Agmates

Alex Mitchell in an article published on Crikey writes:

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Alex Mitchell

Queensland Nationals Senator Barnaby Joyce has drawn a line in the sand: he won’t be supporting Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s emissions trading scheme.

If Malcolm Turnbull’s shadow Cabinet decides to give critical support to the scheme, Joyce will oppose them on the floor of the Senate.

If his own National Party colleagues decide to give qualified backing to Labor’s ETS project, he will defy them and vote against — even though he is the Nationals Leader in the upper house.

In other words, Joyce is on a collision course with the Coalition leadership, the Liberals and his own Nationals over ETS. It could rock the Coalition: senior Liberals are demanding that the Nationals expel Joyce (and anyone who supports him).

If Joyce and his close-knit supporters are removed from the Nationals whip, they intend forming their own parliamentary grouping based on the principles of the old Country Party.

Joyce sets out his opposition to the Rudd plan in a lengthy article he has written for the Queensland-based rural website agmates.com edited by Steve Truman.

He describes the proponents of ETS as religious zealots who don’t have the science to back up their doom-laden claims.

“Those who dare to question are held as heretics,” he writes.

“I don’t pretend for one moment to be a scientist but in my role in the Senate it is implicit in my job to be a sceptic, to question and to consider all sides and be open to the views of many rather than one view.

“My current concern with the emissions trading scheme is that a religious fervour has built up around the altar of global warming. Those who serve at the altar have become ruthless in their denigration of alternate views.”

In old-fashioned populism we haven’t seen since Sir Joh Bjelke-Peterson, he claims the scheme is nothing more than a tax-raising enterprise which will punish people’s pockets and jobs.

The trouble is that a large sector of rural Australia as well as climate change skeptics in the cities are listening: it is music to the ears of the mining industry too.

Meanwhile, the Labor Party can sit back and watch the squabble within the Coalition flare into civil war. As Malcolm Turnbull himself as acknowledged, Coalition disunity is electoral death.

END

Have Your Say!

Agmates believes in sensibly presenting differing opinions on the issues of the day. Then our members can make their own judgments.

Syd Walker [pictured] is a committed Environment and Social Justice advocate and just a bloody good bloke.

Syd is also the Editor of his own Blog Syd Walker and he had asked me if he could publish the environmentalist point of views for the Agamtes community to digest. Syd writes (this article is also published on Syd’s site today):

*****

As our mainstream politicians and major polluting industries are apt to remind us often, Australia is only a bit player when it comes to global greenhouse emissions. We contribute a relatively small proportion of the global total, overshadowed by the USA, Europe, China and other more populous regions of the planet.

On the other hand, Australia’s per capita CO2 emissions are among the highest in the world. Australia’s ‘historical responsibility’ for the increases of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere since industrialization began is also disproportionately high.

Climate Action Network Australia issued a Position Paper called Greenhouse Gas Emission Reduction for Australia in August 2008. It mounted a case for a 40% emissions reduction target for Australia by 2020.

Here’s the nub of CANA’s argument:

The IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report concluded that, for 2° to 2.4°C warming scenarios, global emission reductions in the range of 50 percent to 85 percent by 2050 (compared to 2000 levels) are required (36).

To keep global warming well below 2°C, the global community must aim for the upper end of this range. This was confirmed more recently by Martin Parry, Co-Chair of the Working Group II of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, who also highlighted the need for global cuts of 80% by 2050 (37).

Within the global community, the wealthy and developed Annex I countries must respond to these scientific projections with ambitious emission reduction targets. Their combined efforts must result in collective emission reductions by at least the upper end of the 25 to 40% range by 2020, based on 1990 emission levels (38).

The current international climate negotiations are at a crucial stage, where governments must agree on a comprehensive deal that will prevent dangerous climate change. This agreement will be one of the most complicated ever agreed to at an international level.

Australia is in a strong position to play a positive role in influencing these negotiations that will include an agreement on the emission reduction targets.

If Australia is to demonstrate its leadership on climate change, it must set Australian targets that contribute to maintaining global warming as far below 2°C as possible. To achieve this, the Federal Government should adopt the following emission reduction targets, with the majority of emission reductions being delivered domestically:

• 2010 peak emissions, to decline thereafter
• 2020 at least 40 % emission reductions below 1990 levels
• 2050 at least 95 % emission reductions below 1990 levels

Note that even achieving these very ambitious targets, if the IPPC is correct, will still lead to a significant increase in global temperatures (around 2 degrees centigrade by 2050).

(more…)

The Australian Greens and Eco-Fundamentalist have declared that Australia’s ETS reduction target of 5% means we will lose the Great Barrier Reef.

Ask any green and they will swear that’s the truth even though they have never visited one square inch of The Great Barrier Reef which includes over 2900 reefs, around 940 islands and cays, and stretches 2300 kms along the Queensland coastline.

Heres what a couple of guys who dive the reef most days have to say:.

Shark expert Ben Cropp said yesterday the outer reef was more or less the same as when he started diving 50 years ago…..  I’ve got a gut feeling the reef will cope with climate change, if it exists, but that’s just a gut feeling. Scientists say you aren’t allowed to have a gut feeling, but my gut feeling is based on diving the reef for half a century. But then again, I’m not their kind of expert.

And Patrick Ligthart, is a volunteer with the Low Isles Preservation Society and cleans away rubbish and maintains the reefs around the Low Isles.

… said his section of the reef had never looked better, and he was sceptical about predictions of its demise… I come out to the reef all the time, and the reef’s in good shape…. even old timers say the reef here has never looked better.

I don’t know why these fear-mongers keep making these claims

Yet Bob Brown and The Greens continue unabated with their fear mongering claims that Climate Change is killing the iconic Great Barrier Reef. 

It follows then that Brown and the Greens would lie to the Australian public about other things too.

Have your say!

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s decision to go for 5% emissions cut by the year 2020 was that of a responsible national leader. 

He has steered an economically responsible course that sends a message to the world that we will take action equivalent to any other country but will not cripple our economy by running to far ahead of the rest of the world. If world leaders reach an agreement in Copenhagen next year we have scope to ramp up or reductions to 15%.

The reaction of The Australian Greens and Eco-Fundamentalist since the announcements has shown that these groups are really the ratbag green fringe element of Australian society.

I had been beginning to think that The Australian Greens may have been evolving into a credible and responsible alternative political force in Australia. This weeks events have revealed them for what they really are.

The alternative - that Australia lead the climate change parade rather than sitting comfortably in middle of the pack - is the kind of moral narcissism only the Greens and like-minded eco-fundamentalists can afford.

Bob Brown, who has the luxury of a public platform without the attendant responsibility, will always take the most extreme position, as he did on the weekend. He claimed that a target of 5 per cent to 15 per cent reductions by 2020 was “effectively running up the white flag on climate change”.

The absolute craziness of the Greens proposal is that we could do as Bob Brown insists and cut or emissions by 100% and it would make not one zot of difference to global emissions.

(more…)

Ordinary Australians should be pretty pleased with the Rudd governments emissions reduction target of 5% based on the fact that he’s outraged every deep-green in the country.

The Lunatic Greens are screaming ‘blue bloody murder’ over the Rudd Governments plan to cut Australia’s emissions by 5-15% by 2020. They were demanding 40% cuts.

But lets have a look on a per capita basis how our commitment stacks up. Table taken from the Emissions White paper Summary.

Not exactly shirking our responsibilities are we. In fact a commitment to a 5% cut in emissions is equivalent to a 34-41% cut in per head carbon emissions for every man woman and child in Australia.

In the above table I don’t see any other country or block of countries committing to that level of per capita cuts.

Crikey today ran a liveblogging forum that covered Rudds release of the targets, just to give you a feel for the reaction from the deep-greens:

12:32 | Sophie Black (Crikey Blog Editor): Welcome to the Rooted live blog, covering today’s release of the Rudd government’s White Paper. After a year in the making, and a morning wiled away with Penny Wong in the lock up for some, the details of the ETS are trickling out. And it seems 15% is as good as it gets. Discuss.

12:33 | Sophie Black: Kevin Rudd is now preparing to step up to the podium at the Press Club… tune in to Sky…

Then Rudd drops The 5% Bomb Shell:

12:36 Tim Hollo (Press secretary for the Greens): How dare he??? How dare he talk about protecting the Reef, when he’s just condemned it? Unbelievable.

12:46 Anna Rose (Co-Director of the Australian Youth Climate Coalition): I’m watching Kevin Rudd’s announcement - what a hypocrite.

12:55 Anna Rose: Couldn’t agree more - the government betrayed 6.9 million Australians today to cave into the demands of the 1000 biggest carbon polluting companies. Those 6.9 million are the number of Australians under 24 who were relying on him to protect our future.

12:56 Tim Hollo: Hey, Anna, love your focus on youth, but I’m over 24 and I fully intend to live until at least 2050. He’s screwed me over, too!

13:24 Sophie Black: Greenpeace press release hitting inboxes:

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has betrayed Australians on climate change by setting a pathetic emissions reduction target of 5 per cent, Greenpeace said today.

In response to the release of the Federal Government’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme White Paper, Greenpeace climate campaign coordinator John Hepburn said: “The Government’s target of 5 per cent by 2020 is totally unacceptable and cannot be allowed to stand.”

“Mr Rudd has betrayed the science, betrayed the community and betrayed the next generation who will have to live with climate change impacts.

“He has caved in to the bullying tactics of the coal and other polluting industries.”

13:48 Sophie Black: Press release just in — John Connor from the Climate Institute:

“Rather than backing smart voices in forward looking industries, the Government has buckled to the short-term interests of selfish business voices.

“What’s worse is that the Government has increased the number of free permits to major polluters and watered down the conditions which require them to clean up their act in return. This corporate welfare with inadequate transparency and accountability effectively means ordinary Australians are shelling out around $550 per person in 2020 to polluters.”

13:50 Clive Hamilton: The Government is talking up the per capita approach to “show” that its target is much tougher than it looks. Who would have thought that the radical approach of contraction and convergence would now be used in Australia to justify the most conservative and loophole-ridden climate policy we have seen.

Garnaut and the Government have adopted a particular path to per capita convergence that “protects Australia’s position”. It’s so reminiscent of the Howard Government at Kyoto.

14:07 Sophie Black: Bob Brown and Christine Milne presser:

Brown on Rudd: he’s no Bob Menzies when it comes to dealing with hecklers, and he’s no John Curtin when it comes to dealing with crises.

14:08 Sophie Black: Milne: ” today is the day that the Australian population will say ‘you are wrong, you have failed the nation’

14:16 John Hepburn (Greenpaece) “There were expectations it would be low but nobody thought it would be this low. Five percent, which is what we are looking at, is an outrage.”

Australia, which has been suffering a series of droughts in recent years, is expected to be one of the countries’ hardest hit by global warming.

I got on late because of the moving but here was what agmates threw into the mix - then they closed it down.

16:07 Agmates: Rudd & Wong have listened to real Australians on Climate Change. Once you get out of the affluent leafy suburbs of the capitol cities to the where working Australians live i.e western suburbs of Sydney or the whole of rural and regioanl Australia, you’ll see that those Australians don’t support the evengelical green notions of crippling our economies with huge cuts in GHG that will throw millions out of work.

Sorry to tell you guys this, but ordinary working class Australians, Unionist and farmers don’t support your latte sipping view of the world.

Fortunatley there are more of us who vote than there are you educated latte sipping affluent greens.

Rudd has done his re election chances an enormous amount of good here. If nothing else he’s a smart operator.

Having p***ed off all of those deep greens, I’d think that real Australians would be pretty happy with Prime Minister Rudd’s performance today. I mean all those outraged Greens, he’s got to be doing something right.

Have Your say!

The Federal Government has ruled out a deep cut to Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions before 2020, believing the world will not get its act together on climate change soon.

- Emission cuts 15% at most
- Emissions trading to start July 2010
- Business gets many free permits
- Power, coal to get $4 billion aid
- Electricity and gas bills to rise about $6 a week

You have to admire the fact that Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is a realist. I have been concerned that Kevin Rudd and Penny Wong had been swayed by the the deep-green lunies screaming for 25-40% cuts.

You’ve seen them too,  like John Connor from the Climate institute, Clive Hamilton, Barry Brook and all those upper middle class, inner city university educated  green snobs. The mainstream media loves to quote these people as if they represent the majority of Australians.

Kevin Rudd has shown he is a clever politician. He could not completely walk away from his election promise of a carbon emission reduction scheme so some sort of scheme had to be announced.

Rudd has heeded the concerns of rural & regional Australians expressed here on Agmates. He has listened to the unions and most of all he has listened to ‘Howards Battlers’ or as Rudd labels them ‘Working Families’. They are the millions of people who live in the outer suburbs of Australian Capitol cities.

Union Boss Paul Howes was speaking on behalf of not only his members, but all working Australians when he said:

My members and their wives, husbands and children are getting pretty tired of being told their jobs are dirty and polluting…

What Rudd realizes is that to listen to the vocal lunatic-green fringe and commit Australia to deep cuts in carbon emissions would hurt not only rural & regional Australian’s but the Mc-Mansion dwelling inhabitants of Western Sydney. To do this would be political suicide.

Rudd’s announcement may have enraged those deep-greens who live in the leafy inner city, where public transport is available, the tofu co-op is a block away and the local cafe serves fair-trade soy Latte, but at the end of the day there vote isn’t enough to keep him in power.

I’m enjoying watching the screams of horror from the lunatic greens -

Australia’s targets will enrage conservationists, but the Government says it’s unlikely the world can forge a strong greenhouse agreement so its targets are realistic.

Indeed, Mr Rudd was subjected to heckling by a female protester at the launch of the emissions trading scheme.

The female protester, believed to be a member of a Newcastle-based group, screamed ”No!” as Mr Rudd began announcing details of the emissions target. …

from The Australian

PRIME Minister Kevin Rudd’s launch of his greenhouse gas reduction plan was disrupted when three protesters approached him and were wrestled to the ground.

During a televised speech at the National Press Club, three young female environmentalists rose from their seats, walked towards Mr Rudd and heckled as he detailed his plans on climate change.

“We need hope,” one yelled.

“We’re not going to walk away from (action on) runaway climate change,” called out another.

“No, no” the protesters chanted as Mr Rudd spoke of emissions targets.

And why are these people so shocked and horrified?

It’s because they read & believe the Green alarmist hype thats printed in the likes of Rupert Murdocks News Limited Newspaper and the ABC National broadcaster that have been running an outrageously biased green agenda for years.

What they don’t realize is the Australian public is not stupid. Real Australians had stopped lsitening to their Green global warming alarmism hype some time ago.

Kevin Rudd today demonstrated that politically he’s smart enough to know this.

Have Your say!

Dr. James Hansen, a veteran NASA climate expert, has been both lauded and criticized for moving beyond studying global warming to pressing lawmakers and the public to end unfettered coal burning and build a nonpolluting energy system. I interviewed him 6.21.08 for a New York Times story and post and video on my Dot Earth blog.

Agmates Video Gallery

(thanks to Agmate Jeff)

Have Your Say!

Dr. Tim Ball [pictured] is a renowned environmental consultant and former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg.

Dr. Ball employs his extensive background in climatology and other fields as an advisor to the International Climate Science Coalition, Friends of Science and the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.

In the Canadian Free press on Wednesday Dr Ball writes:

• Proponents of human induced warming and climate change told us that an increase in CO2 precedes and causes temperature increases. They were wrong.
• They told us the late 20th century was the warmest on record. They were wrong.
• They told us, using the infamous “hockey stick” graph, the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) did not exist. They were wrong.
• They told us global temperatures would increase through 2008 as CO2 increased. They were wrong.
• They told us Arctic ice would continue to decrease in area through 2008. They were wrong.
• They told us October 2008 was the second warmest on record. They were wrong.
• They told us 1998 was the warmest year on record in the US. They were wrong it was 1934.
• They told us current atmospheric levels of CO2 are the highest on record. They are wrong.
• They told us pre-industrial atmospheric levels of CO2 were approximately 100 parts per million (ppm) lower than the present 385 ppm. They are wrong.

This last is critical because the claim is basic to the argument that humans are causing warming and climate change by increasing the levels of atmospheric CO2 and have throughout the Industrial era.

In fact, pre-industrial CO2 levels were about the same as today, but how did they conclude they were lower?

Read the rest of the article here.

Have Your say.

As much as the Labor government and Green groups desire to see Australia make cuts to its carbon emissions in the end it might be up to the Liberal / National Party to decide if it passes into law.

THE worsening economic downturn and deepening business concerns are hardening the Coalition’s resolve to delay the Rudd Government’s emissions trading scheme by one or two years.

National Party Senate leader Barnaby Joyce won’t be supporting the Emissions trading Scheme legislation.

National Party senator Barnaby Joyce has said there was no way he could vote for an ETS in the current economic environment,

The Liberals are saying they support the scheme, but want its start delayed by a year or 2. But you can take that with a grain of salt. As the Liberals showed in the Senate last week they will strongly oppose legislation right up to the final hour before the vote then cave in and support the government.

But Malcolm Turnbull and his emissions trading spokesman Andrew Robb made it clear yesterday that they could force a delay because many businesses would be struggling just to survive the next few years,

Spot the difference:

Barnaby Joyce say ‘there’s no way’ which means - ‘there’s no way’

Andrew Robb says ‘that they could force a delay’ - which means, ‘ah maybe, not sure, depends’

Have Your Say!

I actually did not ever think that I would stand and applaud a Union Boss. In today’s Australian the national secretary of the Australian Workers Union Paul Howes [pictured] gives it to the big banks.

THE hypocrisy of big banks such as Westpac and National Australia Bank that signed up to a corporate communique on climate change calling for aggressive unilateral targets needs to be exposed.

Having participated in what can be described only as a global stuff-up of our financial system, they now are trying to tell Australian corporations that operate in the real economy, and generate real wealth and real jobs, how to behave on climate change.

It’s time their dishonest motivation was exposed. Now that the huge profits made out of shoring up risky mortgage markets and fancy financial products have unwound - devastating the lives of countless millions of ordinary citizens - the banks are looking to create a new source of revenue from carbon-trading markets.

Be sure to click through and read the entire article it is an absolute rip snorta.

Paul is speaking for his union members and their families, but he is also reflecting the sentiments of Australian family farmers when he says:

My members and their wives, husbands and children are getting pretty tired of being told their jobs are dirty and polluting, particularly by bankers relentlessly pocketing their money and frittering away superannuation.

They work for sophisticated companies that are at the leading edge of efficient technology, environmental management and workplace safety.

They are proud of what they do, how they do it and the products they produce that help the rest of the world reduce their carbon footprint.

Its a pity that a few of our rural industry leaders did not speak as directly as Paul Howes.

Have Your say!