knockoff nige

If companies are pushed to more greener practices, our environment will benefit. The Carbon tax was designed to do this and was making progress. The income from that wasn't the point. It was the change. Do you believe that to be a waste of time?

Amazulu

Great profit doing that

Go for it

Beoz

Kids generally don't have a hunger for alcohol but if they did then you would be comparing China to a child.

Amazulu

Yes

Australia's contribution to global pollution (real pollution not the CO2 mumbo jumbo) is negligible

We should not hurt our economy or ask consumers/taxpayers to pay more for policies that are basically window-dressing and pointless - it's socialist bollocks designed to let the urban middle-class feel like they are 'doing something'

If we are going to make the taxpayer pay for this then do something meaningful like building nukes and solar collectors

I want a righter, brighter future

knockoff nige

Eh no, I'm comparing them to highlight they are both bad practices. Kids want alcohol, I know I did.

Amazulu

Exactly. It comes from Queensland and NSW or it comes from Indonesia, PNG or the US

Take one or more of those away and the others will fill the void

Amazulu

And it made you a better man

Alcohol is demonised too much

Beoz

China wants coal. If we play the disciplinarian there is only one loser. Us.

They will get it from somewhere.

knockoff nige

Nope, we lose if we keep stressing our dependence on the coal industry. Our future is better served if we move away from it as soon as we can.

Beoz

The consumer will dictate that. If China no longer wants coal then we, the producer, will move on. The Chinese recently lip served up this intention. Will they do it?

knockoff nige

I forgot about our endless pits of coal.

Amazulu

Dig it up and ship the f**ker out

And when we've done that, do it again. And again. And again

Love it

Swerv-o

But in reality, Chinese demand for our coal is declining. There's a large over supply, and steam coal prices have dropped by nearly half in the last 3 years.

And now we have people like Glencore trying to manipulate the price by shutting down production for three weeks over Christmas.

If the Chinese are serious about investing in alternative generation technology - and we already know they have a huge nuclear programme underway, as well as a R&D into fusion, thorium and other techniques. Plus a huge ongoing investment in other renewables too.

I think that nailing our standard to the coal industry shows little insight to what is going on elsewhere in the world. Abbott may not believe in MMGW, but I think that he has buckleys chance of convincing the rest of the world that coal is the future. And in light of that we need to be investing in a non-coal future, rather than trying to ignore it.


S

Beoz

I'm not entirely sure he is trying to ignore it though people will always jumping on the anti TB bandwagon when he doesn't talk wind and solar farms.

What he really said and it make perfect sense to me, is a thoughtful approach to energy, how its produced, consumed, where its needed, and the financial gains it provides.

The Prime Minister this morning said the Coalition “certainly haven’t made a commitment” to the fund and endorsed “sensible policies that don’t impose massive additional burdens on people”.

“The point I made in the G20, and perhaps it wasn’t the most popular point I made, is coal is very important, it’s an important part of the Australian economy, it’s an important part of the world’s energy supply and it will be for decades to come,” Mr Abbott told Sydney radio 2GB.

“Sure it’s important to protect the environment, but we’ve also got to raise living standards. And there is 1.3 billion people around the world — one fifth almost of the world’s population — who have no access to electricity at all and the only way they are going to get access to electricity is if we continue to use affordable and efficient coal.

“As a result of the parliament agreeing to our direct action plan, which is about incentives, not penalties, we will be putting over the next four years extra money into things like more trees, better soils and smarter technologies.”

Amazulu

Don't forget gas. China is doubling its imports for the 5 years to 2015 and wants to double them again for 2015-20. Yes, a lot will be piped from Russia but LNG imports are also going to massively increase