The Wall Street Journal
A carbon tax faces new opposition.
The global revolt keeps building against carbon cap and trade not that youd know it from the U.S. media. First the U.S. Senate postpones its bill next countries meeting in Copenhagen this month cant agree on emissions cuts then emails among climate scientists reveal rigged peer-review and now comes a political uprising in Australia that may doom a carbon tax down under.
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has made a sweeping cap-and-trade bill the centerpiece of his legislative agenda and for two years his climate alarmism has gone almost unchallenged. The conservative Liberal Party which embraced a cap-and-tax scheme before losing the 2007 election first said it would oppose any legislation that hurt the economy.
Then last week under then-party leader Malcolm Turnbull the Liberals threw in with Mr. Rudd and agreed to carve out as many handouts as possible for big business. Given that Australia accounts for only 1.5 of global emissions the bill would pile on economic costs with no environmental benefit.
The conservative wing of the party revolted on Thursday with six MPs stepping down from the front bench in protestan unprecedented event in the Liberal Partys more than 50-year history. And yesterday the party ousted Mr. Turnbull as party leader in favor of
Tony Abbott an MP from Sydney.
Mr. Abbott has spared no time in setting out his views. Yesterday he called cap and trade a great big tax to create a great big slush fund to provide politicized handouts run by giant bureaucracy. That is exactly what Mr. Rudd is proposing: to have business pay government for carbon credits starting in 2011. Canberra would then redistribute the revenues to favored green industries and middle-class voters with a bureaucracy to manage the whole thing.
Mr. Abbott asked his Liberal Party colleagues yesterday to vote on whether they would support cap and trade. They overwhelmingly oppose it. Thats a welcome switch for the party which has been emboldened by Mr. Abbotts conviction.
Mr. Rudd will now have a fight on his hands to pass cap and trade in the Senate which his Labor Party does not control. He said Tuesday that further delay of the bill equals denial on climate change. If Mr. Abbott can mount a solid economic case against such fact-free moralizing then the Liberals may soon revive their electoral fortunes.
