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5% target, 100% pathetic...

Tuesday, 16 December 2008

I feel betrayed... My vote went to the Greens, which in turn went straight to labor and helped Kevin Rudd become prime minister.... all because I believed strongly in climate change election promises. And now, crunch time, the Rudd Government's commitment to compensating and providing free permits to polluting industries is gambling with the lives and ecosystems of Australia and the world... "Peter Garrett, we cannot sleep while our planet is burning." There is no difference at all between the Rudd government and Howard's commitment to fossil fuel interests. At least Howard was honest!

While my application for the white paper public information session was rejected (apparently it was full) I read Anna Roses's overview from the session in Canberra... The so called 'gateway' of between 5 and 15% reduction actually means a 5% reduction because the carbon price ($25 per tonne) is based on this 5%. This is in the face of the CSIROs recommendations of a 60%-80% reduction. To make matters worse the emissions intensive trade exposed industries (the worst polluters of the lot) will basically having all their christmases at once. They will receive huge amounts of compensation (free permits) and the permits are tax deductible! If they buy their permits upfront they won't have to pay tax... The worst emitters get 90% of their permits for free... The second most polluting get 60% of their permits for free... so it makes more sense to increase pollution above thresholds to get more free permits... The carbon pollution REDUCTION scheme is an incentive to increase emissions!!!!!

Well I'm glad they didn't accept my application to attend the session... I'm going to the protest instead! I've also signed up for the climate action summit Jan 31st -> Feb 3rd in Canberra in 2009... This is pathetic.

Apart from that, not much other news... Lachie did well, and got into science at melbourne as planned... Echuca was very quaint and they had the most delicious lemon meringue fudge at Sharps old theatre and penny arcade.... The Murray looked particularly healthy and full after all that rain and there was an abundance of wildlife all along the rivers... The golden cow at Tongala was a definite let down though. For that many brown tourist signs, a mega car park, flags, banners, billboards and a giant building the greying-gold cow and the plastic sheet about tractors was rather confusing. Tongala itself was very cute though... And the Nestle factory held the promise of lots of chocolate and ice cream!

Labels: climate change, Kevin Rudd, pathetic

posted by genloz at 8:45 PM 1 Comments