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OT: Skeptics vs Alarmist Cage Match unSpectacular! 27-Nov-2009 At 9:52:45 AM evanbb

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On 27/11/2009 stingray4100 wrote:
>Do you think that the current legislation is worth supporting despite it being flawed in many ways?

This is a big question, and extroardinarily boring for a lot of people.

There are arguments on both sides of the coin. Firstly, with the current senate, I think this is the strongest legislation that can possibly get through. For legislation to pass it needs the support of Labor, plus either the 5 greens + the 2 independents (Fielding and Xenophon) OR 7 Liberals.

The Greens were being a bit silly with their higher targets (in a political sense), but probably would have negotiated a better deal. The problem with the Greens+2 deal is that Fielding has a thinking, understanding and voting disability and so would not have voted for any legislation that addresses climate change. He is a fukking idiot in the traditional sense of the word. So, for a more environmentally friendly scheme, a Liberal would have had to cross the floor and vote with the Greens; electoral suicide for those guys.

So, Labor had to move further right to try and get the Liberals on board. Again, they're severely fractured internally; torn between blue-ribbon Liberal demographics (inner city doctors) and Country Party right wing-red neck lunatics, who think climate change is an inner city conspiracy to defraud the bush. So, when negotiating with these lunatics they had to water down the scheme to appear to have no affect on the Liberal constituents that would be affected by this green conspiracy to de-industrialise Australia.

So in short, I think it's a terrible scheme, but the best we could hope for with the current right-tards in the senate. There's a decent chance there will be a change in the numbers in the senate at the next election, with either a straight Labor majority, or a chance for the Greens to have the controlling vote. Then, the details of the scheme could be manipulated and tightened to actually lower our emissions.

Personally, I'm filled with cynicism and doubt about this scheme. But, there is some scope for improvement.