Seriously, Scott, are Greta's warnings any scarier than your church’s?

You will have noted the Prime Minister's rebuke of Greta Thunberg's powerful address to the United Nations. He preferred to go to Ohio to attend a factory opening and see the wonders of a new Macca's drive-thru rather than attend the UN Climate Summit himself, but he did say: "Yes, we've got to deal with the policy issues and we've got to take it seriously, but I don't want our children having anxieties about these issues.

The Prime Minister doesn't want children like Greta
Thunberg to be overly anxious about climate change. 

"I say this as a parent, too: we've got to make sure that our kids understand the facts, but they also have the context and the perspective, and that we do not create an anxiety among children in how we talk about and deal with these very real issues."

In response, reader John Lloyd poses a couple of serious questions. "Which of the following is the scarier to tell kids? 1. There is a possibility that in the future you, your family and friends will live in a damaged world that won't be anywhere as nice as it is now if we don't fix it. Or 2. There is the certainty that you, your family and your friends will be tortured for all eternity if you or they reject our concept of God. I reckon No.2.

"And Scott Morrison's church encourages this anxiety-inducing rubbish being taught – presumably to children."

Read the views of Peter Fitzsimmons in The Age - “Seriously, Scott, are Greta's warnings any scarier than your church’s?"

The National Energy Guarantee doesn't end the climate wars, but provides rules of engagement

You have to work pretty hard to see the Prime Minister's energy and climate policy as anything other than a breakthrough.

Malcolm Turnbull's new energy plan, if adopted,
 will provide the rules of engagement.

Just getting his party onside is a major achievement. There was a very real risk the issue would explode in the joint party room on Tuesday.

In the end, the only person asking for more time to debate it was Tony Abbott and, so settled was the matter, his plea was met with silence.

Business groups and big industrial energy users have also welcomed the National Energy Guarantee (NEG). Even AGL, publicly shamed for its perfectly legitimate plans to shut down its Liddell power plant, is onboard.

When the Chief Scientist Alan Finkel swung behind the policy (despite the fact it killed off his Clean Energy Target) you started to get the sense everyone was bending over backwards to support something, anything that will deliver the certainty that industry so desperately needs.

Read the ABC News story by David Lipson - “The National Energy Guarantee doesn't end the climate wars, but provides rules of engagement.”