Soren wrote on Oct 23^rd, 2011 at 8:05pm:


I just see the first one as being simplistic and agenda driven. We'll probably depend on immigration to maintain any kind of sustained level of economic activity. We are still drastically short of engineers for example. If we end up bankrupt, then our hands will be tied economically. We'd probably depend on China for assistance - and that's the way the whole world is headed. So if you agreed, you'd allow some professionals, but not their immediate families? c'mon.

2 and 3 are too much aligned with my own way of thinking for me to try to dispute, but there are problems with the details. Political survival is the biggest.

4. Agree with most, however I can see that a well supervised ETS for bigger polluters only can be a good thing. I know of one company that is hanging out for an ETS just to install some new low carbon technology.  We need the carrot and the stick approach but we need to learn from the lessons of Europe. Do I trust the current Department of Climate Change to get it right? No. They have to the most inept bunch of recent graduates that I've ever had the displeasure to deal with. They are "green" in more ways than one.  Some of them are very very smart, but they were obviously not chosen for their practical knowledge or social skills.     

5. That's woefully simplistic. I'm surprised at that statement coming from you. The opportunity for hydro electric generation is very limited in this country due to patchy rainfall for one thing. Again it's a balancing act. Everything has to be considered in terms of overall justification.

6. Yes, but there's solar and there is solar. The solar PV scheme was great, but it's a totally wasted use of funds. More efficient alternatives are available.  We should be mandating solar airconditioning and smart design (ventilation etc) in all new buildings over a threshold size - here I'm talking about office complexes.

muso wrote on Oct 24^th, 2011 at 9:21am:



I said zero NET immigration and 'drastically reduce', not abolish,  family re-union. The plumber and the nurse and their kids are OK.
Not their extended family, including brothers, sisters, theirt wives and husbands and all their kids and parents (this of course happens mostly with refugees, not skilled migrants).

ANyway, I do not accept that a continuously growing population is a good thing in itself. In any case, if we do need more people, we could make them here, couldn't we? (I have three that I made earlier, as TV chefs say.) Or is that also now something productive we have to send offshore?

the platform 13 of his heart

Karnal wrote on Oct 24^th, 2011 at 11:09am:


Agree, but there is not a hell of a lot we can do to reduce the world's population in a relatively short period of time. 

Even if we went to a totally insane extreme, there are not enough bullets being manufactured.  (take that as sick/ black humour whatever)

Any solutions we come up with must acknowledge the fact that the world's human population is going to remain perilously high for quite some time.

Anything we can do to produce sustainable "anything", will help but there are no easy solutions.

nanobomb china - that would work

develop nanotechnological weapons of mass destruction that convert entire urban areas into rainforests instantly and exterminate everybody within a certain range

muso wrote on Oct 25^th, 2011 at 9:58am:


ppl arent rational mate (most people anyway lol, though most people who are seemingly 'rational' on one issue can compartmentalise and rationalise on other things)

they are rationalisers - everybody has an agenda and everybody compartmentalises

that has nothing to do with whether soren is right or wrong though - people with agendas can actually be right, too

muso wrote on Oct 25^th, 2011 at 10:03am:


this is actually from an old, obscure PC game called call to power 2

there is a political system in the future epoch of the game called envirotopia which is a militant environmentalist government

it has an ingame military unit called an ecoterrorist that makes use of nano assemblers to deconstruct entire urban areas and make them into rainforests