More green waste – Gillard's "Green Start" scrapped

22 December, 2010 by

Governments need plenty of these...

Because wasting taxpayers’ money and axing jobs is just fine, so long as we’re “saving the planet.” Of course, if we trace the logic back, green loan schemes such as this are theoretically needed to encourage people to invest in energy saving measures, which are necessary to reduce reliance on fossil fuels, which are the source of greenhouse gases, which are the cause of “dangerous global warming”… or so states the IPCC.

The Gillard government uncritically swallows everything the IPCC says, and shuts its eyes and ears to any dissenting views. It also blindly relies on various compromised government advisers, including ACM favourite Will Steffen, who has been in good form recently, mudslinging, spouting propaganda and smearing deniers. But why wouldn’t he? The entire careers of climate scientists the world over, including Steffen, is paved with gold from the AGW hysteria they themselves help to create, so even if they had any doubts, why would they dare reveal them in public and thereby help kill the golden goose?

But what does the government find? Tragically, it’s not the green utopia that Bob Brown and his cronies keep promising, but the unacceptable costs of spruiking a green agenda in the face of harsh economic reality.

So it’s little surprise that yet another “green” scheme collapses in a heap, following close on the heels of the home insulation (pink batts), solar rebates and Green Loans debacles, and all of it can be traced back to the spin and misrepresentations of the IPCC:

EIGHT months after the Federal Government axed its disastrous home insulation scheme, it announced yesterday it would also stop its “Green Start” program because there were too many “risks” involved.

The axing of the environmental scheme just days from Christmas means that, within weeks, thousands of people will be without work.

Labelled a “disaster” by the Federal Opposition, the Government’s original Green Loans program was yesterday slammed as a “disgrace and a sinful waste of money” by one NSW assessor.

The multi-million-dollar scheme was supposed to provide 360,000 households with energy-efficiency checks and access to interest-free loans of up to $10,000 for environmental improvements such as solar panels and insulation.

Following criticism of the administration of the scheme, the Government announced in July the Green Loans program would be replaced by a Green Start program, to be delivered in two rounds.

But Climate Change Minister Greg Combet yesterday announced the Government would dump Green Start, forcing nearly 10,000 accredited and uncontracted assessors – 4635 in NSW – to find alternative work. (source)

Who cares? It’s all well intentioned. What’s a few jobs and a few million dollars between friends compared to the future of the entire planet?

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China: one more "Australia" of emissions every year

12 August, 2010 by

One every year for 25 years

James Delingpole on the myth of the Chinese “green economy”. China is building power stations equivalent to one “Australia’s worth” of emissions every year for the next 25 years. Which kinda makes our ridiculous ETS (that will cut at most a few percent of “one Australia’s emissions”) seem even more pointless than we already knew it was:

One of the great lies told us by our political leaders in order to persuade us to accept their swingeing and pointless green taxes and their economically suicidal, environmentally vandalistic wind-farm building programmes is that if we don’t do it China will. Apparently, just waiting to be grabbed out there are these glittering, golden prizes marked “Green jobs” and “Green technologies” – and if only we can get there before those scary, mysterious Chinese do, well, maybe the West will enjoy just a few more years of economic hegemony before the BRICs nations thwack us into the long grass.

This is, of course, utter nonsense. The Chinese do not remotely believe in the myth of Man-Made Global Warming nor in the efficacy of “alternative energy”. Why should they? It’s not as if there is any evidence for it. The only reason the Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming myth has penetrated so deeply into Western culture is… No. I’m going to save that stuff for my fairly imminent (Nov?) book on the subject which I hope you’re all going to buy.

What do the Chinese think about CAGW? Well, until now it was largely a question of educated guesswork, based on inferences like the fact that it was the Chinese who derailed the Copenhagen negotiations. But thanks to a new book called Low Carbon Plot by Gou Hongyang we know exactly what the official view is.

Can you guess?

Read it here.

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Middle classes "bear brunt of liberal elite's obsession with climate change"

25 May, 2010 by

The green economy myth

We knew this already, but it’s refreshing to see it stated so bluntly, in the UK Telegraph. The governing intelligentsia, sitting in their ivory tower, insulated from reality, can pontificate about “sustainable lifestyles” as much as they like, without ever having to suffer the consequences of their actions. And this is also why wealthy celebrities are so quick to climb on any passing environmental bandwagon, safe in the knowledge that nothing they say or do will have the slightest effect on their cosy way of life, or their seven houses (yes, I’m talking about you, Jeremy Irons).

Joel Kotkin, an American expert in social trends, said environmental policies were being used as an excuse to restrict the expansion of the suburbs on the edge of towns and cities.

The result was “a direct assault on the quality of life for millions of working and middle class families“.

Mr Kotkin argued that working and middle class people suffered the most from well intentioned yet-ill thought out policies of liberal and urban elites.

Mr Kotkin said: “Long-term aesthetic arguments against suburbia have now evolved into a new emphasis on ‘sustainability’, largely in terms of greenhouse gas emissions.”

And the best bit of all:

Mr Kotkin argued that plans to build a new “green economy” in the UK were a myth that would never replace the economic and social benefits of traditional manufacturing.

We’ve said so all along.

Read it here.

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