I disagree. The Greens and the Coalition each represent doing nothing. Both have advocated strategies based on voluntary action, which has achieved 0.5% emissions reduction to date. It’s the most expensive and least effective option.

So the choice really is between doing something, albeit of a heavily discounted nature (Labor), and doing nothing (Greens and Coalition).

The Greens have shown themselves to be motivated just as much by political expediency as the major parties, only with an extra dose of naivety and political amateurism. Their offer to negotiate is a Clayton’s offer, since they know they have nothing to offer the Govt in return (such as the ability to pass the legislation). They have executed a political strategy which locks them in to being a moralistic one-issue protest party, instead of taking a path which could have taken them into the wedge between the Libs and Nats to become a major political force. The recruitment of people like Guy Pearse and Clive Hamilton demonstrates this. For this reason I believe that Bob Brown, for all his charisma and deserved respect, is a leader of the past, not the future. I see little promise in Christine Milne, who has been hopelessly outmanoevred at every turn by Penny Wong, or any of the other current crop of Greens senators.

We’re a first world nation, rich in technological capability, but squandering the limited time frame we have to develop the next generation of power technology required to get us through this crisis.

<rant>
No we’re not. We’re the lazy, lard-arse Luddites of the South Pacific. We’re great at using technology but we’re hopeless at developing technology … unless its something that dig rocks out of the ground. Hell, what’s the point anyway when the Aussie dollar makes it impossible to compete internationally. About the only thing we can build is houses, and pretty crap houses at that.

We have no need to innovate because we profit enormously from the destruction of the global climate system through coal exports. Nothing will change this. Nothing!

Dutch Disease. Google it.
</rant>

And really, even the state itself represents, at least notionally, the concept of a large community pooling its funds to buy services collectively at a lower rate than each could buy them individually.

Incidentally, that’s a very privatised and liberal view of the nature of the state.

Patrickg’s point, surely, is that the granting of quasi-citizenship rights to corporations distorts the policy making process and legitimacy of a democracy which is premised on the formal equality of its members. It’s an argument with which I agree, and I’m confused by your apparent objection.

In particular, the granting of personhood to corporations creates rights which are then able to defeat majoritarian desires on the part of citizens.

See Wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood_debate

I’m forever raging against the deeply undemocratic nature of treating corporations like citizens in democracy, and corporate interests as public interests, when this is really very rarely the case, businesses being one of the most undemocratic institutions out there.

At one level, this is obviously beyond serious objection. Corporate interests are by definition private interests. Really a public corporation is a kind of lenders co-op, in which the lenders (shareholders) pool their funds agreeing to risk the lot and to get no dividends unless the people they lend to make a profit. The people who operate the business could have stayed private of course and borrowed directly from a lending institution, guaranteeing the lender a dividend and repayment of principle regardless of profit if they thought they could take the risk of loss on their own and could persuade the lender they were good for it. Sometimes rthough, that’s hard and more expensive. More risky ventures make equity-based borrowing relatively rational. When that happens, the shareholders form the “democratic” pool.

Thios is not structurally much different from other kinds of co-op. A farmers co-op might be set up to house grain and sell it at the best possible price, dividing up dividends by share after members supply grain at below the ultimate market clearing price. The only difference is the asset being lent — in this case grain.

If you own a villa in a strata-titled development you are really part of a housing co-op, in which you pool funds to buy services that would be too expensive to buy privately but which you can share with others at the wholesale price — such as pools and saunas and electronically controlled gates and maintenace and so forth.

In each of these cases, a private interest is served, but it is internally “democratic”.

And really, even the state itself represents, at least notionally, the concept of a large community pooling its funds to buy services collectively at a lower rate than each could buy them individually.

Is the state “democratic”? Rarely, at least in most usages. But that’s because the interests the state is expected to address are very diverse and so you have massive moral hazard/free-rider problems, like what happens when the management of a corporation also owns large swathes of the equity. In most modern democratic states, inequality amongst the “co-op” members means that some mebers can manipulate the managers of the “co-op/state” to serve their interests against other members. Co-ops rarely work well when the members have interests that are too divergent.

And herein lies the problem with the Greens’ position, which is that demanding targets so far in excess of what the rest of the world is prepared to offer appears as unilateral economic disarmament

Hawke/Keating governments deregulated our economy in essentially a one sided dismantling of trade protection, without worrying about our trading partners, and we all benefited.

Greenhouse gas emissions are no different – we should just be doing it and not worrying about whether other countries go first or not. Currently our bunny-in-the-headlights routine is stifling innovation in favour of old vested interests and in the medium term that is counter productive. We’re a first world nation, rich in technological capability, but squandering the limited time frame we have to develop the next generation of power technology required to get us through this crisis. It will rightly be seen in the future as a tragedy.

http://www.sauer-thompson.com/archives/opinion/2009/12/the-australian-7.php

@18 – Terry, well Barack Obama’s already made the point that they can work out what China’s doing via satellite and other technologies.

While what you are positing may well be a plausible scenario in realpolitik terms, I still have huge doubts as to whether any US-China deal would actually result in the sorts of emissions reductions we need – which is actually the point of it all.

My general point is that Copenhagen demonstrated that this has primarily become a game among the nation-states, based on foreign policy realism and power politics. And the more central China is to a resolution, the more this will be the case. China doesn’t do NGO-ism.

Also, if a deal is going to be reached with China, the US and EU need to let go of external verification. There is just no way they are going to have hordes of Americans and representatives of the former colonial powers wandering around their military and industrial facilities counting carbon offsets. That means trusting China, on the basis of realpolitik.