Turbull, targets and trading

Malcolm Turnbull has hotted up his attack on the Rudd-Wong emissions trading scheme this morning, with in an interview on AM.

You see, what Mr Rudd has done and this is a characteristic of the Prime Minister, he has completely lost sight of the real objective.

The objective is to reduce Australia’s CO2 emissions. It is not to have an ETS. The object is to reduce emissions and so he’s has come up with an incredibly cumbersome, economically damaging so we are told by industry, ineffectual so we were told by people concerned about climate, Emissions Trading Scheme which seems to disappoint everybody.

There is almost unanimous criticism of it.

I think Turnbull has really hit the nail on the head here. Rudd’s ETS is not going to do anything for the environment. Therefore, it has already failed to achieve the objective. What then is the purpose of having an ETS at all?

Some would argue that the target can be ramped up after 2020. It would be just as easy to put in another soft target in 2020 and continue to do nothing.

It looks like Big Kev’s trading scheme is simply designed to make it look like he’s taking action on climate change, while he sits back in the Lodge with his team of public servants burning the midnight oil putting together committee reports and creating enough hot air to heat St Petersburg.

Meanwhile, Parliament House is consuming electricity by the bucketload. Maybe the government should lead the way and start to tidy up their own house, so that others may see the benefits of the available technology.

On the other hand, maybe we should just focus on convincing China to cut their emissions. After all, they will probably own most of Australia soon enough.