Via the GWPF and Dr. Benny Peiser – here is a summary of articles discussing the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) future in Australian politics. ETS looks “deader ‘n a doornail” right now.
This graph (courtesy of David Archibald) may help you gauge the impact of the proposed ETS in Australia:
Anti-Green Putsch Down Under: Climate Change Delayers Topple Rudd
Julia Gillard has made no concrete commitment on when to put a price on carbon emissions, despite former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd urging his party to try passing an emissions trading scheme after the election. —Tom Arup, The Age 24 June 2010
In the inner sanctum, Julia Gillard had urged that the Rudd government not honour its election commitment for an emissions trading scheme unless the opposition’s Tony Abbott agreed to one. The deputy prime minister argued strongly with her cabinet colleagues that the government should dump the scheme “because it’s hurting us too much” politically, according to cabinet members. Mr Rudd and the Finance Minister, Lindsay Tanner, opposed her inside the so-called Gang of Four ministers which in effect ran the government. –Peter Hartcher, The Sydney Morning Herald, 26 June 2010
He could not have realised it at the time, but Kevin Rudd presaged the misstep that would ultimately trigger his downfall at a hastily convened news conference well after midnight on the final day of the politically disastrous Copenhagen climate conference. — Adam Morton The Age, 26 June 2010
On Monday green campaigners hit the halls of Parliament House with an air of optimism. Kevin Rudd was opening a window on climate change and they had arrived to ”consult”. Most had been invited into the government’s tent. Instead, drama descended on Parliament House on Wednesday night. A coup was on and Rudd looked finished. Was Bourne and the environment movement watching the window slam shut? —The Sydney Morning Herald. 26 June 2010
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Of course, my presence in Australia doing a tour presenting factual skeptical arguments on global warming during all of this drama is completely coincidental – Anthony
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What’s the worst that could happen? See: Europe.
How to fix it? See: Australia.
Hmmmmm……. Jooolia Gillard in her acceptance speech has stated that she will be “Prosecuting a carbon tax policy” with vigor and at the first available opportunity.
Do these people really think controlling CO2 emissions in Australia is going to make one bit of difference on a global scale? Don’t they realize the coal they’re scheduled to sell to China will far offset any reduction in CO2 they’re proposing for themselves? If that isn’t the height of hypocricy and lack of logic, I don’t know what is.
Those articles your have picked out in your lead peace are from Australia’s warminist press. The Age and Sydney Morning Herald are part of the Fairfax media empire – a warminist supporter.
Interesting to note that in one of the articles it is stated that the Australian electorate overwhelming support the global warming theory – this is not the case as has been shown by polls.
However do we know anything really ? I guess the key is community consensus. Hard without bipartisan support from both major parties and the greens. How likely is that?
from: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/politics/carbon-pricing-only-after-public-consensus-gillard-says/story-e6frgczf-1225884127606
“Ms Gillard, in her first press conference as Prime Minister, said she believed in climate change and expressed disappointment that Australia did not have a price on carbon.
“And in the future we need one. But first we will need to establish a community consensus for action,” Ms Gillard said.
Climate Institute chief executive John Connor said Ms Gillard’s words could be code for either delay or action.
He said the government would need to put a detailed plan on how it would address climate change in its next term if it was to be taken seriously.
“We’ve seen lack of action cost two prime ministers and two opposition leaders their positions. I hope it is a lesson that is learned by the new Prime Minister,” Mr Connor said.
WWF Australia chief executive Greg Bourne said Ms Gillard should be given the benefit of the doubt. But he said recent polling showed up to 70 per cent of people supported an ETS which represented a “firm consensus” on taking action on climate change.”
To Peculia Julia: Eat facts [snip]
The ETS was the beginning, so don’t write your imprimatur off that lightly Anthony.
No one could believe it would happen, a mutiny, The new PM who in effect killed off the ETS and to be honest has very little dirt on her hands with it, or even the new miners tax but raw economics dictates over this feely feely touchy stuff.
They are bleeding left and right. She has had a honeymoon bounce but absolutely nothing like the Primaries and 2PP her predecessor had for most of office term.
Everyone has to wear some blame, that ETS is one poison rim mug, aaargh, it’s not off an oppositon leader and now a PM.
The election will be decided in Burbs region and bush. Australia grew up it votes policies and who best to deliver them.
Coincidence? Maybe, but why risk it? I suggest that you take the factual skeptical tour to Washington D.C. ASAP just in case it was NOT coincidence but the proverbial camel straw.
I watched this saga unfold, and I listened very intently to what the new PM had to say about the ETS.
What she emphasised on more than one occasion is that there “had to be a community consensus” on an ETS.
To me, that means NO ETS for Australia in the short to medium term.
Actually, the ETS had very little to do with this though it was used to paint KR as back-flipping on climate, which he had termed ‘the greatest moral challenge of out time.’ A proposed tax on mining profits (with adverse implications in Western Australia and Queensland – two mining revenue dependent states) plus KR’s growing unpopularity with the electorate led to the ALP’s (Australian Labor Party) factional (like the the US Democrats’ Tammany Hall) coup. Also, Julia is seriously smart, tough as nails, and a much harder opponent for the Liberal’s Tony Abbott who has his own problems with the electorate – his nickname used to be ‘People Skills’ (Australians make irony into an art form).
Julia is the supreme pragmatist despite coming from the so-called Victorian Left (and thus theoretically more ideologically driven) faction of the ALP. She’s also managed to unseat a Prime Minister in his first term elected by a landslide – no mean achievement – unless you subscribe to the view that she will be but a puppet of the factions.
Climate change will henceforth be accorded but a symbolic place in Australian politics akin to our meaningless habit of acknowledging the traditional owners of our land (ie, the Aboriginals) before every public meeting when we have snip-all intention of giving the tiniest portion of any useful land back to them.
We’re far too dependent on selling our coal and minerals to underwrite China’s industrialisation. Our Green vote is increasing – however, while the Greens may well end up holding the balance of power in our Senate in this year’s Federal election, they’ll probably win at most symbolic concessions.
Rudd seems to act shocked. How could anyone imagine rejecting him.
Rudd intended to pass the ETS and it would fill Lake Eyre. Isn’t it slick how we can now legislate climate change and eliminate drought?
As overjoyed as I am to see Rudd fall, still to be fair we have to acknowledge that it was the Miner’s Tax that was at least as responsible for this turn of events. (if not more responsible)
This was a confiscatory tax that would have dramatically damaged Australia’s most important industry, and probably would have created a localized depression if enacted. What’s more, the mining interests were organizing to spend an unlimited amount of money to guarantee Labour failed in the next election – that’s what sparked the in-house mutiny.
Without the mining tax and without ETS, Labour doesn’t have the money it needed to finance all of it’s other plans. That’s why Rudd pushed those two so hard – and now without them, Labour’s entire house of cards is coming down no matter who is in charge.
wws says:
June 26, 2010 at 8:29 am
As overjoyed as I am to see Rudd fall, still to be fair we have to acknowledge that it was the Miner’s Tax that was at least as responsible for this turn of events. (if not more responsible)
——————-Reply
And the problem with any tax on a natural resource, particularly mining, is that is reduces the amount of that natural resouce. What happens is a process called “high grading”, wherein only the highest values in the deposit are mined and processed; the rest is left as it is considered “low grade” or “protore” since the tax makes it uneconomical. Since mineral deposits tend to have a lognormal distribution of values, albeit there’s a continum from low to high, the low grade material is covered up by reclamation after mining ceases, unlikely to ever be utilized in the future. The party most affected? Society in general.
They are only trying to “Lead by Example” to get the Big Bad Wolf (China) –excuse me ‘Dragon’– to do what is right and proper and not take over a polluted world too soon. In the persuit of political ideology, everything is fiction.
I agree with the way Chris1958 laid out the scenario, along with wws, and I would point out the whole CAGW push was losing steam among the average Australian public, but bolstered in the MSM by the Age Newspaper and the government supported ABC that virtually suppressed or dismissed any sceptical opposition to CAGW (very biased in that respect) with the Australian newspaper and the Herald Sun as the only ones that would give some media space to views debunking CAGW. We also had to contend with a very vocal group who like the CRU scientists consider they own the funding and climate science as their own and the new wave of government employed environmentalists who toe whatever scientific line that suits the more socialist extreme of a government in power. This is also apparent in the education system with attempts to confuse environment care and concern with the need for children to become Eco warriors in the fight against the scary CO2 that was ruining the whole world (with lots of socialist undertones of course) so a walk up start to selling any scary scenario against our culpability because we use cheap “brown coal” to produce the bulk of our electricity and even if Hydro power is cleaner, you can’t build dams as that is not an environmentally sound way to go!!
Hardly surprising that there is a hard core of environmental green party supporters just waiting for an opportunity to wield the balance of power in forthcoming elections and with both major electoral parties recently electing new leaders, who must try and capture at least some of the environmental “high ground” or risk having their incoming government hobbled by the need to pander to the green left in either the House of representatives (Lower House) or the Senate (Upper house) if the greens representatives get enough members elected to hold the balance of power (a real prospect, and a shame if it happens) So I think almost mandatory for both of the major parties to at least look like they are embracing and ETS or some form of Carbon Pricing, so its not completely off the table.
What would be a smart move is to put the scientists on notice that an incoming government will place science under greater scrutiny to weed out junk science claims, by reviewing all funding allocations to “ensure the Australian public has the benefit and service of the best science available, rather than the fanciest and most political that money can buy”
Baa! No more KRudd747 jokes.
Andrew Bolt has much on the subject:
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/
Sorry. Not trying do disown the comment; ‘a, June 26, 2010 at 11:33 am’ is me. Must pay attention!
Canadian MSM ran a story on this a few days back and made the whole thing sound a lot different – as if Rudd had changed his climate stripes [and gone skeptic] — and then that led to a mutiny by climate alarmists who pushed him out. So funny seeing the opposites in spin. Media is at-best entertainment these days – worth consuming solely for an opportunity to have a very hearty laugh at the pure nonsense folks think they can sell. Most people are more concerned about the highlights in their hair than about global problems – just follow the money.
RockyRoad says: “Do these people really think controlling CO2 emissions in Australia is going to make one bit of difference on a global scale? Don’t they realize the coal they’re scheduled to sell to China will far offset any reduction in CO2 they’re proposing for themselves…?”
And the coal will be sold at distressed prices, too, just as China wanted.
Cap and Trade: the ripoff that keeps on ripping.
New PM Julia Gillard is saying that an ETS should only be introduced if there is a more widespread international agreement on emission reductions. This is precisely what a lot of us ‘denialists’ have been saying for years, in the face of abuse from Greens and their unquestioning media cheer squad, often taking the form of the term ‘denialist’ with its infuriating holocaust-denier overtones. Australia’s contribution to world CO2 emissions is a paltry 1.4% anyway.
As previous posters noted, prior PM Rudd’s downfall was primarily due to a scuffle with the miners and a mooted sharp tax impost on them (plus increasingly erratic personal behaviour). However, many Rudd fans of Green hue were already disillusioned when he – after pronouncing AGW to be the greatest moral crisis of our times – deferred the ETS to 2013 to balance the budget.
Don’t forget that Gillard/Swan were one-half of the “Kitchen Cabinet” gang of four (Rudd and Tanner being the other half).
Gillard has her hands all over the ruinousr policies that brought down Kevin Rudd – for a glimpse see this Ocober 2007 report
She is clearly an “eat the rich” closet Marxist, who has her hand-prints all over the Resources Super Profits Tax currently doing the rounds.
Just watch over the next few weeks as her past is sanitised, and effectively “disappears”. Do a screen-cap of her current wiki entr, and come back and compare in two weeks.
Unfortunately, both sides of politics (Liberal and Labor) still have an ETS in some form in their platform; neither are stating they absolutely oppose or disagree with the CAGW rhetoric.
We can only vote for a party member and not the individual policies propounded by the party, so our vote is not necessarily that we agree with everything they say they stand for. I vote for the party that is most aligned with my view of the world but still have reservations and/or disagree with some aspects of their policies.
Whichever party gets in, they will state they have a ‘mandate from the people’ to impliment every policy they mentioned in the runup to the election, even though a poll on a specific policy might show ‘the people’ do not agree with that particular policy.
We still need to push to have the ETS/CPRS or any other policy with the same intent removed from party platforms before it is truly dead.
Les Francis: “Interesting to note that in one of the articles it is stated that the Australian electorate overwhelming support the global warming theory – this is not the case as has been shown by polls.”
I think the Fairfax papers confuse support of the electorate with support of their readership.
If Australia wants to curb CO2 emissions all they have to do is stop selling COAL to China. Seem the USA is going to sell the technology for mini nuclear reactors to China since we do not want it so we will all benefit from cleaner air. /sarc
Mini Nuclear Power plants: http://theresilientearth.com/?q=content/americas-atomic-folly