Man, this is really weird. Al Gore, he of the uncomfortable truth, is in Canberra, standing should to shoulder with none other than windbag millionaire Clive Palmer selling an ETS. Clive Palmer's pitch is pretty whacked out and boils down to 2 things: PUP will voe to repeal the carbon tax if the energy producers are mandated to return that money to households. PUP will then want an ETS in place to replace the carbon price, and this ETS should be contingent upon other nations namely America and China undertaking a version of their own.
It's creepy because Clive Palmer is essentially using Al Gore's post-VP star to cast his repealing in a climate-friendly direction. It's very odd because I can't imagine the flipside scenario where say, Paul Keating would stand shoulder to shoulder with Nancy Pelosi in the US Congress, talking about things in the US polity. Doesn't this sort of break a bunch of diplomatic protocols? How do we know the CIA isn't trying to influence Clive (or that they already haven't) who we know is given to conspiracy theories that feature the CIA? You also sort of wonder where Al Gore's head is at, making this appearance. Since when is he a friend of the crackpot wing of Australian politics?
Pardon me while I try to wrap my head around this bizarre spectacle.
The PUP leader said the government's Direct Action policy was "a waste of money, at a time when families, pensioners, young Australians, stay at home mums and single parents and indigenous communities are facing unfair measures in the budget, to increase excise and indexation is not the answer".
Climate change was a global problem, he said, and Australia had to play its part.
He said the Palmer United senators would move, while supporting the repeal of the carbon tax, to establish an emissions trading scheme.
The scheme would only come into effect when Australia's major trading partners established similar schemes.
"This measure cannot be defined as a financial measure, it will have a carbon price [of] zero,'' he said.
A price on carbon would then be introduced down the track.
Mr Gore said Mr Palmer's announcement was an "extraordinary moment in which Australia, the US and the rest of the world is finally beginning to confront the climate crisis in a meaningful way".
He cited President Barack Obama's recent moves to reduce emissions in the US and pilot programs of cap and trade schemes in China as evidence the world was moving to tackle climate change.
"All of these developments add up to the world moving to solve the climate crisis and that is why it is so significant that Clive Palmer has announced that his party will support the continuation of the renewable energy target, and the continuation of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation," he said.
"While I will be disappointed if the immediate price on carbon is removed because it is a policy which I believe to be ultimately critical to solving the climate crisis, I am extremely hopeful that Australia will continue to play a global leadership role on this most pressing issue."
The event comes ahead of Mr Palmer's meeting with the Prime Minister on Thursday morning.
Well, that's pretty nutty, but a good kind of nutty. Like a Marvel comic book movie moment when two unlikely characters turn to one another and work for the common good. The villain in all this is now Tony Abbott, he of the abysmal popular support. He can't possibly be enjoying this turn of events. 1st of July is going to bring in a bunch of people who are going to toe this Palmer United Party line, endorsed by Al Gore. If Tony Abbott's going to get to keep his promise of 'repealing the Carbon Tax' (just typing that makes my eyes hurt), it's going to cost him a pound of flesh from inside his skull. He can no longer count on the conspiracy-nut Palmer to play along with the climate change sceptic script. It turns out Palmer is a conservative nutbar, but clearly not the same brand of conservative nutbar as those in the Coalition government.
What worries me is how the SMH editor (yes, that fool) is busily talking up the Palmer United position. It can't be that good if it impresses that little mind.
These Guys Can't Do Diplomacy Either
That sucking, gurgler sound you're hearing from Canberra, that would be the Abbott government just sucking up the joint.
A few weeks ago, The Abbott government started disputing the terminology 'occupied' in reference to East Jerusalem. It's hard to fathom why the Australian Government would want to break ranks with the rest of the world and come down hard in favour of Israel and against the Palestinians, but that's what they did. And the world heard about it - especially the Arab speaking world - and took notice.
Pleiades gave me a heads up and it seems Bob Ellis seems to think that the jailing of the Australian Journalist Peter Greste was a reprisal for this moving of the terms by Australia. No wonder our pleas to have Greste released ave fallen on deaf ears- and our government is too stupid to understand just what has happened.
What's amazing is that just as with the budget, this government has kicked an own goal in the diplomacy stakes; and the joke is on us because they weren't even asked to offer up an opinion. They just blurted out something that has ended up boomeranging right back.
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