the time for skepticism is past

I know what you’re actually saying, and I generally agree, but the time for skepticism is never past.

There were a number of comments from the floor and the panel that the time for skepticism is past, and one question from the floor along the lines that Directors need to consider the risks they run by agreeing to major carbon emitting projects, given it seems likely that the limits on carbon will end up greater than promised, rather than less. Of course a panel and a few questions are not representative, but they are certainly a bit of a guide.

So the elites of the business world (do they count as “elites” – they’re certainly paid that way – and they are probably right of centre)are firmly in the camp of acknowledging climate change as a major issue. So the coalition is out of step with it’s natural business constituency also.

I’ll have to think more about this.

Risk aversion to economic damage, even to limiting growth by the smallest increment, was Howard’s policy to climate change until the last months, and was the central element of Bush’s stance. It was the subject of a very funny column by Terry McCrann who, considering costs to 2050, concluded that 0.2% too much to bear because of the potential loss of schools and hospitals. Apparently, we spend the last 0.2% of our economy on this important social infrastructure, having spent the other 99.8% on much more important stuff.

Of course, this is an extreme position, and should have been debated by political conservatives who are also conservationists, of which there are many. (Off topic, the bush conservatives who lined up against mandatory detention were fantastic – making the Nats very nervous, and pushing a couple of parliamentary reps to work from the inside).

As Paul said, there are a significant number of green conservatives out there. Analysis in hindsight will show their silence of the past decade to be another depressing contribution to the delay to act.

And some blame the environmental movement for this failure.

Climate denialism is a right wing elitist viewpoint – its not mainstream.

Workchoices was even worse – strictly ideologues only, not even a rump elite caste were that supportive. Note that the coalition was happy to hyper-regulate the price of labour, but oh!! Give people accurate info about the price of cheese and coffee – that’s BIG GOVT!

Voters just had to categorize each of 14 issues as no important, important, or extremely important. Pretty well issues had 80% or more saying it was at least important

Candidates were given a list of fourteen issues and asked to pick the four most important in order. I think “in the top four” is closest to “extremely important”.

Also, some of the candiates must have misunderstood the question, since the the total number of issues in the top four is more than four times the number of candidates…

The irony about the obsession with some about the possibilities of space travel and colonisation is that even as modest a goal as getting humans to Mars and back will require advances in developing closed loop systems, low entropy, low resources throughput, reducing/reusing/recycling etc., for the spaceships which would be more productively employed here on Earth.