Slaving the Planet

"Climate change is crap" said Toe Knee Ass-Bit, The Man Who Would Be King, at a farmers' meeting in Victoria four years ago.

"It is not possible to criticise the new Coalition policy on climate change because it does not exist. Mr Ass-Bit apparently knows what he is against, but not what he is for. Second, as we are being blunt, the fact is that Toe Knee & the people who put him in his job do not want to do anything about climate change. They do not believe in human-caused global warming. As Toe Knee observed on one occasion "climate change is crap" or if you consider his mentor, Senator Minginess, the world is not warming, it's cooling & the climate change issue is part of a vast left wing conspiracy to de-industrialize the world," said Malcontent Turncoatabull three months later, having been recently dumped as leader of the conservative opposition & replaced by Toe Knee.

Now Ass-Bit has a policy, which Turncoatabull supports. "The bottom line is we will spend as much as we have budgeted, no more & no less. We will get as much environmental improvement, as much emissions reduction as we can for the spending that we've budgeted," he said.

That budget is $3.2 billion over the next four years. Out of that, $2.55 billion will be spent paying industry & farmers to carry out projects to reduce emissions, the rest on planting trees & installing more rooftop solar.

Ass-Bit said he was confident the Coalition would meet the 5 per cent cut with the money on offer. But several independent economic modelling studies dispute this.

One, commissioned by the Climate Institute, found the Coalition was $4 billion short & direct action could instead see emissions rise 9 per cent above 2000 levels instead of 5 below. The assumptions made in Climate Institute modelling were kind to the Coalition.

Other work has found larger holes.

Sources: The Brisbane Times, Sydney Morning Herald.