By Sean Maguire

From your grey-to-change citizen of ambivalence, to your hug a tree hippie- the last few weeks have been depressing for Australian environmentalists of every hue.

Last night with the release of Rudd's third Budget their concerns seem amplified.

The CPRS has been shelved till 2012, $238 million has been cut from the Department of Climate Change and local projects such as Landcare have lost millions from their budgets. 

So as pundits praise Rudd's prudency and restraint remember that he's pushing back the changes that will soon be inevitable and making them all the more impossible to achieve.

No amount of technology, diplomacy and political manouevering can hide the fact that to achieve innovation when it comes to global action on climate is a matter of ethics. And that ethical outcomes are themselves dependent on what we want to do.

The geopolitics of who goes first, the economic compensation programs, the views of scientists are all second order issues.

You can’t give up smoking unless you want to and once volition is in play then it’s pretty easy.

Ditto the inconvenient truth.

Let’s create an ethical harmony based on desire before we try and nut out the programme for implementation. That requires a universal accord and not one driven by the power brokers.

‘All for one and one for all’.  . . read more

• Message 1 Reconciliation with our indigenous forebears to activate appreciation
• Message 2 Signing Kyoto to take a global position on the environment
• Message 3 Withdrawing troops from Iraq to break the U.S. sycophancy
• Message 4 Dramatically increasing the funding for public and university education to stimulate innovation and opportunity
• Message 5 Providing tax and financial incentives on the demand side for alternative and renewable energy

We're listening Kevin. Do you have the guts to tell? . . read more

Today the U.S congress has agreed on a budget cut plan that will see $38b cut this year. Doesn't seem like it will do much to bring down a trillion dollar deficit but it might be damaging to some public works and public jobs. 

What was interesting about this though was how much the process symbolised the U.S.

It wasn't really a great win for either party, it avoided making serious changes and a serious analysis into the country's problems and it was replete with the kind of melodrama that would embarrass soap opera directors.

Congress' inefficient and reductive policy programme reminds you of the old saying that says "the opposite of pro is con, therefore the opposite of progress= congress."  

  . . read more

Since the days of Alexander the Great, binge drinking has been a very popular past time - leading to him apparently killing a friend and burning down Persepolis while drunk.

Those are some Great shoes to fill.

Yet, governments, schools and the media have repeatedly tried to teach us of binge drinking's dangers. 

Dartmouth University has taken the lead, instigating a new nationwide policy to curb heavy drinking by their students.

Pour me another glass.

Binge drinking is defined as "the consumption of five or more drinks in a row by men — or four or more drinks in a row by women — at least once in the previous 2 weeks. Heavy binge drinking includes three or more such episodes in 2 weeks."

Seems I don't know anyone who isn't a heavy binge drinker.

Do you think this definition should be changed or should we change people's attitudes? Or should you follow HPD's no fools guide to drinking a lot but not dying?  . . read more