Turnbull - more of a Greenie than Rudd

Malcolm Turnbull is set to try to trump the Government's "carbon pollution reduction scheme" by introducing a policy of alternative energy, forestry and carbon sequestration, The Australian reports.

Mr Turnbull's first major policy announcement since he ousted Brendan Nelson from the Liberal Party leadership in September will come in a speech today to a Young Liberals convention in Canberra.

"The Rudd Government, in its haste to implement its poorly designed ETS, has neglected all alternative paths to a low-carbon economy," says a copy of Mr Turnbull's speech.

"We need imagination, we need passion, we need courage and, above all, we need real leadership.

"We cannot afford to blunder on with Mr Rudd's miserable, bureaucratic approach."

Mr Turnbull's plans, for which he will not provide costings, represent a clear attempt to counter Labor attacks on the Coalition's refusal to commit its support to the planned ETS, which has dominated Mr Rudd's agenda for the past year.

Apart from the fact that many of the technologies the policy requires are unproven (and uncosted), Malcolm Turnbull and the Opposition are heading off in completely the wrong direction. Instead of standing firm against the ETS and the IPCC non-science that is behind it, they are attempting to outflank Krudd & Co by adopting even more Greenie policies than the Government, and in the process shifting themselves dangerously to the Left.

As predicted, Turnbull and the Opposition are so cowed by the possibility of Rudd calling them "climate change deniers" that they have sold out their principles to the environmentalist cause.

Contrast this nonsense with the words of Tony Abbott, also in The Australian, where he rightly says:

the party should resist the urge to take populist stances on issues, instead of fighting for what is right.

How ironic - the Opposition policy on climate change outlined above has nothing to do with what is right, and everything to do with populism.

Mr Abbott says those who see unions as "just another sectional interest" and who "heed climate change science rather than green religion" are more important than ever since the defeat of the Howard government.

This is a very disappointing day for climate change policy in Australia. We are now in a position where only one (small) party, the Nationals, has the guts to oppose Rudd's pointless ETS (and despite Turnbull officially reserving his position on it, we know full well he won't oppose it outright).

Read it here and here.