Monday 2 December was the 10th Anniversary of Kevin Rudd’s Climate Change policy being voted down in the Senate. It was marked with speeches from Anthony Albanese, Ged Kearney, Josh Burns, Patrick Gorman, Pat Conroy, and Tanya Plibersek.
Last week saw the 10th Anniversary of the Greens rejection of Labor’s attempt to pass an emissions trading scheme and in so doing put in train a series of events that were to bring great shame on our nation.
Of course, with the benefit of hindsight the Greens may not have made the decision together with the Coalition to defeat Labor’s CPRS (Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme) in the Senate in 2009.
It was a decision at the time that was a “massive error of political judgement” that would prove to have consequences far beyond that of the environment but also on how we conducted our democracy.
“Australia’s carbon emissions would be more than 200m tonnes lower and electricity prices would be cheaper if the Greens had supported the carbon pollution reduction scheme a decade ago, the Labor frontbencher Pat Conroy says.”
Together with Tony Abbott’s decision to repeal Labor’s ‘carbon tax’ a few years later, they are arguably the two worst policy decisions ever made by the Australian parliament.
The result is that a decade on we still have no national energy or environmental policies and all sides of the debate continue to argue matters of science for which they have no qualifications and repeat the same arguments that they have already had with the same outcomes. No doubt an exercise in dumbing-down the intelligence of our citizenry with debate lasting a decade leaving one speechless.
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The ability of thinking human beings to blindly embrace what they are being told without referring to evaluation and the consideration of scientific fact, truth and reason, never ceases to amaze me. It is tantamount to the rejection of rationale explanation.
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It is a debate, however, that would eventually come back to bite them on the bum. The past year (especially since the election) the tide of public opinion has sided with the view that serious action against climate change needs to be taken.
When kids are leaving the classroom to protest, and the effects of climate change being evidenced; the science now beyond rebuttal and communities demanding action Scot Morrison is finding himself trapped in his own “Trumpian” lies.
People are now resentful of his ‘do nothing’ approach.
Even Royal Banking Commissioner Haynes has weighed in with a stinging rebuke of the government and big business on their do nothing approach to the problem.
Hayne said that:
“… the country’s “opaque” decision-making processes were seen by the public as “skewed, if not captured” by powerful vested interests, while leaders were “unable to conduct reasoned debates about policy matters.”
And as if it couldn’t get worse finally the truth has come out publicly as to why Morrison has been so smug about Australia meeting its Kyoto targets.
As I have written many times, they intend using credits given to us as a form of encouragement to join Kyoto in the first negotiations.
The current meeting is debating whether to revoke the rule that made credits possible.
Using or not using credits is a moral argument. Without them we cannot reach our target and proves beyond doubt that we haven’t pulled our weight. In the eyes of the world we will be looked upon as international freeloaders.
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Australia used to once care about what the world thought of us but now we couldn’t seem care less.
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Pat Conroy went on to say that:
“As a result, Australia is still in the midst of a ‘climate war’ with no real climate policy and has higher emissions today than under a scenario in which the CPRS was implemented.”
He conceded that Labor had also made mistakes in its handling of the vexed issue of climate policy, Conroy said the party should have gone to a double dissolution election in 2010 after the defeat of the CPRS.
On that he is correct. They probably would have conceded some seats but still have won.
The Greens in their stubbornness to get what they wanted – with the benefit of hindsight – would have realised that had the CPRS been implemented, emissions for 2020 would have been:
reduced to 459m tonnes compared to the 540m tonnes projected by the department, which are on track to keep rising to 563m tonnes by 2030.
Had the Greens voted for the bill we would have saved the nation much political angst; we would have been world leaders and the economic rewards would, by now, be flowing into government coffers. How incredibly stupid we have been.
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My thought for the day
On the subject of climate change, think about this: If we fail to act and disaster results, then massive suffering will have been aggravated by stupidity.
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