When do we need to make those changes?

(China) is the main reason even the purist, neo-liberal capitalists should be yelling and screaming for rapid change from all sides of politics. Living in a world with 100% renewable energy, 100% recycling, minimal pollution and minimal waste may seem utopian. But the reality is that we will eventually have no choice. Oil will run out as will all other fossil fuels. Other natural resources will become more and more expensive to extract until they too will run out. Continual increase in the planets temperature will eventually force us to curtail the production of greenhouse gases. The issue is, of course, timing. No one knows when the last drop of oil will be extracted or when the last ounce of gold will be mined. Similarly no one knows precisely when global temperatures will hit the point of runaway climate change. There is a vast body of opinion that we need to make those changes right now. The peaking of the oil price in 2009 to US$ 150 a barrel was seen as a harbinger of things to come. The political instability of the main oil producing nations is also put forward as a key argument to promote local energy security. Climate change scientists the world over are saying that we are already too late to stop major changes in our climate and that our emissions of greenhouse gases should be halted almost immediately. Environmental organisations are decrying our destruction of rainforests, natural habitats, native flora and fauna. But it is not just environmentalists that are clamouring for change sooner rather than later. The corporate world is demanding certainty over carbon pricing. The major oil producers are moving their focus into renewable areas. The major consulting firms around the world are running more and more economic models showing that the later we delay a move to a sustainable economy the more expensive it will be overall. Some countries are already leading the way. Particularly China. The Chinese have two big advantages over most of the developed world when it comes to implementing change. They take a long term strategic view the world and their position in it and they are a dictatorship. Their long term view on life is best summed up by Chou En-lai, the then Chinese foreign minister, who when asked by Henry Kissinger whether he thought the French Revolution of 1789 had benefited humanity replied It is too soon to tell, To the Chinese, the global domination by the British and the Americans over the last couple of centuries has just been a blip in their global domination over millennia. They see the West stuck in 20th Century thinking, using technologies that have hardly progressed over a century or more and being hamstrung to act by an uncontrollable media and the vagaries of popularism in our democracies. In China, they have been building nuclear power stations for decades and they put the waste wherever they want to. They have taken control of the manufacture of wind turbines and solar panels. They have implemented environmental taxes on everything from fuel to disposable chop sticks. People often wonder why China did not support a global carbon price at the Copenhagen talks in 2009. Why should they? A global carbon price would make renewable energy competitive in the West which would spur manufacturing, research and development. Best if they leave the West to its infighting. That

allows them to dominate renewable energy and recycling technology, with its dictatorial powers and the one million Chinese engineers who graduate every year. And that is the main reason even the purist neo-liberal capitalists should be yelling and screaming for rapid change from all sides of politics. As the 21st century moves on, there will have to be a move from fossil fuels and quarrying our depleting resources, to renewable energy and advanced recycling technology. The sooner Australian business understands that, the sooner we can move Australia from its current 20th Century thinking into the Green-Capitalism mindset that will be needed to prosper in this century.