Aussie journo slates toothless Australian Treasury
2 November 2008
An Australian correspondent for the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition draws our attention to an article in the influential The Australian newspaper:
This is an outstanding piece of critical writing from economist Terry McCrann that summarizes the ETS scene in Australia at the moment.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24583002-30538,00.html
Incredibly, virtually every other commentator and economist who has been quoted in the Australian media - plus all the usual pundits, celebrities and gurus, not to mention the Prime Minister and his climate mistress Penny Wong - have all accepted the Treasury ETS modelling at face value.
The government, accordingly, proceeds calmly towards an ETS Bill, citing as justification that it won't hurt the economy by a significant amount.
"Take your medicine now, dear; swallow slowly; there now, it tastes quite nice, doesn't it; and it will do you so much good; you'll FEEL better".
Meanwhile, today we have an explosion of comment on the media from the environmental NGOs of the usual pernicious nonsense that NOW (I think they mean "today") is our "last chance" to save the Great Barrier Reef and Kakadu National Park from the ravages of climate change.
A precursor to this, on the ABC TV's flagship Lateline program a couple of nights back, was a Julie Andrews happy family video vignette of Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg (Australia's resident James Lovelock, and an "expert" on coral bleaching), with his wife and two charming children, splashing about in azure blue waters on the edge of a GBR reef and reminiscing about how sad it is that his grandchildren won't be able to see this natural wonder. Doubtless he will be a candidate for the next Nobel Peace Prize.
There's no doubt that the Greens are ramping up the hysteria as they observe that the greenhouse scam is starting to take a back seat to the global financial crash, as public opinion polls in UK, USA and Australia show marked swings back towards sanity, and after the Canadian election which has buried carbon dioxide taxation there for the foreseeable future.
In other words, current Green AGW scaremongering in Australia (with active and full support from most reporters and media outlets) is clearly part of a co-ordinated attempt to ramp up the pressure to get ETS legislation passed before public opinion swings irretrievably the other way.
And, unfortunately, the signs are that the govt. will get its ETS bill before the Parliament in the nick of time, and pass it into law just as the duplicity of AGW finally becomes exposed.
That said, there have been two encouraging political signs. First, the National Party (which was part of Howard's coalition government) has recently adopted a new policy which says "We will support an Australian ETS only in so far as it is part of a global agreement"; this contrasts with the official policy of the current Liberal and Coalition leader, Malcolm Turnbull, who supports an ETS but thinks it should be delayed until 2011 rather than implemented (as the Rudd government intends) in 2010. Second, several climate rationalist Liberal backbenchers have formed a new Climate Change Committee to examine the issue within the party. Summarizing that, hopeful stirrings are producing bubbles of commonsense, but as yet no more, on the Australian political scene.
So far as I can tell, only the following handful of journalists stand between the Australian public and the pending ETS disaster:
PRINT: Terry McCrann, Andrew Bolt, Miranda Devine
RADIO: Alan Jones (2GB, Sydney), Michael Smith (4BC Drive, Brisbane), Michael Duffy (ABC Radio, Counterpoint)
TV: None.
We should all cherish, not to mention admire, these rare commentators for maintaining a voice of reason at this time of a blizzard of frisbee science and spin.