Guardian - Australia's Climate Wars Were Always Stupid - Now They've Gotten Even Dumber
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In the past, the climate action wreckers nestled comfortably at the heart of Australia’s political system have spent years conducting hyperbolic post-truth seminars at taxpayer expense about various policy mechanisms required to reduce greenhouse emissions – policy mechanisms that were floated, worked up bureaucratically, and legislated. Fully fleshed out mechanisms. Carbon pricing. A national energy guarantee. Real things.
But over the past few days, we’ve broken new ground. Now, the same self-appointed Luddites of the low emissions revolution, folks with elbows sharper than wits, are posturing hyperbolically about policy mechanisms that, wait for it, [narrator whispers] don’t actually exist. Wreckers have replaced ranting about something with ranting about nothing.
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In case you’ve missed the trigger for Flamboyant Incoherence: the Musical (also known as the meltdown within the Nationals), Scott Morrison has been warming up to the idea that the government (might) do something to possibly nudge Australia in the direction of achieving net zero emissions by 2050 – as long as technology magics this transition and not a terrible tax that no one is advocating. Morrison’s frequent tyre kicking and market testing on net zero is promising for those of us who dare to hope. But substantively, the government’s position has not changed. Let me repeat that: nothing, zip, zero has changed. There is no concrete commitment, no mechanism, no nothing.
Even if Morrison were to replace his musing with a concrete undertaking to sign up to net zero tomorrow, and was prepared to back that with a legislated commitment, it’s entirely unclear how Australia would get there. This begs obvious questions. Agriculture should be exempted from … what exactly? Exempted from the technology roadmap the Nationals welcomed? Exempted from a nominal, highly caveated, possible mid-century target that Morrison hasn’t committed to adopting, and hasn’t even begun to talk about legislating?
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https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/feb/09/australias-climate-wars-were-always-stupid-now-theyve-got-even-dumber