ETS White Paper - 5% or bust

On Monday 15 December the Australian Government released its White Paper on the proposed ETS.

Its available here.

5-15% reduction on 2000 levels by 2020.

Lets see now,

The politics of it jams the Liberals into corner with death on one side, suicide on the other....

• Target Not enough? Libs would be siding with the greenies, bad look for the true believers
• Target Too much? you could hardly have a smaller target could you?
• No action? yeah lets side with the 10% of people who think we should do nothing.

Annoys the Greens
It gives them something to holler about, and gets them national press coverage, they might even get more votes next time, but since preferences go to Labor..... and they are probably the only real chance of cleaning out the hurdles in the Senate next election.

Mum and Dad Punters (Working Families to Kevin 07)

• No pain, no gain.
• 'Get your no family will be worse off payments'

Big Industry (The Australian Economy to Kevin 07)

Free Permits to anybody that could possibly be affected in any way at all. Especially anyone who may be adversely affected by having to think about ways to reduce electricity use. (sorry for the inconvenience by the way)

Big Coal ('Friends' to the Kevin 07)

• Put in place mechanism for public funded investment in clean coal technology development.
• Put in place 'clean development mechanisms' to fund implementation of clean coal in China, India etc

30-50 years of Black coal export locked and loaded.

Lastly, Who pays?

Well all that is left is the double decaf soya latte sipping yuppies, exactly the demographic that wants to do something about climate change the most.