ETS bill "delayed until May"

23 February, 2010 by

So “the greatest moral challenge since the start of the universe” (© KRudd) suddenly isn’t so urgent after all. But hang on… just a couple of months ago, it was essential we passed the ETS before Copenhagen, wasn’t it? Or is it because Rudd has no principles whatsoever and his only political compass is popularity, which he slavishly follows, so that now the ETS is proving an electoral liability, he’s looking for ways to quietly abandon both it and his robotic minister, Penny Wong? Hmm.

THE future of the government’s emissions trading scheme was in disarray last night with claims that the Senate vote on the bill could be delayed until May.

The possible delay, the result of the opposition blocking a procedural vote in the Senate, has cast fresh doubt on the government’s ability to create an election trigger on its amended climate legislation.

Last night the government was seeking legal advice about whether it could force an earlier vote than the May sitting. Each side blamed the other for the delay, which resulted from the Senate’s blocking a motion yesterday to speed up the debate.

The government has already dropped the emissions trading scheme from the parliamentary schedule this week to give priority to establishing a double dissolution election trigger on its changes to the private health insurance means test.

Read it here.

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Vote on "greatest moral challenge of our time" delayed

19 February, 2010 by

"For my next trick, the backflip."

Because now there’s something more important – pushing through a vote on health reform that will give Krudd a double-dissolution trigger that’s not climate change. And he’ll pull it, I think, because his ratings are plummeting and if he leaves it until later in the year, he will be a dead duck. But there’s a risk with that – the people aren’t stupid, they’ll see he’s trying to sneak in under the wire, and hopefully they’ll give him the bloody nose at the polls that he so richly deserves. Could Rudd & Co be the worst government since…? When?

THE Rudd government will delay pushing ahead with its emissions trading scheme, prompting an accusation by Opposition Leader Tony Abbott that it is planning one of the “all-time great political backflips”.

In a surprise move, the long-expected reintroduction of the emissions trading legislation to Parliament next week has now been stalled. Instead, the government is shifting its priorities to force a vote on its proposed changes to the private health insurance means test, potentially creating a trigger for a double-dissolution election, as health looks set to be a key battleground in this year’s election.

It means it is almost certain that the next vote on the controversial emissions trading scheme will be pushed back until at least next month.

Mr Abbott yesterday seized on the release of a draft parliamentary order of business that did not list the emissions trading scheme, saying Prime Minister Kevin Rudd seemed to be “running away from his own legislation”.

“Let’s face it, this was just a few months ago not just an important political issue, it was the greatest moral issue of our time,” he said.

Read it here.

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Penny Wong: defender of Copenhagen, climate science and the IPCC

18 February, 2010 by

Time for ALT-CTRL-DELETE

Penny who? Sorry, it’s been so long since we heard anything from the Wong-bot, that I’d forgotten about her, which was actually quite nice. But now she’s back, the latest version of Windows 7 installed, spouting the same old fearmongering tactics and tired old clichés in a last, desperate effort to get the ETS passed (stifles yawn):

CLIMATE change threatens to reshape the face of Bondi Beach, Bells Beach and the Sunshine Coast unless “large and expensive nourishment programs” are implemented, Penny Wong warned today.

Shortly before the government’s ETS bills are to be considered by the upper house, Ms Wong mounted a vigorous defence of the Copenhagen Summit, the science behind climate change, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [now THAT I would love to have heard – Ed] and suggested the future of some of the nation’s most popular beaches was under threat.

The Climate Change Minister also said the government’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme was the most effective way to take meaningful action, dismissing the Opposition leader’s rival plan.

In the address to the National Coastal Climate Change Forum in Adelaide this morning, Ms Wong said it was “possible that with climate change, and without large and expensive nourishment programs Bondi Beach, Sunshine Coast and Bells Beach may no longer be the beaches we know today.”

Zzzz… Oh, sorry – nodded off there. No one’s listening any more Penny. Save your batteries, spin down the hard drive, throttle back the CPU, clear the cache, and shut down – for good this time.

Read it here.

UPDATE: The whole speech is here in all its robotic tedium, and as predicted recycles all the alarmist BS that we’ve heard before, including the old canard of comparing climate realists with those who question the link between smoking and cancer, which personally I find deeply offensive.

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Voters deserting Rudd and the ETS

16 February, 2010 by

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.

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Liberal has-beens dump on Abbott

8 February, 2010 by

Astonishing disloyalty

Call me old fashioned, but I thought that one of the principles in Coalition politics would be supporting your leader in the common aim of getting rid of Rudd and his tawdry government. How wrong one can be. Instead of backing Tony Abbott all the way, as they should, political has-beens Malcolm Turnbull and John Hewson think that it is somehow beneficial to the cause to make pompous speeches in Parliament slagging off the new Coalition policy on climate change, or write articles for the ABC about how the Liberals are using scare tactics about the ETS. I mean, what freaking planet are these guys on? Clearly they put their own petty self interest way above the interests of the party (and the country).

Traitor Turnbull first:

Former Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull has vowed to cross the floor and vote for the Government’s emissions trading scheme (ETS), arguing the Opposition’s alternative plan will achieve “very little” except raise taxes.

Mr Turnbull lost the Liberal leadership to Tony Abbott late last year following a Liberal mutiny against his decision to support the ETS.

Mr Turnbull urged his colleagues to think beyond the next election and legislate for the long term and reminded them that until December last year there was bipartisan agreement to adopt an ETS.

Mr Turnbull says the ETS is the only credible way to meet the Government’s commitment to reduce emissions by 5 per cent of 2000 levels by 2020.

“These bills are as much the work of John Howard as of Kevin Rudd,” he said. [Times have changed, pal, in case you haven’t noticed – Ed]

“I will be voting in favour of this bill.

“All of us here are accountable not just to our constituency, but the generations that will come after them and after us,” he said.

Mr Turnbull said that climate change was a global problem and if Australia expected countries like China and India to act it must lead the way with an ETS. (source)

Yeah, mate, like China and India give a rats what Australia (1.5% of global emissions) does – idiot. We all know you’re just trying to secure all those dollars in future carbon trading, aren’t you? And now for Hewson:

Former Liberal leader John Hewson has taken aim at Opposition Leader Tony Abbott’s climate change policy, accusing him of using fear to win over voters.

In an opinion piece for the ABC’s The Drum which denounces both sides of politics for “squibbing” action on climate change, Dr Hewson has also criticised the media for focusing on the colour of the political debate rather than the substance of the science.

Dr Hewson has urged both Mr Abbott and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to show leadership on the issue instead of “wallowing in the colour and movement of grossly irresponsible politicking”.

“I am particularly disturbed by the way our current ‘debate’ on the challenge of climate change is unfolding,” he writes.

Dr Hewson’s comments come as today’s Nielsen poll in the Fairfax media shows voters prefer the Coalition’s policy over Mr Rudd’s emissions trading scheme. (source)

See how out of touch you are with reality? Even the polls show the complete opposite.

Advice to Tony Abbott: dump these traitors from the party, along with any other turncoat that dares vote with the government on the ETS.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , ,

Australia "out of step" with the rest of the world on emissions trading

6 February, 2010 by

Spinning like a launderette

Just four days ago, Penny Wong said this, in The Australian:

It is clear the global trend is towards greater action to combat climate change, not less.

And on emissions trading, more than 30 countries already have an emissions trading scheme in operation and others, including the US, Japan and South Korea, are working towards implementing their own schemes. (see here)

At the time I questioned the figure she quoted, suggesting that most of those countries were in the EU scheme, but Christian Kerr does the digging and discovers that apart from the EU, there is just one, one, emissions trading scheme in operation, and that’s in New Zealand, and it’s only half working. So to say that the global trend is towards greater action was an outright L-word:

AUSTRALIA is looking increasingly isolated in the global community as Kevin Rudd presses on with his government’s emissions trading scheme.

US President Barack Obama admitted just two days ago he might have to abandon his proposal for emissions trading in favour of direct action in order to steer his carbon-cutting plans through the US Senate.

None of the world’s top five polluters — the US, China, Russia, India and Japan — has an ETS.

New Zealand is the only nation in the world with an operating emissions trading scheme, excluding those affiliated with or planning to link to the European Union’s ETS.

Most of New Zealand’s provisions have not yet come into effect, and the Labour-legislated scheme was significantly amended by the National Party-led government last September after fears about its impact on low-income households and primary industry.

And the article blows the lid off Penny’s misrepresentation of the numbers:

The Australian Department of Climate Change’s website tells the story on emissions trading. Of the 37 countries on its list of nations that have established or are proposing an ETS, 30 are linked to the EU scheme.

Opposition climate action spokesman Greg Hunt said the Prime Minister was “intentionally, deliberately and consistently” misrepresenting the European emissions trading scheme.

“In Europe, they’ve had a mock trading scheme which largely only provides incentives for people to reduce their emissions, with almost no penalty for firms which continue on their economic activity,” Mr Hunt said.

The Rudd government’s position on climate is looking increasingly lame and out of touch with reality, and secretly I would bet Kev would love to see the whole thing ditched – it will be a political disaster. But he cannot be seen to do that, having branded climate change “the greatest moral challenge of our generation”, so I think they will just let the Coalition defeat it in the Senate and hopefully move on to other things.

Read it here.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , ,

Tony Abbott unveils Coalition climate change policy

2 February, 2010 by

From the ABC:

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has placed a $1 billion emissions reduction fund at the heart of the Coalition’s new $3.2b climate change policy.

Announcing the policy today, Mr Abbott said the Coalition would use the fund and its policy to invest in direct measures to help the public, industry and farmers cut emissions.

Those measures would include planting 20 million trees, a $1,000 solar panel rebate and soil carbon storage.

Mr Abbott said the plan would be simpler, cheaper and more effective than the Government’s emissions trading scheme and would deliver the same 5 per cent cut in emissions by 2020.

“Our policy will deliver the same emissions reductions as the Government’s, but without the Government’s great big new tax,” he said.

The policy would be funded from the Budget over the forward estimates but Mr Abbott is yet to explain where the Coalition would find the savings to pay for it.

But he says the Coalition’s policy is vastly cheaper than the ETS, which he says will cost $40b over the same period.

“It’s careful, it’s costed, and it’s capped,” Mr Abbott said. (source)

And Tony Abbott has used his first question time as Opposition leader to goad Kevin Rudd into a debate on climate change, which Rudd continues to shy away from:

Mr Abbott, who earlier released the coalition’s long-awaited climate change policy, opened question time by directly challenging the prime minister.

“When I first challenged the prime minister to a public debate on climate change, he refused, saying the coalition had no policy,” he told parliament.

“Well, we have a policy which is simpler cheaper and clearer than the government’s.

“Does the prime minister have the guts to have a nationally-televised debate about climate change?” (source)

Answer: NO. And to finish off, Rudd comes out with his usual evasive nonsense:

Mr Rudd said the opposition had some simple questions to answer: Did it understand the science behind climate change, how did it propose to tackle it, and was it fair dinkum?

“Was it fair dinkum?” Oh per-lease. And I think the Opposition understands the science (or now should we say, the lack of science) better than you do, clearly.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , ,

Climate Nonsense from Penny Wong

2 February, 2010 by

My denial is this big

I think The Australian is publishing this for a laugh, to syphon off what little credibility the Rudd government’s climate plan still has left before the latest ETS vote. And really, who gives a monkey’s what the Wong-bot thinks? Her memory card is stuck in pre-Copenhagen, pre-Climategate, pre-Amazongate, pre-Glaciergate, pre-Tony Abbott mode, and predictably enough she regurgitates all the old, tired arguments, all of them now hollow. But she starts with what must be the most hilarious understatement of the decade:

COPENHAGEN did not deliver the perfect agreement.

Not perfect? It was a fiasco, a disaster, a laughing stock. Such is the denial (sorry to use that word, but hey, if the cap fits…) in Wong’s CPU that she cannot even admit to the most obvious facts! Then its time to wheel out the climate “records”:

Earlier this month, the Bureau of Meteorology released its 2009 annual climate statement. It found 2009 was the second hottest year in Australia on record and ended our hottest decade. In Australia, each decade since the 1940s has been warmer than the last.

This is not a flash in the pan. It continues the trend.

Globally, 14 of the 15 warmest years on record occurred between 1995 and 2009. As a continent that is already hot and dry, the implications for Australia are profound.

What can you expect from someone with only a primary school understanding of science, as Lord Monckton puts it? Do we really need to go through this again? Oh, OK then. “Record” means in the last 150 years. Big freaking deal. It doesn’t include any of the previous warm periods (of which there were many). And so what if each decade is warmer than the last? What would you expect? We’re coming out of a Little Ice Age. Duh. And even given that, the satellite record shows temperature stasis since 2001. What’s that, Penny? You’ve never heard of the satellite record? You prefer to rely on fudged data from surface stations such as GISS and GHCN? And then, even more denial:

It is clear the global trend is towards greater action to combat climate change, not less.

And on emissions trading, more than 30 countries already have an emissions trading scheme in operation and others, including the US, Japan and South Korea, are working towards implementing their own schemes.

No it isn’t. The trend is precisely the opposite. The majority of those 30 countries cited are in the EU scheme, by the way. China and India may talk the talk, but they (bizarrely) put alleviating poverty and raising standards of living above pointless emissions trading schemes. And the chances of the US passing climate legislation are disappearing faster than the Amazon rainforest. And we know where the Australian ETS is heading…

We know we must put a limit on our emissions. Nothing at Copenhagen changes that fundamental fact. And the cheapest and most effective way to do that remains the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. John Howard knew it, Peter Costello knew it, Malcolm Turnbull knew it and the Rudd government knows it.

Yes, and times change Penny. Tony Abbott has realised this. You and Kevin Rudd (and Malcolm Turnbull) haven’t. With luck, your obsession with passing this pointless ETS will consign you and your dismal government, at the next election, to the rubbish bin of history, where it truly belongs.

Read it here.

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Garnaut urges Rudd to call early climate change election

26 January, 2010 by

Enough, already

Much as I dislike having to post about the over-exposed Ross Garnaut (who we are all thoroughly sick of), it is unfortunately necessary in this case, as he is urging Kevin Rudd to call a double dissolution election in order to get the ETS passed. I guess that would be to try and scare the Opposition into supporting it, is it? Well, we have news for you, mate: bring it on.

If Rudd thinks he can win an election on climate change, after the disaster in Copenhagen, after the warmist camp and the IPCC have been shaken to their very foundations by Climategate, Glaciergate, Amazongate and all the other “gates” that will happen in the next few months, after Pachauri has been shown to be hopelessly mired in conflict in his role as IPCC head, after the ETS has been exposed as a pointless tax that will do nothing for the environment, then he is even more deluded than we give him credit for.

Actually, Kevin Rudd hasn’t even mentioned climate change this year! Not once! Hardly the sign of a top priority policy is it? But Garnaut wades in anyway, and the ABC lurves it:

Professor Garnaut says it is unlikely this Parliament will support the legislation, so the Government should consider calling a double dissolution election.

“One would have to say at the moment, there’s not much prospect for this Parliament, so it will take a double dissolution election,” he told ABC Radio’s AM program.

“Or it can put the legislation to a new parliament with a different Senate after July 1, 2011. There’s the two options.

“I think that there should be support for the Government if it presses ahead with the double dissolution, but obviously it’s got lots of calculations to make there.”

Professor Garnaut also backed a Greens proposal for an interim scheme which would set the price of carbon at $20 a tonne while negotiations continue for a permanent ETS.

“Let’s not kid ourselves that we’re ahead of the game – there’s no danger of that. Lots of countries are doing major things,” he said. [Just look at Europe, struggling to keep its population warm in freezing temperatures because energy prices have gone through the roof – Ed]

“At this stage we’re one of the laggards. And us coming up with a field and ceasing to be a laggard would help the debate in the United States.” [The US legislation is virtually sunk, and nothing Australia does will make the slightest bit of difference, pal – Ed]

Back to planet earth, you can read the rest of it here (if you really must).

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Greens: "Ten out of ten for honesty!"

22 January, 2010 by

Green taxes

Barnaby Joyce gives the Greens full marks for calling their proposed price on carbon a “tax”:

Climate Change Minister Penny Wong said the government was prepared to discuss the proposal with the Greens further, but the introduction of a $10bn-plus annual tax in an election year would appear to be a political impossibility.

Nationals Senate leader Barnaby Joyce foreshadowed the opposition attack, greeting the proposal with a backhanded compliment. “The ETS is a massive new tax,” he said. “The Greens coming out and calling this a carbon tax, well I’ll give them 10 out of 10 for honesty.”

The government insists it will put the legislation for its Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme before the parliament for a third time when politicians return to Canberra at the start of next month, but the opposition and the Senate crossbenchers, including the Greens, remain opposed to it.

Actually, political suicide is just what we want from Krudd & Co, so maybe they should go ahead!

Read it here.

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