Japan shelves ETS – Australia should do the same

Mt Fuji: try offsetting that...

China and India have no intention of strangling their economic growth with emissions reductions, the US won’t be enacting climate legislation anytime soon, but plucky little Australia, with its massive 1.28% contribution to global emissions (down from 1.5% as those from developing countries skyrocket) is prepared to sacrifice its prosperity on the altar of “tackling global warming”. Why shouldn’t we, says our Julia? The EU has an ETS (which hasn’t reduced emissions and is bogged down in corruption and fraud), New Zealand has an ETS (on their 0.11%, or just over one thousandth, of global emissions), and very soon Japan will as well… no, wait, reality check ahead:

JAPAN’S decision to postpone its plans for an ETS by 2013 has increased pressure on Julia Gillard over her goal of pricing carbon next year.

The postponement has also set back efforts for a global market to cut global carbon pollution [harmless carbon dioxide gas – Ed]

Opposition climate action spokesman Greg Hunt called on the Prime Minister to rule out an emissions trading scheme by New Year’s Day in the wake of the Japanese move.

The decision by the world’s fifth-largest greenhouse gas emitter and Australia’s second-largest trading partner to postpone the scheme for a year comes after the US also stepped back from a national emissions trading scheme and as international firms remain concerned about lax pollution controls in China, which has no obligations under the Kyoto Protocol.

…

Two weeks ago, [Greg Combet] defended the Rudd government’s carbon pollution reduction scheme, dumped by the former prime minister. He said it had included an emissions trading scheme that would have “provided the greatest certainty that Australia would meet its emissions reductions targets”.

But, Mr Hunt said, the government’s plans were “now in tatters”.

“First Canada, second the US and now Japan have all determined that there is a better way to cut emissions than a massive electricity tax.

“The Prime Minister should drop this electricity tax before New Year’s Day.” (source)

Not a chance, Greg Hunt. Don’t forget, Bob Brown and the Greens have a loaded gun pressed to Labor’s head – drop the carbon price, they pull the trigger. They’ll probably pull the trigger anyway, when Labor don’t agree to 90% cuts by next year, or whatever nonsense the Greens want.

In other news, The Australian’s Cut and Paste section is devoted to the cognitive dissonance emanating from the US warmists as snowstorms hit New York:

Judah Cohen in The New York Times, December 25:

THE earth continues to get warmer, yet it’s feeling a lot colder outside. All of this cold was met with perfect comic timing by the release of a World Meteorological Organisation report showing that 2010 will probably be among the three warmest years on record, and 2001 through 2010 the warmest decade on record. How can we reconcile this? The not-so-obvious short answer is that the overall warming of the atmosphere is actually creating cold-weather extremes. It’s all a snow job by nature. The reality is, we’re freezing not in spite of climate change but because of it.

John Goetz on the website Watts Up With That? on December 27:

[JUDAH Cohen] had to be joking, right? There is no way a “director of seasonal forecasting at an atmospheric and environmental research firm” could possibly believe the weather we are experiencing out here on the east coast is in any way different from the past. The New York City blizzard of March 1888 certainly left a lasting impression, as it was used to measure several other bruising storms. (source)

And an editorial warns us that watching the climate has blinded us to watching the weather:

Failure to watch the weather as well as the climate has arguably led to loss of life and injury that might have been avoided if authorities had spread grit on British roads as well as spreading the word about global warming. International airlines, so busy selling carbon offsets for global miles, might have been better employed ensuring that Heathrow bought a few more snow ploughs. The tendency to see the wood and not the trees was illustrated last month as ABC TV’s Lateline interviewed Rear Admiral Neil Morisetti, the British special envoy on climate and energy security. While he was busy in Canberra talking about the long-term impact of climate change on national security, back in Britain the weather threat from cold and snow was looming as a real and present danger. (source)

A tiny puddle of climate sanity in a mighty ocean of climate madness.