Renewable energy target is "mad, bad tokenism"

The RET isn't just a feel-good gesture that the Opposition should wave through, it will achieve what all climate related legislation achieves: nothing in terms of climate, everything in terms of increased costs for consumers:

HURRAH, the Rudd government and Turnbull opposition have agreed to pass the Renewable Energy Target, an initiative unjustified in economic terms that makes emission reduction costs three times more expensive than the price of permits under cap and trade and resurrects government planning that Australia spent half a century trying to escape.

This is an initiative driven totally by politics. In a new world of climate change tokenism it means Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull are heroes. Government support to create new renewable industries otherwise untenable has become the test of being "serious" about climate change.

Perhaps it is time to be grateful for small mercies since in the scale of climate change policy atrocities this is modest. But it illuminates a greater truth: a fundamental change in policy values produced by global warming and a new hypocrisy about solutions running from renewables to nuclear power.

And the Nationals (and some Liberals) aren't going to let it pass without a fight:

MALCOLM Turnbull will be forced to seek Coalition partyroom approval before signing a deal over the government's renewable energy target, after several backbenchers expressed concerns yesterday he was not driving a hard enough bargain.

In a sign of how hard the Opposition Leader will have to fight to get backing for any kind of climate change legislation, Nationals senators Ron Boswell, Barnaby Joyce and Fiona Nash said the opposition should insist on all of its proposed amendments before allowing the bills through the Senate.
…
The Nationals were backed by Liberal senators Cory Bernardi, Mathias Cormann and backbenchers Bronwyn Bishop and Wilson Tuckey, with many arguing that opposition environment spokesman Greg Hunt should drive a harder bargain in the talks he is holding with Climate Change Minister Penny Wong.

Read it here and here.