Antinuclear

Tony Abbott’s climate nonsense

Tony Abbott’s plan to reduce Australia’s carbon emissions by at least 5% by 2020 — the only sure commitment on climate change we know about given Abbott’s flip-flopping yesterday — will depend pretty much on just how stupid he thinks voters are.

In walking away from any economic tool for reducing emissions — turning his back on an emissions trading scheme, coalition policy since early 2007, and ruling out a carbon tax — Abbott has headed off the economically-sensible reservation and into the verdant fields of left-wing policy prescriptions: regulation or a huge increase in government spending.

And this is supposedly the party of small government and deregulation, attacking the market-based approach advocated by the ALP (and, to be fair, many Liberal MPs).

The new coalition approach to climate change, whenever it emerges, will be based on furphies, tricks and outright lies.  It cannot be otherwise because, in rejecting either an ETS or a carbon tax, Abbott has removed from consideration any sensible policy prescriptions…………….

There’s always the nuclear option — a term that could aptly describe Abbott’s own leadership — but even assuming an Abbott government would stump out the billions needed to start building nuclear reactors, it wouldn’t make a dent on Australian emissions before the 2020s or later…………..http://www.crikey.com.au/2009/12/03/abbotts-climate-prescription-non-economic-and-non-sense/

December 4, 2009 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, climate change - global warming, energy, politics | antinuclear, climate change, climate change - global warming, energy