Hypocrisy soup for an entree anyone?
The Greens say they want to protect the environment, that CO2 is evil, and that we must be considerate of foreigners. But their actions speak louder than their tie-dyed t-shirts.
Example 1: They get a pot of $10 billion to hand out to their friends, their fans and their pet projects — and they’ve chosen to use it on “carbon reduction programs” that we already know won’t do much to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. If they truly wanted to reduce CO2 emissions, they wouldn’t have ruled out nuclear at the start line and they wouldn’t have ruled out carbon capture and storage (CCS). (We know that CO2 emissions don’t matter; who knew the Greens thought that too?)
Australian Greens leader Bob Brown insisted that CCS not be funded by the new entity, arguing that the money represented industry welfare for foreign-owned mining giants and “clean coal” was an illusion.
But the treasury says this will cost a fortune.
FAILURE to develop carbon capture and storage technology will release 25 million more tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by 2050 and increase the hit on the economy caused by Julia Gillard’s carbon tax, Treasury warns.
(As an aside: Notice that Gillard realises how silly this looks, and finds some more funding from a pot near a rainbow…
Opposition finance spokesman Andrew Robb said that every time Ms Gillard spoke she announced a new funding stream.
And we can see how hard it is for the ALP and Greens to add up numbers:
“The economics of the carbon tax has already unravelled,” Mr Robb said.
“There is the budget overrun of $4.3 billion which they acknowledge, another $3 billion to retire 2000 megawatts of brown coal power generation and $10 billion in money that will have to be borrowed for the Brown-Gillard Bank.
“This total of $17 billion cannot be simply dismissed by Labor as being broadly budget neutral.”
And Mr Robb has not added in the billions required to replace Hazelwood either. Bear with me, this point about numeracy matters and I’ll get back to it in a minute.)
Example 2: Are the Greens really tolerant of foreign cultures and non-Australians? Yes and No. The Greens hate the idea that Australian mining profits go back overseas; indeed, they were positively xenophobic about it. Yet when it comes to buying worthless carbon permits, it’s all A-OK if that money-for-nothing ends up in greedy foreign investment bankers hands. Got that?
From Terry McCrann:
…the single craziest aspect of the carbon (dioxide) tax lunacy is that it actually aims to have us paying perhaps $4 billion a year to foreigners just for the right to keep our lights on.
Sunday’s documents estimate that by 2020 we’d be buying the other 100 million tonnes or so from foreigners. That’s ‘Julia’s 160 million’ less the 60 million of actual local emission cuts.
We’d be buying them at a price which Treasury estimates would by then run around $37 a tonne.
We wouldn’t actually get anything tangible for the $4 billion – that’s around $170 for every Australian, $680 a year for a family of four. Just the ‘right’ to keep producing electricity from our coal-fired power stations.
So in Green-world: foreigners who risk their money to create Australian jobs and a product that people all over the world want are the enemy, while foreigners who give us nothing but paper promises about atmospheric nullities get the big tick, the champagne, and red carpet legislation — they can take our money and run. Why? It’s not about science, economics or politics. It’s tribal, and the carbon traders are from the same tribe.
The Greens — masters of numeracy and business (not) — don’t seem to twig that the only reason so many foreigners are invested in Australian mines is that the foreigners are willing to pay more than the Australians are for those productive assets. If the Greens want to keep the profits in Australia, they just need to get a job, earn some money, and invest it, and face the risks of losing it like everyone else. (That’s a tough game to compete in though if you are not so good with numbers — better to stick with tie-die and politics.)
So what do the Greens want if it’s not a “low CO2 world”? Based on the evidence, they want to hobble miners, shareholders, and investors: the productive skilled business people. Brown has said he blames the miners for the floods and fires. If this is a tribal war, the enemies of the Green power grab are those who are the main competition for power and influence and the ones who can’t be co-opted into the Green-tribe.
Brown and Gillard call the big companies “polluters”, yet they are charged with no crime. “Corporations” are people — shareholders, employees, and consumers. These are the targets of the hate-campaign.
They who are the independent self sufficient souls, will never be serfs to foolish agendas.