Fallout from ETS dumping continues

The whole landscape has shifted, and the climate debate in Australia has changed overnight. Climate change as a political issue is off the agenda, and it will sink down in public consciousness again, only emerging briefly when there is some pointless UN gabfest on (like Mexico at the end of the year). Nobody really cares, as more and more people (including politicians) realise that there are more urgent and pressing things to worry about, like huge oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico, massive eruptions of volcanoes in Iceland that cripple air transport for days, economic crises that threaten to tear apart the EU… the list goes on.

The only ones that are still bleating are the liberal left intelligentsia, spluttering “But, but, but, how can you dump climate change? We need to save the planet!” The Sydney Moonbat Herald carries a good example:

Climate change does not need faith or trust any more, just the ability to read.

Now most of us cannot really understand the economics of the Emissions Trading Scheme so that too relies on faith. Perhaps the ETS might give way to something more straightforward such as a carbon tax. Governments around the world have made a pig’s breakfast of explaining how these complicated ETS schemes work and so faith is again required. Economists and politicians must now step up, like the scientists have, to explain what ETS means to the community. Only then will the ETS stand a chance against the warriors of ignorance.

And what has this all to do with Godlessness and religion??? Well sometimes those old foes, religion and science have similar epistemological (the theory of knowledge) challenges. I once argued that climate change science is one area where I would happily proclaim – ”KEEP THE FAITH!”

I now assert that faith is not needed. The data is in. The deniers will go down, like Neville Chamberlain, as the deluded and cynical fools of history. We shall remember them. Lest we forget. (source)

Unfortunately, we will see denial all around us, not from the climate realists, but from the true believers who cannot come to terms with the fact that their precious faith has just been abandoned by KRudd & Co. Funnily enough, as one commentator noted, if Howard had been voted back at the last election in 2007, there probably would be an ETS by now! Oh, the sweet irony of it all!

The delay may of course encourage the alarmists, desperate to keep the bandwagon going, to resort to even more desperate, dangerous and undemocratic means to get their way. However, with so many broken promises from Labor, how can we even trust this last announcement? As Andrew Robb said, is this just an electioneering smoke screen? Only time will tell.