Why worry mate ?

...from the Economist, on Australia and its approach to climate change...

...The topic is fraught. On becoming prime minister in 2007, Mr Rudd, who had in opposition called climate change “the greatest moral, economic and social challenge of our time”, ratified the Kyoto protocol (disdained by Mr Howard) as his first official act, and put a trading scheme for carbon emissions before parliament. In the face of falling polls and rising opposition, however, he abruptly dropped it. His successor, Ms Gillard, having vowed during the 2010 election campaign that there would be “no carbon tax under the government I lead”, has now said she will introduce one...selective and situational morality in action - trying to develop political policy on an issue based on lies - results in even more lies... Her plan is to fix a price for carbon for three to five years, after which a trading scheme will take over. The details remain to be settled, but the idea is that transport, energy and industry will be included, though farming will not.
Whether it will ever come about is uncertain. The Liberal Party, under its previous leader, Malcolm Turnbull, supported a trading scheme, but that support cost him his job. The man who got it, Tony Abbott, had also once been a backer of such a scheme, but then decided it was a “great big tax on everything”. He is now adamantly opposed, knowing that many in his party are climate-change sceptics and sensing votes from those who would be hit by a carbon tax. What he himself believes is unclear: he has declared the science to be “crap”, but even so vowed last year to spend $3.2 billion over four years to secure emissions cuts. The fate of the scheme may lie with the Greens, who help keep Ms Gillard’s minority government in power. In 2009 they voted against Mr Rudd’s scheme, saying it was too feeble. They may find this one no better, yet to reject it would be to invite charges of irresponsibility...all up, a dog's breakfast of waffling and insubstantial pollie newspeak. What then are Kiwi's to do ? A pragmatist would say stay on course as we are, talk the talk, but don't scare the horses, and for pity's sake don't upset the electorate or the economy...more here...