In the 1950’s NSW had a vast network of railway lines, much of it built in the late 19th and early 20th century, and radiating out from Sydney across most of the state.

Although successive State Governments since the 1970’s have closed ‘unprofitable’ lines, replacing trains with coaches, much of the railway infrastructure is still in place, i.e. the tracks haven’t been ripped up yet, and many of the stations are still there although many are now used as museums or tourist attractions.

This infrastructure will not necessarily need to be re-built, it will need to be repaired and maintained.

Many State Governments still don’t seem to have a clue on future transport infrastructure needs. In NSW the Carr/Iemma Governments have been flip-flopping for many years over the much-needed rail link to the north-western suburbs.

One minute we are told it will be heavy rail; then the link is cut back to half its length, and now there are plans afoot to service the area with a completely unsuitable ‘Metro’ type service. Likewise nothing has ever become of the Eastern Suburbs extension line, the Manly line or the Inner West Metro line.

Regarding your argument about the affordability of diesel, I’m sure that diesel locomotive engines can be re-designed/ adapted to run on bio-diesel, and it’s certainly going to take a lot less paddocks of oil-seed crops to produce bio-diesel for trains than the massive amounts required by the trucking industry. In NSW urban and regional (Newcastle, Kiama, Lithgow) lines are electrified, which will mean eventually getting electricity from renewable sources instead of coal-fired power stations.

Regarding bullock dray teams, you might want to have a look at recent overseas developments including the Phoenix Electric Truck, see http://www.phoenixmotorcars.com/, and the ZAP Xebra truck, see: http://www.zapworld.com/electric-vehicles/electric-cars/xebra-truck, (which by the way comes with a solar panel option).

Although these are far smaller than a B-Double, it is a move in the right direction, and it’s only a matter of time before full size trucks are developed. Furthermore, bullocks are definitely not part of the solution as they belch tons of methane into the atmosphere.

Despite the muddled self justifying confusion of modern economic theory his observations are basically just common sense after all.

After the blinkers of prejudicial learning are removed and the smog of environmental conditioning is lifted, the obvious continues to co exist with the ignorant only more obviously so.

Unfortunately the Greens suffer the same manner of conditioning as all of us, we are prejudiced by our chosen professional associations, by our accidental environmental conditioning and our need to be part of an entity of gathered individuals.

Preaching to the converted is no solution to speeding up a much needed collective response, neither is the reliance on authoritarian stricture. Centralised demands are normally spectacularly unsuccessful in a capitalist democracy.

Two major motive forces which move the levers of the machine that is our narrow world are ’self interest’ (fiscal greed and material wealth obsession) and Fad.

Why is it that an otherwise intelligent successful environmentally concerned adult can be motivated to expend so much personal energy purchasing and maintaining a huge 4 wheel drive to barge around the city streets in, buy shares in Uranium mining interests, leave the sorting of the rubbish to somebody else whilst relaxing in a house designed to consume more than provide.

We are sold it, its a popular obsession.

We can be sold something else.

We don’t need to be compelled by guilt or fear, neither motivations are sustainable as we automatically seek other modes. Nobody wants to be ruled by guilt or fear.

The integrity of the Greens continues to reside in the issues and not the politics.
At their most successful the Greens love us all and our future environment more than political success, the worst and most memorable mistakes have been made when compromising influence in the search for power.

By exploiting the machinery to create a culture making common sense responses more popular, destructive excess a little more obviously ridiculous, the Greens themselves will grow and mature with the people they would seek to represent.
If matured to become ‘those in residence’ the Greens may yet become the ‘conservatives’

For now however the Greens are a party of influence, not power.
Garnaut, Gore, Murdoch are prime examples of that influence.

The language and the culture are different between the resource and energy oligarchy conservatives and the leftist leaning conservationists but the urges are universal.

Even though the motivations of a young person may seem different to a much older individual, the prime drives are the same.

Continuity and survival are two of these.

Garnaut is a fine translator for those at the big end who may listen, what we need now more than ever is a voice to translate to the consumers in their (our) language.

We all are under the control of the natural zeitgeist, collectively like a lodestone temporarily out of alignment, we already have the imperative to align ourselves for continuity and survival. The will just needs the flesh beckoned.

I like your enthusiam, but I think you will find there are a lot of obstacles to a party with a majority in the house of reps compelling things. They are in order (but not limited to) as follows:

1) The Senate.

2) Those policing the new laws not being sufficiently resourced or motivated to prosecute them as a priority.

3) The judiciary. They are famous for lenient application of the law. This is a regular source of outrage in the media for violent crimes as an example. This will be even more the case when a new law is seen as draconian. Clever lawyers and well funded challenger to the new laws will stall progress enormously.

4) The majority party itself when it becomes aware that it will lose government due to its enthusiam for compelling the population to do things it otherwise wouldn’t.

5) The voting public at the first opportunity. The desire for re-election ultimately makes governments surprisingly weak at compelling things.

Each of these things dilutes the theoretical power to compel.

Workchoices provides the most recent example of an attempt to compel something and it is was only possible because obstacle 1 above was avoided and it will be repealed before it had any lasting effect.

Believe or not John Howard believed workchoices was good in the same way that we believe emission reduction is good. Only a smidgeon less than 50% of the voting public thought workchoices was good as well.

We can only compel a new order with more than 50% support being sustained over a very long period. That support will not be forthcoming if we are seen as tyrannical. A two year run for the agressive new rules only to have them thrown out and replaced with a decade of stalled progress will be worse than a more subtle approach.

Tyrants who aren’t subject to a genuine democratic process are good at compelling things, but the core business of modern democratic governments (where the bulk of their power is exercised) is in collecting taxes and allocating expenditure. Even in their core business area government’s can barely compel uniform proper payment of taxes by all citizens and entities.

I have tried never to say what the policy of the Greens was in the past, only what I arrogantly think it should be now ;)

Vicki wrote, “Meanwhile I ponder how my job and lifestyle does nothing to help the global situation…. Now I’m all depressed again.”

When political leaders gather to discuss change, they always give it several decades. There’s no reason you can’t do something similar, giving yourself several years to change. For example, if your job involves lots of air travel and you don’t like its contributions to the greenhouse effect, give yourself (say) five years to find a new job with no travel requirement.

Or if you’d feel better in a job contributing in whatever way to the world, give yourself (say) five years to research and discover what that is, and then five years after that to get qualifications or whatever.

If, rather than saying, “100% carbon reduction, TODAY” our political representatives can say, “um, 60% by 2050″ then surely you and I can set our own goals for some years ahead. “No more air travel by 2012″ or “job with the Greens by 2018″ or whatever.

*Vicki applauds loudly*

Yes, I hope people are wise enough to see this political move.

It really upsets me actually. Many people have been conditioned to be self absorbed and thinking only about their prosperity, as though it was the only thing of value in their lives. Perhaps I’m overthinking this because Sydney-siders tend to have that form of reputation :-/

Meanwhile I ponder how my job and lifestyle does nothing to help the global situation…. Now I’m all depressed again.

Tim @44 you really did get out the wrong side of bed this morning. I have been in the Greens for many years and quite heavily involved with many levels in the past (prior to getting quite ill as the new millennium dawned.) . Your “campaigning 101″ address to me is a bit akin to you teaching your grandma to suck eggs!

For someone who pleads to be so interested in facts. Where are they? For starters show me the academic studies that prove with Australian-like urban (&/or rural ) geographies & densities public transport can be made such as to win out over & against private transport. Especially so as to get the improvement implied in the election PR. I will not be holding my breath for after years of professional work in that area and futile search for such, all I have is leaver-arch folders to the contrary.

As for your verbalizing me. I have never ever said or even hinted that the “problem is impossible to fix”. What I was objecting to was the Smarmy Election PR, (that seem quite out of character with previous election’s materials). “PR implies we have ALL the answers to fix it”. Kiashu @46 is far closer to the approach I have come to expect in the Greens.

From my distance the whole ethos about these things (including your sparks today) in the Greens is looking very like ‘Group Think’ (I assume you know history of that technical term).

I completely agree that audience feedback is vital - that is the very purpose of this blog, of course! Indeed, I personally find it useful always in helping me clarify the way I communicate our issues and policies, even if I sometimes respond defensively.

My frustration comes from the feeling that some commenters are not coming here to provide constructive criticism, but to deliberately undermine us by running lines that they know - or should know - to be untrue. I don’t include you in that, as a new visitor, and take you point that we should clarify that argument. But there are several on this thread that that feeling applies to, and I’m sure they know who they are.

Again, apologies if people feel I have been too aggro this morning, particularly given my latest post.

It is an honest truth that I am troubled by the sequence and I think it is important that you should have this feedback so you can remove any confusion in the minds of those who receive your messages.

It would have been less confusing, more defensible and credibility enhancing to say in the top piece something like:

“While Garnaut goes beyond our election policy we believe he is totally correct to do so given the updated information since our policy was conceived. We firmly support his direction and will be making our own updated statements in the near term.”

More generally can we have a little bit less sniping at the commenters please. There is no need to be so defensive, most people really want you to do a better job of communicating the issues and to this end our comments constitute feedback. They contain information about how to do better get your messages out.

Your own set of understandings about things means you will not always be able to see thing how your readership sees it. This is a curse of being very well informed and needing to speak to a less well informed community. Audience feedback (not just the nice stuff) is a great solution to this problem.

I see it as like when in the scouts or the Army you’re told to navigate from A to B - but you have only a poor map, so you don’t know the exact lie of the land. So you head off in a straight path to your destination, but as you go along you encounter patches of impenetrable forest, gullies, ridgelines, big rocks and streams, and you adjust your course to go around them.

You don’t sit around hoping for a better map so you can plot your exact route. You just get a rough idea, head off and then sort it out as you go.

I think we’re better off setting an imperfect target now and dedicating ourselves to it than we are arguing for years to get a perfect target. This is especially so because the science of this field of climate change is changing so fast itself. The climate moves more quickly than a committee.

Please ensure that your comments are actually informed and relevant. At this stage, they are appearing to be simply stirring up discontent based on a misrepresentation of our policies. That kind of behaviour is unwelcome.

Lewis @ 38 - indeed, the ‘400ppm or less’ approach is under review, but it accords quite closely with what many top scientists are currently saying. Even Jim Hansen - the scientist out there calling for strongest action - is saying 350-400. But rest assured it is currently being reviewed.