It is generally said of me that I am a lilly-livered liberal -> most often while in discussions with this guy! I believe in universal health care, the abolition of mandatory detention, increase in the foreign aid budget to 0.7% of GNI by 2015, I am pro public education and social welfare, I try to only have fair trade coffee, tea and chocolate, I have a shirt with a picture of Kevin Rudd on it, I read SMH, I regularly hang out with this guy and I think as a nation we would have grounds to invade the United States if Sarah Palin became the next US president…
Anyway I thoroughly enjoyed Malcolm Turnbull’s speech about the ETS and why he will be crossing thr floor and so I thought that I would share some of it with you (courtesy of SMH of course)
“It is our job, as MPs, to legislate with an eye to the long-term future, beyond the next election, and ensure what we do today will make Australia a better, safer place. Climate change is the ultimate long-term problem. We have to make decisions today so adverse consequences are avoided many decades in the future. It is easy to argue we should do nothing, or little, or postpone action, yet we are already experiencing the symptoms of climate change, especially with a hotter and drier climate in southern Australia.
The planet is warming because of growing greenhouse gas emissions from human activity. If this trend continues, truly catastrophic consequences are likely, from rising sea levels, to reduced water availability, to more heatwaves and fires.
In December, we had confirmation from three leading scientific organisations – Britain’s Met Office, NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – that the past decade to 2009 was the hottest since recordkeeping began, hotter than the decade before (the second hottest) and the decade before that (the third hottest).
From the Copenhagen Summit. The snowman says: I'm Melting! Source: http://www.peopletree.co.uk/safia/
Both sides of politics are agreed that Australia should, regardless of whether any international agreement is reached, reduce our emissions by 2020 so they equal a 5 per cent cut from 2000 levels.
It is not enough to say you support these cuts. You must deliver a strong framework to deliver them. Australia should take action now in advance of and to promote a global agreement. While our emissions are only a small share of the global total, we are, per capita, one of the highest emitters.
How can we credibly expect China, with per capita emissions less than a quarter of ours, or India, with less than one-tenth of ours, to take our call for global action seriously if we, a wealthy, developed, nation are not prepared to take action ourselves?
The transition from a high emission economy to a low one cannot be achieved without major changes to the way we generate and use energy and use our landscape. Is an emissions trading scheme the best policy to reduce emissions? Believing that market forces deliver the most cost-effective solution to economic challenges, the answer must be yes.
At their core, these bills are as much the work of John Howard as of Kevin Rudd. We, as Liberals, believed in the superior efficiency of the free market to set a price on carbon. The Rudd government’s approach has broadly embodied the same principles, although there were problems with its initial design. But extensive modifications made in May and November made it a scheme that appropriately balances environmental effectiveness and economic responsibility.
Alternatives such as direct regulation or subsidies will be far more costly. Under a market-based mechanism, like an ETS, there is a clear, transparent and immediate incentive encouraging investment in lower emission technology.
Source: http://pavanvan.wordpress.com/2009/10/03/co2-black-not-green/
Industries and businesses, attended by an army of lobbyists, are particularly persuasive and all too effective at getting their sticky fingers into the taxpayer’s pocket. Having the government pick projects for subsidy is a recipe for fiscal recklessness on a grand scale. Having the government pay for emissions abatement, as opposed to the polluting industries themselves, is a slippery slope to higher taxes and more costly and less effective abatement of emissions.
Most large emitters have committed to substantial reductions over the next decade. Many have already acted. The EU has had an ETS since 2005. China has committed to a 45 per cent reduction in emissions per unit of output by 2020. Japan has pursued lower emissions and higher energy efficiency for three decades. Our commitment is equivalent to a 21 per cent reduction.
The notion that this ETS would put Australia in front of the world is, sadly, completely wrong. We start way behind because our per capita emissions are so large, because our sources of energy are so overwhelmingly dependent on burning coal. This legislation is the only policy on offer which can credibly enable us to meet our commitment and the flexibility to move to higher cuts when warranted.
The ETS is far more in the great traditions of modern liberalism than any other available policy response.
It allows businesses to make their own decisions as to how to reduce emissions. Schemes where bureaucrats and politicians pick technologies and winners, doling out billions of taxpayer dollars, is neither economically efficient nor environmentally effective.”
This is an edited extract from Malcolm Turnbull’s speech in Parliament yesterday in support of the emissions trading scheme legislation.
But then the story stops and zooms in on a quirky little story about a woman and two spies. It is a story you could take out of Joshua and not really miss it! I mean Joshua 1 ends with the people ready to enter the land and Joshua 3 begins with the people entering the land. We don’t need chapter 2! But of course the author of Joshua is quite intentional in his placement of the story there because the author is not just writing chronologically, he is also writing theologically! So he tells us the story of Rahab to give us a great example of faith!
