The Fairfax press say the improbable Gore-Palmer play was a win for alarmists. The Australian calls it for skeptics and says Gore is a fool. I’m not calling anything until I see the fine print. Palmer says he’s met P.M. Abbott and he was ‘encouraged’ by his climate plan.
The only thing I can say for sure is that the science of CO2 is irrelevant to both Gore and Palmer. Everything else is a paradox. We’re not being told everything.
It seems now that Palmer’s amendments to repealing the carbon tax do not include an Emissions Trading Scheme (even the Fairfax press agrees). That makes it look like a skeptic win, but keeping the $10b Clean Energy Finance Corporation is a win for Gore, and so is keeping the RET (Renewable Energy Target) and the Climate Change Authority — it’s another government funded advertising unit for the carbon scare campaign. The more patrons who are dependent on the carbon-subsidies, the more pro-carbon lobbyists there are. And they lobby like their livelihood depends on it — because they have nothing if the government policies don’t prop up their pretend free market.
Why would Gore have any interest in standing next to Clive-Palmer-the-coal-magnate as he axes Australia’s carbon tax? Some suggest Gore was paid for the event, but the man got $100m from Big-Qatari-Oil selling his TV Channel — even a few million to be there yesterday (and we don’t know he got anything) would not make it worth his while. I don’t think Gore was here for anything bar the big game. He wants a global trading scheme (which might be worth more than the global oil market — we’re talking a $2T annual turnover). The rest is little biccies. A million here, a million there, so what? And Gore sheds no tears over the death of the coalition’s Direct Action Plan, because it was never really about actually reducing carbon emissions, was it? It’s about keeping Green Gravy flowing and window dressing.
More inexplicable is what Palmer gains from standing next to Gore. Part of Palmer’s appeal at the last election was that he wouldn’t support “carbon action” of any kind. Palmer, surely, is not aiming to win semi-Green voters to his voter base? Clive risks burning off more voters than he gains. This is not about the environment, and it’s not about voters, so what is it about?
Gore’s motivations seem easier to understand than Palmer’s. The election of Tony Abbott on a blood oath to get rid of the carbon tax is a devastating break in the global PR story about the so-called rise of “carbon trading”. It popped the bubble — and it’s no accident Gore is here just before it goes to the new Senate. He wants to limit that damage and rescue the narrative that a global carbon scheme is inevitable. It’s all about momentum, or rather the semblance of such. Gore wants to go to Paris in 2015 being able to say “Australia wants carbon trading”. Perhaps he can finangle weak agreements from all the countries named, which each nation thinks is never going to happen, then present them as a fait accompli at the UNFCCC and embarrass them into meeting their agreements?
The latest developments are that Senator Nick Xenophon is leaning on two of Palmer’s senators — Ricky Muir and Jackie Lambie — to support the Coalition’s Direct Action plan. A political consultant of Muir says he hasn’t decided. Lambie says “no way” to Xenophon’s suggestion.