Wong responded to this on TV and said the policy basis “is jobs”.

Which jobs Penny, and how many? What about the clean green jobs we are foregoing while sending $billions to the worst polluters? Do the Australian people really support this? How about a referendum to test this?

So it seems that Labor is:

* captured by industry and giving them exactly what they want in terms of (our) cash and free permits, and a high emissions cap. All this equates to no emission reductions.

* captured by unions who support old dirty 19th century employment (not that there is really much left of this) in the coal industry.

* playing politics by wedging the Liberals/Coalition -just look at how Wong put the acid on Turnbull “he will have to support our weak and ineffective 5% target”.

* ignoring the last 5 years of science that shows are in the midst of dangerous climate change.

I really can’t see our current political system doing much other than rearranging deckchairs and pandering to corporate power and providing them with corporate welfare.

Here is a real policy for them to consider:

Nationalise the entire energy industry with $5b, rather than just gifting them the money. Get rid of power retailers and wholesalers – buy them out. Then set yearly energy use reduction targets, along with a carbon rationing system.

While corporate interests continue to make big profits selling power we won’t see any political or policy steps toward better efficiency and/or emission reductions – they are too busy making money, and trashing the planet in the process.

Sorry, the amount to be spent on green technology is $150 billion, not 270, but the point remains. My source is Brian Toohey’s article in the weekend Fin Review, who thought the white paper could scarcely be worse.

But the situation for the USA is a lot different than in Australia. For one thing, it may well be Congress that makes the running on a cap and trade bill.
For another, the USA is in a position to do a bilateral deal with China that might significantly alter China’s emissions trajectory.

I’m wondering whether his desire not to purge the bureaucracy has left the greenhouse mafia well and truly in charge. The scheme they’ve come up with seems to be designed to preserve the privileged place of the polluters.

The developing countries have four advanced countries on watch – the US, Canada, Japan and Australia. The effect of the white paper will be to ensure that Australia stays on the list.

LO could have refuted this statement by pointing to people with a well-established track record of concern for the environment and climate change in particular who had endorsed the White Paper, if any such people existed. Instead s/he gets on the high horse about a statement that is extremely mild relative to Rudd’s pre-emptive denunciation of opponents (presumably endorsed by LO).

That’s the key message Obama is out stating, again and again, as he positions for a massive injection of funds to rebuild the American economy around a clean green model, using the current recession to cast a Green New Deal.

Labor Outsider has eloquently laid out a case for the politics of Rudd’s decision. But the truth is it wasn’t his only choice that would have delivered good political capital.

Rudd could have gone a harder target, a much stronger regime of auction permit, larger stimulus to new energy & energy efficiency (especially for low income households for the latter), still compensated some industries, and been hailed as a visionary leader and enjoyed an even higher approval rating.

The politics (ie popularity), the economics and the environmental gains were all aligned in a magic moment, and he treated it like a pit toilet by going the political wedge. It’s both a failure of leadership as patrickg has described, a failure of imagination, and a failure to capitalise on a massive political opportunity.

So frickin’ sad.

How does a government do that?

I wonder what the long-term damage caused by the ‘Mark Latham election’ is? If the Greens had a simple BoP this time around I wonder if the game would be quite different?

Open your eyes people. America is a basketcase, China is crashing fast, Europe is in a deep hole and Japan has been in an on/off recession for more than a decade. We are not going to escape this.

Global CO2 emissions will fall sharply next year, regardless of what the politicians do. Climate change will rapidly become a non-issue in this (political) environment.

As I said above, the only way forward is to engineer a cleantech bubble.

It seems to me he’s still doing the same now: except the opposition are a pack of disorganised losers, who don’t warrant the time of day, who’d need a chop round their neck to get 25% approval among canine voters – and still, this sort of uber-cautious ‘neutralising’ shit. Compounded, as you say, but not even being good policy.

Wrt to Keating, I suspect he himself is probably closer to “let the polluters rip” Labourism. Although it’s hard to know, because he was certainly behind the “narrative” and “economic reform” push wrt this. But that’s not the point, as you note. His perspective may have been different if he were still in power, but it’s the style of leadership that Keating and Whitlam both exemplified – sharpening rather than obscuring differences and political choices, and laying down long term markers, rather than some combo of messy state Labor-esque compromise pap combined with impenetrably confusing policy wonkiness.

And frankly, I could wear 5% for now if I was seeing some ground-shifting rhetoric of the sort you note: the ‘economy versus the environment’ is a dunce-hat-wearing cliche of the lowest order. An out-of-date, three card trick, invented by shysters like Gunns and QLD developers – and K07 just played it as well.

Im not suggesting Keating would have done otherwise – but a leader/reformer for the times we’re now in would have. Shoft the whole debate. WE will invent this shit, and WE will flog it to coal-assed losers who didnt, and WE will retire down the coast having helped saved yer global butts!! But…. no. A boring fart-whimper instead. Frankly, I dont even see the consolation of good economic times in this equation. The whole thing’s a vote for soon to be redundant old-tech, a soon-to-be redundant old economy. Its just a complete failure all round.