Renew Economy reports:
On Monday, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd made us wince as he confirmed plans to take the thought bubble away from Tony Abbott and transition to an emissions trading scheme a year early. Today, he made many cry as he identified the victims who would have to make way for his populist ploy.
The Rudd government has taken an axe to a series of climate change programs to make up the budget shortfall caused by the proposed accelerated transition to a traded emissions scheme to July 1, 2014. The axe has not touched the main renewable energy programs, but also will leave in place compensation for trade exposed and energy intensive industries.
The popular, and much praised, Clean Technology Investment Program is one of the major victims – with impacts on solar and energy efficient lighting – along with carbon capture and storage programs, and the biodervisity fund and the farming support fund.
Yodaddy, I fear you are optimicstic. Trading a carbon tax for a cap-and-trade, I think, is worse than the carbon tax.
If you’re going to have a stupid program, it’s better to pay for it by cutting other stupid programs than by cutting smart programs. But it’s better to quit the whole stupid part.
Human activity is a tiny driver in the climate system, overwhelmed by other drivers in a system that is beyond our prediction or control.
Any “climate control” policy or program is going to constrain people’s standards of living and choices. That seems to be their real purpose, regardless of the advocates’ statements about sea level and storms and droughts and floods and the children. Stop them all.
The shoes aren’t sticking out from beneath the house, but government sponsored ‘sustainable development’ is a little closer to being dead. The sun seems to be shining a little brighter and little songbirds are singing. In a few months we might even have a chorus of the little people.