Speaking of self-correcting mechanisms, I heard Barnaby Joyce on the radio saying that this global credit crunch will slow down the world economy to much that our emissions problems may sort themselves out. Now that is optimisim!

Also I see that the Rudd Government is now planning to cut excise after all to offset price increases due to emissions trading.

Aren’t we missing something in this whole debate (not on your blog, but nationally)? Even the most hopeful outcome of Rudd’s FuelWatch – a 2c per litre reduction – is utterly negligible, isn’t it? On average, Australian households consume 150 litres of petrol per month, so that amounts to a monthly saving of around $3. Fantastic, maybe I can buy that large coffee I’ve been saving up for. Under Nelson’s even more ludicrously populist proposal the saving is about $7 per month. If I drive to work, I spend more than that on tolls EVERY MORNING.

We live in a market economy. We rely on a commodity which is sourced in unstable nation states, subject to global market speculation, and on-sold by oligopoly retailers. We have no control – which is precisely why fuel is the product of choice for any government wanting to collect a reliable indirect tax via excise. We’ll pay whatever is asked.

Or we can use less of it. Which isn’t a bad idea anyway. Wouldn’t it be strange if capitalism included its own self-correcting mechanism that helped save the planet?

You mean the frog will really jump straight out of the boiling pot. But for the rest of us, as the price of petrol slowly creeps up – we’re making a nice Zuppa Di Rane