Catallaxy Files

So much for Angus Taylor being the great hope of the side.  Promoted, ostensibly, as the Minister for Getting Power Prices Down, Taylor has shown himself to be just as mealy-mouthed as the rest of his second-rate Coalition government.

Here he is in a recent edition of The Australian:

Others say leaving the Paris Agreement will lead to a miraculous drop in prices. Wrong. Like it or not, we will reach a 26 per cent reduction in emissions in the NEM well ahead of time based on investment commitments already made. Paris won’t require new interventions and won’t create new price pressures.

I doubt that anything now gets my goat more than the insistence by Coalition MPs that the Paris Agreement is irrelevant.  As I have argued repeatedly on this site, and as commentators more prominent than me – such as Peta Credlin and Andrew Bolt – have argued repeatedly, the Paris Agreement covers the whole economy NOT just the energy sector as Taylor dishonestly implies above.  He repeated the same strawman argument on Credlin a week or so ago.   Nobody is saying that ‘leaving the Paris Agreement will lead to a miraculous drop in prices’.  What we are saying is that leaving the Paris Agreement will hopefully prevent the wider economy from suffering the devastation that has already been wrought upon the energy sector.

OK, let’s accept that Taylor is focussed only on the energy sector and that his remit does not cover the rest of the economy.  Let’s also accept that he has to toe the official party line on CAGW, whatever that is from one day to the next.   When faced with the embarrassing question of the Paris Agreement he could decline to comment, the matter being outside his portfolio.  But instead he chooses to pretend that if he achieves his objective of getting power prices down, we will still meet our Paris target.   This is just plain and infuriatingly dishonest.

And put in the context of the latest ambit claim from the IPCC – that existing pledges will be nowhere near enough to avert climate disaster – then the case to repudiate or, at the very least, re-evaluate the Paris Agreement is unarguable.

Any sensible Coalition government has two triggers for such an approach. The first is that we already know that most signatories will not meet their existing pledges and even if they do it will have no appreciable effect on overall emissions, which, following a short hiatus, are now rising again.

The second is the mounting evidence that, whatever is happening to the climate, it is nowhere near as dire as was predicted and that human contributions are a minor factor at best.

As PM Scott Morrison swans around Queensland selling himself, sounding more and more like Malcolm Turnbull in a baseball cap, I note that Sky News, hosting Morrison at a public forum at a brewery in Townsville has promoted the occasion with a special release of ‘ScoMo Pale Ale’, which prompted the thought that he is indeed nothing more than a pale imitation of his predecessor.  At the time I wondered if the ABC’s stretched finances would run to the production of a suitable beverage to mark the former PM’s appearance on a special edition of Q&A – ‘Turnbull Bitter’, perhaps? As it turned out, the claque of Turnbull groupies lobbing marshmallows at the smugly beaming jet-setter rendered it unnecessary for him to openly inject too much bile into his discourse -other than naming and, and in his mind shaming, his assassins including the impeccably loyal Mathias Cormann.

However, It’s not just Tony Jones who is asking why Turnbull was removed.  Commentators on both sides of the political spectrum are repeatedly asking the same question.why the Party dispensed with the services of our erstwhile PM.  As far as I am concerned paying him out for his own treachery and incompetence is justification enough but the question is apposite.

Is there not one single issue, even one, upon which Morrison and his Cabinet can bring themselves to part ways with Turnbull’s agenda?  And on the one issue where Turnbull did hold firm, illegal immigrants, there now appear to be cracks developing.

You would think climate policy would spring to mind as a potential game changer as it was this issue that terminated Turnbull’s first attempt at leadership and led to a landslide election victory under Tony Abbott.  There may be one of two reasons why this opportunity has not been grasped.  It may be that the large bulk of members really believe that CAGW is the greatest moral challenge of our generation – in which case why support such an intellectually bankrupt crew?  Or it may be that they think any push back on ‘climate’ policy is too hard a sell, particularly given the proximity of the next election.  If that is the case, if they are anxious to avoid the hard policy fights just in order to get re-elected, why support such a morally bankrupt crew?

As far as I am aware, Craig Kelly is the only Coalition MP who is prepared to speak the truth on CAGW.  The rest of them, including the much vaunted Taylor, are nothing more than a claque of time-serving, self-seeking, pusillanimous ….. I am trying to think of a suitable word ..…Got it!  …. politicians.

To hell with them.