I invite readers to submit pieces to me for inclusion on this blog, as has happened with Jaime Pozuelo-Monfort and his Monfort Plan. The pieces don’t have to agree with anything else on the blog, they can indeed be critical of other material on the blog, but they have to achieve a certain standard of writing and thought. If I decide not to include a piece, I will write personally to the person submitting it, explaining why.

My address is cpier@bigppond.com

The predictable failure of the Copenhagen conference to produce an agreement on international action to slow or stop global warming, supports what I argued in an earlier post – global warming cannot be stopped. There is too much momentum behind the human component of its cause, and we lack the economic and political systems, and the international institutions, to get effective international action.

I argued in that earlier post that what we can do, and must do, is face global warming and cope with its effects.

In Australia, incandescent light globes are to be illegal from 2010 and it is already impossible to buy them in the shops. The compact fluorescent globes that are to replace them have been on the market for years but have not been popular. They certainly consume less energy to produce the same amount of light, but they have always been much more expensive, they don’t produce the amount of light that is claimed on the package, they don’t last as long as is claimed – often less time than an incandescent globe – and the light is an unpleasant cold pale shade.

Learning from Bretton Woods

http://TheMonfortPlan.com

Jaime Pozuelo-Monfort is the multidisciplinary European and author of The Monfort Plan

The ongoing G20 meetings that started in November 2008 in Washington and continued with the G20 meetings of London (April 2009) and Pittsburgh (September 2010) have emphasized the necessity of moving ahead with the financial reform. In the reform agenda, there are other areas that were not incorporated, areas that are directly related with the origination and perpetuation of poverty.

In Australia the federal government is trying to implement an Emissions Trading Scheme to combat global warming. Opponents of this scheme argue that it will cost jobs.

Surely the whole point of trying to slow and stop global warming is that if such warming continues unchecked, it will cost millions of jobs, and lives, worldwide, because of the destructive effects of changing climates and rising sea levels.

It is clear that opponents of any plan to stop global warming have not understood the point. They think it is just a vote-catching scheme to attract the votes of a minority of ‘chattering classes’ in ‘leafy suburbs’ in the cities. They believe that the world can just grind along its present course with no change and no ill effects.