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John Quiggin 
The Fall Of Socialism in NSW
“Senator Arbib, are you part of the disease infecting NSW Labor?”
In other news, banned troll Tony G is an idiot who thinks Arbib is a socialist. I swear I didn’t make this guy up, and I will try to block him properly in future – JQ
Japan copes with 21st-century dark age
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2014616863_quakenergy28.html
Perhaps a precursor for the rest of the developed world.
Complex societies that are both overreached, and, reducing in societal resilience – meeting up with – the reality of a world with increasing disaster costs (eg Ilan Noy).
What do you and your commentariat think of Prosper Australia’s Buyers Strike?
http://www.prosper.org.au/2011/03/15/prosper-calls-for-buyers-strike/
GetUp’s membership loves it, ranking it 1/100 in only12 days:
http://suggest.getup.org.au/forums/60819-campaign-ideas/topics/61385-i-suggest-a-campaign-about-/filter/top
Band One – There hasn’t been much Socialism in Australia for over a generation, so its a bit late to be calling time of death now.
David Collyer – I love it, but then I dont have my wealth tied up in a house unlike, apparently, the vast majority of us. If this strike has its intended result, it might cause the housing bubble to burst and I might actually be able to buy in. I’m sure I would feel differently if I were already a home owner though.
Here is an article from he Wall street Journal via TOD on oil price and recession
Click to access theoildrum_7562.pdf
which tells a very different story about the consequences of energy price increases.
Most people oppose the carbon tax.
http://www.essentialmedia.com.au/carbon-pricing-2/
The proponents of a carbon tax have perhaps wrongly assumed that the general public has been fully engaged in the arguments over recent years about such a proposition. I suspect that large sections of the public have been largely indifferent to the debate and are now playing catch up.
However some of the proponents of a carbon tax (or price on carbon) don’t seem to have polished their answers very well. Tim Flannery being a notable example. Asked a very basic question he seems to have been quite honest in his answer but also quite unprepared to deal with the logical consequences of his answer.
Personally I think the case that a carbon tax makes little sense and it is a bad policy.
http://blog.libertarian.org.au/2011/03/29/a-carbon-tax-makes-no-sense/
However I would like to see the other side of the debate get their crap together in the public debate. Currently they are not selling their arguments well at all. For a number of advocates I suspect that this is because they don’t even understand their own arguments. Hopefully some superior proponents will enter the fray sometime soon to make a more sensible case for this reform.
Well, Terje, let’s start with recognising that the free release of CO2 has been immoral for decades and, as you like to argue in defence of Nuclear Power, the burning of most fossil fuels has uncosted externalities which cause great environmental damage. Global Warming aside this Carbon “Tax”, as you like to call it, is finally the world catching up with applying an environmental restitution charge on the burning of fossil fuels and CO2 release.
This is good policy for that reason alone. Just as we no longer dump sewerage into the streets, it is now no longer acceptable to dump the wastes from the burning of fossil fuels into the atmosphere.
If you do not want to pay the Carbon Price charge then you are free to buy a renewable energy solution and pay it off with the money that you save from not paying the Carbon Price. Alternatively you can become innovative and develop a non fossil fuel energy system of your own and take that to the market. You have lots of options before you, let’s not hear any more whining about it.
Terje ,
That support changes when compensation is mentioned.
without a price on carbon your nuclear industry won’t radiate at all
Jeepers – I’m not advocating that we switch to nuclear irrespective of price. I merely advocate that we have a balanced assessment of nuclear and that we remove nuclear prohibition. If nuclear can’t compete with gas or coal then people should focus on lowering the cost not beefing up the cost of competitors.
BilB – your point is fair enough. However that is not the basis on which this tax is being sold. If you want to include those health benefits then fine by me so long as the benefit of the policy in this regard is properly quantified. The point is that the public has a reasonable right to have good estimates of the cost and good estimates of the benefits for any given policy. To date the advocates for this policy have focused their argument on the costs of business as usual, but that is the wrong metric.
Jeepers – regarding your claim that support shifts when compensation is discussed do you have any evidence?
Regarding compensation it won’t work. You can’t move society to a more expensive form of energy and compensate society from societies pool of resources. Moving to more expensive energy makes our society poorer.
I have no problems with the nuclear option however I do realise it will not work without a price on carbon.
I would suggest that a society which does nothing to address AGW will not just be poorer.
Mark Arbib a socialist? Really? You are either clueless or a troll or both.
@Alex
Agree Alex – Mark Arbib a socialist? Hardly but he is part of the disease of Labor alright. He is exactly the sort of person once labor voters cant stand the sight of. So is Eddie Obeid who manages to get his two cents worth inb right hand side column of page 13 (where he belongs).
cant beleive he has the temerity to write ” the blame game is now underway with various leaders of NSW trying to rewrite history”.
The reality is, Obeids opinion isnt fit to be printed on toilet paper and he was part of the problem.
So now we have Iemma blaming Roberston, Obeid blaming Iemma, Roberston doing deals over Currawong with friends of Costas, Arbid blaming boring branch meeting agendas for deterring labor voters.
The problem with NSW labor is the labor right and the idiot labor right bullies who took their right views down to a darwinian survival for the mates club and its perks and its power and its dirty dealing, and stuff the rest of the people in the state and the finances.
A more incompetent deceitful lot you couldnt come across. Welcome to the real denialists in NSW Labor some of whom have managed to march straight up to federal labor and keep on denying why they people in NSW cant stand the sight of them. That goes for Arbib.
If I was a genuine Labor politician Id think very carefully about letting these people in the media with their two bit opinions. Its not a good look right now.
Better still Fed Labor would be best muzzling the labor right.
@Alex
Oh and Alex, you are dreaming – people voted for Barry OFarrell, not the right. People voted for a government that just wants to get on and fix the problems in infrastructure and energy and health and do the job. The people are sick to death of factionalism and that includes trolls like youself who want to keep the left right extremist positions alive and well.
Its not cracks in socialism that got Barry the vote. Its not a swing to the right. Its a swing to a work ethic that is clean. Barry got the votes of ordinary people everywhere who just want the bloody job done in NSW without the extremism and without the dirty dealings of the incompetent protected mates club and that NSW labor became.
sorry – its Band one who is dreaming – damn troll.
Troll comment deleted – anything more will be replaced by a comment of my choosing – JQ
I saw Frank Sartor on TV last night, explaining what was wrong with Labor in NSW, yet politely exempting himself from the “politically incorrect” people he was talking about. Did April Fool’s Day come early this year?
What do people think of the trial of Andrew Bolt? Personally I have no time for the man on climate change; I think he’s often a very dishonest commentator. However, this legal process is really too much. Firstly, I think it should be perfectly legal for someone to express an openly racist view, so long as they don’t call for violence. Secondly, I don’t think his “white aboriginal” columns were racist or slandering at all, and that in fact he made a useful contribution to the debate (though I don’t entirely endorse his view).
The opportunity for rationalist, liberal progressives to show true impartiality of principle over personality is now. Let’s stand up for a man who is often our ideological enemy, not to make him feel better, but so we can feel better about ourselves.
@Donald Oats
Don,
Richo, Carr, Obeid, Iemma, Arbib, Sartor – lets see who has missed the rolll call of dumb and dumber opinions (“twasnt me that done it) by part of the boys club? Oh thats right – Tripodi and Costa should be due to point their bones next.
Well – must be off to join my place the traffic congestion now…
“The Fall Of Socialism in NSW […] There are cracks forming in the socialist walls of Cambericho and they will be down shortly.”
Don’t know what Cambericho is, but socialism is not under threat in NSW. We just had a government elected with a record majority with the key promise of expanding socialist transport.
That sits strongly with socialised health, education, and social security.
Australia’s $10 billion in socialised support for fossil fuels is not under threat in NSW either!
http://www.greenpeace.org.au/blog/?p=2946
Please Band one, naff off with your silly McCarthyite gibber!
Alice, elsewhere, the problem of Arbib’s connection with a foreign power, as with others of the ALP Right, I think stemming from wikileaks, has been raised again.
Hang the traitors!
Jakerman, with the coalition in in NSW, expect a quick rise in “agrarian socialism”, if nothing else..
Band One
>*Adam, were the National Socialists “socialists”? They also got into power calling themselves ‘socialists’ and like Arbib and Obeid, who call themselves social democrats, enacted the politburo agenda of their pecu-liar ‘social’ club.*
They were no more socialists than than the Liberal Party of today. Nor were they more socialist than the FDR-Truman socialsit that defeated them. They were skilled propagandist like the (German Democartic Republic who were no more democratic than the NAZI’s were socialist) and called themselves a name that mached the mood of the their day.
The National Socialst might have called themselves socialsit but they were on the opposite spectrum to the (Marxist) Social Democratic Party (SDP) and the Communities who they battled in the streets.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/germany/elect.htm
Hitler came to power in a familiar right wing route, finaced and backed by a media mogul (Alfred Hugenberg) and Hjalmar Schacht, Fritz Thyssen and other leading German businessmen and international bankers.
Hilter’s evental rise to Chancellor was in the Conservative and centre right Coalition opposed by the left wing parties.
Dad and I were betting that at some point Barry O’Farrell would roll out the “Budget $X-billion Dollar Blackhole” gambit to screw the NSW voters out of some of his Liberal party election promises. Didn’t even make it past Monday – today – before the gambit is tried. Only thing is, according to the Noon news on the ABC, he is going on about a projected deficit 5 years into the future! The reporter helpfully explained that there is another whole election before then. Sheesh! Couldn’t even lie straight in bed; all the NSW people have done is replace one bunch of low-down phonies with another bunch…I’d be even more disappointed if I still lived in NSW.
Terje,
I assume you insure your property? Most people do. That makes you poorer. The chances of your house being destroyed are pretty low. The insurance company (aims) to make a profit from it’s policy-holders. The chances of carbon dioxide making us poorer by an unrequested and uncalibrated climate adjustment are, it seems likely, greater than your house burning down. Yet you don’t want to insure -against a high probabability high impact event. Perhaps because its too far away in time. Lets make a calibrated adjustment ourselves that we can (hopefully) control.
Forget the rubbish about the temperature adjustment that a carbon tax will make now. It’s an irrelevant red herring. The adjustment now is an investment in the future.
TerjeP:
TerjeP narrow view of cost works the same as arguing for continued externalising of costs. TerjeP’s failing to internalise costs makes his calculations unfair. We lose assets when we lose biodiversity, we lose assets when our air is polluted with irritants and carcinogens. We lose assets when we ship off non-renewable resources. We lose assets when sea levels rises. We lose assets when we lose ecosystem services, we lose assets when Hadley cells expand to change the climate in formally arable land.
We lose assets when storm intensity increases, when scale of floods increase, when scales of droughts increase. We loses assets when intensity of fires increase and when range of disease increase.
We loses assets when civil conflict increases dues to depletion of assets (including assets lost to externalising costs).
y’know,if any body/group put together a plan to gut the community contribution to effective local political participation,they couldn’t have done a better job.
all politics is local.
every body has heard of the glass ceiling but what happens locally seems to be glass walls(sometimes frosted)
you can see where you want go and can’t see any reason not to get there
but
you spend an awful lot of energy and get no where.
TerjeP, We also lose wealth when we invest limited resorces in unsustainable Ponzi scheme bubble economies such as expansion of expensive infrastructure (i.e. more and more freeways, and carparks at the cost of more sustainble growth) that only makes economic sense if we can depeand on contiued access to cheap oil.
@TerjeP (say tay-a)
You can’t quote one poll without quoting the other. On 29th March, essential media asked: “If the Government compensated households by cutting income tax and increasing welfare payments, would you be more likely or less likely to support the proposed carbon tax?” to which 38% of respondents said that they would be more likely to support a carbon tax.
I was thinking something similar about Bolt myself. Again I can’t stand the man, but I cannot help getting the feeling that the court case looks a little like political point-scoring.
However I have little sympathy for him. I looked over his blog today and found a post about rises in global sea levels that I think represents the man pretty well. He cites a single paper from the Journal of Coastal Research (not exactly Nature or Science) which he uses to cast doubt on certain aspects of the AGW hypothesis. That Bolt would accept this particular result without scrutiny and fail to acknowledge that the overwhelming majority of scientific evidence leads to the opposite conclusion says a great deal about his integrity. Furthermore he often criticizes the scientific community of cherry-picking but appears to indulge in it greatly himself.
@sam
The trouble here is that the distinction between an openly racist view and calling for violence can be a subtle one. Alan Jones, you will recall, dogwhistled day in and day out in the run up to Cronulla and created an atmosphere in which callers could spread nonsnesense and people whyo saw violence as desirable could piggyback on it. There’s no doubt that the demagoguery of Blot has authored an audience of existentially angst-ridden reactionaries some of whom read between the lines exactly what their fantasies tell them is there. The distinction between crying “Fire!” in a crowded cinema and wondering loudly if that smell isn’t smoke, when there’s nothing there at all is not something that one wants to give test in real time.
I remain opposed to laws restraining vilification, it seems to me that those with significant public celebrity ought to be compelled to assume that others may rely on their words when acting, and may interpret them in ways that the author would disavow, either sincerely or disingenuously. If someone is hurt as a consequence of such a reliance, and a defendent demonstrate that the intepretation of the words was unreasonable, or at the very least unconnected with the harm-causing acts, then the person ought to be held liable in part for any harm that ensues. In the absence of clear direction to act or obvious malice, the liability might be a civil and tortious one — one purely involving restitution rather than criminal sanctions. In the former case, (one where, as in Rwanda at the time of the gen*cide, there was an invitation to breach the civil rights of others) one could be made an accessory to the crimes.
It seems to me though that the courts are an appropriate place to test these claims. In the particular case of Blot at issue, it seems to me that the case has little merit. The comments, while obnoxious and ignorant, could not reasonably be interpreted by any person as an invitation to infringe the rights of the said persons or similar persons, nor is it clear how one might rely on these remarks to go about this. At worst, it might create space for others to repeat these tropes and offend others, which, while regrettable, is something that predated Blot’s commentary by a very long way. He is, after all, merely repeating longstanding attitudes in this. I’m happy enough for these matters to be explored in detail by the courts, because one way or another, a precedent will be set. If the precedent is indeed an unhealthy one, then it’s at that point one ought to be critical, rather than now. It is not as if the Blot lacks the resources to secure his interests.
Bernard Keane made some remarks in passing on this over at Crikey, complaining of the prosecutor “Godwinning” the case and saying that he hadn’t heard the Blot attacking people in this way over their words. It seems implausible, as there is scarcely a week in which Blot doesn’t bracket Greens with f*scism and mass murder, based on one trope or another. In one case he took exception to a crematorium returning energy to the grid and of course his lonstanding lie about the Greens “banning” DDT is a constant feature of his claim that Greens are mass-murdering psychopaths. If anyone has less room to complain of being Godwinned, it’s hard to know who that would be.
So I won’t at this stage be raising my voice in protest at Blot’s legal vicissitudes. Let him be a test case and let us see if anything undesirable emerges from it. If it does, then perhaps I’ll change my mind, but in the interim, this lying for the culture war-style commentator can work it out without my help. he did after all once ban me from his blog for pointing out the stupidities he and his fan base were disgorging.
@jakerman
And of course we also lose when working days are lost to ill-health. Apparently, about 150,000 people’s lives are shortened in the US each year by airborne pollutants derived from coal, gas and oil combustion, and before they die, they demand service from the health system, take days off work, are attended to by their families. We lose when people spend too long and too much commuting or hundreds of extra kilometers of water and gas pipes and data and power cables have to be installed and serviced because the city is set up to give everyone 700-1000m2 blocks. We will lose when the coal and oil becomes economically unviable and we have to switch in a hurry to something else and when the things that are harder to do without these things apart from energy production go up at the same time.
People rightly make a fuss about the CO2e-driven externalities but they forget that Co2 is merely part of a package which also includes all of the other harvest, transport and combustion waste from fossil HC and the perverse incentives attached to the use of this nominally “cheap” fuel source. Western societies ought to have been configuring to minimise usage of fossil HC from the 1950s on grounds that had nothing whatever to do with elevated atmospheric CO2. Certainty on the pernicious consequences of CO2 augmentation, which we had achieved at least by the late 1970s was merely a new and even more compelling reason to take action for which there was already a strongly persuasive case.
Martin Feil has an article in today’s smh on the Productivity Commission’s report on a carbon tax.
Feil writes:
“The commission’s conclusion is that comparable measurements are problematic. It also concludes that any tax or ETS implicitly subsidises one product or less-carbon-intensive sector at the expense of another. This type of policy has been anathema to the commission since it discovered economic rationalism and fervently adopted free market economics”
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/the-truth-is-you-cant-put-a-price-on-carbon–no-one-can-20110328-1cdei.html
Something seems to be wrong here. Surely everybody who knows anything about economics (post 1900) would know that the idea of internalising externalities is a) desirable on allocative efficiency grounds and b) the internalisation of externalities manifests itself in changes in relative prices.
I wonder what the terms of reference were for the Productivity Commission or, alternatively, I wonder whether Feil read correctly.
Having said that, I’d like to add there is a problem in the usage of terminology which has become particularly noticeable since Mr Rudd and Mr Turnbull have been replaced. It seems to me some politicians and commentators want to find catch phrases*, on the apparent assumption that the public wouldn’t understand anything else. What if the public gets the impression that those who sell phrases don’t understand what they are talking about?
Regarding allocative efficiency, obviously, if ghg emissions had been taxed for the past 100 or more years then peak oil would lie in the more distant future. This is obvious for all except those who don’t believe that market prices are relevant for anything except superfluous cost accountants.
*The expression ‘putting a price on carbon’ is one of these phrases. A ‘carbon tax’ does not put a price on carbon but merely on new carbon emissions and only to the extent that emissions from production of physical marketable commodities are to be reduced but well bounded away from zero.
@Joe K
You might find that Terje isn’t big on insurance. At it’s psychological core, libertarianism is based on a something like a “tough man” myth. (Not surprisingly, they are virtually all men.) They’d rather enjoy the spoils and tough out the downsides of their actions than mess with anything as like communal responsibilites. Most people have tendencies in this direction but libertarians are gathered at one end of the bell curve with a high moral philosophy to keep from being distracted. For good evolutionary reasons this same type of behaviour also characterises young male chimpanzees, but they haven’t converted it into a psychologically robust political narrative.
hey one might disagree with Terje but there is no need for that.
I have seen nothing in what he has written to suggest he deserves such snide comments.
I do wonder about how he calculates external diseconomies.
@Jeepers Creepers
Agree with your #38
@Ernestine Gross
It doesn’t come as a surprise to many that the Productivity Commission was unable to do the research called for in the terms of reference. The research capacity of the Commission has become poorer and poorer over the years. Over the last ten years there has been a massive exodus of researchers.
As it is now, there is no real research culture in the place and no reward for good research. The upper levels of management have no interest and no capacity for research. What is worse is that when they get an important reference, like that one, the upper levels of management will not let any of the real researchers near it, least they come to a conclusion, based on data and evidence, different to the immediate conclusion those managers came to based on their ideological prejudices.
All this is not to say, that there aren’t some good, even excellent, researchers left in the place, even at the branch head level. But these individuals have no organisational support and they owe their skills, their training and knowledge to where ever else they have worked and not to the commission. The organisation is vastly degraded from the days when it was the IAC or IC. A lot of great talent has come and gone, underutilised, and it was a long road to where it is today.
Quality control, when it comes to research, is another issue at the Commission. The greatest danger the institution faces is an audit of their research. After the results of an audit, I am sure their would be enough material to fill several volumes of a “Journal of Irreproducible Results”. Amazingly, although that emperor has no clothes, the institution still is held in such high regard. That they were unable to do what ought not to have been so difficult, and may have already have been done elsewhere may start people wondering about their nakedness.
As they often do in these sorts of cases, the Productivity Commission appears to have randomly sprayed money at consultants. Problem is, that if you don’t really know what you are after, or you are not sufficiently knowledgeable about research, you are not really capable of spending money on consultants wisely. The sort of asymmetric information problem many have if they go to their mechanic to get their car fixed. If you know little, it is very easy for the mechanic to rip you off. If you don’t even know that for cars you need a mechanic, you might go to a ‘car faith-healer’.
Snide remarks have become pretty common on this site.
I do have house insurance. However I think much that goes by the name “insurance” is a waste of money. A bit like poker machines but less entertaining.
The externalities of CO2 emissions are real. But in evaluating a policy such as the carbon tax it is the wrong metric. The correct measure of benefit is the amount the policy reduces those externality by. If a global 5% cut in emissions by 2020 only delivers a temperature reduction of 0.004 degrees Celcius then the case for such a policy isn’t that compelling.
Could be worth considering, do one or more in the upper levels of the Commission believe that anthropogenic Climate Change is, to use Tony Abbott’s words, “Crap”?
If they do believe it is crap then throwing a spoke in the wheels whenever possible becomes completely rational.
Another question worth asking is: How many of other senior bureaucrats in the public service also believe its ‘crap’?
And enough of this rubbish about pity for Bolt, also.
He is a deliberate, vicious and premeditated serial liar, sadist and lunatic and ought to be kept in irons on Norfolk
Island, until it can be proven whether he tells the truth ever, except by accident andif only be accident.
I could go further and call him out for a psychopath, but it seems that’s what they look or in politicians and columnists.
@Nick R
I’ll do another take on Godwin’s law here.
Even if Adolph Hitler himself had written these “white aboriginal” columns, I’d still be defending him against this legal challenge. Of course, for other reasons I would like to see him tortured to death as painfully as possible, but for these columns he would blameless. Have you read them? Here are the main ones, I trawled through Andrew Bolt’s nonsense so you don’t have to.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/column_white_is_the_new_black
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/opinion-old/white-fellas-in-the-black/story-e6frfifo-1225764532947
@Fran Barlow
I don’t think Bolt’s comments here were particularly ignorant. Some of the people he cited indeed seemed to have no genuine cultural attachment to aboriginality, and simply be gaming a grants system. Perhaps this wasn’t true of all the individuals he cited, but his point still has merit, and is worth debating. He isn’t guilty of defamation either, since he didn’t lie about anyone’s actions, and only offered a cynical interpretation of their motives.
My own view is that freedom to speak unless it offends is no freedom at all. The only time
freedom of speech matters is when it’s controversial. There was a slightly similar case to this in Canada where a conservative magazine editor named Ezra Levant was hauled before the Human Rights Commission. He was made to answer charges after a radical Muslim imam decided to get offended over a republishing of the Danish cartoons. You can watch his “government interrogation” (his words) here.
I agree with Levant on very few things, but those clips still send a libertarian shiver down my spine.
@Nick R
I’ll do another take on Godwin’s law here.
Even if Adolph Hitler himself had written these “white aboriginal” columns, I’d still be defending him against this legal challenge. Of course, for other reasons I would like to see him tortured to death as painfully as possible, but for these columns he would blameless. Have you read them? Here are the main ones, I trawled through Andrew Bolt’s nonsense so you don’t have to.
hwords added so asnottotripupJQ’smoderationblockerttp://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/column_white_is_the_new_black
hmorewordsttp://www.heraldsun.com.au/opinion-old/white-fellas-in-the-black/story-e6frfifo-1225764532947
@paul walter
Paul – no need to hang the traitors – the electorate just decapitated them. If Federal labor had any sense it would clean out the sum like Arbib as well…..the only thing saving Federal labor is the madness that is Tony Abbott!!
Sorry – thats “scum like Arbib” above and as for Bolt – he is the same sort of scum.
These people with their extreme views wanting to kick up a fight between the left and the right are just so damn boring and predictable and petty and a pain in the bum.
I pay my taxes so whoever is in power can get their act together and deliver sound infrastructure and decent policies that keep people employed and the economy turning over without people once middle class ending uo in the ranks of the poor or homeless or a huge traffic jam or unable to be seen to when they are desperately ill.
I dont pay my taxes so Labor can bicker with liberals about the left and the right and idiots like Arbib or Costa can get into power and throw their weight around and pull out the knives and stick them into their colleagues.
The bottom line is they have a job to do and how many do we have to throw out before its done?
Enough with the spin and the bellyaching about who does the job better – the private sector or the public sector? Enough with the tippy toeing around big business. No one minds big business as long as it isnt running government and getting away without paying taxes etc like it has been or gouging us.
The majority of the people – remember us while you are fighting? (I mean really whether you are left or right – people like Abbott dont cut an appealing image – maybe he should go to the OFarrell school of etiquette because I for one am sick to death of seeing parliament debates like snide sneering schoolboy bullies – unfortunately Abbott was trained by the trifecta of sneering bullies – Howard, Costello and Abbott..and did they train up NSW Labor (Sartor, Costa, Tripodi ?)
No one wins let alone from this garbage let alone the voters.
I don’t know that I support the legislation that is being used against Bolt but have great difficulty feeling sorry if he becomes the victim of it.
On the best interpretation of Bolt, he would be a very highly paid performance artist. However, his are performances we could do without, because too many take his performances seriously, and hence they continue to have a corrosive effect on public opinion.
What has happened in Australia to Labor has happened to labour parties around the world, where an initial focus on justice and the betterment of the so-called ‘working class’, has, after the struggle generations, been replaced by too many labour aristocracies and apparatchiks who have a “what’s in it for me, my mates and relatives” view of politics and policy. Rather than looking after the ‘working class’ too many of them simply are after looking after themselves and their mates and those they tend to identify with, the so-called “aspirational class”. As a consequence, there are few if any left to speak for their natural constituency. Not surprising that that natural constituency would eventual and suddenly leave them in such large numbers. You can’t full all the people all the time.
@Fran Barlow
TerjeP:
TerjeP you’ve not showed how you calculate your 0.004 degrees figure. Also you’ve got to cut emission by 5% before you cut them by 50%. And Australia’s recalcitrance needs to be overcome to permit a global agreement. Hence Australia’s 5% then 50% carries with it far more emissions cuts than just our own.
Then we need to look at all the externalities that you’ve excised from the equation by looking at temperature alone. See @Fran Barlow’s points And @jakerman @ 30.
Imagine if we had gone to Copenhagen with the same pitch by the Rudd-led government, but with say a working ETS or a reasonable Carbon Tax already in place. It would have added some merit to our jawboning, and may even have swung a few more countries to put weight to a global action plan. The more we do our bit, the more currency our word is worth; on the other hand, failure to do anything at all provides other countries with the excuse to do nothing as well – they simply point to our hypocrisy and snigger behind our backs (bit like Copenhagen).
Okay, I’m painting the picture in overly brilliant colours, but I hope it makes the point that a positive feedback is possible in the way other countries decide whether to take action or not; seeing other countries choosing to take action establishes the baseline needed to convince other countries to do something substantial too. Many things need to go right for this to happen, but it is an obvious path to avoiding the more serious consequences of not reducing (in absolute terms) our global carbon emissions. We aren’t just investing in a 0.004C or whatever the inconsistently defined figure is, we are investing in the right to lecture, cajole and convert other countries to doing something as well.
PS: The radioactive water releases are much more signficant than previously described (in Japan at the Fukushima nuclear reactors). I still haven’t heard anything about whether nuclear waste has been dispersed by the original tsunami or not. The tsunami washed away entire multistorey commercial offices several kilometres inland, and chucked cars, buses, trucks around like matchbox toys. A few drums of nuclear waste wouldn’t have been too difficult to chuck around either…or some disposed-off fuel rods still ponded in the cooling ponds, perhaps? It would be nice to get some assurance that it wasn’t so, and news on whether there will be some land areas cordoned off for all time. [And yes I know the natural disaster is responsible for huge loss of life; I’m not making that comparison. And anyway, that’s why I donate.]