Tony Abbott's Environment and Climate Change policy can be read here (pdf) if you have the stomach for it.


Quote:

This will be achieved without new or increased taxes on Australian industries or increased costs to Australian households and families.

This is the key phrase in the entire policy.  The traditional question then becomes how will they pay for the policy?  After all another statement is:


Quote:

Our policy will cost $3.2 billion over 4 years...

So Abbott’s policy is to find $3.2 billion over 4 years, that’s $800 million a year without any new taxes and without any increased costs.  Surely this shows Abbott and perhaps the Coalition itself are living in a fantasy land.

Barnaby Joyce, Shadow Finance Minister gives the game away on Lateline:


Quote:

LEIGH SALES: Tony Abbott says the Coalition needs to find $3.2 billion over four years in the Budget to find this. As Finance Minister, where will some of those savings come from? BARNABY JOYCE: A whole range of issues. I’m too willing to drill into the figures, but let Mr Swan show me the mechanism of how we are going to do it.

Tony Abbott’s Coalition will find “those savings” by cutting back expenditures in other areas of the Budget but they are incapable of saying where as Senator Joyce makes clear.  It does not matter where in the Budget these expenditures are cut, it will result in “increased costs to Australian households and families.”

The only way this proposal and the other proposal in Abbott’s Environment and Climate Change policy can be made tenable is by deficit spending.  Tony Abbott has all ready argued against the current stimulus spending which has taken the budget into deficit as has Barnaby Joyce.

So, either the policy is not credible or the coalition is ignorant to the hypocrisy within their policy.

Or they will cut back on schoolhall spending.

You forget that a very common way of finding money is to cut spnding on a couple of things. I don't think it would be terrible hard to find 'ideological' spending', whichever side is in government. In a roughy trillion dollar budget, finding 3.2 billion dollars (3.2 %) can't be that hard.
Next time you have $100 in your pocket, ask yourself - can you spare $3.20 for ice cream?

Yes they could cut back school hall spending, which would increase the cost that schools would have to pay for school hall spending underway.  Which will ultimately translate into an increased cost for households and families.

The very thing the policy denies will happen


Quote:

This will be achieved without new or increased taxes on Australian industries or increased costs to Australian households and families.

By cutting any costs that the government is spending, it increases the costs that the private sector has to pay for that service.

The policy outlines quite clearly that they will pay for it without increased costs or new taxes.   This is clearly a lie but probably one spoken in haste, not through any ill-intention.

Not all government spending is on services.
And some services ought not to be paid for by government.

Senexx wrote on Feb 6^th, 2010 at 6:33pm:

The policy outlines quite clearly that they will pay for it without increased costs or new taxes.   This is clearly a lie but probably one spoken in haste, not through any ill-intention.

We pay for everything already. The government is an instrument of the people, not the other way around.

The best way to reduce GHG emissions with least harm to the economy is to put a price on it. The coalition often has the better policy from an economic perspective, but not this time. This policy totally discards economic reality for cheap populism.

Well said, FD!

freediver wrote on Feb 6^th, 2010 at 7:19pm:

The best way to reduce GHG emissions with least harm to the economy is to put a price on it. The coalition often has the better policy from an economic perspective, but not this time. This policy totally discards economic reality for cheap populism.

What's the 'popular' bit?

All carrot, no stick. Straight from the horse's mouth. Carrots grow on trees, BTW.

So people can recognise the greatest moral issue of our time (CO2 reduction) only if it is beaten into them with the tax stick?
Big brother's hoof is showing. The government (elected by the people) turns out to be more in tune with what people (ought to ) want than the people themselves! Thank you Karl, thank you Vladimir, thank you Adolf.

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So people can recognise the greatest moral issue of our time (CO2 reduction) only if it is beaten into them with the tax stick?

That's not what I said. What I said was, using a pricing mechanism will get you the reduction in GHG emissions you want for the least impact on our economy. If you want to become a hippy all of a sudden and hold hands round a campfire sharing carrots with mining executives, knock yourself. Just don't pretend it is economically rational.

freediver wrote on Feb 6^th, 2010 at 9:41pm:

Quote: So people can recognise the greatest moral issue of our time (CO2 reduction) only if it is beaten into them with the tax stick? That's not what I said. What I said was, using a pricing mechanism will get you the reduction in GHG emissions you want for the least impact on our economy. If you want to become a hippy all of a sudden and hold hands round a campfire sharing carrots with mining executives, knock yourself. Just don't pretend it is economically rational.

Ridiculous.

How so?

It brings up the question of how could you fund a  carbon reduction scheme. One of the ways would be to stop subsidising diesel to mining companies. That would give us 7 billion dollars a year towards such a scheme. Then we could stop subsidising people who have more than 1 child.

All these subsidies are contributing to the problem. Of course, it wouldn't be a very populist move. The latter would not help with election chances, so a good idea immediately goes out the window.

Soren wrote on Feb 6^th, 2010 at 6:42pm:

Not all government spending is on services. And some services ought not to be paid for by government.

I agree.


Soren wrote on Feb 6^th, 2010 at 6:44pm:

Senexx wrote on Feb 6th, 2010 at 6:33pm: The policy outlines quite clearly that they will pay for it without increased costs or new taxes.   This is clearly a lie but probably one spoken in haste, not through any ill-intention. We pay for everything already. The government is an instrument of the people, not the other way around.

I agree.  However whether a cost is cut by the government, no matter what goods or services, it will increase the cost elsewhere.  We call this opportunity cost, it is a trade-off, all policies have this - except this one apparently.

The policy clearly states it will do this by not increasing the cost of anything.

The 7 Billion dollar figure for diesel fuel subsidies mentioned by muso is pretty staggering.
Now he says it is for the mining industry, but I always thought it was a general exemption for "Primary" producers, which would include, loggers, farmers, and any other industry that can legitimately describe themselves as Primary producers.

If there is another extra allowance for mining companies on top of that exemption, then I would agree that it should go.

The Libs can never put forward a policy we could take seriously when their ranks are so full of ignorant denialists, as they will always be paying lip service at best, to an issue they consider either false, or unimportant.

Maybe the issue is false or unimportant. Just maybe. Have a liitle doubt.

Mozz. you don't believe in the resurrection - so why start a psychic life of belief with AGW? You know what Chesterton said -people like you, who don't blieve in god, start to believe in anything. Don't be the subject of a clever quip. Why make that 'anything' such a predicatbly fashionble, passing thing? Don't be a dandy, a slave to fashion this late in life. Why be part of the herd if you have avoided it thus far - if you have avoided it.

A rational approach to risk management is not a passing fad.

Why are you sounding more and more like a hippy Soren?

I generally am a pretty skeptical person, by nature, yet I also believe that it is the height of foolishness to just ignore professional advice, when you get it.

Now even if too much hyprbole is thrown around by some journalists, and politicians, about global warming, it does not alter the fact that I consider the advice given by the IPCC, even with it's faults, is still the best professional advice available.
I acknowledge they are fallible, and they will need to continuously adjust their findings, as mistakes are corrected, and more accurate data is collected, but to dismiss the whole thrust of their findings out of hand, out of sheer bloody minded obstinance, or by perversely elevating the value of opinions of sporadic crackpots, over that of the accumulated wisdom of the bulk of the scientific community, is beyond what any fair minded person could categorise as merely being skeptical.

So I can retain a healthy skepticism, and still acknowledge that the best information we have demands we address global warming as a real, and present threat to our environment, to do any less would just seem foolhardy.

If we can't trust scientists to read a thermometer, we are in trouble. This stuff isn't rocket science, y'know.

Collate figures, take out variables, draw a graph. Extrapolate. Thats about it.

I think nutting out the causative relationships is a bit more involved.

Lets accept it has been warming. Lets move away from all the cherry picking thats done such as starting from 1998 all the time. And other such diversions.

Its warming.

So, talking about causative relationships, the only reply to "its not CO2", is to come up with what it really is. In the IPCC report, all the causative effects have been removed out of the graph, except CO2. They take out the solar variation, el ninos...etc

If not CO2, what is the cause?

The cause is CO2 (and methane, nitrous oxide etc but mainly CO2.)

CO2 is not just a greenhouse gas it is dissolved into the oceans making them more acidic so threatening the basis of all marine life.

But we'll have endless supplies of soda water from the desalination plants. Beauty!

freediver wrote on Feb 8^th, 2010 at 7:03pm:

I think nutting out the causative relationships is a bit more involved.

Involved yes - but pretty well established. In a nutshell, if you add energy to a system, it's going to warm up. CO2 does that by slowing down the rate at which the earth loses heat by radiation.

Infrared (blackbody) radiation from the Earth is intercepted by CO2 molecules and re-emitted at all different angles, thus decreasing the IR radiation that was previously heading out to space. The other greenhouse gases, including water do a similar thing.

Very simplistically, it's a bit like putting on a jumper so that the heat escaping from your body is trapped.

Expressing that mathematically in terms of an atmospheric column of reducing density with altitude, is tricky to understand for the layperson.  

The changes are taking place mostly in the upper atmosphere.

mozzaok wrote on Feb 7^th, 2010 at 4:33pm:

The 7 Billion dollar figure for diesel fuel subsidies mentioned by muso is pretty staggering. Now he says it is for the mining industry, but I always thought it was a general exemption for "Primary" producers, which would include, loggers, farmers, and any other industry that can legitimately describe themselves as Primary producers.

What it comes down to is this: In Australia, the government is encouraging the burning of fossil fuels by handing out incentives to do so. The figure is actually more like 8 billion dollars combined in tax concessions. A substantial chunk of that goes to some of the largest companies in Australia in the form of diesel fuel rebates for mining and transport.

Effectively, through tax incentives, the government is spending approximately three times as much on encouraging the burning of fossil fuels as all the federal environmental protection measures combined. (most of my facts are from an article by Economist Simon O'Connor in this month's "Habitat Australia" )

This is what needs to be changed. It isn't a partisan issue. This has been going on for years under numerous governments.

muso wrote on Feb 10^th, 2010 at 8:30am:

The changes are taking place mostly in the upper atmosphere.

That is the expectation. But remind me, where did we read that satellites are not detecting the predicted upper-atmopheric warming? I recall a colourful graph NOT showing the tell-tale reddish blots up there.

Soren wrote on Feb 10^th, 2010 at 8:45am:

muso wrote on Feb 10th, 2010 at 8:30am: The changes are taking place mostly in the upper atmosphere. That is the expectation. But remind me, where did we read that satellites are not detecting the predicted upper-atmopheric warming? I recall a colourful graph NOT showing the tell-tale reddish blots up there.

You'll have to be more specific. I don't follow the latest contrarian guff.

freediver wrote on Feb 7^th, 2010 at 9:35pm:

A rational approach to risk management is not a passing fad. Why are you sounding more and more like a hippy Soren?

Globalwarminsceptic easily beats the odds-on favourite.


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