A. You’ll have to throw up.
B. We’ll have to kill you.

There were two problems I think. The first is that the gummint really didn’t have the stones to face another election within weeks of being elected, which, given the coalition it had formed would be if not inevitable at least rather likely.

The second is that the government had stuffed up the policy in such a way as to render it into a tax paid to government with little or no flow-on of tax CREDITS to those who actually undertook the farming of trees or the technical changes to reduce the carbon usage. Nor was a balancing reduction in OTHER taxes publicised or even mentioned. This made the tax a problem for the financial minister, while it should have been in the environmentalists area of responsibility the entire time.

Not all-in-all, an inspiring example of that oxymoron, political intelligence.

respectfully
BJ

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10374565

On the eve of a major climate conference in New Zealand, a senior Government scientist has spoken out about chaotic policy in science and climate.

Dr Patterson was distraught at the dropping of the carbon tax, which he said would have solved about 75 per cent of our global warming problems.

Hodgson claims, of course, that it’s because they didn’t have the numbers in Parliament that they axed the carbon tax, thereby effectively withdrawing from the Kyoto protocol….

But combined with NZ’s stalking-horse role on GM, one wonders if it doesn’t dovetail nicely into a “cozy up to the Bush administration” agenda?

Inquiring Minds Want to Know.

Paramount theatre is hosting talks and doco’s for those without the clout to get into the conference, from 6.30pm - 10.30pm on Wednesday 29th March, with support from the British Council, who’ve brought over one David Vaughan from the British Antarctic Survey.

gotta love those scientists, keep telling us where the ice is going….
cheers, katie

He’s not the salesman Ronnie was though.

Not that it matters. Votes are no more than ephemeral electronic ghosts now, filtered through the machinery of tomorrow to recreate the fraud of yesterday.

The USA is in grave danger of having to spell “ballots” with different vowels in order to make them count.

respectfully
BJ

http://www.stnews.org/News-2719.htm

…we might be witnessing the high water mark of climate change denial. Here’s hoping.

Remember: you’re either with us, or you’re with the terrorists.

The “head buried in the sand” approach that’s so helpful to GWB’s fossil fuel chums doesn’t come as a big surprise anymore: even though he has publically acknowledged the fact of climate change, you know he doesn’t really believe it as his every action speaks otherwise. What *does* come as a big surprise is that

a)media are happy to go along with this, presenting oil company-funded fringe views as mainstream science, and George’s stance on environmental matters as a cost-benefit analysis rather than a faith-based or political or favour-garnering stance: and

b)Relatively mainstream politicians in some other countries seem to want to emulate this anti-science approach. Think John Howard and Don “don’t trust any of the world’s national academies of sciences” Brash. And

c)It looks like the global public are quite happy for their politicians to be anti-intellectual or anti-scientific, as long as they are personable.

For these reasons, I don’t think this will impact Bush too badly. It’s not going to hold the public’s attention like Irangate or Lewinsky, and Bush’s supporters (including Murdoch) will think it’s OK to rewrite the truth as, hey, he’s on our side.