Believe it or not, if the Libs had a credible climate change policy (and if I believed I could trust them to actually carry it out – a big ask after the Howard Miracle), I’d preference them ahead of Labor (but after the Greens, of course).

http://larvatusprodeo.net/2009/11/18/cprs-rage/

The You-Tube clip of Richard Denniss from the Australia Institute (in the lead blog) clearly explains the core problems of the claimed reductions from CPRS.

It is in fact “business as usual” with negligible reductions, but buried in a pile of spin that Rudd/Wong’s ETS and CPRS would actually be achieving something.

First, Swedish bank, Nordea, just announced they will not finance the pulp mill in its current form and reaffirmed their adherence to the international environmental standards for project finance that we’ve been calling for. This resulted from GetUp’s collaboration with our sister organisation, Avaaz.

Second, Gunns has finally bowed to public pressure from campaigners like yourself and The Wilderness Society and announced that their Tasmanian pulp mill will use 100% plantation timber from start up. While this statement is a step in the right direction, Gunns still has a 20 year contract with Forestry Tasmania for native forest wood supply, so we’re not done yet.

Its entire “reductions” consisted of permits bought elsewhere, or as Elise says, were totally imaginary cuts, marijaunishly premised on inventing “clean coal” sometime after 2030. Oh puhleaaase.

Next! How about some real action.

So he damn well should.

The assumptions underlying the CPRS projections for emissions reduction are the biggest load of crap you ever saw. Total fantasy land. Dependent on technology that won’t be implemented except as a limited PR exercise.

If Rudd/Wong continue to push their CPRS as the best answer, they had better hope that the Coalition don’t get hold of that bone and chew it into small fragments.

The blog on Possums Pollytics about “Swing States” seems to me to bear these claims out admirably. I’m not a political analyst, so would be glad if someone would verify the following conclusions.

Check out the sidebar on Pollytics Demographics. The ALP two-party preferred has increased significantly, whereas the ALP primary vote has hardly moved. By contrast, people have fled in droves from the Coalition primary vote (what a surprise!).

Sooo, if people aren’t increasingly backing the ALP primary, and they are abandonning the Coalition, where are they going??? The Greens vote has been increasing nicely.

Unless I am mistaken, the ALP is not so much a winner, as the Coalition is a loser.

Furthermore, perhaps the ALP 2PP is not being won by the Rudd government, so much as supported by the Greens vote?

In summary: “”Abbott’s going nowhere…Rudd is also going nowhere…The only party that can win something out of it, and they will, are the Greens.”

So we need to shift the argument from ‘Wow, how huge is 25%!!!???’ to ’25% is an easily achievable ‘business as usual do nothing outcome, let’s move to 30% practical with 50% aspirational’.

The huffing and puffing about targets seems merely to be posturing to allow plenty of fat for buying off big business.

Maybe the political reality is that the Govt needs to get big business support for re-election, but we need to call it for what it is and move on from previous targets which are now really ‘business as usual’.