Can Republicans Play the Green Card?

Writing in the U.S. based Forbes Magazine, Dr Patrick Michaels discusses the lessons of the Queensland election - and how a carbon tax and "green nonsense" must always be opposed:

Recent elections—including last month’s tectonic shift in Australia—unequivocally show that aggressive global warming policies are political suicide. But, will a Republican ticket headed by Mitt Romney be able to capitalize on the Administration’s fatal weakness?

On March 23, the Australian Labor Party—akin to our Democrats—held 51 seats in the unicameral Queensland Legislative Assembly. 34 were held by the Liberal National Party, Australia’s variant of our Republicans. There were four independents.

The election, over the fourth weekend in March, has been called the largest electoral rout in the history of The Lucky Country. Labor hung on to six—that is not a typo, 6—seats, and the Liberals grabbed a mind-boggling 76. Three are still in doubt and Labor may add one more.

The crack-up of the Aussie left—regardless of what you hear from Labor’s spin cyclists—has largely been over Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s support (and the legislative passing) of a carbon tax to fight dreaded global warming. While Labor didn’t say very much about it in Queensland, Liberal candidates were all over the issue.

Gillard campaigned on a “no carbon tax” platform in the 2010 national election, which resulted in neither her party nor the Liberals gaining an outright majority. A coalition of independents and a green joined with Labor, extracting from Gillard a promise to follow the advice of an ad hoc climate policy committee guaranteed to recommend the tax. In keeping her end of the bargain, she moved the bill forward through the national legislature, and by November she had her tax.

Since the 2010 election that forced the suicidal coalition, everything has gone downhill for Labor. Once in control of all six Australian states, they have now lost four of them to the Liberals.

Australia is in the process of repeating American history. In 2010, Democrats in the House of Representatives paid the ultimate price for their June, 2009 passage of the cap-and-trade bill that would have reduced per capita emissions of dreaded carbon dioxide to what they were in 1867. Every close race that they lost evicted a member who had voted for it. In the Senate, which never touched it, every close race went to an incumbent Democrat. Both houses of Congress voted for the despised health care nationalization, so it isn’t right to blame the loss of the House on that.

On the night of the debacle, the press was clearly aware of the damage that cap-and-trade had wrought. On the day after, President Obama was asked about the future of carbon dioxide regulation. He replied that “cap and trade is just one way of skinning the cat”, a clear signal that he intended to direct the EPA to now go where Congress would forever fear to tread.

Which it has, fulfilling his campaign promise that, “if someone wants to build a coal plant they can—it’s just that it will bankrupt them”.

Last week, EPA administrator Lisa Jackson announced a proposed regulation that will outlaw any new coal-fired plant, unless it employs carbon dioxide capture technology that will make it uncompetitive anyway.

This should be green meat for the Republicans. What Jackson is proposing is another environmental boondoggle, far bigger than the Administration’s outrageous commitments to inconstant windmills, solar power that can’t work at night, and $10,000 to taxpayers who buy a Chevy Volt (median household income: $175,000+).

It wasn’t even necessary. Thanks to the wonders of horizontal and flexible drilling in shale, it’s now cheaper to produce electricity with natural gas instead of coal. In fact, the percent of our power that comes from coal has been dropping dramatically, and will continue to do so as long as gas is plentifully cheap.

Which, of course, is the problem. No one can guarantee that it will remain at its current rock-bottom price, which is now so low that big-time frackers are cutting back operations. If coal again becomes the price king, we will simply not be able to build new plants to take advantage.

While recent history demonstrates that running against green nonsense wins elections—big time—Mitt Romney will be unable to run away from his previous enthusiasm for carbon dioxide caps, or for burning up our food supply in the form of ethanol, proving again the political toxicity of global warming.

 

 

Patrick J. Michaels is Senior Fellow in Environmental Studies at the Cato Institute and author of  “Climate of Extremes:  Global Warming Science They Don’t Want You to Know’. Origially published at Forbes.com, and reproduced with permission. 

Comments

[kraka]

1.

It is now obvious that distancing yourself from the Greens (Victoria) and opposing the ridiculous inneffective non required Global Warming scam policies (Qld,federal) is a much bigger vote winner than loser. This is mainly not seen by the supporters of the AGW scam (the left) because of their infallible belief in their own superiority and intelligence. Time and time again their idealogical beliefs are shown to be wrong and their constant answer-"we need to communicate better" (read we need better propaganda) is simply not washing with the majority anymore. This arrogant we know better than the masses might have worked in the 1800's but not these days. The majority is now so much better informed, and dare I say more based in reality,that the current politcial and media class are facing a losing battle trying to enforce their rose colored ridiculously out of touch view upon the thinking voters.

[Mat]

2.

You're right on the money with that one Kraka - this is the very reason that our political masters want a monopoly on the information that the peons are spoon fed, aka the NBN. And, let's not forget Conroy's nasty little filter that will ensure that only federally approved sites receive bandwidth. If you control the flow of information with a Government controlled service provider monopoly along with compulsory filtering of the Net, you can shape public opinion to suit your own ends. And let's not forget Bonzo and the Watermelons call for a media inquiry, with the end goal of further controlling the flow of information. The only light at the end of the tunnel is the knowledge that this band of thieves couldn't organise a chook raffle.