And as for the Snowy – yes, it is a dying system. That’s why Vic lobbied NSW and Canberra so hard to have water returned to it. The only way that this could happen was by Victoria finding water savings elsewhere, equivalent to the extra amount going down the Snowy. Haven’t heard anyone complaining that this water is being ’stolen’ from SA but it’s a very similar scenario.

#343 You missed Amigo FINNS correct analogy point Obama was prepared to trash his own (white) grand mother to score a politcal racial point on TV live to 300 MILLION

“I can no more disown him (Pastro Wright) than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/18/obama-race-speech-read-th_n_92077.html

Disgusting & indecent …Now FINNS was simply saying similorly by analogy that Indian politcans ar more interested in money and power than facing th Mumbai terrorist problems and I agree …Overseas politcans ar below Aussie politicans standards

But then child-powered extraction would slow the coal economy!

If we always listened to what every business lobby group demanded, we’d still have children down coal mines

No doubt

I agree with that but I remain to be convinced that the end result will be any better. They might well get there by a more sensible, educated route but if you end up at the same place, it’s a bit irrelevant that the route was better.

Oz

Yes. The 2020 target is 20% reduction from 1990 levels.

If one does act on climate change (without proper regard to the economy) there will not be an economy to worry about!

There’ll be a planet.

Can you prove that? The whole point of the Garnaut report was that the opposite is true. Business always says this but its rarely true, except for businesses that are dying anyway. Thanks to our black coal Australia has some of the cheepest raw electricity prices in the western world. If we can’t compete its got nothing to do with power costs. A $50/tonne carbon tax would result in a 20-25% increase in retail power prices, which represents no more than 1% on inflation. In fact in the present (economic) climate, the extra work from emission reduction schemes will probably be a net economic gain. Business always counts the costs without counting the benefits to shoot down such ideas, but its usually a false argument. If we always listened to what every business lobby group demanded, we’d still have children down coal mines.