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The start of the end — Mainstream press says “Politicians go cold on global warming”

The Zeitgiest is shifting. The unthinkable is now thought, and in public.

Politicians go cold as global warming debate loses spark

From: The Times    July 23, 2013 12:00AM,   Reprinted in The Australian

Soon will come the time when everyone says “I always knew it was wrong”.

Tim Montgomerie notes the great backdown of  Kevin Rudd on the carbon tax and lays out the global carnage in the climate meme:

Throughout the world green politicians are presiding over similar climbdowns. From Washington to London, shale gas rather than any renewable technology is seen as the future. Even nations such as Germany and Spain, which led the march to green energy, are slashing unaffordable subsidies to the renewables industry. British Conservative Nigel Lawson has claimed that the average share price of companies in the renewable sector has fallen by 80 per cent over five years. “One renewable company after another is going bankrupt,” he declared. The heavy cost of green energy policies might have been justifiable if they had delivered results, but they haven’t. Since the Kyoto treaty on climate change, global emissions have continued to rise. Since 1990 they have increased by about 50 per cent. China’s increase in emissions has been 25 times greater than the reduction by the EU’s core nations. In so far as Europe has actually met its environmental obligations, it has only done so by exporting industrial capacity (and jobs). Once the environmental impact of imported goods has been added to its carbon footprint, Europe has clearly failed to keep its environmental promises.

One commentator, Bjorn Lomborg, spelt out the futility of Europe’s unilateral environmentalism. Germany’s efforts to combat climate change might, he calculated, just possibly delay a rise in global temperatures by 37 hours, but that delay will have cost German taxpayers and consumers more than $US100 billion in the form of renewable subsidies and higher electricity costs. That’s about $US3bn an hour.

Green enthusiasts are kidding themselves if they blame the global economic slump for the failure of climate change policies. Their policies were always an attempt to defy economic gravity.

Montgomerie’s description of Rudd is very short:

… in the past 10 days one of the greenest of green politicians has to all intents, constructions and purposes given up. Last week, Australia’s green movement suffered a defeat at least as big as those of the country’s cricket and rugby teams. Rudd announced he would ditch the carbon tax that had threatened to consign his Labor Party to one of the worst defeats in its history…

Some will argue that Rudd has shifted to a trading scheme which is what he always wanted, and he’s only brought it forward by a year. But everyone knows that the reason for the shift was not because it would be “better for the climate” to reduce the carbon-price by 70%. Even Rudd himself admits the shift was to reduce the cost of living pressures.

Priority number one is not the environment. (But don’t expect Rudd to say that).

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