Australian Parliament Rejects Their Version of Cap & Trade

What looked like a sure thing a few weeks ago just got voted down in the Australian Senate. There has been a bunch of drama over this bill, including the ousting of the main opposition leader after he started to go along with PM Rudd's plans to send the Australian economy back to the Stone Age.

Now it looks like Rudd and both houses of parliament are in for an early shake-up:

Opponents of the cap-and-trade scheme used their numbers in the Senate after a climate change skeptics took control of the opposition leadership on Tuesday.

The scheme would have been the biggest outside Europe, covering 75 percent of Australian emissions and starting in July 2011. It would have effectively forced polluters to pay for their emissions, requiring them to purchase emission permits from a carbon market.

Senior opposition lawmaker and frontbencher Christopher Pyne said he expected a dissolution of both houses of parliament and an election early in the new year, ahead of polls due around late November.

"I think the election will be on March 6. I think the government will call a double dissolution election if the ETS (emissions trading scheme) is voted down this week," Pyne said.

Ah, Copenhagen, we barely knew ye.

Lousy Editorializing: Y'know, last year I wrote that 2008 would be known as the year when the Global Warming scam started to fall apart. And it did. That's when more American's disbelieved in warming than believed in it. Many people woke up and realized that the big ball of nuclear fire hanging over our heads might have something to do with global temperatures on Earth. And many people looked around and noticed that it's been awfully cold around here lately (for example, we had snow in Malibu for the past two years).

But if it started last year, man, the collapse of the Global Warming con is coming fast now. Almost like a runaway greenhouse gas effect that's just going to ruin everything.

In many places it was was a heinous, unthinkable violation to doubt Global Warming, especially for my generation. I came out as a skeptic to a few of my coworkers last year and they looked at me like I was an alien. But this week I saw doubt in their eyes when another coworker brought up ClimateGate.

The taboo for being a "denier" is lifting. Before you know it, no one who can get away with it will fess to believing in Global Warming. Of course, a lot of politicians will go down kicking and screaming, swearing to their last breath that it's real. They've got too much invested in it being real and many are much too proud to admit they were duped.

But I'm okay with that. As Americans sour about the billions of dollars that have been wasted on Global Warming, they'll go hunting for wasteful fools in Washington.

Obama wants to go to Copenhagen and make a commitment to fighting Global Warming? Let him. Just something else to pin on him in 2012.

posted by Gabriel Malor at 09:13 PM

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