The world is going to the dogs. Discuss.

Australia's largest carbon polluters are back on comfortable ground, spending big on advertising to persuade enough Australians that "jobs" is a better motherhood concept than "global warming" or "brace yourself for very disruptive changes".

My memory tells me that the last time the coal-based industries stomped in to defend their patch, they focused on their political muscle rather than a public campaign.  Still, they retain that in their arsenal if they aren't already using it.

And Kevin Rudd, as Australia's "more conservative than thou" Prime Minister, is gearing up for the climate change battleground by persistent abrogation of international principles on asylum seekers:
1) Continuance of  the evil John Howard policy of excision of Australia's territory (to whit, Christmas Island) from the geopolitical State;
2) fear-mongering over the Sri Lankan asylum seekers sitting in on the Australian Customs ship Oceanic Viking. -again, attempting to follow Howard's lead.

And not only does Rudd perpetuate another disastrously short-sighted Howard policy of incentives to parents to participate in a renewed population boom; he also claims Australia can fit in many millions more people over the years.  (the unspoken parameters: population is okay if it us, not them; we don't want a great influx of people who are too far removed from our culture; and - purportedly - baby booms protect us from our own ageing population, and provide the economic growth that makes us richer - that, perish the thought - asylum seekers couldn't do.

Which is all a load of alarmist claptrap, of course.

Meanwhile, the Government and Opposition are preventing implementation of any carbon emission policy by both arguing variants of the same weak stance on climate change.

Facing the pressing problems of the world... the wrong way.

This is just Australia.  You can fill in the gaps for the rest of the world.  Despite some valiant policy efforts from the European Union, nobody is going to the Copenhagen climate change talks with anything like the necessary power and will.

Brace yourself for decades of instability.  If the world's governments can't cope with prevention, how will they fare with the effects of rising sea levels?  The least of their worries will be the rich retirees already complaining about their crumbling coastline properties.