Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

The passing of the carbon tax bill today is a victory for future generations and for the planet. The money raised will be used to fund alternative energy and new industries for Australia. We can all stand proud today.

With challenges like these confronting mankind, can we continue with a business as usual approach? Are the current institutions capable of addressing these challenges? I think not. To fix these problems governments will need to raise a lot more revenue.

I believe it is greed that is a root cause of climate change denial. The people who deny the threat of global warming are the same people who are unwilling to change their way of life so that others in the village can survive. People who want it all now and are unwilling to leave anything for generations to come.

Surely it is time to get on with the job. Rather than debating carbon tax we should be investing in alternative energy, instead of a two speed economy (miners doing well everyone else struggling) we should be rolling out technology such as this. Projects like this create jobs in regional areas and massively reduce our use of fossil fuels.

History should be at the core of all education. Without an understanding of our incredible history - the story of life - life itself can become meaningless. We must realise that we are a tiny part of a very big picture. Our future is unlimited. Our ancestors understood the need for stories of origin. Now more than ever we need to pass on to the coming generations an incredible story based on truth.

We are really struggling for good leaders when we end up with the likes of Abbott and Gillard as our only choice of Prime Minister, too much bullshit from these two. As many of us do not attend church regularly where are we getting our leadership? We certainly do need a bullshit detector!

A prominent Cairns businessman is spearheading a push to bring thousands of Japanese refugees left homeless by the earthquake and tsunami to the Far North to ease the pressure on the disaster-struck nation.

Richard Koo says that if government stimulus stops now we will face another downturn in the global economy. He says governments should continue with their fiscal stimulus until private sector borrowing reaches more normal levels.

During a time of war a leader who wanted to appease the enemy would be called a traitor. It is about time we asked who is paying these people when the scientific evidence is so overwhelming. Whose interests are they supporting?

To blame Wikileaks for the problems that may or not be caused by the leaking of such information is to shoot the messenger. The information is out there any intelligence agency worth its salt has probably had access to it long before Wikileaks.

A war between “good” and “evil” is a cosmic war. A cosmic war is not a war over land or resources as such a strong army cannot prevail in a cosmic war. The battle ground of a cosmic war is the mind.

Australia is a small country and we cannot afford to waste lives or resources. We have growing threats much closer to home than Afghanistan and we should be concentrating on these threats. We should be fighting real terrorists, not chasing ghosts or nation building in distant countries that are no threat to Australia.

"So what the committee is recommending to Australia is not only we completely remove the suspension - which we haven't yet done - but we entrench in the constitution a provision so that never again can race discrimination law be suspended in Australia." (Graeme Innes)

Is it possible to have prosperity that isn’t about rising income? A prosperity that would give us health and security, at the same time allowing us to participate socially with hope for the future – a life that gives us the ability to flourish as human beings on a finite planet?... We are social beings, not isolates. To be complete we need to free our imagination: our prosperity should be about caring for others – a prosperity of hope.

Gandhi used non-violent actions to bring freedom to India. Maybe if we want to fight for a future for our grandchildren or bring equity to the children unfortunate enough to have been born in the third world we too will have to resort to non-violent action.

The new aircraft carriers proposed by the Chinese would end the domination of our region by the US navy. The Australian navy needs to rethink its policy on aircraft carriers. We will not always be able to rely on the US navy to provide air defence on the high seas; we will have to redevelop our own fleet air arm.

As the political debate heats up on who is to blame for the increase in the number of Afghan refugees, Malcolm “Returnbill” is pointing his finger at the “softening” by the Rudd government of Australia’s immigration policy. The reality – as the Human Rights Unit of the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan points out in a new report – is that the increasing civilian death toll in Afghanistan (and other places) is more likely to be the cause of the increase in refugee numbers than changes to Australia's immigration laws.

In a time of economic downturn when the private sector is reducing its work force, the national government should step up to the plate with infrastructure spending to stimulate the economy and create jobs for the unemployed. We should be building infrastructure to benefit Australia when the boom times return.

According to the Medical Journal of Australia over 2,000 Australians die every year while waiting to be admitted to hospital emergency departments. No wonder doctors are frustrated. What would happen if we were faced with a large scale disaster?

As we look for solutions to the global situation it is becoming increasingly clear that the only way forward is a new path. We should listen to those who predicted the collapse nearly forty years ago. We must be willing to change and support those who are showing us some direction.

The Afghan people are fighting us because we are the foreigners. We are pushing people into the arms of the Taliban and inflaming the situation with the likelihood of spreading the war into surrounding countries such as Pakistan and Iran.

Shouldn’t we be using the anti terror laws to control these thugs? We should make their clubs illegal and destroy the club houses. Anyone known to belong to an outlaw bikie gang should face the same penalties as those belonging to terrorist organisations. There is no difference – both use violence and terror to intimidate the rest of the population.

The election will be very close. Anna Bligh may scrape in with the help of Green preferences; the alternative will be disastrous for Queensland. Let us hope that the ALP learns from this election and works out how to manage both the economic crisis and the climate change crisis.

Most of us would agree that there is a limit to the number of people this planet can sustain. It may be 10 billion or 100 billion but there is a limit. The only debate is about the size of the limit and how we prevent the human population from reaching the limit and destroying the planet.

We have an enormous opportunity here in Australia to absorb millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, store it safely as carbon, and put in back into the soil and increase the productivity and the health of our own landscape. A win-win. A win for jobs, a win for the environment, a win for agriculture. (Greg Hunt)

Mrs. Clinton went on: "There is a pent-up desire on the part of the United States government under the Obama administration, as well as partners around the world, that we begin to work together to solve a lot of our common problems...

Can we continue with the business as usual approach or should we make dramatic changes to how we do things? Unless we are willing to change, the world in the latter part of this century maybe unfit for living.

Molan says that the troop numbers required to win the war would be about 500,000. He also says that if the West in unprepared to commit these kind of resource we should “cut our loses now and get out”. I think he is right. I doubt if the US is prepared or now even has the will to commit the resources needed.

Too many women in the third world are being denied access to legal abortion. These women often have to resort to illegal backyard abortions. Many die as a result. It is time Kevin Rudd stood up for these women and gave them the same rights that Australian women enjoy.

Arne Naess died on 12th January 2009, aged 96. He was a Norwegian philosopher who promoted an all-embracing relationship between humans and the earth. He was an inspiration for many Green political activists.