Are these the words of an environment minister?
Ian Campbell shares his thoughts on a carbon tax:
SENATOR IAN CAMPBELL, FEDERAL ENVIRONMENT MINISTER: You don't want to wipe out the jobs of thousands of Australians. What we want to do is invest in the technologies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions and this is just a tax.Citizens of the civilised world may be excused for thinking these cannot possibly be the words of an environment minister. An industry minister perhaps, but surely not an environment minister.
...
SENATOR IAN CAMPBELL: This is simply a new tax and there can be no getting away from it. It is a massive impost on Australian industry. It will drive jobs offshore, put up prices for energy in Australian households and not fix the greenhouse gas challenge that's so serious that governments should be investing in it.
Campbell is repeat offender on this issue. In June he described carbon taxes as 'stupid' prompting this hilarious response from Big Gav at Peak Energy:
The Minister for blocking wind farm development, Ian Campbell, has announced that "carbon taxes are stupid". As he is a master of the dark art of stupidity, perhaps he could be considered an expert on stupid things, but I still think he's several beers short of a sixpack, as usual.Its amazing to think that more than a decade ago Australia had an environment minister who actually proposed a carbon tax. His name was John Faulkner.
Personally I'd say a well implemented global carbon tax would solve (1) global warming (2) peak oil and (3) resource wars over oil and the terrorism that results from these - so perhaps they wouldn't be such a bad thing.
2 Comments:
But why would he backslide from this postion where I praised him.
http://stevegloor.typepad.com/sgloor/2005/12/credit_where_cr.html
Boy have I regretted this.
Tue Aug 22, 08:54:00 PM
I've noticed a lot of backtracking on climate change this year by the Howard government. This is what Campbell said in October 2005:
Debate over, it's time to save the planet
"There is a very small handful of what we call sceptics who, in the face of seeing all of the evidence about carbon increases and all of the evidence about impacts on the climate, would still say that it's only natural variability that is causing it," Senator Campbell said.
"On global warming, I have spent an enormous amount of my time getting to understand the problem and getting to understand the solutions, and I think the Australian Government owes it to the public to tell it like it is - it is a very serious threat to Australia."
Less than a year later Campbell is calling carbon taxes 'stupid', and Macfarlane is openly admitting that he's a climate change skeptic.
In recent months Howard and his ministers seem to have adopted the hard-right denialist position as promoted by the Murdoch media: The Australian's War on Science
Wed Aug 23, 11:34:00 AM
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