"songbird" wrote in message
...
David Hare-Scott wrote:
songbird wrote:
David Hare-Scott wrote:
...
The first thing our new Prime Minister will do will be to neuter any
action on climate change. And that is quite enough politics.

if you wait for the politicians in any country
at this point you are wasting time and probably
just looking for yet another reason to
procrastinate.


What a dopy argument. The amount that the individual can do alone is
completely trivial.

only people who put themselves in that category
are certain to remain there. the rest of us refuse
such classifications and do what we can. some may
appear trivial, but here is one example to counter
your statement.

'Bird, David and I both live in Oz and since Oz is the home of permaculture,
he and I wopuld both know of multiple examples where those sorts of projects
have been implemented and are working in the 3rd world. In the 3rd world
people still know how to perform hard physical work. They will put in
personal physical effort wtihout a tractor or an air conditioner being
available or even sought.

Sadly you, like David and I both live in the 1st world and that is where the
problems lie and from where they stem. The 3rd world knows that they have
to do without unless they do for themsleves and they (with the excepton of
the emerging tiger economies) arent' where the solutions lie. Our 1st world
is not the same at all. It's a greedy, rapacious, unthinking, uncaring
place where everyone buys new T shirts every year.

Now you may wonder why I ended that sentence with the phrase about T shirts,
but T shirts are an analogy for so many of the ills of our 1st world. We
export the work, we export the pollution of production, we import the profit
and the goods - you'd know enough to fill in the rest of the analogy I'm
sure.


Millions of people together can do something but before
you have that organised the pollies who opposed it would be out of office
anyway and the job is already done. A grass-roots movement might force
action on a government but the effect they can have instead of government
action is quite insufficient.

if it gets done it surely isn't insufficient.

In the 1st world where the problems stem, it can't get done without
political input and legistlation. It doesn't get done because you and me
recycle our cans and bottles and compost and grow food.

David sees coal by the millions of tons of boat loads being exported from a
port near him. That coal is going to pollute a 3rd world country so we can
buy back T shirts and breathe more carbon rich air produced by that 3rd
world making the T shirt.

If you want to deal with climate change then elect a government that
will
do it.

too slow. doing is faster. but, yes, vote,
and i do.

And that is all any of us can do in our positions (other than reccyling our
cans and bottle and growing and composting)

do what you can locally, find others to work
with who aren't obstructionists and pool
resources and efforts.

By all means, one has to lead by example if trying to bring about change
but
don't fantasise that it will have any effect compared with (say) my local
port that exports hundreds of millions of tons of coal per year.

add the right scrubbers and processes and that
becomes much less of a problem.

It will if they are compelled by legislation to install scrubbers. Until
then they are not going to do it out of the goodness of their managerial
hearts because then they will have to pay out less to shareholders.

not that i think
it's a good idea to still be burning coal, but i
doubt China or India will be giving it up any time
soon.

They might if countries like Australia and other coal producers have
legislative restrictions that apply. Of course that supposes that the 1st
world will think about its T shirts.

if we can encourage them to add better CO2
scrubbing then we've gained something where if we
just throw our hands up and say nothing can be
done, then we've fallen victim to a fantasy far
worse than hoping people will make needed changes.

OK 'Bird, off you go and tell China and India to put in scrubbers. I'll
join you in doing so as I'm sure will David and every other poster who posts
here.

A nanasecond of thinking asbout that will tell you how effective we few
will be.

Now if my country's government had some guts and was prepared to look the
Chinese government representatives in the eye and bargain like the Chinese
do, we might just manage to get some scrubbers in place in one or 2 places
in China.