Apart from the myriad reasons that readers have already supplied, why not pick up the ball and run with it, maybe provide an example of what Australia can do when we put our minds to something and be part of world leadership and best practice?

There are huge benefits down the road for Australia if we can be part of the technology and policy forefront on the challenge of climate change and environmental issues.

Interesting arguments (for doing Right Things).
#1 might be possible, especially given Oz’s location.

#2 everything helps, although not as much as we’d like until the “World’s biggest polluter” departs the US Presidency, as I’m afraid Oz signing on was insufficient embarrassment.

Also sad to say, many of my fellow Americans aren’t really sure where Oz is, or what it is, except as the home of Crocodile Dundee and kangaroos. Many are slightly surprised to learn that Oz actually has cities [doesn't everyone live in the outback?] This is unsurprising, as many think that Canada is really some 51st state where they say “eh” more often. Hence, good actions in Oz may not have as much effect (in the US, anyway) as you might hope, although smart people study solutions from all over the world and copy what works.

You might look at Art Rosenfeld on Energy Efficiency, slides 7-8. On such slides, lower left is where we all need to get, and unfortunately Oz is at the upper right. Rosenfeld is the California Energy Commissioner, and a hero of energy efficiency.

California (whose population & economy are about 2X that of Oz) is in lower left quadrant, and we do have (strong) US Senators & Speaker of the House, and the largest representation in the House, which all help. When we stop having to sue the US Federal government for everything, a bunch of other states are set to follow.

[Few people outside the US and many inside don't know that CA has a magically-special legal position regarding pollution control in the US.

The US EPA sets uniform emissions control rules for the US, to avoid the chaos of everything state doing its own thing. When Pres. Nixon created the EPA in 1970, CA had had emission control laws for years, and it got a special grandfather clause.

If CA wants to have *stricter* emissions controls than the US, it apples to the EPA for a waiver, which it has done ~50 times, and until just recently (the CO2 / auto one), has always been granted with minimal fuss. However, once CA has a stricter law in place, any other state can copy it, so there is effectively a 2-track system.

If for some reason a Federal government wishes to maintain loose rules, it *must* fend off CA, which is why we've spent a lot of effort suing them lately. We're only a state, not a country, sigh.]

In some case, manufacturers, after much whining and moaning, match the CA rules, and of course, get tired of building two different products … and then discover it’s not so bad after all, and in some cases (refrigerators) ended up being more efficient at no extra cost. See Rosenfeld Bio, p45. Also, high-frequency ballasts for CFLs and low-E windows came out of the same place. Much to Detroit’s surprise, tailpipe emissions controls were not the end of the auto industry.

Rosenfeld writes (p.66-67):

“The cleverest measures to save energy are the ones that cost the least, but these are least likely to excite the profit motive of a utility…”]

=====
But if I had a wish, there is something we can’t really do in CA that you might do in Oz: make coal CCS get real.

I don’t know if that will ever be practical, and you could well do OK on solar and wind, but you surely should have some motivation to work very hard on CCS for real, not just greenwashing or happy ads about “clean coal”.

CA and Oz have some relevant similarities [climate, water issues, major coastal populations, agriculture, sun, wealth], but CA can’t really do anything for coal, whereas Oz might.

That would indeed be a terrific service.

p.240
“Productivity growth is the primary driver of the global economy, with per capita GDP projected to increase by more than 900 per cent over the coming century, compared to a 380 per cent increase over the 20th century. Overall, the global economy is projected to be roughly 15 times larger in 2100 than in 2005.” [That's assuming population rises from 6.5 billion to 9.3 billion by 2100.]

What does per capita GDP +900% (= 10X richer) actually mean? What does that count? [More-or-less similar numbers can be found in stern, Nordhaus, and elsewhere.]

I’ve been asking, in various ways how this desirable outcome happens, and I still don’t quite understand, given that:

- it appears water will become more expensive in many places, and some aquifers are being drawn down.

- fertilizer (at least nitrogen, via natural gas) looks to get more expensive

- oil & natural gas would look to be trending up in price, with usual jiggles

- food, especially via heavily mechanized farming depend on all of the previous

- building sea-walls, dikes and rebuilding low-lying infrastructure (mostly built with $30 oil) would seem more expensive in 2050-2100, when oil will surely be >>$200/bbl.

+ but of course, we do have a lot of low-hanging fruit on efficiency, the usual improvements in crop yield, and technology improvements in renewable energy.

- but still, we have a century of needing to totally rework the world’s energy systems, which will surely cost money, especially as EROI is decreasing.

So, what does 10X richer really mean?

Emissions trading, carbon taxes it does not matter. What matters is investment in energy sources that do not emit greenhouse gases. The best way for this to be achieved is through a market place in investment opportunities in green energy sources. This can be done through redistributing the money collected through taxes or trading but REQUIRING the money distributed to be spent on investing in renewable energy sources. You can see more on this idea at

http://www.henrythornton.com/article.asp?article_id=5259

This approach deals with the tragedy of the commons and if we show it can work then the rest of the world will follow.

Emissions trading, carbon taxes it does not matter. What matters is investment in energy sources that do not emit greenhouse gases. The best way for this to be achieved is through a market place in investment opportunities in green energy sources. This can be done through redistributing the money collected through taxes or trading but REQUIRING the money distributed to be spent on investing in renewable energy sources. You can see more on this idea at

http://www.henrythornton.com/article.asp?article_id=5259

I agree the aluminium industry figures are deceptive and self-serving. The Aluminium industry in Australia uses 10% of the nations electricity for relatively little economic return. It is an $8 billion export industry (<1% of GDP) but there is very little value adding. We refine over 1/3 of the world’s alumina, but produce only 1/5 of the world’s aluminium. So the energy intensive refining is done here becease various state governments have caved into the industry and agreed to give them very low energy prices. Meanwhile the higher value work is shiped overseas.

Also, saying that our industry is low emission is quite misleading. The hydro powered Tasmanian plants are very good; the brown-coal powered Victorian plants are not.