How A Coal Baron Fooled Al Gore And The Greens
Andrew Bolt Herald Sun, 26 June 2014
What the hell was Al Gore doing at Palmer’s press conference? Why did the great global warming guru help to sanctify a press conference called by a coal baron to announce the destruction of Australia’s climate change policies?
AUSTRALIA will be left without a major scheme to cut greenhouse gas emissions after Clive Palmer last night backed the repeal of the carbon tax without supporting any concrete alternative…
Mr Palmer said the PUP would propose an emissions trading scheme to put a price on carbon but said it would only start when other nations did the same, an unlikely prospect in the short term.
He also vowed to vote against Tony Abbott’s alternative policy, the $2.8 billion Direct Action spending program, in a move that appears to kill off the scheme given it is also opposed by Labor, the Greens and minor parties.
But Fairfax newspapers buy the spin added by the introduction of warmist guru Al Gore to Palmer’s ludicrous press conference:
Clive Palmer has thrown into chaos Tony Abbott’s plan to abolish the carbon tax, demanding the Prime Minister instead create an emissions trading scheme that would swing into action when Australia’s major trading partners adopt similar measures.
That spin – that Palmer is demanding the carbon tax be scrapped in favour of an emissions trading scheme – is exploded just a few paragraphs later in the very same story:
Mr Palmer made clear that repeal of the carbon tax … would not be contingent on the other measures Mr Palmer proposed on Wednesday night, such as the proposed emissions trading legislation.
UPDATE
CLIVE PALMER: Repeal of the carbon tax is contingent upon the Government bringing into law a system where the energy producers will refund the benefit to their consumers…
TONY JONES: So – but you won’t make your repeal of the carbon tax contingent on any of these other things you want to see happen? That’s a critical question to answer tonight.
CLIVE PALMER: That’s right, yeah.
TONY JONES: So Tony Abbott, when he negotiates you with tomorrow, going on what Greg Hunt is saying today, will be able to offer you fairly easily the kind of agreement that you’ve asked for. Does that mean you’re now convinced you’ll vote the carbon tax out of existence?
CLIVE PALMER: If that’s the case, it is…
It is bad that Palmer will keep the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and (probably) the Climate Change Authority, and it’s alarming that he wants at least the framework created for an emissions trading scheme.
But it is very good that the emissions trading scheme won’t actually get off the ground under the conditions Palmer proposes.
And it is beautiful that Palmer is against Tony Abbott’s direct action policies as well, as are Labor and the Greens.
This means we could end up with a sceptics’ paradise: no carbon tax, no prospect of emissions trading and not even Abbott’s $2.5 billion direct action schemes. That is a huge win.
Thanks, Clive.
It would have saved on carbon emissions and under the table money if Clive had just used a cardboard cut out of Gore instead. He could still play the trick with cardboard.
Send in the clowns…
Gee, the politician who “invented the internet” is also not entirely consistent with his billionaire-generated vocation.
Shocking, really
Major trading partners. Like China? Chance of China creating an emissions exchange? Pretty low, I’d think….
Wile E. ManBearPig
I could never reconcile how an idiot could amass a fortune through business ventures. Everything that he did appeared to be further evidence that he was a complete idiot.
Maybe, just maybe, he has made me look like an idiot. I hope so much that this is true. I might have been hoodwinked but the Alarmists may have been well and truly outfoxed/(shafted). Please let this be my Christmas present!!!
Will the good folk of the USA please take Gore back in a hurry. It’s as “cold as a mother-in-law’s kiss” in Australia at present.
And, if you are short of buffoons, you can also take Clive Palmer – he boosts the “buffoon stocks” anywhere.
“AUSTRALIA will be left without a major scheme to cut greenhouse gas emissions …”
—————————————————————————————————————————
Yes, scheme is the appropriate word:
“scheme
noun \ˈskēm\
: a clever and often dishonest plan to do or get something”
At the end of everything Gore does, it’s always about the money to be made from fear and politics. Where’s the money angle here? Obama might tell Al that, at some point, he’s made enough. Except that Obama is probably looking to become a climate billionaire himself.
Who’d have guessed that the cookie might crumble this way? Not in anyone’s models, that’s for sure.
In Al’s Noble winning movie “The Convenient Inconvenient” [Church Lady says, “How conveeeenient.”] when he describes his high school class mate on drugs, Al was really referring to himself (and channeling future Presnuck Barak Obama “Interception”), but that’s the way Al’s brain works.
If the wind changes, tack.
They could probably make up for some of the lost ‘reveues’ by enacting a ‘Kool-Aid’ tax.
My cousin, a very astute individual, who served three terms in the United States Congress while Al Gore was there, told me that Kipper Gore was a very nice person but that Al Gore was a complete a**h***.
StoptheRot says:
June 26, 2014 at 6:35 am
I could never reconcile how an idiot could amass a fortune through business ventures. Everything that he did appeared to be further evidence that he was a complete idiot.
========================================================
Fervently religious people are always willing to send enormous amounts of money to their evangelist leaders.
Somebody PAID him, obviously. Albert is all about the benjamins.
Now to have the US wake up and return to a rational climate/energy/enviro policy……..
But instead we have our man-child in chief sitting in his echo chamber, name calling.
Tom in Florida says:
June 26, 2014 at 6:46 am
“scheme
noun \ˈskēm\
: a clever and often dishonest plan to do or get something”
=============================================================================
Yes that is what it mean in American English, but I don’t think it has negative connotation in British and Australian English. I have heard lots of British politicians talk about their own ideas as schemes, no American politician would do that, here they all have plans.
THE POLITICS OF IT
At first to make sense out of this is hard — until you realize something that everyone already knows — Palmer is a coal baron.
With that “stigma” everything he does environment-wise is already perceived by the left as being done for personal financial reasons. When he supports Abbott, environmentalists will use him to smear Abbott’s policies. He will be pinned up as the poster boy for a government run by big business for the benefit of big business.
But suddenly Al Gore is on stage with Palmer. Huh? Maybe Palmer is a coal baron with a green conscious. Maybe Palmer has a green heart.
Suddenly any poster of Palmer will have Al gore standing beside him. Palmer is now the “green coal baron” endorsed by Al Gore himself. Palmer can’t be used to smear Abbott’s policies.
A major arrow in the green quiver has just been removed. Abbott can’t be stigmatized by his association with the coal baron Palmer because Al Gore himself endorses Palmer.
The best thing about this is that Al Gore comes off looking like a fool. Palmer used Al Gore to cover both his and Abbott’s ass.
Eugene WR Gallun
.
Gore’s base fortune was inherited. That should answer a LOT of y’alls’ questions…
To be fair to St Gore , the tax would have made him nothing , the emissions trading scheme however could have made him ‘lots of cash’ . So you can see why he jumped , without thought , into supporting Palmer’s .
Should any one see ST Gore , ask him if his feeling OK , although in that photography he is looking rather ‘orange’
Eugene WR Gallun says:
June 26, 2014 at 8:20 am
THE POLITICS OF IT
Yes Eugene, I believe you have it in one!
I suspect that Palmer’s no fool – maybe even brokered the deal with Abbott because Abbott is a “denier” (like me), The “direction action plan” was proposed to keep the greens off his back.
Abbott: “Please, Mr. Palmer, don’t throw me in the briar patch.”
knr above has the truth of it. Al has always been about the TRADING of carbon. That, s were he and his type can make money in this scam. Why would he care about a tax on carbon in Australia, he can’t get at that money. But trading in an imaginary commodity that they can control the supply and force the demand of? He was set to profit from that from the start.
Business man – NO
Scam artist – YES:
The Chinese are involved in a “searching inquiry’’ that is pressing Mr Palmer to show where funds — including sums of $10m, withdrawn in August last year, and $2.167m, taken from the same account in September — went during last year’s federal election campaign, in which the resources tycoon is reputed to have spent more than $15m fielding candidates.
Lawyers for Citic Pacific have told the Federal Court that these funds could not have been legitimately spent on management of the port, which was built to ship iron ore mined by the Chinese company from tenements controlled by Mineralogy.
The $10m and $2.167m were claimed in a one-line explanation by Mr Palmer’s company, Mineralogy, to be the cost of “port management services”.
However, Mineralogy has not been operating the port and is not in charge of the port.