Labor and Liberal pander to polluting industries
Polluters win no matter who is in power
The Age Kenneth Davidson * August 31, 2009 *Labor’s policies to tackle climate change pander to big business.
“………….This Liberal/Labor policy bipartisanship is most clearly on display in measures to deal with global warming. Both sides support the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS). The political rhetoric serves to disguise the fact that it isn’t any such thing. Cap-and-trade schemes ostensibly designed to reduce emissions haven’t worked anywhere else in the world and the Australian scheme won’t work here………………………………………The CPRS is structured so that most of the revenue it raises will be recycled back to Australia’s largest polluters rather than used to finance the massive increase in investment in renewable energy needed if Australia is to cut its emissions and maintain its living standards. Worse, even as the cap on emissions is lowered, the big polluters will be able to meet their lower targets by buying dodgy emission permits offsets from Papua New Guinea and Indonesia so that, according to Treasury forecasts, actual emissions by Australia’s biggest polluters will be above 1990 levels until after 2035.
In other words, the CPRS, like similar schemes in Europe, is designed to slow down the structural change necessary to avoid catastrophic climate change……..
……………..Last week the Coalition joined the Government to pass the Renewable Energy Target (RET), which will increase the proportion of electricity being generated from renewable energy from 10 to 20 per cent, but only after the number of energy-intensive industries eligible for exemption from the flow-through into higher electricity prices was increased from three to 40…………………
………..This is the real story: how Australia’s two major political parties have become as one in the service of Australia’s major polluters.
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