Climate fiction from EC President

Actually it's not just fiction, but outright [insert L-word here]. Writing in the Fairfax press this morning, where else, Jose Manuel Barroso clearly hasn't been looking out of the window for the last 10 years:

CLIMATE change is happening faster than we believed only two years ago. Continuing with business as usual almost certainly means dangerous, perhaps catastrophic, climate change during the course of this century. This is the most important challenge for this generation of politicians.

And at the same time, Kevin Rudd has conceded that there is little chance of any agreement at Copenhagen… but that we should still plough on with the ETS before December anyway. Maybe one of you can explain the logic, because it eludes me:

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says he is not prepared to delay consideration of the Government's emissions trading scheme legislation despite conceding a global agreement remains some way off.

Mr Rudd is in New York to advance international negotiations on strategies to cut greenhouse gas emissions ahead of the December Copenhagen summit.

However, he is worried progress on international climate change talks are progressing too slowly to reach an agreement before [at?] Copenhagen.

And unfortunately, the Opposition's stand-in emissions trading spokesman, Ian Macfarlane still believes that negotiating with the Government is the best option:

The Government says it is prepared to negotiate on the legislation if the Coalition puts forward specific changes to the bills.

Mr Macfarlane says he expects to have amendments ready before Parliament resumes in four weeks.

"I'm still confident that within a week, I'll be able to sit down with the Department of Climate Change and have a preliminary discussion about their latest information from Copenhagen and following that, frame up a set of amendments over the following two weeks that I'll firstly take to Shadow Cabinet and then to the party room," he said.

Wrong answer.

Read it here and here.