The wingnut Virginian Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli has had a setback in his witchhunt of Professor Michael Mann. Cuccinelli was asking for all documents from the University of Virginia concerning professor Mann's research while at UVa, to "investigate" any possible fraud committed by Professor Mann in his grants received to study climate change. A judge has ruled that Cuccinelli failed to show a sufficient “reason to believe” that UVa possessed any documents related to Mann that suggested a fraud occurred. Cuccinelli will continue harrassing UVa and Mann on the taxpayer's dime.
Cuccinelli is a climate change denier, who has also directed all state schools and colleges to remove sexual orientation references from their non-discrimination policies (in other words removed discrimination protection for gays and lesbians), and sued over the constitutionality of federal health care reform. All on the taxpayer's dime.
Cuccinelli is doing nothing more that using taxpayer money to fund a major profile enlargement, which is odd given his opposition to publicly funded healthcare.
Showing posts with label Climate Change. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Climate Change. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Monday, December 15, 2008
Rudd sells out Australia
Today the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, proved to full of hot air on climate change by setting a mandatory reduction in CO2 emissions target of a worthless 5% cut by 2020.
This abject failure of leadership is a stab in the back to all those who believed his (now obviously empty) rhetoric about needing leadership in tackling climate change.
They try and spin it by saying that it’s a large cut on a per capita basis. Well, yes, it would be, as Australia is ONE OF THE WORLDS BIGGEST CARBON POLLUTERS on a per capita basis – or more accurately Australian companies are amongst the worlds biggest polluters, which, given our small population makes us a large polluter on a per capita basis. This argument is like saying, "right, you pollute 50 tons and we pollute 500 tons. If you reduce your pollution by 50% or 25 tons, we'll reduce ours by 25 tons as well"!
So as we are amongst the biggest transgressors, we should take the biggest hit, shouldn’t we?
It’s the right thing to do.
It’s the fair thing to do.
It’s the moral thing to do.
But not in Rudd’s world, where the big polluters, who have been literally gouging massive profits for years, will be rewarded with low targets and billion dollar payouts as a reward for doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to prepare for carbon emission limits which they have known for years were coming. Not only that, but he has reduced the threshold for polluters to qualify for free permits to pollute, making the permit system even less effective at initiating change in the practices of our worst polluters.
The leader of the opposition, Malcolm Turnbull is probably slack-jawed in disbelief. That a Prime Minister should so comprehensively turn his back on those who voted for him and his platform of decisive action on climate change, to run into the arms of the only group in Australia that will not vote for him – big business. All Turnbull has to do now is sit tight and wait for the next election. After today, the odds of a single term government (a rarity in Australian politics) is suddenly on the cards.
This abject failure of leadership is a stab in the back to all those who believed his (now obviously empty) rhetoric about needing leadership in tackling climate change.
They try and spin it by saying that it’s a large cut on a per capita basis. Well, yes, it would be, as Australia is ONE OF THE WORLDS BIGGEST CARBON POLLUTERS on a per capita basis – or more accurately Australian companies are amongst the worlds biggest polluters, which, given our small population makes us a large polluter on a per capita basis. This argument is like saying, "right, you pollute 50 tons and we pollute 500 tons. If you reduce your pollution by 50% or 25 tons, we'll reduce ours by 25 tons as well"!
So as we are amongst the biggest transgressors, we should take the biggest hit, shouldn’t we?
It’s the right thing to do.
It’s the fair thing to do.
It’s the moral thing to do.
But not in Rudd’s world, where the big polluters, who have been literally gouging massive profits for years, will be rewarded with low targets and billion dollar payouts as a reward for doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to prepare for carbon emission limits which they have known for years were coming. Not only that, but he has reduced the threshold for polluters to qualify for free permits to pollute, making the permit system even less effective at initiating change in the practices of our worst polluters.
The leader of the opposition, Malcolm Turnbull is probably slack-jawed in disbelief. That a Prime Minister should so comprehensively turn his back on those who voted for him and his platform of decisive action on climate change, to run into the arms of the only group in Australia that will not vote for him – big business. All Turnbull has to do now is sit tight and wait for the next election. After today, the odds of a single term government (a rarity in Australian politics) is suddenly on the cards.
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