Porkahontas: why Kevin Rudd’s Solar Schools is really solar pork

While the price of $364 per tonne of CO₂ avoided is indeed high, it’s clear that the Solar Schools initiative is a ridiculously expensive way to combat climate change, but an affordable way to buy votes, I suspect.

Honesty in addressing greenhouse emissions is what’s needed. Incentives, not sanctions, are indispensible in order to cajole the public (and industry) to act responsibly. That does not mean slapping a tax on those consumers or producers whose behaviour is frowned upon by the gloom sayers of global warming.

Looking at public transportation for instance, the community already expects this service to be affordable and to be primarily subsidised by state governments.  Ideally, Federal intervention would involve direct payments to the states to cover the value of passenger revenues forgone as a result of abolishing fares.

But there are other ideas that come to mind: removing federal taxes on hybrid vehicles, given their trifling contribution to global warming; lowering (or eliminating altogether) car registration costs for such vehicles; exempting hybrids altogether from (state) tolls as the City of London does for drivers of the low emitting Toyota Prius.

Labor has already u-turned in their long march towards Kyoto II. The unionists now understand the folly of advanced economies signing on to such a flawed treaty, while the underdeveloped world is given a free pass to thumb their collective snouts at us.

I wonder, how long it will take Porkahontas to pivot 180 degrees on his Solar Schools initiative? And when, if ever, will we see him honestly and fairly tackle the real environmental bandit: the motor car.