Climate Change proponents emails and files hacked

[Magda Hassan]

What do the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand have in common?

Echelon and cricket and war criminals as heads of state.
I find myself in the unusual position of supporting some of the Liberal and National Party pollies here in their rejection of an emissions trading scheme legislation but not for the same reasons they are rejecting it. With them it mostly seems to be because of their business interests (petro/coal industry or the compliance with be too much of a burden for business in general and business must be 'free' and unregulated) they are against it or because they do not 'believe' there is any such thing as global warming because some of them are not the brightest bunch. The leader of the Liberals is formerly a merchant banker and is supporting the emissions trading scheme as a banker and not an environmentalist. I agree that there is something called global warming and that humans have had a negative impact on the well being of the planet, including us, since major industrialisation. But even if it can be proven to me that there is no such thing as global warming I just can't see a down side in moving to a zero emission base. Air quality alone (good old fashioned air pollution which everyone agrees does exists) in the world's urban areas is poor and causes much illness with respiratory diseases. All that would be gone if industry was zero emission.

An emissions trading scheme on the other hand is just so much bull shit and the fact that it is being bundled into other legislation instead of separately causes me to wonder about the motives of the others who proposed it (the other business party currently in government) There are two separate issues and they are being conflated in people's minds. An ETS is just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. It will have no effect on reducing emissions just making money from shifting around responsibility for the cause of those emissions and seems to be supported by the corporate entities especially the big polluters (who can continue to evade their environmental responsibilities) and the finance sector which will do for the carbon trade market what they did for mortgages and wasn't that fun? In the mean time tribal people with almost zero footprint will be banished from their hunting grounds as the corporate interest buy up the carbon credits there so they can continue to pollute. Banking and finance types will make a fortune out of moving zeros and ones on their computers. The rich will get richer and the planet more polluted and the cause of pollution more entrenched.

So, I too reject the legislation because it is very flawed and does nothing to deal with the root causes of emissions and is an open cheque book for gross corporate abuse. I expect there are a couple of pollies rejecting it on this basis too but most of them are rejecting it for other more parochial and self interested reasons.