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On ‘Q and A’ (Australian ABC TV) last night, Prime Minister Gillard admitted she did promise ‘...no carbon tax…’ before the last election. Fortunately, moderator Tony Jones (pic) gave her the opportunity to explain her ‘backflip’. In a nutshell, she would have preferred to go straight to a cap and trade system, but the political reality of working in a coalition with Independents and Greens offered her a choice of a compromise plan that included a temporary carbon tax, or no plan. I breathed a sigh of relief.
If we continue to treat nature as a ‘market’ and we continue to plunder environmental capital, we will eventually face the reality of a ‘market correction’. That correction can come in two ways and there are only two. We continue to pollute and let Nature adjust as it always has by forcing massive depopulation, sometimes to extinction, or we intervene to slow the process and perhaps, given time, reverse it.
They both know a cap and trade system is the only sure way of pushing investment in renewables and the tax will be used to ease the burden on households and business through the transition period. So why are they out to destroy it? Because they are both being faithful servants of their constituencies; Big Business.
I guess I was not alone in wondering what caused the Chairman of the Joint Sitting in Washington to be so overcome with emotion that tears were cascading down his cheeks as Julia Gillard wound up her speech to the joint sitting of Congress. The tears seemed to follow her comments that recognised the American contribution to space exploration, steadfast opposition to the USSR in the cold war and so on and her vision of the US as an ongoing force for global stability.
