During the election campaign, LP will be cross-posting selected items from the Centre for Policy Development’s discussion of policy issues, Thinking Points. Readers may also be interested in the CPD’s upcoming collection of policy ideas and priorities for the next term, More Than Luck.
Ben Eltham – CPD Fellow – asks what really happened now that climate change bills are dead in the water on both sides of the Pacific.
Published in ABC’s The Drum Unleashed on 29 July 2010.
Who killed the climate bills?
John F. Kennedy, in the wake of the Bay of Pigs fiasco, once said that “victory has a thousand fathers, but failure is an orphan.”
Not so climate change legislation, which has now failed in both the US Congress and the Australian Senate.
Both defeats can claim many parents: climate change skeptics, conservative politicians in opposition, well-funded lobbyists, vested interests in industry, the complexity of the proposed bills, the failure of international negotiations, and the complacency of ordinary citizens.
To read more click here.
Ben’s use of the the Machievelli quote was great, and he kindly links to it on Gutenberg as well. Ominously Machievelli goes onto say:
Perhaps this force is already reincarnated into voting for change, public protest and wild weather events.