Gruesome threesome

Terry McCrann on the increasingly nonsensical propaganda for the carbon tax:

Just how stupid does the prime minister and her climate minister think you are? Pretty damn stupid has to be the answer.

There they both were yesterday, saying we want to hit you with a $10 billion tax, to pretty quickly grow to a $20 billion or $30 billion one. And we promise to give you back half of it.

They actually think this is the trump card! Climate Change Minister Combet: “I can assure you … that more than 50 per cent of the carbon price revenue will be used to assist households.”

While earlier in the day, the prime minister herself even more emphatically: “I can guarantee that more than 50 per cent … of the revenue raised will go to assisting households.”

She then managed to say with a straight face: “That means millions of Australian households will be better off under a carbon price.”

How persuasive can you get? We hand over $10 billion, they give us $5 billion back. And it just gets “better” as the tax rises. We hand over $20 billion, they give us back $10 billion. We hand over $40 billion, they give us back $20 billion.

So this is what Ms Gillard means when she claims that people will be “better off”. Just focus on the $5 billion or $10 billion or more that you are “getting back”.

You don’t need to worry about the $10 billion or $20 billion or more flowing to Canberra, because as Gillard and Combet keep claiming, you won’t be paying it.

No, only the big so-called polluters will be paying the tax. Believe that and I have an opera house to throw in with the bridge I’ve got to sell you.

Read it all.

Half-truths and misrepresentations

The Sydney Moonbat Herald prints Greg Combet’s response to an article by Julie Bishop, which gives me a perfect opportunity for a spot of deconstruction and hopefully demolition. Fasten your seatbelts, ladies and gentlemen. Here we go:

The puerile opinion piece by Deputy Leader of the Opposition Julie Bishop shows how the Coalition perpetuates misinformation to hide the fact it does not have a credible plan to cut Australia’s carbon pollution.

Combet accuses the Coalition of misinformation? That’s ripe for a start. How much of a cut in global temperature will our “carbon price” achieve Greg? What did Julia Gillard say before the election about “no carbon tax under the government I lead”? And what is “carbon pollution” anyway? Soot? Because it certainly isn’t carbon dioxide. Misinformation is your speciality, and it’s there for all to see. And his petulant use of the word “puerile” to dismiss any dissenting view speaks volumes of the arrogant, contemptuous mindset of this government. And all of that in the first sentence? It’s not looking good so far…

It is appropriate to correct the record.

It is incorrect to imply that Australia risks going it alone on pricing carbon.

Thirty-two countries and 10 US states already have emissions trading schemes. California, one of the largest economies in the world, is due to start emissions trading next year.

Other countries, including China, Taiwan, Chile and South Korea, and a number of Canadian provinces, are either considering developing their own or already have trial emissions trading schemes in place.

Carbon taxes are in place in Britain, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands and Canada and under discussion elsewhere, including in the EU, Japan and South Africa.

China has a tax on coal, oil and gas extraction in its largest gas-producing province and plans to extend this to all other western provinces.

India has nationwide tax of 50 rupees per tonne levied on both imported coal and coal produced domestically, to be used for clean energy development.

South Africa has released a discussion paper for public comment on a broad carbon tax.

This, again, is simply nonsense. Most of the countries in the world with emissions trading schemes are part of the EU arrangement, where corruption, fraud and organised crime have made the carbon market over there a joke. The US has abandoned federal plans for climate mitigation schemes, with Obama desperately trying the EPA back-door route. US states are bailing out of their go-it-alone plan, with New Hampshire voting to leave the scheme (which only covered less than a fifth of US states anyway). Japan has just abandoned plans for an ETS.

And please don’t insult us by quoting China or India. Both of those massive emitters are far more concerned about their economic growth than tilting at climate windmills (or wind farms, perhaps). Their emissions will continue to rise over the coming decades, dwarfing any mitigation that Australia may put in place. To believe that the world is heading towards greater climate action is just delusional.

Bishop suggests it is not relevant if Australia’s per capita emissions are high. The fact is that Australia has the highest per capita emissions of all developed countries, about 27 tonnes per person.

This compares to a world average of about 6 tonnes per person, and an average of about 14 tonnes per person in other developed countries.

Developing countries consistently point to Australia’s high per capita emissions to justify why we should take strong action on climate change.

If we did not make our fair contribution to international efforts, how could we expect the big emitting developing countries such as China and India to take meaningful action?

Of course, a country’s total level of carbon pollution is important. That’s why the government is working with the main emitters – the 20 countries responsible for about 80 per cent of the world’s emissions – to support an effective global outcome. Australia is one of these top 20 emitters.

A really good effort to justify pointless unilateral action, Greg, but no-one will buy it. Australia has a small population, with a very high emissions economy – due primarily to the geology of our country. Therefore per capita emissions will inevitably be high. But that is totally irrelevant in these discussions. We contribute less than 1.3% of global emissions, and nothing, repeat NOTHING, we do alone will make the slightest bit of difference to the climate. One of my commenters pointed out that by land area, Australia’s emissions are negligible: 60 tonnes per square km compared to 700 t/km² in China and 3000 t/km² in Japan.

Australia is in the top 20 emitters, but again, that is meaningless, because the top ten alone contribute nearly 80% of global emissions. The remaining 20% comprises the entire rest of the world, including Australia.

It is the case that the 2009 conference in Copenhagen did not deliver all that was hoped for. But it is wrong to say that there is no action happening globally or that Copenhagen did not make important progress.

In the lead up to Copenhagen all the big emitters pledged to reduce their carbon pollution. These pledges were formally incorporated into the United Nations process at the most recent negotiations, in Cancun last December. The Cancun meeting also made concrete progress on other key elements needed to underpin an effective global response.

Irrespective of what happens under the UN negotiations, countries, regions and states around the world are taking real action on climate change now.

Please don’t mention Copenhagen… oh, you just did. Copenhagen was an utter disaster, irrespective of how you spin it. The worthless Copenhagen accord was of less value than the paper it was printed on. And you know it. And Cancun did very little to advance that process. And you know it. The reality is that there is less desire for global action on climate now than there was five or ten years ago. And the GFC has focussed people’s minds on what is really important – economic growth and prosperity, rather than chasing the nebulous chimera of climate change.

The Coalition has ridiculed the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative in the US. But look at some facts. The RGGI scheme caps carbon pollution for the electricity sector in the 10 participating north-eastern states. The combined population for these 10 states is 50 million – more than double Australia’s total population.

Each state auctions pollution permits to power stations, and commits to use at least 25 per cent of their auction revenue for clean energy programs, and to assist consumers to reduce their use of electricity.

In practice all participating states are far exceeding this commitment, investing 80 per cent of their proceeds – totaling $775 million so far – in renewable and energy efficiency programs.

The RGGI’s executive director has said that these programs show $3-$4 in benefits for every $1 invested. Furthermore, several businesses have realised energy cost savings great enough to retain or add new employees.

See above. New Hampshire has bailed out. And what effect will this have on the climate? NOTHING. Nada, Zip, Zilch. Just money thrown away that could have been spent on hospitals, schools, or in fact anything other than climate mitigation. And don’t start on the mythical “green economy”. It doesn’t exist. For every “green job” created, between 3 and 4 proper jobs are lost. And for every dollar spent on “green investment”, real investment suffers.

The Coalition has also alleged that emissions trading schemes are bad because of vulnerability to fraud, referring to cyber attacks on the European Emissions Trading System. Europe has taken steps to strengthen the integrity of its carbon market to prevent criminal activities in the future.

See above – the EU ETS is mired in fraud.

High standards of security and a range of anti-fraud measures are being applied to Australian emissions registries. For example, Australia’s Kyoto Protocol registry complies with IT security standards set by the Defence Signals Directorate and the United Nations. Australia’s registry systems have remained safe from cyber attacks.

Big deal.

It is all very well for Bishop to tell the electorate what she doesn’t like. What she and the Opposition need to tell everyone is what they actually propose to do to reduce Australia’s carbon pollution at the lowest cost.

A fizzle-out ending for a fizzle-out article, full of half-truths and misrepresentations. If this is the best that our minister for climate change can come up with, it shows a total lack of any grip on reality. What the Opposition should do is say we will do nothing to mitigate climate change, because it is money down the drain, but we will spend where necessary to adapt, at far less cost.

Even Bjørn Lomborg, the non-sceptic’s sceptic, who believes in the reality of man-made climate change, thinks that carbon taxes are the worst way to deal with climate change:

“The current solution is to make fossil fuels so expensive that nobody will want them,” Dr Lomborg said, adding that this is “economically inefficient and politically impossible”. (source)

And finally, it’s “carbon dioxide”, Greg, not carbon pollution.

The article source is here.