Voters deserting Rudd and the ETS

Climate "front and centre"

Kevin Rudd, in one of his rare comments on the subject, recently said that climate change would be “front and centre” at the next election. And that’s good news – for the Coalition, that is – since voters are deserting Labor and its ETS in droves:

VOTERS have been turning off Kevin Rudd’s emissions trading scheme at a faster rate than they have stopped believing in the existence of climate change.

Although Australians overwhelmingly believe climate change exists and it is at least partly a result of human activity, there has been a sharp rise in the percentage of people who do not believe in climate change.

The shift follows the collapse of the UN’s climate change conference in Copenhagen in December and widespread publicity of false claims in the UN’s 2007 climate change report.

In the week when the Rudd government made its latest attempt to pass an ETS through parliament, public opposition to the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme jumped.

The Prime Minister remains committed to the ETS as a central part of the government’s election strategy and continues to attack Coalition opposition to the CPRS.

According to the latest Newspoll survey, taken exclusively for The Australian last weekend, support for the CPRS fell from 67 per cent two months before the Copenhagen summit and before Tony Abbott became Opposition Leader, to 57 per cent.

In October 2008, support for the CPRS was at 72 per cent.

Since Copenhagen and the release of climate change scientists’ emails casting doubt on their research and false claims being exposed in the UN’s 2007 climate report, opposition to an ETS jumped from 22 to 34 per cent.

Whilst the rest of the world has moved on, Kevin Rudd and his government are stuck firmly in the past.

Read it here.

Also read Terry McCrann’s excellent article in the Herald Sun here.