Limber up for the pre-election backflip season

The Australian Labor Government may have abandoned the ETS field in the lead up the election. Ironically leaving Malcolm Turnbull as the only pro-CPRS player left, but on his way out.

Not content with his Pyrrhic victory, he uses this for his very own backflip back into politics. Welcome back on entertainment value alone, given this:

Kevin Rudd blames an opposition backflip and slow global progress on climate change action for the delay of the federal government's carbon pollution reduction scheme (CPRS).

But the prime minister says the government is still committed to meeting greenhouse gas emissions targets.

Mr Rudd on Tuesday said the government would now wait until the end of 2012, when the current Kyoto commitment period ends, before implementing the CPRS.

Tim Dunlop is not impressed with the poor backbone action in Rudd's very own flip:

Kevin Rudd picks fights, but he doesn't want to take a punch. Maybe that's pragmatic and means he'll live to fight another day. But increasingly it looks like he has vacated the ring.

Can't say I am either. I can understand the reasons for vacating the ring for the election, but getting a bill through that is going to wrought massive changes on voters does need courage. might.

My problem with Rudd white-flagging the CPRS field is the signal it sends out to renewable energy investors and voters. And the potentially stalled progress on the issue.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Opposition now opposes Australian people's will

How's that for an election strategy when staring down the barrel of an anytime-now double-dissolution election?

With 66 per cent of Australians supporting the emissions trading scheme, according to the Herald's Nielsen poll on Monday, and only 25 per cent supporting it, the Liberal party elects a hard-right, stem-cell research stopping, God-bothering wacko, preferred by only 25 per cent of Aussie voters. Did I already say he is against stem-cell research?

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I just don't get the Liberals. Did big Fossil Fuel quietly promise to feather-bed the retirements of the ETS rejectors? Or did they have a communal brain-fart of frustration as a result of not being in power after countless years of having it?

To prove he is monkish mad when it comes to science, after Tony Abbott won the leadership by one vote (43 to Malcolm Turnbull's 42) he immediately called for a secret ballot on the fate of the ETS (CPRS) bill. Secret, I guess, so the electorate won't know who to take it out on come election time. Here is the verdict on whether to back or defer Rudd’s great green tax: Defer - 55, Back - 29. But we all know 'what' defer means. It means 'ship the CPRS bill off to a committee out the back and then put the bullet into it'.

Which, all in all, sounds like a recipe for a double-dissolution election, now that the Liberals have handed Labor a weapon, fully loaded. The same Nielsen poll shows that 57 per cent of voters, also support the Government calling an early election if the scheme is blocked. Let's hope Rudd throws off his conservative insticts about living out your full-term, and takes the opportunity to drive the stake thought he heart of this reality-avoiding Liberal opposition.

Bring it on. I really want to see these words of Tony Abbott come back to haunt him: "man-made climate change is crap". Yep, he said it, only to back peddle today after becoming leader, and claim that he was being hyperbolic at the time. Hyperbolic or hyper colic?

Anyway, if you want to know why the Liberal who spoiled their vote in the party room by writing "no" did so, Punch has just happened upon the secret diary of the offender.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

A pox on your house

The Liberal National Coalition of the Welching is in good form today, with "Mad Monk" Tony Abbott now reneging on his Friday pledge to not contest the leadership spill tomorrow if consensus-candidate, "cuddly" Joe Hockey, steps into the ring. Commentators are saying that Hockey will have made a Faustian pact to gain the loyalty of the brain hemorrhaging right wing of the Liberal party by sinking the CPRS bill in the senate.

But now it seems that Opposition Leader Hockey would allow a free vote on the CPRS bill, effectively getting the legislation through because all Labor need are seven votes. What a development, this story has more twists and turns than a cross-dressing snake.

So Abbott calls all bets of? This is the guy who is putting himself up for alternative PM, who is from the same party that welched on their deal to vote on the CPRS bill at 3:45 last Friday.

Electorally, the Liberals now are pink mist in-waiting. I honestly think Malcolm is their only chance to regain any credibility with the electorate, as he is their only guy who has shown he gets climate change, and has the strength of character to lead.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Dissecting the brain of an AGW denier #2

This brain belongs to Cory Bernardi:

They said ...

Senator Cory Bernardi, Liberal, South Australia: "This ETS [emissions trading scheme] will also fundamentally change the way our legal system operates. It reverses some important legal concepts such as presumption of innocence, the right to remain silent, the burden of proof and protection from self-incrimination." Altogether after me: Huh?

Peter Fitzgerald

OK, this is the same CPRS bill that has practically caused the once proud Liberal opposition to split in two as they try to process it. Pretty strong magic, huh? Imagine what it can do if enacted? Maybe gradually help us gain control over the rate of co2 we put into the atmosphere? Just a passing thought.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Who is who in the Coalition zoo

Further to my post below, you might like to know who supports the CPRS and negotiated amendments, and who doesn't. The never-learn-from-an-election Liberals/Nationals look like rabble:

Among the Coalition party room speakers in favour of the bill were Richard Colbeck, Judith Troeth, Andrew Laming, Simon Birmingham, Gary Humphries, Sue Boyce, Mal Washer, Bruce Billson, Barry Haase, Marise Payne, Scott Morrison, Judi Moylan, Don Randall, Jo Gash, Russell Trood and Steve Irons.

Those opposed included Alan Ferguson, Judith Adams, Brett Mason, Michaelia Cash, Matthias Cormann, Alan Eggleston, Alby Schultz, Cory Bernardi, Andrew Robb, Guy Barnett, Nola Marion and Luke Simpkins

If anyone of those is your senator, 'cos it's in the Senate where the rubber will hit the road, let them know where you stand, dear reader.

PS. Andrew Robb - what a clown. Anyway, Lateline Tonight should have the outcome.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

About f'king time, Mr Rudd

Respectfully, you should have been using this sort of hard language to publicly out and route these most insidious AGW deniers (not sceptics ~ sceptics form their views based on the peer-reviewed evidence) in the Liberal party, a lot earlier. We've already seen how many political cowards in the Liberal Party snuck across into the denier camp as the public bought your you-are-doing-something and climate change concern dropped in its priorities.

But, these words are as pleasing on the eyes as the drought-breaking rain is on the parched face of a cockie:

"These do-nothing climate change sceptics are prepared to destroy our children's future,"

"The do-nothing climate change sceptics are still alive and well in the coalition,"

"The argument that we must not act until others do is an argument that has been used by political cowards since time immemorial, both of the left and the right.

"They are reckless gamblers who are betting all our futures on their arrogant assumption that their intuitions should triumph over the evidence.

"You are betting our jobs, our houses, our farms, our reefs, our economy and our future on an intuition, on a gut feeling, on a political prejudice you have about science."

Well put, sir. Though, technically speaking, you just pinged them Do-Nothing Deniers. Now route 'em hard, and route 'em for good. Take the best damned deal you can to Copenhagen. We want 25% emissions cuts below 2000 levels, minimum.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Glasses charged for Copenhagen

I don't like admitting it because I'm a glass-half-full guy, but, right now, the political climate change world is wobbling some.

In Australia, we have a Government that is finally negotiating Carbon Pollution Reductions Scheme bill amendments with an opposition determined to destroy itself for their claque of Carbon Pollution Freedom Scheme lobbyists, in an agonisingly slow-mo train crash over climate change.

Because of aforesaid recalcitrants and a Government determined to win the politics of climate change, but not take the real leadership science says is needed, and because we export 80% of the world's coal, the worst of it is that the best we can hope for.

The high side of Government's proposed 5 to 25% targets (depending on what the rest of the world signs up to at Copenhagen) are on the low side of what climate models tell us are necessary if we are going to control warming by 2C, where a 25% to 40... 60, some say 80% reduction in co2e emissions from 1990 levels is counselled.

On the bright side, politically we are many miles down the road from where we were eighteen month ago, although popular concern about climate change is dropping priority as the economy bites. This, and a concerted campaign by sceptics who, no doubt have had some wins, as well as a sense that, 'well since the Government is doing something we can worry less', all contribute to this drop in priority, I believe.

Will the Government hold the line on what is a weak commitment anyway, or will they give the polluters bigger exemptions to avoid a double dissolution election? The point of the CPRS is that there has to be pain for some.

In the US, Obama's election turned the US from climate change bad guy, to most important player in creating a post Kyoto world. An amazing transformation that even got China making some very positive noises about fighting climate change. And then,... nothing. Obamania ended, leaving the US hung-over, the GFC bit, and Obama's political capital started getting chewed up in health-care reform. What kind of country gets itself torn up over basic universal health-care? Unchecked climate change is going to be so much more expensive, people.

Here's how Jim Hoggan sees it on Desmog blog:

A new poll released by the Pew Research Center has found the number of Americans who believe that pollution is causing climate change declined 20 percent over the past two years. Only 57% of Americans believe there is solid scientific evidence that the global climate is warming.

Some pin this decline on the economy, arguing that Americans have other things to worry about and climate change has drifted off their radar screen.

He goes on to point the finger at the dark influence of Big Denial, all explained in his new book, Climate Cover Up — The Crusade to Deny Global Warming.

It remains to be seen whether the political climate change world is in a death wobble, or we recover our sense of purpose, and straighten up in time for Copenhagen.

You'll forgive me now, if I finish this half-full glass. Then drink another.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Government ETS delay: A back-flip to the future

I don't know what to think about the Australian Government's 2011 back-flip on the starting date of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.

The economy is going sideways. This means fewer carbon emissions caused by lower productivity. A delayed introduction will help businesses by delaying compliance costs, but it is only a delay. And, we miss the chance to go to Copenhagen and negotiate with more leverage. I do think this is a big-picture mistake because Australia's (or any country's) best shot at mitigation is as part of a global effort.

In what's becoming a knack of this government, it's a back-flip with a twist. In the following case, for the greater good:

The government has delayed its emissions trading scheme (ETS) a year to July 2011, citing the global economic crisis.

But Labor has also pushed up its emissions reduction target to 25 per cent of 2000 levels by 2020 - up from a maximum of 15 per cent - depending on the strength of an international agreement. The bottom end of the target range is still five per cent.

They sneaked that in without much protest. Wong and Co also neutralised one of the criticisms of the pollution reduction scheme — that carbon emissions savings by conscientious households would allow business more ceiling to pollute in. Well, Rudd's mob seem to have thought about that.

Concerned householders will be able to calculate their carbon output and buy permits to pollute, effectively taking these permits out of circulation.

Because the scheme will have a set number of permits for trading, permits bought in this way will not be available to polluting industries, thus reducing the amount of pollution able to be pumped into the atmosphere.

These permits will be bought by a new Australian Carbon Trust – Energy Efficiency Savings Pledge Fund, which will pool donations to buy the permits.

Seems like they have been consultative, which is a good sign. If I could say anything to them, my echo in the blogiverse would be to take heart from the British Colombian government's recent victory.

The only government in North America to implement a carbon tax to fight climate change has been re-elected handily in British Columbia.

And to take heed.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy