Solid Monckton Journalism

Viscount Monckton is on another one of his highly lucrative climate denial evangelism tours of Australia.  I caught this great piece from a Tasmanian newspaper called "The Mercury", Monckton's Hot Air:

At a public lecture in Hobart this week, he said there had been no global warming for at least 16 years. 

"The climate models were wrong and the world is not going to end," he said. 

Tony Press, former director of the Antarctic Division and now CEO of the University of Tasmania's Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Co-operative Research Centre, said Lord Monckton's interpretation was unscientific. 

"The argument of 'no recent warming' is wrong and has been debunked time and again," Dr Press said. 

"The cherry-picking of dates or selected time periods to cast an argument in support of a pre-conceived idea is not scientific method.

Good stuff, no "he said, she said" false equivalence, most of the piece is scientific experts rebutting Monckton's many falsehoods.

Posting Without Comment

Via this neat site which I only just discovered:

Mr Roberts said climate change science had been captured by “some of the major banking families in the world” who form a “tight-knit cabal”.

Mr. Roberts in this case is Malcolm Roberts, a prominent Australian climate denier associated with the "Galileo Movement" (because climate denial is just like being persecuted by the Pope for proposing the Earth is not the centre of the universe).

They're really "sceptics" who just want honest science to win out, don't you know.

Warming Wednesdays: A carbon tax Down Under

This week, I found a couple pleasant suprises coming out of Australia, so the post is a primer on what I know of the climate fight there. 

First and most important was the announcement by Prime Minister Julia Gillard (Labor party, the centre-left big-tent party of Australia) that her government was going to pass a law implementing a national carbon tax:

Announcing details of the scheme today, Ms Gillard said the price on carbon would be fixed for a period of three to five years before moving to a cap-and-trade system.

"I'm determined to price carbon," Ms Gillard told a joint press conference with Greens leader Bob Brown and Senator Christine Milne well as independent MPs Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor.

Now I don't know what kind of details go into this, but on the whole it can only be considered good news.   Gillard leads a razor thin parliamentary minority government which required the support of the Green and a couple independent MPs in order to form the government after Labor's near loss in the 2010 federal election.  The previous Labor PM, Kevin Rudd led a healthy lower house majority and even passed a carbon trading plan through, but saw it defeated in the Senate (sound familiar?).  In fact it came quite close as the Liberal (the right wing big tent party) leader at the time indicated he would support the plan, and a caucus revolt saw him replaced with a proper conservative who would oppose the climate plan.  That person is the current opposition leader, Tony Abbott. 

A Word On Australia

Australia is worth watching for a few reasons.  It has a great deal in common with the United States and Canada.  It's part of the "rich" world, mostly English speaking, a former British colony and a federal system.  It's also a very big coal producer, which makes for a very wealthy and concerned interest that is predisposed to oppose action on (or acceptance of) climate change.  If Australia can enact a price on carbon, that may show us how it can be done in Canada and the US before it is too late to do any good.    This isn't Sweden, where the linguistic and cultural differences make their politics quite often incomprehensible or at least difficult to apply.  Australia has an economy very dependent on fossil fuels, lots of wingnuts who know it, and runs under an analogous political system.

Rudd's failed promise

Rudd actually could have pulled a special move that the Australian system allows and call a "double dissolution" election, where all members of both houses of parliament would face elections.  As polling still favoured Labor at time, this was likely to at least increase the number of Labor and Green senators for another run at the bill.  If that didn't enough friendly Senators to pass the bill, he would have been able to call a special joint session of parliament, and pass the bill through that (which effectively waters down the Senate by counting their votes equally with House members - it's a neat way to provide democracy a way to override the House of Lords). 

This is in fact how Australia got its system of universal health care over the unwavering opposition of the right wing opposition in the Senate back in the 70s.  Sadly, for whatever reason, Rudd backed off and the emissions trading plan fell by the wayside.

After this failure of one of his signature promises, Rudd's government floundered and his moment passed.  He was forced to resign by his own party and replaced by Gillard in 2010.  This was an amazing downfall for someone who arrived in Canberra on such a wave, after a very long drought out of power for Labor too.  It also means that both Gillard and Abbott got their jobs in similar ways largely attributable to the climate fight. 

Given all that, I find it remarkable that Gillard is taking another kick at this can.  Yes, the plan she's pursuing is different - a carbon tax that morphs into a cap and trade system over time, but as anyone who has followed the climate debate knows, the right opposes any and all attempts to price or limit carbon emissions through any mechanism you can name.

So unsurprisingly, Gillard's move has provoked the right wing "Coalition" opposition (called such because they are a coalition of Liberal and National party MPs) to declare war on Labor and the plan:

Mr Abbott had a simple message for the Coalition party room.

"This is a fight the Coalition can win and must win. We will oppose it in opposition and rescind it in government. We will have an overwhelming mandate to repeal the carbon tax."

This fight has heated up to the point of death threats being made against a particular independent MP, Tony Windsor.  Windsor's support was crucial to allowing Gillard to form the government, giving her a 76 to 74 vote majority in the House.  Windsor is a remarkable character as he is personally and historically conservative, and was even part of the further right National party early in his career.  He represents a rural district.  In America or Canada, he would almost certainly oppose pricing carbon and would likely be a climate denialist to boot.  In fact, action on climate change is a major issue for him, and appears to have been decisive in his choice to support Gillard over Abbott in the days after the 2010 election:

INDEPENDENT MP Tony Windsor says Tony Abbott "begged" him to back the coalition for minority government after 2010 election, pledging to do "anything" to gain power.  [...]

"One could draw a conclusion from that that if we pulled a tight rein and said `Well, you've got government if you put a carbon price on' he would agree with it - that was the inference from his statements."

Mr Windsor said he had made a "character judgment" about Mr Abbott after the discussions.

This is the second pleasant surprise I mentioned at the start.  It's so very rare for personality to factor in so vitally in world events and so nice to see them do so in a way that works to the greater good.  As I noted above, Abbott got his job because the previous Liberal leader was willing to accept a price on carbon, and here he is begging a normally insignificant back-bench independent MP to support him, and willing to promise to sell out his deepest principles to attain it.  It's no wonder the Australian tea baggers are threatening him, after this revelation.

All this makes Australia a place to watch in the climate fight over the next few months.  If Gillard can keep her 1 vote coaltion together in the House of Commons and pass her bill, it will go on to the Senate.  Currently it doesn't appear that Labor and the Greens have the votes to pass it, but on July 1st, the new Senators elected in 2010 take office giving Labor + Green a majority (and fortunately Australia has no filibuster).

Substantively it isn't clear yet what exactly Gillard's proposal will be and how much it will reduce Australia's emissions, and of course Australia's emissions are not some great fraction of the world total.  But it will be an important milestone for a major economy (Australia is in the G20) under heavy domestic opposition to have taken real steps to address the climate crisis.  

Rules blocking States from deficits and debt are dumb

From the little I understand and some moderate research, it appears that only Vermont is allowed to govern itself like a real soverign government, with every other state having some level of "balanced budget" requirement baked in.  Some of these are only a requirement that the Budget proposed by the Governor be balanced, some require the Budget plan passed to be balanced, but most others go furthest and require the actual budget as spent to balance every cycle (sometimes two years).  That last covers 37 states so it's not like some small group of ultra-red states. 

This is all deeply stupid and the cause of a great deal of misery happening today.  In Wisconsin, the misery is a deliberate strategy by conservatives and who are happy to have the excuse, but in other States from Califnornia to New York I am not convinced this is the case.  Even if it is, again, why give the politicians such a convenient excuse to hide behind?  There are already enough people out there who are eager to afflict the afflicted, why provide the get-out-of-blame free-card?

Keep in mind that many states also have rules requiring supermajorities to raise taxes so even if you get the occasional governor like Ryan Quinn in Illinois who is actually willing to increase taxes as at least part of the solution, it will often be out of reach anyway.

Canada has 13 provincial level governments (3 are technically territories but they act like provinces) ranging from tiny (Nunavut and PEI) to Ontario, Quebec, Alberta and BC which are comparable in size to many medium and larger US states (Ontario is biggest at 12M people) and all are able to run deficits and debt as their elected governments see fit.  They have no supermajority requirements for raising taxes either.  Luckily for us, this is guaranteed in our federal constitution.  Provinces can pass laws requiring balanced budgets, but the next government is typically free (and willing) to repeal such laws.

It's not utopia of course, most of the provinces have debt and in some cases the levels are a long term concern, but we have been able to ride out the Great Recession without massive public sector layoffs and other cretinous stupidity in service of absurd rules.  As far as I know of, the last time a province defaulted in Canada was during the Great Depression...and it was Alberta, currently swimming in oil money and in no danger of a repeat (though they might drown in a tailings sludge).

As I think about this now, I think this sort of thing is also a big reason why Canadian provinces are so much more powerful within Canada than States are in America.  Last time I checked, Canada's provinces actually account for more collective spending power than Ottawa.  In the States, Washington is something like 70% of the State/Federal combined spending.  Not that I'm a big proponent of "state's rights" as having strong sub-federal governments leads to its own set of problems but all these rules hamstringing State govenrments are a big reason why Washington can push them around on things like speed limits and the drinking age. Not that conservatives are generally sincere in their support of States' rights, but still a factor worth considering.

For what it's worth, Australian States also don't seem to be bound by such rules and I've not read of any great fiscal crisis or looming debt default at the State (or Federal) level there either.  In fact, this freedom of democratic government action certainly helped the government of Queensland deal with the massive floods by passing a flood tax to help cover the costs of the crisis. 

California took a big step forward in 2010 when it passed Proposition 25 and can now pass the State budget on simple majorities.  These measures can pass, and for progressives determined to focus at State level improvements, you can pretty much pick any state on this one.  There will be future recessions and even future depressions and requiring governments to balance their budgets in times of revenue crisis and weak economies has proven horrendous to all the people who can least survive it.  This needs fixing.  States should not be reliant on whether Presidents Snowe, Collins and Specter feel like allowing federal aid in order to avoid having to do stupid things like privatize parking revenue or turn off street lights.  Aside from hamstringing the economic recovery, these things are just bad for the people who have to live through them.

And Vermont?  I doubt the phantom bond vigiliantes are about to unleash their flying monkeys over a debt-to-gdp ratio of less than 20%.