Surely if we – countries in general – are going to make a serious effort to arrest the human-induced component of global warming, then countries aspiring to lead the process must put on the table imaginative ways to ensure the dissemination of technology and inspire the general population to modify their behaviour in ways that they can accept as doing smarter rather than just doing without.

There’s a limit to how far you can push social engineering though. Stopping road construction in Brisbane (for example) with the exhortation “let them ride bikes” will merely result in defeat of the responsible politicians.

As I said to you in Toowong Village a couple of days ago, I think there’s a whiff of insincerity in the exhortation by governments to consumers to pay extra to their utilities for green power. Those who don’t elect to pay more for green power are effectively “rolling-off” their part of the responsibility for global warming onto those who do. If governments really believed the message, and wanted us to use more green power, they’d *mandate* faster take-up of it so EVERYONE shouldered part of the burden. As a taxpayer, I can’t opt out of paying my share of (say) Defence expenditure, or of expenditure on transfer payments for unemployment, welfare or study, so why should a similar, long-term community-wide benefit like green power be any different?