Some carbon chickens coming home to roost today for the nation with the most to lose from climate change yet with the least effective policies. From The Australian:
The Climate Change Authority is pressing the Abbott government to dramatically lift its 2020 emissions reduction target, as it recommended the nation take a 30 per cent cut by 2025 to the UN Paris climate change conference.
The CCA warned that keeping the 2020 target at 5 per cent below 2000 levels risked imposing steeper costs on the nation in the next decade as it tried to catch up with the rest of the world.
In a special report on Australia’s emissions reduction targets, the CCA said a 30 per cent cut by 2025 would put Australia’s emissions reduction effort on broadly the same footing as those of other developed nations.
The question before the country is who should pay for it. With a carbon price the emitters pay. With direct action the tax payer pays. If the Abbott Government were to attempt these levels of cuts using Direct Action it would blast the budget to smithereens. Ipso facto:
- it cannot meet the CCA goals with its current policy settings;
- it cannot change them either given its history of hostility to mitigation;
- it will therefore attempt to derail and undermine the Paris talks wherever possible, and
- when that fails, longer term Australia will have no choice but to resurrect the carbon price.
But not until it goes, from Tony Abbot’s top business advisor, Maurice Newman today:
…a coalition of Labor, Greens and other so-called progressives continue to oppose fiscal responsibility. They want to restrict prosperity by increasingly applying handicaps to private enterprise, particularly through workplace laws. They call for the closure of our vital fossil fuel industries. They promote renewable energy knowing the harm it does to manufacturing jobs. They condemn meat consumption because of flatulent cattle, the wool industry because of animal cruelty and cropping because of water usage. Their vision for future generations — North Korea.
In Europe, where the masses have most fallen prey to the progressive spin, jobless youth and the elderly face bleak futures. Democracy is fraying and desperate voters are opting for extreme solutions. Syriza, a radical left- wing party now governs Greece. Podemos a party similarly opposed to austerity and capitalism is finding strong support in Spain. Buoyed by Syriza’s success Trotskyists are gaining traction in France and Germany. When poverty comes in at the door, freedom flies out the window.
…India is set to become the world’s largest importer of thermal coal. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is on a mission and has frozen the bank accounts of Greenpeace on the grounds the activist organisation “was working against India’s economic interests”. He is determined to lift the Indian people out of poverty as quickly as possible and won’t tolerate outside interference.
Freedom for all except evil greenies, eh Maurice?
Since when did being green make you a Trotskyist, North Korean (and Iranian) sympathiser? The carbon price was a market mechanism designed to address an extant threat to our liberal civilisation.
The loon pond fusion of anti-green ideology with mock libertarian zeal is really bonkers.
