Politics

The Lesson from the Death of the Aussie Carbon Tax

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When Australia embraced a carbon tax two years ago, global warming warriors were ecstatic. Australia had gone

Climate.Change.Summit
Kris Krug / Foter / Creative Commons

from environmental laggard, refusing to even the sign the Kyoto treaty at first (just like the benighted US of A), to environmental leader. They told the world to watch and learn.

But two weeks ago, Australia's newly-elected Prime Minister Tony Abbott scrapped the tax that was as popular in the Land Down Under as Donald Sterling is here.

So if anyone needs to learn from the death of Australia's carbon tax, and the terminal fate of Europe's cap-and-trade program, I note in the Washington Examiner, it is the enviros themselves. And the lesson is that "mitigation" strategies — curbing greenhouse gases by putting economies on an energy diet — are not winning or workable.

Instead,  envrios should accept that "the sins of emission can't be legislated away and abandon their quixotic quest for radical cuts in emissions in favor of less economically destructive coping strategies."

Go here to read the whole thing.