May 9, 2013
Column - Combet
announces the death of the
warming scare
I watched the global warming scare this week drowning in a pool of red ink, right on my television screen.
I don’t just mean Climate Change Minister Greg Combet being forced yesterday to eat his mendacious words, having blown a gigantic hole in the Budget .
First there was Monday night’s Q&A on the ABC, where students fired earnest questions at Prime Minister Julia Gillard on such things as bad sexism, poor boat people, and evil Israel.
But not one of these well-coached idealists asked a question on global warming.
When Kevin Rudd as Prime Minister faced students on Q&A in 2010, he was asked at least a dozen.
Back then, and after, Labor was so sure global warming was the new moral crusade that it gave us a carbon tax we didn’t want and didn’t vote for.
It was just as sure – and just as wrong – the rest of the world would also impose stiff carbon taxes, so we would not be alone in driving up power prices and killing jobs .
Greg Combet was so certain that he last year linked Australia’s carbon trading scheme - to replace the carbon tax in 2015 - to Europe’s, the world’s biggest.
Greg Combet was so certain that he last year linked Australia’s carbon trading scheme - to replace the carbon tax in 2015 - to Europe’s, the world’s biggest.
He was betting a committed Europe would ramp up its own price to $29.
The Government then figured how much it would earn from all that loot – and blew the lot, with $1.4 billion promised in tax cuts from 2015.
You couldn’t tell Combet he was mad – Europe was too broke to slug business like that.
But now the truth can be denied no longer.
Europe’s price is bogged at under $5, and if it’s still near that by 2015, the Budget will have a hole north of $7 billion a year.
So Combet was sent out yesterday to admit the promised tax cuts, meant to compensate for the tax, would not be paid.
But the full story is that the $23 carbon tax Labor gave us last year has been entirely for nothing.
In two years the price will fall to a fraction. Companies will simply wait for that rather than invest in expensive technology to cut their emissions – which wouldn’t change the global temperature anyway, even had it risen these past 15 years.
What a colossal folly. What a criminal waste.
Does ANYBODY know if they are going ahead with this, and only dumping the compo side? Nobody seems to be asking this VERY important question. HELP PLEASE…
Thu 09 May 13 (09:31am)
Thu 09 May 13 (09:41am)
Thu 09 May 13 (09:43am)