Warming gets cold shoulder from Canberra | theage.com.au

The Government is jogging on the spot when it needs to take big strides.

WHEN representatives of community climate action groups from around Australia gather in Canberra for a meeting this weekend, discussion will focus on understanding how the Rudd Government got climate policy so wrong, and what can be done in 2009…

One sign of this problem in Australia is the way the Prime Minister and Climate Minister have adopted a traditional Labor approach to climate: something for the environment lobby and something for business. But solving the climate crisis cannot be treated like a wage deal. It is not possible to negotiate with the laws of physics and chemistry, and believing that it can reflects only an ignorance of the task at hand.

The planet cannot be traded off. There are absolute limits that should not be crossed, and doing something, but not enough, will still lead to disaster. This the Government appears not to understand at all…

Warming gets cold shoulder from Canberra | theage.com.au. [My emphasis in bold italics]

I get the feeling when seeing Rudd posing for the camera on TV that he seems to think of himself as something of a statesman. There was the thing about an Asian regional kind of EU thingy, and he wanted to do away with the nuclear non-proliferation treaty so that he could arrange to sell uranium to India and be all smug and superior about it as well.

I’ve been meaning to comment on the quote attributed to Bismark that politics is the art of the possible. I have the feeling that since Bush and the neocons, some prominant politicians seem to have this maxim in mind but in a reversed way. They seemed to think that if you could bully up politics only to reflect their agenda and way of seeing, so that alternative voices could not be heard – partisan hard ball politics basically – that it would then magically reflect on what was possible in reality. It is as if they thought they could change the laws of physics if only a show of hands in a legistlature was in the majority for a prescribed change in physical laws and processes (Intelligent Design could be one example). Sheer stupidity, ignorance and arrogance of a ruling cohort may be capable of creating its own little make-believe world for a time being, but as to this being the art of the possible – Nah. It will all fall into a heap sooner or later.