From the AFR’s John Kehoe:
Former US Treasury secretary Hank Paulson, a long-time Republican who served in the Nixon and Bush jnr administrations, likened the emerging climate change “bubble” to the financial risks that built up under his watch before the 2008 crisis.
…“Risk management is a conservative principle, as is preserving our natural environment for future generations,” Paulson opined in The New York Times…the former Goldman Sachs chief executive sensibly argued the most prudent action was to “empower the marketplace” to find the most efficient response.
“We can do this by putting a price on emissions of carbon dioxide – a carbon tax,” Paulson urged.
…The Australian public has been badly let down by a lack of intellectual honesty by those on the right, including the Liberal Party, media and commentators, supposedly in favour of markets solving our problems. Because of this collective failure, every day Australians will pay a much higher price to cut emissions through the highly inefficient renewable energy target and, if it materialises, Abbott’s Direct Action policy of paying big polluters.
I know some of you will be horrified at this given Paulson’s deeply compromised role in the GFC. And regulation of carbon markets is certainly something that needs to be taken very seriously to prevent the kind of gouging many of you have pointed to.
But, even so, I still agree with Paulson that markets are a more potent response and conservatism is shooting wildly astray in adopting climate change skepticism for its own sake. The Liberal Party’s betrayal of that fact is as deep as it is hypocritical and it was this more than anything that led to me giving them an outright serve recently.
