They're Just Giving Aid And Comfort To Global Warming

By Darryl Mason

If you're going to take on a sitting government with protests against that government's most high priority policy, you have to be prepared to cop a whole load of ugly shit from politicians, the media and opinionists. Think of the appalling abuse heaped upon the thousands of World War 2, Korea, Vietnam and Gulf War 1 veterans who joined hundreds of thousands of other Australians to protest the Howard government's War On Iraq in early 2003. They weren't just called extremists by politicians, they told by their own prime minister they were merely a "mob" and were "giving aid and comfort to Saddam Hussein."

And just like all those veterans, elderly people and young families who attended protests against the War On Iraq, the thousands of Australians who attended the No Carbon Tax Rally in Canberra earlier this week have now discovered what it's like to be uniformly smeared for the actions of the extremist few who also joined their protest.

Unlike 2003, however, there are now numerous ways for protesters to get their message out to wider Australia without having to rely on the mainstream media to speak truthfully of their motives :



The next big No Carbon Tax Rally will be held in Hyde Park, Sydney, on April 2.

Finally, someone explains the Labor and Liberals parties positions and policies on the greenhouse economy, carbon tax and carbon trading in a way that can be easily understood :

Professional idiot Andrew Bolt sees this photo of Prime Minister Julia Gillard and US President Barack Obama having fun in the West Wing...



and smells some kind of conspiracy! Or at the minimum, something suspiciously amiss :

Bolt : What an incredible coincidence, that a photographer was there to witness Julia Gillard kick a footy in the White House with Barack Obama.

Yes, what an incredible coincidence that the official White House photographer Pete Souza happened to be doing his job at the same time the leader of one of the United States' closest allies paid a visit to the White House.

Here's another Souza photo from the official White House photos & video site. It was so hard to find it was the first photo I saw when I visited the page :



Fact-checking, like spell-checking, has never been a priority for Bolt in his rush to get out his latest conspiracy soaked rantings, or yet another frothing demand for whoever happens to be prime minister to quit.

Interesting, though, that in all his daily blatherings about a carbon tax, Bolt doesn't mention that he works in a 'carbon neutral' News Limited workplace, and never discusses how much money his boss Rupert Murdoch is likely to save when carbon tax & trading for Australian businesses become a reality.

As ex-Australian citizen Murdoch's newspaper circulations plummet across the country and his dreams to get people to pay money to read his digital news sites fall apart, the tax benefits of running a carbon neutral corporation in a carbon currency economy will help pay all kinds of bills and keep wealthy non-stop whiners and intolerance spreaders like Bolt in paid employment.

But despite the hypocrisy, and deception, Bolt will keep railing against a carbon tax, knowing all the while that even if the Liberals were in federal power they, too, would be bringing one in, because that's what his readers want, and he has to keep those readers well pleased, and coming back, because Rupert still wants News Limited bloggers like him to convince their readers to hand over cash for iPad & iPhone apps instead of reading for free.

Good luck with that.

Vote Liberal, Labor Or Greens, It Doesn't Matter, Australia Will Still Get A Carbon Tax

By Darryl Mason

Chris Ulhmann writes on ABC's The Drum that Opposition Leader Tony Abbott knows he has only one shot at becoming prime minister, so this is it, he's going in hard...or so it would
appear :

The Coalition is not going to win a war for the votes of climate change purists or the devotees of detail. What it wants is to set up a position that it can defend while it seeks to win a war of attrition against the Government's emissions trading scheme.

It is reminiscent of what has happened to United States in Iraq and Afghanistan. Given its domination of the sky, no conventional army can stop an America invasion. But as Machiavelli knew, taking a country and holding it are two very different things. The way to beat America is to get its soldiers out of their planes and tanks and into a prolonged street-by-street battle.

The Coalition doesn't want to engage in lofty debates that it knows almost no one understands. It wants hand-to-hand combat on the cost of living increases that come with putting a price on carbon.

Climate Change Minister Penny Wong was almost, almost, worn down by Tony Jones on Lateline last night, when he refused to stop asking her how much pricing carbon will eventually cost the average family. She avoided answering at least twelve questions on the subject. It was gruesome, like watching John Howard in late 2002 trying to deny we were about to go to War On Iraq, when Australian soldiers had already been deployed, knowing they were going there to fight.

The Rudd government for now has not much to counter the opposition's claims that the GBNT (Great Big New Tax) will cost everybody. It will.

But Abbott already appears suspicious is his mind-numbing repetitive use of "Great Big New Tax" by not calling the GBNT what it really is, will eventually become, was always going to be. A Carbon Tax.

Abbott is reluctant to call it a carbon tax because he knows that if he becomes prime minister, it will be all but impossible for Australia to function in the New Global Economy without one.

Labor and The Greens want a carbon tax, the Liberals will accept one, and Barnaby Joyce will be told to hold back from shouting about '"Carbon Tax!!" in public, too often. Entertaining his own dreams of one day becoming prime minister himself, Joyce will also, reluctantly, play along.

The Carbon Tax was always going to be the end result of either the introduction of an ETS, or the abandonment of an ETS. It doesn't matter which reality unfolds between now and election day. The introduction of a carbon tax was the mission from at least 2006 onwards for Labor, the Liberals and The Greens, irrespective of how oppposed they appeared to be of each other's plans.

To really whip up the growing tide of climate change skeptics in Australia, to get on side a new Liberal conservative base, Abbott needs to go to the election pledging 'No Carbon Tax!' if he really wants to win.

But he won't do it.

No matter how much he wants to win.

.

Joyce Unveils .1% Dissent Against Liberals

They tried to make Barney believe in global warming, but he said, "No, no, no."

Senator Joyce said the Nationals did not always vote with their Liberal partners.

"About 99.9 per cent of the time, or more, we vote for the Liberal Party and I can't understand why people get their noses so out of joint when that's not the case,'' he said.

Even in a marriage, couples don't agree all the time, he said.

"I don't ... and no one says that's the end of this relationship, they just say that's the way relationships go.''

Yes, but the aggrieved partner may also seethe quietly while plotting wicked revenge.

Carbon trading, and the carbon tax, might be delayed for a year or two, but it's not going to fall into the "Forget About It" pit anytime soon. Most Labor and Liberal politicians want it, some of Australia's biggest businesses are demanding it, and Rupert Murdoch stands to make hundreds of millions of dollars from it, even if he lets a few of his columnists, for entertainment purposes, rage against it.

Barnaby Joyce could ride an anti-carbon tax movement to even greater election success, unless pensioners and the poor actually get paid cash by the Rudd government because they emit less carbon in their lifestyles than the rich, which is probably exactly what is going to happen to smooth over its introduction.

Everybody's Trying to Cash In On Global Warming, Even My Boss

By Darryl Mason

Under the headline, No Backers For Rudd's Reckless Plan, The Professional Idiot promotes the claim that climate change minister, Penny Wong, has no backing at all for the emissions trading system :

Here’s the real growing consensus among the public - that global warming theory is wildly exaggerated.

The Professional Idiot has somehow managed to forget that there is one very obvious backer of the Rudd government's emissions trading scheme, and its inevitable bigger family of global taxes, and credits, based on carbon usage, and that would be his own Earth Hour loving boss, Rupert Murdoch.

Rupert "Climage Change Poses Clear, Catastrophic Threats" Murdoch has put almost his entire worldwide news empire (including The Professional Idiot's Herald Sun) on a hardcore carbon diet, in the hope that when the carbon trading becomes reality, he'll be able to cash in. Just like the Rothchilds.

Hilariously, that big banner ad promoting the fact that News Limited, and the Herald Sun, are true believers in global warming, and reducing carbon emissions, appears yet again across the top of The Professional Idiot's story about how the Rudd government has little support for its emmissions trading plan.



(click to enlarge)

And in a bizarre admission for a journalist, hitting his sixth decade, The Professional Idiot reveals he has never seen the movie Network, hands down one of the most important films on the business of journalism ever made.

Quoting this fantastic speech by playwright Paddy Chayefsky, from a climactic scene in Network, was very popular with allegedly crazed, president hating, America despising Lefties during the Bush II regime. Now, of course, the "I'm Mad As Hell And I'm Not Going To Take It Anymore!" mantra is rapidly being adopted by conservatives for the Age of Obama, only eleven weeks into the new presidency. Same words, same message, same reality, different presidents :

I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth; banks are going bust; shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter; punks are running wild in the street, and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it.

We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat. And we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be!

We all know things are bad -- worse than bad -- they're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out any more. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we're living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, "Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials, and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone."

Well, I'm not going to leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot. I don't want you to write to your Congressman, because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street.

All I know is that first, you've got to get mad. You've gotta say, "I'm a human being, goddammit! My life has value!" So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out and yell, "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!!"

The Daily Telegraph's Tim Blair also suddenly notices something that has been going on in the United States for years, that he somehow managed to not notice at all during his beloved Bush II
reign :

"The police state continues to grow..."

The big banner Corporate Green ads from the boss, proclaiming that global warming is so real News Limited is frantically trying to reduce its carbon emissions, keeps showing up on Blair's blog, too, mostly when he's running stories proclaiming that global warming is a farce, a con, a delusion, bogus and that carbon trading will spell doom for all.

And still nothing from Blair on how disgusted he is that global warming propaganda is being jammed into News Corporation TV shows aimed at children.

When Tim Flannery and Bob Brown scare children with global warming hysteria, it's something evil, but when Tim Blair's boss does it, hey, it's just business.

Tough Stance On Licorice Legs

The Liberals are mounting a tough opposition to the introduction of the Carbon Tax (or emissions trading system). They're totally against Australia joining an EU-initiated program to impose a global tax on every kilometre you drive, the food you eat and just about everything you buy that hasn't been grown by a neighbour.

The Federal Opposition has intensified its attack on the Government's emissions trading scheme, warning it has "very big flaws".

Treasury spokesman Malcolm Turnbull went on the offensive today, saying parts of the scheme were absurd, it was too rushed, and the whole country was at risk from the scheme not working out.

So, the Liberals are finally taking a real stand of opposition to one of the most radical plans for a global tax ever devised.

The Government, which could struggle to get the scheme through a hostile senate, is putting pressure on the Liberals to approve the scheme.

But Mr Turnbull was in no mood to be conciliatory today as he spoke out against the Government's proposal.

The Liberals think a carbon tax is wrong, evil, and will destroy the Australian economy and smash tight household budgets to dust. Wow, how exciting it must be for Liberals to finally have a major Labor policy issue that their party leaders are mounting real opposition against.

Mr Turnbull said the Liberals' policy was to move towards emissions trading but to do so "with great care and with great deliberation".

Oh.

Sorry. It appears I've been mistaken. Turns out the Liberals are not opposed to the introduction of a carbon tax after all. They're all for that, of course. Just as John Howard was in his last months in office.

The Liberals aren't ready to oppose something they've clearly been told must be introduced, they just want to fuck around claiming the Rudd government are doing it wrong.


And is this the most curious thing of all? The introduction of a carbon tax for all Australians is the one issue upon which the Liberals, The Greens and Labor all agree.

We must have a Carbon Tax, just like Al Gore says.

Did they all get a divine memo from Green Jesus or something?


How desperate and bizarre it must be to be a decades-dedicated, die-hard Liberal voter, who truly believes that global warming is a New Green Order hoax and thinks Greenism is prettified socialism, that Nelson is a tool, but that Turnbull is even worse.

How galling it must be to them that Peter Garrett, for Menzies sake, is a senior government minister and regularly represents Australia on the world stage.

How shocking it must still be to see Bob Brown being interviewed, taken seriously, shown respect, not just on the ABC, but on the morning, midday and evening news on 9, 7 and 10.

How nauseating it must be for Howard-era Liberals to hear the dirty tree hippie chants and envirolosophy of early 1980s anti-logging and anti-dam protests being repeated by almost the entire front bench of the Liberal opposition every time a microphone turns in their direction.

Who do they turn to for representation now? The Nationals?

Labor might have moved centre and fully adopted (for now) Rudd's promised 'economic conservatism', but the Liberals turned long lines of humiliating backflips to update themselves to modern Australia's Green-soaked belief systems and passion for clean(er) energy.

The Greens are now the real third party of Australian politics.

Bob Brown didn't need to become prime minister to see entire slabs of his environmental conservation and anti-global warming policies become reality.

So popular had long-established Green Party platforms become by 2007 that we witnessed the brain-frying Theatre Of The Absurd that was John Howard's Liberals and Kevin Rudd's Labor actually fighting in public over who loved and cared for the environment more, and who would be best at fighting climate change.

In the shaping of a new pro-environment, clean energy Australia, it wasn't Labor or Liberal ideas that won in the end.

It was The Greens.

They were there first, and they did most of the ground work in re-introducing city-dwelling Australians to the wonders of our rainforests, wetlands and wilderness areas, promoting the theory and suspected consequences of global warming, demanding expansion of solar energy usage and investment in alternative energy sources, while raising the original arguments for why we have to have a carbon tax.

A carbon tax that both Labor and Liberals now fully agree must be introduced, but the details of which are now being squabbled over. Like it will make any difference in the end.

The Greens won.

Rudd Announces Massive Emissions Cuts By 2020

Australians To Feel Full Force Of Economic Fight Against Climate Change

A few hours after telling the United States that they had to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, and getting knocked back, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced that Australia would leap headfirst into setting a world standard for cutting carbon emissions with a stunning declaration of up to 40% cuts within 12 years.

Only days before the election, on November 24, Rudd was still refusing to announce Australia's interum greenhouse gas emissions target, that would fall between now and his announced target of 60% cuts by 2050. Rudd said he would wait until he received a report on how emissions cuts would affect Australian business and the economy before announcing a 2020 target.

The announcement that Australia will aim to cut emissions by 25 to 40%, by 2020, came after both China and Indonesia demanded that all countries who have ratified Kyoto (as Australia has just done) must meet the targets agreed to in an "understanding" earlier this year :

Last night Australia publicly aligned itself with the nations under the Kyoto Protocol that have agreed to consider these cuts, distancing the new Rudd Government further from the US position. Saying Australia "fully supports" the position, the delegation said Australia was, "happy to proceed on this basis".

....when (Rudd) arrives in Bali next week he will face international expectations from Europe, China and Indonesia to make Australia's position clear whether, having ratified the Kyoto Protocol, it is committed to its own deep cuts.

...China, Indonesia, India and most of the poorer nations speaking at the Bali conference yesterday made their views clear that rich countries, including Australia, must commit to deep cuts to their greenhouse gases within 12 years, by 2020 and keep the model of the Kyoto Protocol in the new climate agreement.

"It is a successful model and we should persist with it," the Chinese delegate told the talks.

Yvo De Boer, head of the United Nation's climate team, who are hosting the Bali talks, has told Rudd that if he serious about "bridging the gap" between developing and industrialised countries on climate change, he should get himself to Bali immediately, and not next week as originally planned.

If Australia is to meet emissions cuts of 25 to 40% within twelve years, we are really going to feel it. How exactly Rudd intends to get Australia to make such massive cuts, in such a short space of time, is unclear but it will obviously require some drastic measures, or Australia will face huge international fines, worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Paying Papua New Guinea to preserve some of the last great expanses of ancient rainforests left in the world today, to act as carbon sinks, will probably figure to a large degree in Rudd's plans, as will the rapid roll-out of solar, wind and geothermal energy.

China and Indonesia are obviously playing hardball, and Rudd might have spoken too quickly about his plans to 'bring the world together' on climate change, now that he has decided such a move will be his Look What I Can Achieve mission in the next month.

While China and Indonesia will obviously want the so-called 'roadmap' on climate change under discussion at Bali to benefit them financially, they may only push so far, as it is unlikely they will want to embarrass Rudd, who they view as an important and beneficial ally, so early on in his leadership.

But then again, this is international politics, and international economics.

Rudd may be about to receive one very nasty wake-up call to how the rest of the planet, including China and Indonesia, really view Australia, and its place of importance in the world today.

It should also be noted that Rudd has many of Australia's largest corporations, including mining companies, backing his announcement of a 2020 target. They're ready to dive into the new global economy of carbon trading, and work emissions cuts and carbon credit values into their business plans and profit projections for the next few years. Something they were unable to do, and were growing increasingly annoyed about, under the Howard government.