If you actually listen, Abbott’s stance on Climate has been 100% consistent!

Labor and it’s lackeys continue to play cat and mouse with every word the opposition leader, Tony Abbott utters. This is no doubt to distract us from this government’s utter, continuing and willful failure. Even Andrew Bolt starts to buy into the game in exasperation:

When you’ve promoted policies you know are frauds to fix a problem you think is exaggerated, it’s hard to later remember what you said. …At some stage the Liberals will have to decide whether to attack the global warming scaremongers or just potter along in this dangerous way, paying lip service to a false god.

…in response to an article by Ben Packham:  ‘Weathervane’ Abbott targeted over support for price on carbon” The Australian July 20, 2011:

LABOR has seized on a second contradictory climate change statement by Tony Abbott in the space of just a few days, in which he said he’d never supported a carbon price. The Opposition Leader made the claim on Gippsland’s Star FM yesterday, saying: “I’ve never been in favour of a carbon tax or an emissions trading scheme.”

But in October 2009 Mr Abbott, under then-opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull, publicly backed an emissions trading scheme in an interview on the ABC’s Lateline program. “We don’t want to play games with the planet. So we are taking this issue seriously and we would like to see an ETS,” he said at the time.

He made a similar comment on radio 2UE in November that year. “You can’t have a climate change policy without supporting this ETS at this time,” he said.

But read what Tony Abbott is actually saying. On the ABC Lateline above, he uses the ‘we’, in “we would like to see an ETS”. As he is not the Queen of England, the ‘we’ must refer to the Liberal party, which under the alarmist Malcolm Turnbull, most certainly wanted an ETS. Months later, it is no secret that he resigned in protest at the ETS, so he is unlikely to have been a big fan of it within the party under Turnbull. His statement on 2UE similarly states the bleeding obvious likelihood of ETS “at this time”, on the eve of Copenhagen’s anticipated global carbon trading, but does not suggest that he is necessarily in favour of it. Does he say anywhere anytime “I believe in urgent decarbonization of our industry”? or “We’re all gonna die if we don’t tax air”, or  “I believe this is the greatest moral challenge”? I think not.

Abbott clarifies this point similarly today here.

Unlike Ms Gillard, if you bother to read his speeches and not just Mark Reilly sound snips, Abbott has held a 100% consistent, scientifically and socially responsible position on Climate Change since 2009. He has always expressed a cautious view that Climate change does happen, that man has contributed some part to recent mild global warming, that large uncertainties exist in how much and how dangerous warming will become and that catastrophic climate change hysteria is ‘crap’.  Given the apparent scientific advice government is receiving from authorities, Abbott has always advocated cautious and non-damaging application of the precautionary principle:

Tony Abbott Climate Speech – 27 July 2009:

What we can say, though, is that we should try to make as little difference as possible to the natural world. As well, prudent people take reasonable precautions against foreseeable contingencies. It’s the insurance principle. The premium we are prepared to pay, though, should relate to the extent of the risk and the magnitude of the possible loss. If carbon dioxide might be contributing to harmful climate change and emissions can effectively be reduced at reasonable cost, it certainly makes sense to do so. Of course, what we shouldn’t do is embark on a cure that turns out to be worse than the disease.

…If Australia is greatly to reduce its carbon emissions, the price of carbon intensive products should rise. The Coalition has always been instinctively cautious about new or increased taxes. That’s one of the reasons why the former government opted for an emissions trading scheme over a straight-forward carbon tax. Still, a new tax would be the intelligent skeptic’s way to deal with minimising emissions because it would be much easier than a property right to reduce or to abolish should the justification for it change.

Mischievous journalists such as Mark Riley could snip from above comprehensive views, any stand on climate change to make Abbott look like flipping to and fro, and they do.

Read his current position in his resent speech to the Press Club on Climate Change and Carbon Pricing (and our earlier comments):

Of course, Australia should take prudent steps to reduce emissions but the case for doing so is not improved by pretending that other countries’ actions are stronger than they are. As former Prime Minister John Howard pointed out in 2007 when committing the Coalition in-principle to an emissions trading scheme, “nothing we do alone will materially affect our climate… (and) without a global framework that includes all major emitters we lack a genuine global solution.” That’s why the measures that the Coalition now proposes to fund under our direct action policy have other environmental benefits in addition to reducing emissions.

A history of Abbott’s alleged changing positions on an anti-Abbott blog, in fact shows a consistent healthy skepticism of overreaction to climate fears and a reluctant, modest and a cautious approach to CO2 mitigation only as an insurance, not as a way to a fantasy clean energy utopia.

At an October 2009 meeting in the Victorian town of Beaufort, Abbott was reported to have said [the famous 'crap' remark]:  “The argument [on climate change] is absolute crap… However, the politics of this are tough for us. 80% of people believe climate change is a real and present danger”, Unattributed (2009-10-02). “Tony Abbott visits Beaufort”. Pyrenees Advocate: p. 5.

“We can’t conclusively say whether man-made carbon dioxide emissions are contributing to climate change.”
Source: Tony Abbott, Speech, 27 July 2009, ‘A Realist’s Approach to Climate Change’ click here.

“I think the science behind the policy is contentious to say the least.”
Source: ABC Radio Am, 4 August 2009, click here.

“I am, as you know, hugely unconvinced by the so-called settled science on climate change.”
Source: ABC 7.30 Report, 27 July 2009, click here.

“The Howard Government (in 2007) proposed an emissions trading scheme because this seemed the best way to obtain the highest emission reduction at the lowest cost.”
Source: Battlelines, 2009, Page 171

“It seems that, notwithstanding the dramatic increases in manmade CO2 emissions over the last decade, the world’s warming has stopped.”
Source: Herald Sun, 5 January 2010.

“The argument (on Climate Change) is absolute Crap” – well, it depends on which argument you take, there are so many -  Green’s catastrophic needing urgent closing of coal mines, but not urgent enough for hydro and nuclear?, loony Tim Flannery’s Gaia as a thinking organism, Al Gore’s 7 meter seal level rise, Gillard’s doomsday meter sea level rise and up to 5 Deg C warming, IPCC’s 20-50 cm sea level rise rise or Singer, Lindzen,  Christie and Nils-Axel Morner’s minor warming and harmless sea level rise.  They can’t all be true.

So what can you expect from Tony Abbott on Climate:

Well, it’s no secret, watch Bjorn Lomborg, whom here repeatedly refers to. Expect whatever level of climate action or inaction is being taken by the big global emitters like USA, China, Japan and India, support for research into energy technology and real environmentalism to go, hold the socialism. No more, no less. Or read his ‘Battlelines‘ – as a conservative, don’t expect from Abbott a New World Order Government, centrally planned economic white elephants or a giant government mapping your path from cradle to grave. For that, please vote Labor. Expect to be allowed to and be expected to contribute to building a world that you want.