Climate Wars Back In Australia: Both Parties Pander To Zealots, Ideologues, Renewables

The climate circus is back in Australia

Election 2019 is coming and Turnbull just lit a fire under the conservative base. The Deplorables are angry. Phones are running hot today. The DefCons awaken.

In the last election, defiant non-left voters were the “most influential group” — the swingers who ultimately decide the winner. This was the same group the journalists completely missed, like Brexit and Trump voters.

The Australian government, despite the polls showing Australians don’t want to pay more for renewables, has agreed to try to legislate a 26% reduction in emissions, setting a target in stone that almost no other country has done. (Have any?)

Most countries have committed to nothing, or rather, they’ve committed to building nearly 300 coal plants. They’re planning 400 more.

A 26% mandatory target means so much more than just higher electricity bills, we’ll have to carve up our cattle and sheep, transport, waste, and the rest of the economy too. What are they thinking?

We could lead the world in agriculture or medicine but we picked Hare Kari?

We are the largest coal exporter in the world and it’s our largest export earner, we have a lower population density, bigger distances, higher transport needs, and 300 years worth of coal.

We already pay some of the highest electricity rates in the world. We have faster population growth than practically any other first-world nation (so we’re offering to ignore that completely and cut our total emissions, not our emissions per capita? Master negotiators, not.)

This is industrial and economic suicide, but on the upside, we will look fashionable in UN cafe-latte circles right until the lights go out. Good work Malcolm.

Sadly, the main opposition party’s aim is to destroy jobs and lifestyle even faster. Why go out on a limb when you can launch yourself with a canon?

The “conservatives” want a 26% reduction, Labor thinks a 45% cut will stop storms and make electricity cheaper. (So why not do 100%?)

This is a big risk the party did not have taken

Just like 2009 — Turnbull fell on his sword over climate change and was tossed out as opposition leader, he’s doing it again.

He runs a one-seat majority government, up to ten MPs have such great reservations they say they might cross the floor (and vote against it).

Turnbull has to get the Labor party and states to back this. If he fails, the word is it will cost him his leadership.

That gives the Labor party huge leverage over the policy details.

They may say “No” because the policy is not suicidal enough and they are scared of losing the Green voters.

Or because they want to troll the Libs, watch them immolate and pick a new leader, in which case, the jokes on them.

If somehow Turnbull pulls it off, the Liberal base will desert the party, he’ll have to put in two million dollars of his own money this election to replace the lost donors, and he’ll likely lose anyway. What drives this man?

Foreign readers can get some idea of the schism in Australian politics — the last Prime Minister of the very same party writes of the dissent in the ranks at the party meeting on the NEG: “there were lots of pleas for unity, but as one MP said, we’ve got to be loyal to our electorates and to party members too, and not show the “unity of lemmings”.

On Abbott’s Facebook page there are over 600 commenters, most of whom are congratulating him and pleading for cheaper electricity.

Peter O’Brien replies — Tony, The Real Lemmings are Smarter

What they [Liberals] have done, to put it in the most simple terms, is back a policy that will now be filtered and modified by the demands of state premiers to whom Turnbull will be obliged to defer if he hopes ever to go before the cameras and claim with that patented supercilious grin that his NEG has carried the day. It won’t be his NEG by that stage. What sort of a “conservative” leader places his destiny in the hands of Laborites?

For people looking to understand the political ramifications, read all of Peter O’Brien’s piece at Quadrant.

Read rest at JoNova