A day ago, it looked as if Malcolm Turnbull could survive at least long enough to implement his deal with Labor, a deal that would deliver a drastically weakened emissions trading scheme with massive overcompensation of every possible big business interest. It would be marvellous to report that a popular uprising against rent-seeking lobby groups changed all this. But, in fact, Turnbull’s leadership has been rendered untenable by a Liberal Party base, and commentariat, that has entered a state of collective insanity in which the most absurd conspiracy theories are taken as a starting point for reasoning. Over time on this blog, I’ve seen even seemingly sensible commenters of a libertarian or conservative cast of mind succumb to this tribalist lunacy. The handful who have resisted (hi, Tokyo Tom) are increasingly regarded as “beyond the pale”.
From delusional beliefs on climate science follow equally delusional beliefs on political strategy, symbolised by the 37 votes for a Kevin Andrews spill yesterday and by the apparent certainty that, assuming Turnbull holds his ground, a majority of Liberals will vote for the delusionist candidate, Tony Abbott
Amazingly, even the editorialist at the Oz, whose columnists have uniformly promoted delusional conspiracy theories recognises the hopelessness of such a stance. as the Oz says
In truth, there is nowhere for Coalition members to go on this issue, other than to support the amended and improved bill and claim as their work the concessions they have wrung from the government. The introduction of a cap-and-trade ETS has been bipartisan policy for more than two years and it is supreme folly for rebels within the Liberals to believe they can go to an election as the destroyers, rather than the enablers, of such a scheme.
There may be room for the Nationals to argue against an ETS in the bush, but it is politically naive to think that voters in the inner-city areas of Melbourne and Sydney would welcome such regressive policies from their MPs. How exactly would Mr Abbott, for example, propose campaigning on this issue in seats such as North Sydney and Wentworth, where Liberal voters are determined to see action on climate change? Having a bob each way on the issue will not go down well with voters who have followed the debate and who expect, as Mr Turnbull says, responsible political parties to take responsible action
There is no reasoning with lunatics, and my attempts to do so have gone nowhere. At this point, we just have to hope that they will remain, as they are at present, in the minority, and that they can be kept as far as possible from political power.
There’s no guarantee that sanity will prevail. As the conman in Huckleberry Finn says ‘Hain’t we got all the fools in town on our side? And ain’t that a big enough majority in any town?” But, as I recall, he ends up tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail.
John Quiggin 
@Philomena
Philo – this is how you tell a sock puppet. They drop in with anew name. Youve never heard of them or saw one of their posts before. They start off polite, stay polite, and talk utter deniliast obstructionist garbage nonsense….and act wounded when you point out their gross intellectual deficiencies… (the poor me routine a la Sarah Palins fan…I dont know what a troll is…I was just trying to offer my opinion)
The dead giveaway? When called they disappear like rabbits and up pops a new one with a new name. They never get excited or angry or inisistent and they dont put up a good fight because even they dont believe what they parrot. They just belong to some group who puts empty rhetoric in their empty minds…
Philo – here is a troll test..ask them to google a question “Are the snows of Kilimanjaro disappearing?” Then count the entries that say they are….
Then ask the troll to google the following question “Are the snows returning to Mt Kilimanjaro?”
Then count the entries (zero).
Then count the entries yourself and watch them try to lie.
My hubby has a denialist friend (seriously this poor afflicted numbskull has driven his once friends away and they are threatening to put him out of his misery…).
Last week he sent hubby an email saying there was apparently a new ski resort going in on Kilimanjaro…!!
Am I serious? No. But its not at all out of the realms of the imagination these days…
Mark Hill is not a troll. He is an intelligent person who is prepared to argue his case. You may disagree with his perspective but he is not playing games and makes an appropriate effort to be reasonable and polite.
over bug break
@John H
Who are you? Mark Hill’s brother?
@John H
Ands trolls are always polite. Thats why you can tell they are trolls.
Ken N is being totally disingenuous in his concern trolling here about the use of the word “lunatic” which as JQ has correctly inferred is common currency at his home base, Catallaxy, courtesy of the regular contributions of a large proportion of its commenters, including Mark Hill.
To complicate matters – shock, horror – fact is plenty of people today don’t necessarily think “lunatic” used as an epithet is necessarily pejorative or cause for shame at all.
For very good reason. Context as usual is all.
When rightwing sexist men use the word or its equivalents to attack critical, challenging feminist left women, then yes it is to be condemned and exposed.
When progressive people use it to describe Tony Abbott, e.g., it is broadly accurate and acceptable.
And truth is the officially designated “lunatic asylums” of the recent past were filled with many people who were not insane but had been formally rendered or deemed so by a society and its institutions that drove people – in particular certain types of creative, oppositional, thinking, contrarian, questing people – insane and which then drugged them or “therapeutically” intervened in such a way to effectively render them clinically “insane”.
Simplified, one-dimensional explanations of any phenomenon is truly the real original sin.
It’s the political Right’s greatest failure and fault.
Dover Beach is Mark Hill’s blood brother.
@Sarah Palin Fan
The only way most of us might become a Sarah Palin fan is if she caught fire. The more charitable among us might douse the flames with a bodily fluid. Only in America would they contemplate electing a second-rate Tina Fey impersonator.
@Philomena
Philo – I dont know who Dover beach is except this
” And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.”
Lets interpret John Hs arguments on behalf of Mark Hill
“you may not agree but he is always polite”
No I dont agree with Mark Hill’s arguments and I dont agree we should give air time to people who come in here to disseminate anti AGW garbage no matter how politely they want to spread the word that the damage from our production isnt happening at all and its OK to keep on polluting the environment.
Mark Hill does nothing but play linguistic and one-up-man-ship games.
He is a bad faith blog interlocutor extraordinaire.
@Alice
“Ands trolls are always polite. Thats why you can tell they are trolls.”
Then you’re definitely not a troll, Alice.
I post here very infrequently, but always under my own name, and first posted in mid 2007.
Looking back over my recent few posts, I can’t see what has raised the ire of Alice, et al, other than that I questioned the concensus here. Isn’t that permitted? Sorry, that’s a silly question to ask of AGW believers, isn’t it?
Assuming the lunatics don’t derail the Rudd/Wong masterplan, what benefits do you think a delusionist such as myself can expect to receive for the $1100 (up from the pre-election $1) I will be forced to pay?
Assuming the lunatics don’t derail the Rudd/Wong masterplan, what benefits do you think a delusionist such as myself can expect to receive for the $1100 (up from the pre-election $1) I will be forced to pay?
Zero, zot. The ETS, even as a symbolic gesture, is laughable and damaging because it purports to be addressing a problem but doesn’t yet requires us to start forking out extra. The big end of town is given free credit while we face increased bills for everything. It is another opportunity to create speculative bubbles, though the more likely outcome for the ETS will not be a bang but a whimper(sorry TS Eliot). The principle reason they did not choose a carbon tax is because if that didn’t have a sufficient impact they would have to raise the tax. Raising taxes is a great way to lose an election. But can you blame them? Aren’t politicians doing the same thing as us, preserving their position, maintaining their lifestyle, wanting more?
The thing that’s most repulsive about climate denialists is that they’re all to a man – and they mostly are men – demonstrate zero feeling or concern or love for nature, ecology or the universe as a mysterious, ethereal, numinous, sensual, exquisite organism of which we are all a part. That’s the bottom line and starting point. If you don’t have that, know that, you’re not just useless, you’re dangerous to the entire planet and all its species and our common future, even the possibility of a good future.
Delightful post from Philomena and have had my concerns about Janert Albrechtsen, Miranda Devine, Sussan Ley and the like cognitively defined from the inside out, so to speak.
Also the role of the Cataleptics, surging forth in a dark funk from their hermeticaly sealed ivory tower to chastise those who dismantled and exposed the shabby base from which their heroes and heroines were projected onto those impressionable minds.
That’s the bottom line and starting point. If you don’t have that, know that, you’re not just useless, you’re dangerous to the entire planet and all its species and our common future, even the possibility of a good future.
True, and if people bothered to read Adam Smith carefully, they might realise that the man had a much wider vision than self interest. The very idea that individuals chasing self interest will lead to some spontaneous order is absurd. However it is wise to remember,
George III Chancello, Baron Thurlow said 200 years ago:
“How can you expect a corporation to have a conscience, when it has no soul to be damned and no body to be kicked?”
We are in a worse position because since the 1980’s our culture has actively promoted economic growth and damn the torpedoes. We rushed headlong because it was widely believed that we could progress our way out of our problems. It’s funny in a way because it presupposes that someone is steering the ship.
Your perspective Philomena reminds me of the ideas Skinner explored in Walden Two. We have created a culture replete with incentives to do the very things that we need to think very much about changing. Forget about rationality, if you fill an organism’s environment with stimuli to do behave in certain ways well der … . Here’s an uncomfortable thought: any theory of behavior must contain within it environmental variables because without those it must be an intrinsically flawed theory. Libertarians hate ideas like this because it makes a mockery of “freedom” and “rationality”. Go read the last page of Nancy Andreasen’s work, Brave New Brain. She knows what needs to be done.
Paul
Well, if you won’t take the trouble to learn enough about the problem to judge for yourself, won’t trust those who have, and want certainty based on information you are determined not to understand, then you are, alas, doomed to disappointment.
PeterT, if last was directed toward me, I must say haven’t the foggiest idea what you’re trying to say or talk about.
Do youhave anything tosay on the thread topic; political dysfunctionality, as expressed in current unprincipled, arguably and demonstrably lunatic, liberal party infighting in the currently occurring real here-and now?
@Peter T
Que?
@Paul Williams
Same as above
I dont agree we should give air time to people who come in here to disseminate anti AGW garbage no matter how politely they want to spread the word that the damage from our production isnt happening at all and its OK to keep on polluting the environment.
We have engaged. We have tried to be reasonable. The trolls come and the trolls go. You may post infrequently. What do I care? That is your choice but I am not in any mood to hear more of the same tired arguments from delusionist trolls.
@Paul Williams
Paul you said
““Ands trolls are always polite. Thats why you can tell they are trolls.”
Then you’re definitely not a troll, Alice.”
Why thank you Paul. No I am not.
@John H
Joahn H says in the masquerade od a reasonable argument yet does not look to the cause as being the very denialists in LP that ruined this and demanded 123billion in concessions tro big coal even though mining is the most heavily subsidised industry i Australia already…..
no John H says
“The ETS, even as a symbolic gesture, is laughable and damaging because it purports to be addressing a problem but doesn’t yet requires us to start forking out extra. The big end of town is given free credit while we face increased bills for everything. ”
Now who did that? Who turned it into such an abomination? The denialists and lunatics in LP.
It does seem to have entirely escaped your attention John H. If it wasnt for the obstructionists, loonies and denialists maybe we wouldnt be facing such a debauched ETS and now you want to complain about it? Look to the black heart of LP for responsibility for this mess.
I say pay up and be damned because you didnt want it in the first place (ETS) half supported people like Mark Hill on the basis of their “politeness while denying delaying or obstructing” and at the first opportunity after ETS is through I sincerely hope Rudd rips the concessions off those that the LP bargained so hard for.
If he doesnt he has lost my vote, but then so has LP.
Thing is, it’s not justic rustic benighted lefties are disturbed by ecology and economics, including as expressed in political outcomes like the Tory meltdown, but the best and brightest of the right.
Throughout the blogosphere the likes of Jason Soon and Nicholas Gruen have taken a step back as to different aspects of the current antics.
And the blogosphere demonstrates how the better informed of the right have, in effect, “abstained” as to comments on this “loser” set of issues for Tories, by their simple absence.
.
@paul walter
Peter Ts post not directed at you Paul Walter but I suspect at Paul Williams. Innocente!
@John H
Assume you got the ETS you wanted. I guess it would cost a lot more than $1100 a year. How would you sell it to the electorate? I haven’t seen a simple message other than generalities about “tackling climate change”. Which it will obviously not do.
My point is that it isn’t, in my opinion, a bad move politically for the Libs to oppose an ETS, because Rudd is inextricably tied to it, voter concern with AGW is evaporating, and an ETS will be a very hard sell to the electorate, especially with a Coalition scare campaign.
So come on, forget about insulting me, what pro-ETS campaign slogan will convince the voters?
“mining is the most heavily subsidised industry i Australia already…..”
Alice,
Please read any of the Trade and Assistance Review reports by the Productivity Commission. You may be pleasantly surprised.
Click to access 04-chapter2.pdf
Please view table 2.2 and also familiarise yourself with the concept of a negative effective rate of assistance.
Because we must …
Incidently, your claim that a robust scheme would cost more than $1100 doesn’t follow at all. Schemes that hand huge amounts to big polluters are obviously expensive to fund. Schemes that spread the burdens and allow people to avoid the costs may impose a degree of inconvenience but only modest cost.
And in any event, such schemes may have benefits that don’t show up as costs until the costs are saved.
Why do you think voters need convincing? Don’t you read the polls?
Can someone explain how this neolib tax obsession stuff has even permeated as far as a discussion on what to do about the pressing ecological concerns of our time?
We ALL live “here”, y’know!
How is carbon trading some how reduced back to the old neo lib night terror of “taxation”?
Is it about “paying to educate other people’s children in a secular institution” when they out of contrarian funk, want their amount of tax owing for community amenities sent to some Opus Dei or Exclusive Brethren anti education anti science institution?
Is it because they might have to chuck in their whack toward what is a critical problem, despite all the infantile denial? Sorry we have interrupted the caprice, but, ” let them eat cake” is no longer an appropriate response from adults to real world problems in the twenty first century.
Just watching a replay of last weeks senate, was astonished at Joyce’s astounding misrepresentation of ( censored ) CSIRO scientist Dr Clive Spash as climate change sceptic. Sure I had not misread the original press report, I recall reading the Sun Herald report that Spash had objected to the currently proposed carbon scheme not because he was adenialist, but robustly proposed the more effective remedy of a direct carbon tax to ensure that polluters grown fat on the previous twenty years inactivity, would then be required to contribute ( also) for their own future profitability, as well as the rest of us less-wealthy citizenry ( real reason for his censoring ).
@Mark Hill
Mark Hill – you post a link to a productivity commissions report on tariff assistance to Mining yet you dont go to the ABS to get the correct file for the level of government subsidies to mining. At a quick glance its in the order $958million per year. Would you like me to get you the ABS cat number as it appears your research skills are lacking.
I dont know why I bother.
Tariffs Vs industry subsidies Mark. Different animal.
I’m not surprised that no one here can justify an ETS.
No politician that I have asked has been able to either. Other than the generalisations such as “tackling climate change”.
Personally, I think it would be a disaster for Australia.
Now that Rudd appears to have ruled out a double dissolution, if the Libs decide to oppose an ETS, they would have 12 months or so to point out the flaws. Public support would evaporate faster than the Kilimanjaro glacier.
Maybe the lunatics aren’t so silly?
@Paul Williams
“Maybe the lunatics aren’t so silly?”
It is the nature of being a lunatic that you would think so.
@Freelander
So whos the leader of the pack?
I find it somewhat disheartening that the ‘climate sceptics’ use an marginally incomplete scientific picture as an argument against such an obvious position. Pollution is bad. Scientific proof is difficult is obtain on anything – but through significant testing, empirical evidence and modelling a robust theory can be developed. If we waited for “proof” of everything most technology we use currently would still be awaiting proof.
The reality is that the introduction of some form of pricing for pollution is essential and should have been in place for the past 200years. There is no logic that supports the notion that individuals (or organisations) should be allowed to pollute the environment without compensation. By polluting we are effectively impacting on someone elses livlihood or quality of life and as such we have an obligation to compensate them for it. Simply becasue the negative consequence is not as immediate as if i started to put all my food scraps in your favourite slippers, doesn;t mean I shouldn’t be required to compensate.
The consequences of the pollution should be taken into consideration when determining the level of compensation. This does not change the simple and unquestionable logic that says you should pay if you pollute. Or you should not pollute at all.
This isn’t a new tax, this is redressing the imbalance that has existed throughout history.
@Paul Williams
Nick “The Knife” Minchin simply does not accept that we are contributing to climate change through GHG emissions. The scientific evidence, on balance, comes down overwhelmingly against that. Perhaps Nick “The Knife” Minchin knows something I don’t about climate science, but I very much doubt it – on politics it is another matter…
It now looks like Joe “Wobbles” Hockey will be up for the leadership on a scuttled ship; his position is like jelly – you prod it and it shifts, only to wobble back. Minchin will burn him and toss him when he is crispy fried, to replace him with a harder head; that’s my opinion for free (and you get what you pay for).
PS: while I completely mis-called it on the aftermath of the GFC – I didn’t expect that everybody would really spend so big, not least the various governments, and China is a faster moving freight train than I reckoned with – I did get the failure in Afghanistan right, for what it is worth. The US should have stuck with the limited goal of catching or killing bin Laden in Tora Bora, even if that meant taking some US casualties in the process. It would have been cheaper and more effective in the long run. The government’s report outlines the principal failures in the first few pages. The whole occupation of Afghanistan hasn’t shifted treasure towards the impoverished, and it hasn’t brought a functioning democracy.
Alice,
Sorry I did not refer you on far enough. Please refer to table 2.6, see ‘Combined assistance, summary by industry grouping,
2007-08’
Net combined assistance – Mining 29.6 million AUD.
They may be heavily subsidised in direct terms but mining inputs also face a high negative effective rate of protection.
The net combined assistance is a better measure of which firms are subsidised.
If you’re asserting that all forms of protection shouldn’t be aggregated and measured as “net assistance”, you’re basically rewriting most of trade policy theory. A subsidy is an implicit tariff to others and vice versa. Refer to any introductory trade theory text.
Standard stuff Alice, not part of any agenda you don’t like.
@JJ
“such an obvious position”
But how are you going to convince voters that it actually is the correct position? I know most commenters here accept that it is, but if an election is fought over it, you’ll have to do more than just state that it is correct. There will be a lot of people pointing out the flaws.
Telling people who question an ETS that they are delusional lunatics might not work so well in an election campaign.
@Paul Williams
Telling people who question an ETS that they are delusional lunatics might not work so well in an election campaign.
The only people who’ve been called delusional lunatics are those who reject climate science. This group is apparently in the majority in the activist base of the Coalition, and the rightwing commentariat/blogotariat, and has effective control of the Opposition. OTOH, they are only a small minority of the Australian public
http://www.usyd.edu.au/news/84.html?newsstoryid=4210
and the handful of people in the Labor part who “think” this way are at least smart enough to keep their mouths shut.
So, an election campaign in which the Opposition is campaigning for suicidal lunacy, and wins the support of the delusional* vote, at the expense of losing the rest of the population, looks like a pretty good bet for Labor.
And of course, they can now quote Turnbull and other front benchers on the lunacy of those controlling the Libs – so they don’t need to do any namecalling of their own.
* Actually, among voters, even those who accept delusionist claims typically do so on the basis that they (unwisely) trust their party and opinion leaders to get thse things right rather than exhibiting the full-blown collective lunacy of rightwing activists. So, they’ve been deluded but they are not actually delusional.
@Paul Williams
agreed Paul. Unfortunately, poor understanding of scientific analysis within the community, misrepresentation by opportunists, and simplisitc reporting by the mass media creates a situation where people believe in the notion of indiputable facts. Within this false reality almost nothing can be proven as there will always be someone who can identify a flaw that sounds plausible.
I had hoped that our politicians and community leaders were well enough informed to appreciate that the choice isn’t do we have an ETS or not, but rather how is it introdcued and what should the initial settings be.
Perhaps it is I who live in the false reality.
@Mark Hill
Still pressing on with your argument over mining industry subsidy by governments? – go and read your own document. There is a whole lot of assistance given to the Mining industry not reflecting in these statistics, including State, environmental regulations, royalty levels,and accelerated depreciation…page 18 of your own link.
And why havent you gone to the ABS to get the real figures instead of to the productivity commission who is only referring to a narrow part of govt assistance to Mining.
Mark, you havent got a clue.
It is a sad, sad state of affairs for the right of centre in Australia. Note that Turnbull’s biggest profile defenders (Hewson and Greiner) have been the true small government representatives in the Liberal party rather than the the unprincipled in all but fetus obsessions of the Minchinites.
@jquiggin
Assuming that the Libs decide to reject the ETS, and campaign for the next election on the basis that they are opposed to an ETS, perhaps on the basis that it won’t actually achieve any improvement in the climate, but will cost a lot of money and jobs, how would you counter that?
The difference between forcing through an ETS and getting the voters to actually buy it?
How do you think Rudd would go if a reporter asked him to explain the effect of an ETS on a particular families’ finances?
While most people may say they are in favour of taking action on climate change, that may not translate into actually voting against their own financial interest, unless the benefits can be clearly spelt out.
I have so far been unable to get a clear statement of the benefits of an ETS to the people who will pay for it, and who ultimately employ the politicians who are so keen to introduce it, the voters.
Incidentally I have had little enthusiasm for an ETS – count me as a ‘policy sceptic’ rather than a ‘climate sceptic’. However it’s now increasingly evident that the ETS has become a proxy for wider culture wars for the soul of the centre right in Australia which now looks like it is in the process of emulating the US Republican party and driving away a whole generation of urban middle class voters to the higher taxing higher regulating centre left parties.
MSM thought bubble leaders in a cartoon world of climate science denial:
Andrew “Neck” Bolt
Janet Albrechsten
Christopher Pearson
Piers “Angry” Akerman
Alan Wood
Terry McCrann
Tim Blair
Alan Jones
Miranda Devine
Frank Devine
Michael Duffy
Michael Costa
etc.
What do they all have in common, besides the denial of AGW? Hard right (and interestingly, Catholics show up alot) politics. As far as I can see.
BTW, Can anyone find leftwing denialists among MSM journalists? How about hard right AGW accepters (meaning they accept AGW outright) among MSM journalists?
A word of warning, judging by this guest post at Jen Marohasy’s site Paul Williams is a Lyndon LaRouche groupy: http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/002176.html
There are a handful of lefty denialists (Alexander Cockburn, I think?), as well as rightwing denialists who are in the Labor Party because of hereditary ownership of leadership positions (Martin Ferguson, for example). Until recently, Costa was another case.
@melaleuca
Actually I thought this one was better,
http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2006/08/hocky-sticks-ancient-pine-trees-paul-williams/
@Donald Oats
I think there is a group called “main street Republicans” to which some hard core rightists subscribe that pay lip serive to AGW — Kansas Senator Pat Roberts comes to mind — not that they actually want to do anythying about it.
Look him up at “ontheissues.org” for his voting pattern and he is described as on the conservative right — and his pro-oil industry, pro-business, pro-guns, anti-abortion, pro-death penalty, pro-ANWR drilling, anti-flag desecration, pro-school prayer, pro-educational vouchers, pro-warrantless wiretapping, anti-habeus corpus, pro-war on terror, pro-mercury pollution, anti-reduction in gasoline usage, anti-CAFE, pro-lobbyists giving money to Congress and accepting money from people lobbying to prettify the violent and corrupt regime in Equatorial Guinea attest to him being a hard core reactionary.