It seems likely then that Gillard will be forced to push ahead with a carbon tax while the rest of the whole world balks at the prospect. Much like the same situation Rudd faced earlier this year – which probably ended up costing him his leadership.

The chance of a climate bill passing the US Congress becomes lower day by day as the mid-term elections draw near. The elections will likely see the Republicans take control of at least one chamber, basically killing Obama’s ambitions to tax breathing out. Despite what the ABC writes, China and India are not about to cap and trade their economic development either. They maybe investing in some piece meal ‘renewable’ energy projects but they are not going to tax carbon, especially if the US does not.

So where does that leave Gillard? She has signed the ALP up to a bunch of fanatics in the Greens and it seems they will force Gillard to go it alone on carbon taxation or risk losing control of the Senate and even denying supply. If Gillard is returned to government it is going to get very messy indeed.

To recap, SPA is an organisation made up of fringe dwellers that has previously advocated the adoption of abortion and government mandated one-child policies to control Australia’s population, to avoid some type of  ‘day after tomorrow’ environmental horror show. Like Gillard, SPA is long on scaremongering short on the detail and of course empirical evidence.

SPA is a who’s who of pseudo-intellectuals that spend more time it seems in the media than doing serious academic research. If there is one thing that binds these people together though it is the outlook that people are always the problem. Given Gillard’s personal life style choices it seems that she is lock stock in barrel with SPA.

UPDATE

Apparently Family First is saying that Gillard agreed to let the Greens push for the opening of heroin injecting rooms across the country. I think this may be speculation – not certain if confirmed.

When Gillard talks about a sustainable population – the left really mean government controls to limit family size and encouraging more abortion. Just do a basic google news search and you’ll soon realise where the left are coming from on this issue. One wonders what her new minister for ‘sustainable population’ will be planning in the coming months. Consider the following news bite from 2009:

A population control pressure group has issued a call for the Australian government to institute a one-child policy to ensure the continent’s environmental and economic “sustainability.” Sustainable Population Australia (SPA) said this week that Australia’s 22 million people must be reduced to 7 million and that restricting each couple to one baby, as China does, is “one way of assisting to reduce the population” and avoiding “environmental suicide.” 

Given that Gillard is the leader of the looney left, where does she stand on the issue? Don’t expect a straight answer. SPA is headed by the usual ALP supporters such as Tim Flannery, Ian Lowe, etc… all members of the Australian Conservation Foundation, which is a major promoter of climate change policies and taxes. Given Gillard’s strong statements on the need to control carbon emissions through government taxes and penalties, it does not take much of an imagination to make the link between limiting people’s decisions over their own family life in accordance with Gillard’s sustainable population ideal and the climate change agenda of limiting carbon growth through abortion and one-child policies. SPA supports such a move, all of whom support Gillard’s carbon taxation agenda. ALP Victorian figure Kelvin Thompson is a major Gillard supporter and favours limiting Australia’s population to 26 million. It is likely that Gillard got the idea for sustainable population from Kelvin Thompson. He has been doing the rounds for some time now – including with SPA – spruiking his anti-family agenda to anyone that will listen. Is it any coincidence that Gillard surrounds her self with pro-abortion and anti-family political and intellectual types, all of whom are prepared to sacrifice family choice to placate the climate change gods?

“I’m really calling on the government in the budget to put some money into this climate change action fund because our members still want to be good citizens around this issue,” the Ai Group chief told Network Ten.

“They know eventually there will be a price on carbon, so it’s a very important issue.”

(Rolling eyes) Ridout is afraid the fund will be cut in the budget, leaving the Mother Gaia sacrificial alter empty. Ridout is still spinning it to get her cause won:

Ms Ridout said a market-based scheme remained the least expensive way to cut emissions.

This is Ridout once again trying to make an empty claim to authority. According to the Copenhagen Consensus, a group made up world leading economists, carbon tax and trade is the least effective way to reduce carbon emissions. From the Globe and Mail by Bjørn Lomborg:

…trying to force drastic cuts in carbon emissions makes no economic sense. All the major climate economic models show that, to achieve the much discussed goal of keeping temperature increases under two degrees, we would need a global tax on carbon emissions that would start at $106 per ton (or about 25 cents per litre of gasoline) – and increase to $4,200 per ton (or $9.83 per litre of gasoline) by the end of the century.

In all, this would cost the world $42 trillion a year. Most mainstream calculations conclude that, all in all, this spending would be 50 times more expensive than the climate damage it seeks to prevent.

Where’s Ridout’s authoritative claims now?

A new opinion poll released by the Greens shows the majority of voters support a carbon levy to cut emissions.

About 70 per cent of those surveyed want the Federal Government to negotiate with the Greens and other Senators to introduce a levy.

Even though the same opinion poll showed that 58 per cent of people were not prepared to spend anything to no more than $10 a month to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. In other words, introduce a levy as long as we don’t have to pay for it. The poll is a contradiction and shows how uncommitted people are to the enviro fascist cause.

So now that the emissions trading scheme is dead, why does the government need to employ 50o climate change public servants? Well according to the public servant union:

The notion that you should just sack them because a program doesn’t go ahead is just silly.

Of course! Just because they have nothing to do does not mean they should be sacked.

The Opposition’s climate action spokesman, Greg Hunt, says he is sceptical about the Government’s agenda.

“It is a pea and thimble game because what is absolutely clear is that while last year’s greatest moral challenge has become this year’s inconvenience,” he said.

“The Government is concerned about the financial impacts of their enormous impost on electricity and grocery prices and the Government is concerned about its impact on the budget.”

Mr Hunt says the Government may have realised that the Senate is not going to agree to the ETS any time soon.

UPDATE

It is the single biggest domestic policy announcement of Rudd’s government but where is he? Rudd has gone into hiding. His media allies are covering for him. The Fairfax Press is completely silent while ABC Online has given it token mention, preferring instead to run headlines about the Melbourne Storm salary cap issue. A story a few days old by now. The group think abounds for all to see.

Imagine if Howard had dumped the GST, border control or Work Choices just before his elections. One can imagine the media out cry and their gunning for blood. When it comes to Rudd though the media almost in concert shut up shop, hoping no one will notice Rudd’s latest policy failing and blunder.

UPDATE II

Who said the following about the ETS:

“Action now. Not action delayed,”

Yep you guessed it. Kevin Rudd. Even Paul Kelly is a taken back by these latest turn of events, even though I called this a while ago:

If you want an equivalent, think of Gough Whitlam delaying Medibank, Paul Keating deferring the float, Bob Hawke folding on the abolition of the tariff or John Howard surrendering on his GST.

There will be many words written about Rudd’s retreat but it is simply crystallised: he is a prime minister without the courage to champion the policy that defined him.

…But this choice, justified by prudence, will stamp Rudd’s career and cast a permanent shadow over his credibility.

The less diplomatic might call Rudd a coward. I would never steep so low. He’s just a grovelling self-servicing parasite on tax-payers that will say anything and do anything to get re-elected, no matter the cost or the consequence. One senses from Kelly’s article that he is genuinely astounded, even a little annoyed at Rudd’s back down.

Having attacked the Coalition last year for political cowardice in not legislating the ETS, Rudd now shuns the chance to legislate the ETS. The brazenness is exceptional.

In truth, Rudd has lost his nerve….it betrays a government weak to its core.

That has gotta hurt Rudd. The enviro fascists are getting angry, really angry at Rudd. At least Abbott still has a ‘direct action’ plan. A sacrificial lamb to placate the enviro masses. Rudd has nothing now. Kelly goes on:

This is a government arrogant in double-speak yet timid in policy courage.

If Rudd has lost Kelly, he has lost a good part of the media. Think of Channel 7′s Sunrise programme and Kochie’s love affair with Rudd. However, Kelly is just catching up with what the rest of us always knew about Rudd: two-faced.

If Rudd lacks conviction on climate change – one of the core policies that won him the 2007 election against Howard – what does this say about Labor’s mettle and its beliefs?

Rudd’s retreat invites the judgment that he is running scared of Tony Abbott

Bang! That is Kelly basically conceding that Turnbull was a disaster whose leadership was promoted and sustained by the main stream media as a way to serve their enviro fascist agenda. And Kelly goes on:

The point is that Labor is addicted to absolute risk minimisation. The era of Keating and Howard is long gone.

Yep, Rudd is no Hawke or Keating. And if he thinks he can become the statesman that Howard is by launching his China institute at the ANU, then think again. Virtually every single foreign policy that Rudd has pushed has come to nothing. For example, what ever happened to the trade agreement with China? If Howard was still PM we would have it by now. But we have a low-grade public servant for a PM, who according to Kelly is a man without courage, conviction, nerve, full of brazenness, arrogance, weakness and double-speak.

Now that everything else Rudd has tried his hand at has failed, he has gone back to square one. He’s declaring the issue not over:

He did not agree Copenhagen was a failure. It had produced an accord that temperature increases should not exceed 2 degrees, he said. In the past three months, Australia had been working intensively to get countries to sign up. So far, 74 countries, producing 80 per cent of the world’s emissions, have pledged to reduce emissions by 2020.

So a bunch of politicians have said that the world’s temperature will not go up by 2 degrees. Is anyone taking bets on that? Isn’t it interesting that most of the work Rudd has been doing on the issue has been away from the public eye. That says something about how confident he is that the public will come on board with the issue.

UPDATE

Rumour has it that the US Senate will not seek cap and trade legislation until after the 2010 November mid-term elections. With the prospect that the US Republicans could take control of at least one of the chambers it would seem that US carbon legislation is dead on arrival. So where does that leave Rudd? Following the EU into economic madness. I get the distinct impression that Rudd wants Australia to have an EU make over – slow economic growth, high public debt, high unemployment, over regulation, rampant totalitarian political correctness, Islamic fascist ghettos, lack of border control, piece meal commitment to national security and defence, etc….

Senior Chinese government figures have described the view that climate change is not man-made as an “extreme” stance which is out of step with mainstream thought.

The comments were made during China’s annual sitting of the National People’s Congress.

So a bunch of communist styled authoritative political figures say that denying climate change is a form of extremism. You better toe the line then or off to the gulag for you – extremist!!!

This article is probably an hysterical reaction and ironically, evidence to support an address given by ABC chairman, who this week claimed that the ABC is beset with group think on reporting climate change issues. Thanks ABC.

In her opening address to the National Climate Change Forum in Adelaide yesterday, Senator Wong made some alarming predictions for Australia’s coast. “Not only are our assets and environments at risk, many of our sandy beaches could erode away or recede up to hundreds of metres over the coming century,” she said. “It is possible that with climate change and without large and expensive nourishment programs, Bondi Beach, (Queensland’s) Sunshine Coast and (Victoria’s) Bells Beach may no longer be the beaches we know today.”

It is incredible to believe that Senator Wong actually believes this nonsense. Is she also saying then that Sydney will be under water by the end of the century as well? She is talking about hundreds of metres. Where is all the water going to come from? The South Pole? Well if that’s the case it better start melting some time soon. And where is the scientific consensus that supports her outrageous claim?

Bob Carter, a geologist and environmental scientist with James Cook University in Queensland, said Senator Wong’s comments appeared to be an attempt to panic the public.

Pointing to historical rates of sea level rise of an average 1.6mm per year globally over the past 100 years, Mr Carter said it was reasonable to expect a total rise of 16cm in a century….

Dr Carter said: “Have you noticed Bondi beach being destroyed in the past 100 years by that rise?”

He said that in some areas around the Australian coast, the sea level was actually getting lower.

“In some places, the geological substrata is sinking, which adds to sea-level rise, and in other places it’s rising, which subtracts from sea-level rise,” Dr Carter said.

“So you can’t have a sea-level policy for the whole of the Australian coast — that’s just stupid, and that’s what the states are doing.”

There is no credible science to support her claim. It is simply a brazen attempt by a captain of a sinking pirate ship attempting to salvage what golden ETS booty is left over after Lord Monckton’s devastating tour of the country, Prof. Plimer’s book, the rise of Tony Abbott, Climategate and the recent and continuing implosion of the scandal ridden IPCC.