Turnbull's flawed ETS policy

Malcolm Turnbull, flanked by Andrew Robb and Senator Nick Xenophon, proudly announced today that he engaged an economic research organisation (doubtless at not inconsiderable cost) to analyse the economic impacts of Rudd's proposed ETS, and to propose a way to make it "greener" whilst at the same time cheaper. The report runs to over 100 pages, and I really don't have the inclination (nor the time) to review it in detail, for reasons which will become apparent. If you wish to read it, however, it can be found here.

The entire premise of this document is fundamentally flawed. As Andrew Bolt pointed out this morning, Turnbull seeking to out-green Rudd is a tacit acknowledgement that he accepts the argument (also flawed) that emissions of CO2 are causing dangerous climate change and must therefore be reduced. I was horrified to see that the document uses, without question or criticism, the government's term "Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme" and "CPRS" throughout - falling headlong into the government's trap of labelling the harmless trace gas carbon dioxide, plant food and essential for all life on earth, as "pollution".

And the subtext of all this is that we need deeper cuts in emissions. How wrong can Turnbull, Robb and Xenophon be? They have accepted, again without question, the word of the IPCC, which we know to be a politically motivated organisation whose terms of reference require it to focus solely on "human-caused" climate change. You should also bear in mind the ultimate aim of the UN - global governance and control. There is nothing that is more likely to deliver such global governance into the hands of a grateful UN than the hysteria of climate change.

The science is not "settled" - the debate is not over. New discoveries about the hugely complex climate system are being made literally every day. New research shows that solar variation has a huge part to play in major climatic variations, and that cosmic rays also have a significant effect on climate - both issues that the IPCC chooses to downplay significantly. How can Turnbull therefore be so blinkered as to believe the IPCC's (and the government's) spin on the causes of climate change, and be certain enough in their predictions of catastrophic climate change to burden future generations with this disastrous tax?

Regrettably, ACM hopes that the Government refuses to entertain any change to the ETS either at this vote or the next (which looks like happening), thereby forcing the Coalition to do what it should have decided to do long ago, namely vote against it at any and every opportunity.