Friday, August 22, 2008



Climate change: the debate on the ETS

The Greens' going to the people on whether to support the ETS has already resulted in a flood of responses - though, sadly, many are reportedly from deniers and self-interested industry lobby groups after a last bite of the pollution cherry rather than the people whose opinions they might be interested in. It's also resulted in some good debate in the blogosphere, with The Standard and 08 Wire arguing "yes", Toad on GBlog arguing "No", and Stevedore (again at GBlog) reluctantly leaning towards making the best of a bad deal. Meanwhile, I'll repeat the offer I made on Frogblog: if anyone wants to write a well-written piece from an environmental perspective (rather than a denier troll one) arguing why the Greens should oppose the ETS, I'm happy to publish it as a guest post. While I have my own opinion on this, I think its a debate worth having and highlighting to the public.

Meanwhile, Chris Trotter goes absolutely feral at this exercise in democratic consultation, calling it "avoidance behaviour on a truly disreputable scale" and declaring that the Greens need a damn good smacking. But then, we all knew that he has a basic problem with democracy (one he even confirms today)...