You can look forward to a few posts from me on this debate … so let’s get started …

This from the Guardian on November 5th …

Carbon taxes and emissions trading systems are the most cost-effective way to reduce emissions and should be “at the centre of government efforts to tackle climate change”, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

An OECD study, called Effective Carbon Prices, found that other policies, such as feed-in tariffs, industry regulation and subsidies, are far less economically preferable than carbon pricing.

The findings are the latest evidence-based blow to the Coalition government’s climate policy, which involves dismantling carbon pricing and replacing it with its Direct Action system of financial handouts to businesses that want to reduce their emissions …

… The OECD’s ringing endorsement of carbon pricing follows the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, which have both recently backed the system as the best way to slash emissions.

It is noteworthy that all three of these major economic policy thinking bodies, the OECD, the IMF and the World Bank, have long left behind the debates about whether climate change is real and about whether human activity is contributing. They accept that that governments need to attack it – that’s a given – they have moved on to analyse, discuss and recommend what policy responses governments should implement to reduce emissions.

So where does that leave the Australian government?

• Equivocal about the science. Tony Abbott has made many comments about the carbon tax and about climate change in the last few years. Some have been outright denials of scientific evidence and reality. Others have been nervy, equivocal comments that climate change is real. But, have you ever heard a statement from Abbott that convinces you that he really believes that climate change warrants serious government and societal action? I haven’t. Or, do you find little Greg Hunt convincing? Look at them. Read the body language.
• Now the Government is flying in the face of almost unanimous advice about the appropriate economic policy to attack the problem they really don’t think needs attacking. So politics trumps science and economics.

I wonder if we got an insight today into Abbott’s thinking. His mentor went all the way to London and made a speech reported in the Sydney Morning Herald here:

Former prime minister John Howard has poured scorn on the “alarmist” scientific consensus on global warming in a speech to a gathering of British climate sceptics, comparing those calling for action on climate change to religious zealots.

“I am unconvinced that catastrophe is around the corner.”

Howard is, of course, a well researched expert on the subject. Hmmm. The Herald again:

Mr Howard revealed before the speech that the only book he had read on climate change was Lawson’s An Appeal to Reason: a Cool Look at Global Warming, published in 2008.

Mr Howard said he read it twice, once when he was writing his autobiography, when he used it to counter advice for stronger action on climate change given to him by government departments when he had been prime minister.

So that’s how he made decisions on matters important to humanity. Ignore the science and the paid public service, and rely on one book by another politician! What was that I said about group think a few days ago?

Howard clearly needs to upgrade his reading list, perhaps starting with the quite readable recent summary from the IPCC. Then he could move on a wonderful article by Naomi Klein in the Russell Brand edited New Statesman last week (more about Russell soon). She is an author of the utmost integrity, relying on years of research to produce each of her books. Read it. It’s important.