ETS: emissions trading scheme or energy tax swindle?

Climate change has been with us for millions of years. But anthropogenic global warming could only have existed from some time in the 20th century. If we assume the theory is correct, and a worldwide ETS actually neutralises it, what guarantee is there that other factors will not affect the weather?

There is of course, no guarantee at all. So even an effective world wide ETS could all be in vain.

In any event no serious foreign affairs commentator expects China or India to enter a genuine ETS. Even if Senator Obama was elected President and proposed this, Congress would never agree.

And everyone knows an Australian ETS will not have even the slightest effect on the weather, the Murray River or the Great Barrier Reef.

So there is no reason to proceed with an ETS. But the government is intent on this. And once in place the ETS will be ramped up - after the next election.

The ideological commitment to an ETS and to anthropogenic global warming (AGW) indicates rational argument will not prevail. All an ETS will do is enable the government to take even more money from taxpayers and waste and redistribute it, at the same time enriching the usual carpet baggers.

This commitment to AGW has taken on a sinister theological character. Those who question it are called doubters, or deniers. How long will it be before they are labelled heretics? The reason for this commitment is best explained by the observation famously attributed to G.K.Chesterton.

This is that when men stop believing in God it is not that they believe in nothing: they then believe in anything.

Kevin Rudd’s party has a long tradition of passionate attachment to ideology - the socialist objective the terms of which used to be inscribed on every member’s ticket. Communism was a human disaster, but widespread socialism in those democracies who went down that path seriously damaged their economies and impoverished generations. The massive nationalisations in Britain doomed that country to slow rates of economic growth and decline for decades until the advent of a truly reformist government under Margaret Thatcher.

Almost everyone thinks socialism was a mistake. For a generation keen on apologies for past wrongs, who has apologised to a whole generation of Britons?

So what is the point of the ETS, this tax on energy if it is not to satisfy a new ideology? An editorial in The Wall St Journal (July 14, 2008) is more cynical. It suggests a result consistent with socialist ideology. They say the resulting massive tax windfall will be used to accelerate the move to emasculate a once free people and make us even more dependent on government.

Everyone knows the Liberal Party kowtowed to the AGW believers over an ETS in 2007 because electoral defeat was staring it in the face. That’s in the past, like the ALP’s opposition on the GST. Instead of clinging to it, the opposition should just renounce it. So should the sensible people in the Labor Party, as Michael Costa clearly does.