A crucial question is: Are we in a global emergency with a short timeframe - or not? In my view trend lines and incipient tipping points indicate that we are in a global emergency.

If Kevin Rudd accepts that we are in a global emergency, he should:

- Exert leadership a la Churchill, saying that we are in a global emergency, we should all recognize that rapid change is imperative, and as a government we are going to invest massively in dealing with it.

- Take a stand to influence other governments

- Advocate Tradeable Emissions Quotas (TEQ) rather than carbon trading. TEQs are a form of rationing that apply to both individuals and companies, and force (by social agreement) all of us to take responsibility for reducing emissions. The point is to reduce emissions, not just offset them. Ian Dunlop is the former head of the Institute of Company Directors. His paper about TEQs is here http://www.aspo-australia.org.au/References/Bruce/ITD-ETTG-Subm-0307.pdf

- Invest massively in renewable energy and in retrofitting buildings, since these are the fastest and most immediate ways to reduce CO2 emissions.

- Invest massively in building soil fertility and in biochar to rapidly take CO2 out of the atmosphere.

Advanced techniques of organic farming pioneered in Australia can build 10 cm of fertile soil in three years- a phenomenal rate by world standards, but entirely feasible.

Biochar is slow cooked charcoal from wood and other organic materials that when buried permanently takes charcoal out of the atmosphere (www.biochar-international.org/).

Together these two technologies, if deployed globally, appear to have the potential to withdraw enough atmospheric CO2 to pull is back from the brink of runaway global warming. If true, this should be front-page news and a major driver of policy.

Alan Yeomans makes a back-of-the-envelope case that building soil fertility on its own can take us back to preindustrial levels in Chapters 5 & 8 of Priority One

Alex McBratney, Dean of Soil Science at Sydney University, has asserted that a less than 2% increase in soil fertility in agricultural lands globally can take out the 300 gigatons of CO2 required.

However, no authoritative group has gone into the details sufficiently to make a compelling case. This should be a major ‘ think tank’ priority.

Again, if we are in a global emergency, then deploying these technologies should not be left to market forces. Government should invest directly, in the same way that they invest in ships, aeroplanes and armaments in wartime.

Sorry, I can't see much correlation between increasing our population and sustainability. Why do we need to endlessly increase our population? This idea has been the dominant paradigm in this country for some time now which appears to me to be the main reason it continues to exist. I believe logic and good sense should prevail to kill this sacred cow of an idea. There are plenty of prosperous countries in the world not increasing their populations so why do we continue to do so? The Aboriginal people of this country achieved equilibrium and balance with the environment and became care takers of this land over many thousands of years. Why can't we return to this belief that we are here to take care of this country and not exploit it?

I don't think we need to 'stop everything' until we get a population plan done, but it should be taken into consideration before doing silly things like the baby bonus.

The interaction between population, sustainability, quality of life and technology:

http://www.ozpolitic.com/articles/population-sustainability.html#IPAT

We're in a real mess in terms of carbon emissions, and we need to radically change the way we think about travel, fun and business if we are going to get out of it.

First up we need to travel differently, and without legislation that just isn't going to happen. The "hoy no circula" plolicy in Mexico city is an excellent example of simple leglistation which forces people to car pool, and use public transport rather than just hopping in the car. We're not going to do it without a bit of a push, so I would encourage the federal government to mandate for limits to personal car usage. Sybolically, and practically cars should be gradually banned from the inner city, especially Sydney. This way people will be more likely to come in and leave by public transport, reducing polution, carbon emissions and improving the health of the population by forcing us to walk more. Of course concessions need to be made for public transport, ambulances, deloivery vehicles and the like, but private cars should be banned.

The second area we need to look at is the way we entertain ourselves. Electronic entertainment, computer games, big screen TVs and so forth, are not only socially alienating, and even debilitating, they are also humongous wates of carbon. Health wise and planet wise it would be better for us to limit the sale of these screnes to private homes, and look for ways to replace the screen with entertainment which contributes to society. Kids are far better off engaging in physical and mental activity after school than they are sitting in front of a screen larger than they are. Along with an advertising campaign linking bad parenting with computer games and television watching, we need to include the cost of the electricity with the initial price of all electrical goods. At present, electronic consumer goods are comming down in price, and the electricity they use is heavily subsidised. That is an equation which needs to be evened through a system of tariffs on electrical consumer goods - so that ultimately it's cheeper to insulate a house than it is to buy an air conditioner, and cheeper to send your kids to little athletics after school rather than sit them in front of the idiot box.

I'd also like to see the goverment grab the whole transport issue by the short and curlies and ban all non-necessary aeroplane travel for government employees, and politicians. We should be using videoconferencing technologies rather than face to face meetings to conduct our get togethers. Not only would this be a powerful symbolic measure, it would also create economices of scale on the technology makeing it more accessible for the private sector.

Finally we need a big shake out of outdated business and governement practices which see us spend hours travelling to and from work to do a job which could be completed perfectly well from our houses. Not only would working from home massively reduce our carbon emissions, it would also build happier families and safer communities, and the only thing standing in it's way is paternalistic bosses who want to see people working in front of them. They need to get over it, and get in contact with the knowledge economy - clearly you can't run a hospital via the internet, but the vast majority of office jobs can be carried out perfectly well from home using web based technologies.

In the 80s through a mixture of advertising campaigns and penalities we managed to make drink driving shameful. I think we should do the same for the owner ship of big screen TVs, four wheel drives, air conditioners, non-essential car usage and aeroplane travel.

We need big symbolism backed up by legislation, tariffs and taxes so that the cost of a new product more adequately reflects its true cost, and we need it now.

Let's not get carried away. It sounds like you are trying to use carbon emissions as a cover for draconian interference by government in our private lives. The sort of legislation you propose is totally unworkable. For example, people would get around the requirement for 'necessary' air travel by flying across the country to purchase some bags of gravel for the company driveway, and visiting their family while they are at it. The outcome would be tonnes of uselss paperwork and in some cases more emissions. What you would end up with is communist style rationing and a trippling of the economic impact of any emissions reductions actually achieved. You are trying to make this far more complex and costly than necessary.

The problem is greenhouse emissions, not TV's, plane flights, cars, lights, or anything else. There is no need to eliminate people's choice. If someone wants to pay enough to get the same thing in a carbon neutral manner, they should be able to. The environment doesn't care how we reduce our emissions, but our society, our economy and our values on personal freedom certainly do.

If you want to get the public to totally reject efforts to reduce emissions, you are going about it the right way, by tying it to economic collapse and totally unnecessary Orwellian control over our private lives.

That doesn't really clarify what you are proposing. Pricing mechanisms alone are enough to achieve any level of emissions reductions. You mentioned pricing in passing, but then went back to the whole direct government interference thing. Your first post mentioned ideas like forcing people to car pool and use public transport, mandatory limits on personal car use, banning cars from the inner city, tariffs on electrical consumer goods, banning unnecessary air travel etc. All of these ideas would drastically increase the social and economic cost of reducing emissions and are totally unnecessary limitations on personal choice. You actually seem far more interested in lifestyle issues like watching TV and playing computer games. Your second post has only reinforced the impression that you don't really care about carbon emissions but just want to use the issue to force through draconian legislation aimed at correcting what you see as the major social (as opposed to environmental) problems. You didn't call for a total ban on things like air travel, but you did call for absurd legislation requiring people to get government approval for a flight as 'necessary'. Remember, it is greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change, not Xboxes.

you impose a tax on consumer electrical goods which reflects the capital expenditure required to be invested in the electricity grid to provide the electricity which that good will ultimately use

So if someone runs their air conditioner from a solar panel they still have to pay the tax?

You seem a bit hung up on consumer electronics. But it is not consumer electronics that are the problem, it is greenhouse emissions. You have to get the price signals right, otherwise you just screw everything up. So instead of taxing consumer electronics, you should tax carbon emissions. If the price of electricity rises, people will start taking it into account with their purchases. Many already do. The only direct government interference that is necessary for consumer electronics is mandatory labelling informing consumers about the electricity load.

You also include the cost of disposal of the good at the end of it's life.

I think it's easier to just make the manufacturers legally responsible for the disposal of large goods and let the market take care of the mechanism.

but makeing the manufacturers responsible for the disposal of the goods at the end of life would take some serious work at the WTO, what do you do when a good is manufactured in one country but sold in another

They do it that way in Germany. You just threaten to ban the importation of their product if they don't obey the law.

This is why I'd opt to target the devices which consumer the power, rather than the power itself because it's less disruptive

Why is it less disruptive? For a given amount of emissions reductions, that would be far more disruptive. The simplest explanation is that putting a price on emissions lets you take advantage of all the really cheap ways to reduce emissions, and there are a lot of them. If you try to limit the sectors where you reduce emissions, you inevitably miss the easy targets and end up forcing very expensive options onto the table.

but the challenge I see if you target the price of energy....

You target the price of emissions, not the price of energy. Energy is never the 'final product' wanted by the consumer. It is always an intermediate product. There are lots of ways to achieve the same final product, or even an alternative product with which the consumer is just as happy, while using far less energy, or more importantly far less emissions. The only way to get at all of these is via a price on emissions.

As for inflation, if you offset an emissions tax with a reduction in the GST, you eliminate most of the inflationary effect.

The most impressive thing about search engines is that one can quickly find relative topics on subjects of interest within milliseconds. With 1000 "brain-stormers" in action on the weekend, I'm totally stunned there is not a mention of Ethanol apart from the fact that one Australian car manufacturer is working towards exporting cars that include ethanol powered hybrids. May I say that I'm disappointed that the following topics were not covered.

• Bio-Fuels
• Ethanol powered vehicles ( I thought this stuff emits 80% less CO2)
• Ethanol production in rural Australia with genetically modified drought resistant plants. ( A great future for fringe farmers)

As soon as we get the World's car manufacturers design out dependency of crude oil for internal combustion powered vehicles, the sooner our climate recovers from our (well maybe the USA) high energy needs by- product called Global Warming

HYDROGEN. The most abundant resourse available to us, and we don't utalise it. It appears to me that the summit for big ideas isn't thinking anywhere near big enough. Sure there are suggestions on the table that can, and should be utilised, but these are only short veiw, stop gap measures. Let's be honest, there are powerfull ecconomic forces at play that have a vested interest in keeping the status quo. There is a lot of money to be made from George W Bush's quote, "We are addicted to oil". We have even invaded a sovereign country, under the disguise of regime change, in an attempt to control oil reserves. That is a very bad indictment of our addiction. It is costing people their lives, not to mention the continued damage to our enviroment.

Concider this. The two largest nations on our planet, are increasingly seaking the benefits that the west has enjoyed from the energy obtained from Hydrocarbons. This is not only going to increase the rapidly advancing deterioration of our enviroment, through the accumulation of greenhouse gasses. It also means the cost of these deminishing resources is going to continue to escalate. The way fuel prices are going, it is becoming increasingly ecomomically prudent, to find a less harmful and more abundent sustitute. My suggestion is Hydrogen. It is certainly more abundent than oil, or uranium for that matter, and it also burns cleaner, and can be used in a way that is zero emission. ie: Fuel Cells. It also has the benefit of not producing difficult to handle toxic waste.

Why not think bigger and convert our society from a Hydrocarbon economy to a Hydrogen economy. Sure there is going to be issues and problems along the way. With sufficient effort and resourses, I am certain that we can make this work. Let us be a world leader, not a follower, and develope the technology required to make Hydrogen a safe, reliable and prefered energy resource. Bring Hydrogen from the background to the foreground. Afterall there is an increasing global market for reliable clean energy.

If nothing else, we have a responsibility to future generations, to do our very best to rectify the damage we have done with our senseless and self indulgent greed. We are all guilty of this, and are setting a very poor example to developing nations. Let us improve our legacy to the furture. Afterall, don't we love our children.

1. CSIRO / Uni Alternative fuels / engines research with success qualifying for incentives & extensive IP rights to ensure the fruits of the research see the light of day!

2. Biomass fuels developed from landfills / tips for both power generation and transport fuel requirements, soas not to dedicate farmland to the provision of growing for fuels.

3. Immediate commercialisation of geothermal power generation to substantially reduce the need for coal.