The Spectator: Joyce is right

The Spectator Australia publishes an excellent opinion piece which just about sums up everything ACM stands for, applauding Barnaby Joyce for standing up to the nonsense of an ETS, and urging the Coalition to have the guts to fight an election on climate change and Rudd's spending spree:

Barnaby Joyce, leader of the National Party in all but name, gave a formative speech on Sunday at the Party Federal Council in Canberra. He underlined his party’s opposition to any emissions trading scheme, and called for a referendum on the use of nuclear power in Australia. His determination to stake out a National Party position independent of his Liberal coalition colleagues is understandable. The ETS is a political boon for the Nationals. Long a party in decline, they are now the only major Australian party that is outright opposed to an ETS. Many Australians support this position, and far more will support it once the full cost and futility of an ETS become widely apparent.

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Polls show most Australians support an ETS. But that is because it is bound up with the popular yet asinine notion of ‘doing something for the environment’. Only an election campaign provides the resources and political focus to blast away the moral hype. All that would remain is a giant tax to fix a debatable problem of disputed cause, a totally ineffective tax to boot. The world’s climate is never going to change because a country that produces about 1 per cent of the world’s carbon emissions decides to restrict its contribution a bit. And that is assuming all the science about anthropogenic global warming is correct. The ETS could end up being the Labor government’s own WorkChoices.

Read it all!