Monday, September 10, 2007

Talk is cheap. Not even talking is, therefore...

Me, I'm into reducing waste. So, enough already on my plate. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it in not leaping into this one: Greens need to grasp the nettle: aren't there just too many people?

Frankly, between the article and the posts (never seen so many either edited or deleted by the moderator - passions running high, I guess), the whole issue has been pretty well thrashed out.

However, it was not until the end that I caught one who tried to answer the question, and did so quite well, I thought, for all the good it does us:

'There's no profit, politically or economically in population reduction. It's laughable to suggest that people would accept this, as the green lobby and government are only too aware . 'Green taxes', however, will potentially bring in billions of pounds for the Exchequer and private finance, the public will begrudgingly feel they're doing their bit to save the planet and we can all go home and have a nice cup of tea.'

More milk, vicars?

APEC - a step forward or just so much hot air?

Some say that the APEC meeting in Sydney was a huge success, others moot that its outputs, as least as far as climate change mitigation are concerned, are no more than a load of hot air.

As reported by Reuters, many environmental groups have labeled Australian Prime Minister John Howard's 'Sydney Declaration' useless; "Green groups immediately dismissed the 'Sydney distraction' as so much hot air adding to the warming of the globe." Although some level of agreement appears to have been reached, the final declaration wording is "voluntary and non-binding", so it seems to permit some of the planet's worst emitters to carry on regardless.

What I thought quite funny was Dubya's accidental referral to 'OPEC' rather than 'APEC'; he obviously still has oil on his mind in a big way.

And it was interesting to note that the biggest amount of international media coverage was not for the Sydney Declaration itself, but for the stunt pulled by ABC TV's staff:-

"Posing as the Canadian delegation, members of ABC TV's The Chaser show drove a 'motorcade' through two checkpoints to within metres of Bush's hotel -- one of them made up to look like Osama bin Laden, and the designation 'Insecurity' written on their convention passes. Police arrested 11 of them".