How the 'Mad Monk' saved Australia

Cripes, it was a close run thing though. That deranged megalomaniac Malcolm Turnbull almost succeeded in helping to get K R Puff'n'Fluff's emissions trading scheme passed into law. But events have proven Tony Abbott to have been completely right. (As a note of clarification for non-Australians, Abbott is of course the so-called Mad Monk. Partly it is a play on his name, but it is also an attempt by parts of the media and the Labor Party to 'frame' him as a dangerous fanatic because he is firstly - shock, horror - a Christian, and then to make it worse a Roman Catholic to boot. An example was seen recently in the more down-market News Corporation titles, such as the Sunday Times here in Perth, when a remark by him that the great texts of our civilisation should be taught in schools and that this had to include the Bible was bizarrely twisted into having him call for compulsory 'Bible studies' in schools!) It was irresponsible madness on the part of the federal government to try and push through such a scheme before knowing what the rest of the world was going to do at Copenhagen, (or as a Danish newspaper renamed the event, Floppenhagen). And what did the rest of the world decide to do? Nothing. (It's an interesting observation made by some - despite all the rhetoric from political leaders about climate change being the greatest moral challenge and existential threat of our times, when you look at their deeds you have to conclude that by and large they don't really believe what they are saying.) Forget Obama's absurd spin about 'meaningful' progress being mad at the summit. That, to put it bluntly, is bullshit. The Chinese (with help from the Indians) played hardball and set out very clearly that there is no chance of an international agreement that doesn't involve them deciding how much of their emissions they will cut and when, (and it is worth remembering here that talk of cutting their carbon intensity does not mean cutting their carbon emissions, but rather slowing the increase of their emissions). Um, on the 'positive' side of the ledger, they also made it perfectly clear that there was no chance of an international agreement that involved independent checking and verification of any claimed reductions in forecast CO2 emissions. Well, at least for none that weren't paid for by the West. Yes my dears, that was the proposition - trust Chinese state statistics. Believe me, if you are suspicious and cynical about the use of statistics here, you 'aint seen nothing until you have a gander at what goes on in China. Though equally, the feeling now is that the United State's version of an ETS is highly unlikely to get through the Senate there. So here's Terry McCrann writing in The Australian about how the ETS here is dead and that we are much better off for this now. Secondly, but for Abbott's aggression -- helped in no small part by Malcolm Turnbull's overweening arrogance -- we would have been locked into a bad policy and a disastrous process, which is even worse. The ETS. It's time the business community woke up from its dozy slumber, with the doziest of all being the Business Council. This is something they should be able to understand. Copenhagen has shattered any prospect of a local ETS delivering the "certainty" they crave. Now it would only be the certainty of the grave. That of carbon export and permit volatility and rip-offs. That's the export of jobs, businesses and investment to other places that had no price on carbon dioxide. Those "other places" are essentially the rest of the world except for Europe -- which doesn't matter and in any event has totally debased the permits system, just as it has cynically approached the whole sorry climate saga, starting with Kyoto. Full article here. Via Greenie Watch

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