How we found ourselves ambushed by reality

Wednesday, 15th October 2008

Australia’s love of emissions trading to combat global warming is ending in the face of
economic uncertainty, says Tom Switzer

No doubt some critics will warn that Liberals can’t afford to be seen as ‘browner than John Howard’. No doubt too they will use any Coalition opposition to an ETS as evidence that conservatives remain climate change deniers. But as Oscar Wilde said: ‘The truth is rarely pure, and never simple.’ What’s so wrong with embracing an agnostic position on climate change which says: yes, it can’t be good to pollute the atmosphere, but the moral absolutists who presume to know exactly what to do are kidding themselves? Meanwhile, with one of the world’s biggest supplies of uranium, Australia could develop an alternative form of energy use which produces not an ounce of carbon dioxide: nuclear.

In any case, conservatives won’t be able to attack effectively the government’s global warming scheme if they remain carbon copies of Labor. When all is said and done, Turnbull and his shadow environment minister Greg Hunt agree with virtually everything that Rudd and his climate change minister Penny Wong say about taxing industry and redistributing the proceeds at potentially huge cost to the economy.

The only point of difference is the start date: the government supports a deadline of 2010; the opposition says no later than 2012 — no matter what the rest of the world does. But by putting forward a simple, sharp critique of this costly and risky scheme at a time of global economic turmoil and when no global consensus exists, the Coalition would be better able to feel the pain of battlers who will suffer most from higher energy prices as companies pass on costs.

This is what Brendan Nelson was essentially saying behind the scenes. For his pains, he was disowned by many of his colleagues and was denounced as a denier by the foolish. But this is what Malcolm Turnbull should be saying on the record in the most forceful and coherent language he can find — and sooner, rather than later, he will have to.

Tom Switzer was a senior adviser to the former federal Liberal leader Brendan Nelson and formerly an opinion editor of the Australian.

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Robert G.

October 22nd, 2008 6:33pm Report this comment

Global warming is a scam. Time to bury it far out in the outback. Earth temperatures have been dropping sense 1998 without carbon taxes. Vote all the GW scam artiest out of office now.

Peter J. Morgan

October 24th, 2008 8:50pm Report this comment

Carbon dioxide causes neither global warming nor global cooling.
Here’s an atmospheric physicist’s brilliant lesson in basic physics which proves it:
www.middlebury.net/op-ed/global-warming-01.html
Here’s something much more likely to explain why earth has alternate periods of global cooling and global warming: Meteorologist Dr Roy Spencer has just put out the results of his latest work:
http://www.weatherquestions.com/Global-warming-natural-PDO.htm
Here's some more good news -- there is more Arctic sea ice this year than there was last year!
For proof, click on this link:
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Extent.png