Last week, the Australian Senate struck down their version of cap-and-trade by a 42-30 vote. Some Green Party Senators voted against the measure because they felt it wasn’t oppressive enough to industry and the economy in Australia. Some wanted to wait for more information on the economic impact. Others, such as Senator Nick Minchin, voted against it because he recognized that it isn’t wise to destroy an economy based on unsettled science and an unlikely threat. In a speech prior to the vote, Minchin said,
“The Rudd government arrogantly refuses to acknowledge that there remains a very lively scientific debate about the extent of and the main causes of climate change, with thousands of highly reputable scientists around the world of the view that anthropogenic emissions of CO2 are not and cannot be the main driver of the small degree of global warming that occurred in the last 30 years of the 20th century… The cruel joke is that all those thousands of jobs to be destroyed by Labor’s CPRS will be in vain, because this scheme will make absolutely no difference to the global climate.”
Support for cap-and-trade among Democrats in the US Senate seems to be waning as well. A group of ten Democratic Senators recently sent a letter to President Obama demanding the bill contain protectionist tariffs for their coal and manufacturing constituents.
Last week four Democratic Senators urged the Senate to abandon the cap-and-tax component of the bill and focus on renewable energy mandates. These Senators recognize that this massive tax will be a tough pill to swallow for many taxpayers.