Trotskyist Political Strategy Handbook, circa 1975.

Far left activists seem to have it hard wired into their brains that the smaller and more pure their political movement, the better. Of course, this just leads to more splits and the movement achieves nothing whatsoever, except the purity of the movement, which becomes an end in itself.

But the lesson is never learned because of the genetic hard wiring.