Canada stands up for sensible environmental policies and rejects unilateral economic disarmament

By Matthew Barrett
^{Follow Matthew on Twitter}

Several Anglosphere counties are in the process of implementing climate change policies that mean burdensome green regulations which kill jobs. There's the United States, where jobs and energy will move to China unless a new direction is taken on the environment:

"Foreign markets, led by China, could soon become the most appealing options for American energy companies dealing in coal. Environmental Protection Agency regulations, chief among them an effective ban on new coal-fired power plants, are squeezing the U.S. market and strangling the fuel that powered the Industrial Revolution. “You can see it dwindling away,” said Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, West Virginia Republican and co-chairwoman of the House of Representatives‘ Coal Caucus. “The regulations are made without regard. [Federal officials] don’t even ask what kind of impact they’ll have. The EPA has already put in place … rules and other impossible standards that are causing a giant shift of our natural resources to China.”"

In historic rejection of Climate Change Plan A, Canada's Conservative government pulls out of Kyoto

By Tim Montgomerie
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Cameron may have said "no" to Europe. Canada's Conservative Government has said "no" to the world.

The Canadian Environment Minister Peter Kent yesterday pulled his country out of the Kyoto Treaty. In this short statement he said that he wasn't willing to impose massive costs on his country's economy while other nations continued to increase emissions:

"A previous Liberal government signed on to Kyoto in 1997 with no intention of ever meeting targets – then did nothing for years – Canada was lagging well behind by 2006.

While our government has taken action since 2006 to make real reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, under Kyoto Canada is facing radical and irresponsible choices if we are to avoid punishing multibillion-dollar payments.

To meet the targets under Kyoto for 2012 would be the equivalent of:

Either removing every car, truck, ATV, tractor, ambulance, police car and vehicle of every kind from Canadian roads.

Or, closing down the entire farming and agricultural sector and cutting heat to every home, office, hospital, factory and building in Canada.

The cost of not taking this type of radical and irresponsible action?

The loss of thousands of jobs or the transfer of $14 billion from Canadian taxpayers to other countries — the equivalent of $1,600 from every Canadian family — with no impact on emissions or the environment.

That’s the Kyoto cost to Canadians.

And here’s the kicker: global emissions would keep rising because Kyoto doesn’t cover the major emitters, like the United States and China, which is why Kyoto doesn’t work.

As we have said, Kyoto — for Canada — is in the past. As such, we are invoking our legal right to formally withdraw from Kyoto."

Watch Mr Kent.

Climate change realism is now a defining feature of conservative parties in Canada, Australia and the USA. We know that realism is shared by most British Tory MPs. The good news is that it is also now shared by George Osborne.

Australian Labor steps into its environmentally-friendly electoral coffin

By Tim Montgomerie
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The Australian Labor government is now in meltdown. A short history...

1. Julia Gillard replaced Kevin Rudd as Labor leader.
2. She called a snap election and Labor became the first, first term post-war Australian government not to win an outright majority.
3. Gillard governs with a majority of one.
4. That majority will be wiped out if one of her MPs is found guilty of using his union credit card to pay for the services of escort girls.
5. At the root of Labor's problems is that Gillard promised not to introduce a carbon tax and then announced one.
6. Cameron - crazily - backed her judgment.
7. Support for Labor is now at 27% in the primary vote; 23% behind the conservative opposition.
8. The conservative opposition leader - Tony Abbott is preferred as PM to Gillard by 43% to 34%.
9. At a state level, Labor is being massacred.
10. The man Gillard ousted as Labor leader - Kevin Rudd - is now preferred as Labor leader by 57% to 24%.

There ends your snap shot guide to the latest in Australian politics.

It's the same all over the Anglosphere. Canada. America. Australia. Climate change policies are political poison. Cameron needs to be careful for the reasons set out by Matthew earlier.

Cameron backs Julia Gillard on carbon tax, embarrassing Australia's conservative opposition

By Tim Montgomerie
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British Toryism is out of step with Anglosphere conservatism in a number of key respects. Solidarity with Israel and a belief in the supply-side effects of lower taxation are two stand out examples. The biggest difference though is on climate change where conservatives in America, Canada and Australia are all opposed to unilateral* action on global warming that (i) accelerates deindustrialisation of the west but (ii) does so without reducing global emmisions, because it doesn't include the likes of fast growing China, India and Brazil.

Australian conservatives have revived on the back of opposition to a carbon tax that the minority Labor Prime Minister promised not to introduce. Watch this video in which Julia Gillard said there would no carbon tax under any government she led. She lied and Australian voters are furious. Our sister partry in Australia - the Liberals - led by Tony Abbott has championed this fury. The graph on the right shows the boost that the issue has given him and his party (Liberals in blue).

Not surprisingly Tony Blair endorsed Ms Gillard on a visit downunder last week. More surprisingly David Cameron has done the same. In a letter to Ms Gillard that is making waves in the Australian media Mr Cameron has said that "your announcement sends a strong and clear signal that Australia is determined to make its contribution to addressing this challenge." "It will," Cameron continued, "add momentum to those, in both the developed and developing world, who are serious about dealing with this urgent threat."

Will the Liberal Democrats follow Germany's example and abandon nuclear power?

By Tim Montgomerie
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Overnight we had confirmation that Angela Merkel's CDU/FDP coalition has abandoned plans to extend the life of Germany's ageing nuclear reactors until 2036. By 2022 Germany will become a nuclear-free power and, in preparation, reports Reuters, Merkel will "present five or six bills in Cabinet on June 6, including a revamp of feed-in-tariffs for solar, wind and biomass power, new building insulation targets and plans to build new “smart” power grids."

Mrs Merkel's u-turn follows strong performances by the German Greens in regional elections. On the back of opposition to nuclear energy the Greens topped the poll in Baden-Württemberg, in March, and overtook Merkel's CDU party in elections in Bremen last week.

One week ago Switzerland also said it would not renew its nuclear power stations, but the phase out wouldn't be complete until 2034.

I wonder if the Liberal Democrats will look to Germany and Switzerland for inspiration? The SNP's opposition to nuclear power stations was one of the under-discussed factors that helped it defeat the pro-nuclear Scottish Labour Party. With UK-wide opinion polls finding a plurality of voters AGAINST nuclear power (by 48% to 40%) the issue could provide the next tension within the Britain's Coalition. The current Lib Dem position is that they'll support nuclear power as long as it doesn't receive public subsidy - while, it should be said, supporting huge subsidies for renewable ernegies.

Meanwhile, reports WorldFinancier, India, China and other emerging economies are continuing with their nuclear power programmes. Eastern Europe, on the whole, also remains pro-nuclear because of its determination to be independent of Russia.

German FDP leader's decision to stay in government but resign as party boss may be model for Clegg

Tim Montgomerie

Nick Clegg will be watching the fortunes of Germany's Free Democratic Party (FDP) with interest. The junior coalition partner in Angela Merkel's government was badly defeated in the recent Baden-Württemberg election. Guido Westervelle has decided to end his ten year leadership of the FDP but continue as Germany's Foreign Secretary. He hopes that this will ensure the FDP retains its role in government but that, under a new leader, his party can reverse a slump in the opinion polls (from 15% to just 5%). This resign-only-as-party-leader strategy is one I think Nick Clegg might need to take, but only towards the end of this parliament.

Part of the reason for the decline of the FDP has been Westervelle's failure to convince Merkel to prioritise supply-side tax cuts over and above her cautious fiscal conservatism. Lower taxes had been such a defining selling point for the FDP that a failure to deliver them has hurt Westervelle's partly very badly. The FDP has also been the country's most pro-nuclear party in a country that has reacted very strongly to events at the Fukushima plant in Japan.

If the FDP doesn't recover and win the 5% plus that is necessary to win any seats in Germany's system of proportional representation, the CDU will be left without a natural partner in government. This has led some (including the FT (£)) to speculate that an alliance with the Greens might one day be necessary. A Green/ CDU alliance was formed in Hamburg but ended badly. Mrs Merkel has dismissed the possibility as a "fantasy" and it is certainly hard to reconcile the social liberalism of the Greens with the social conservatism of the CDU's Bavarian arm (the CSU). Nonetheless there is an emerging faction within the Greens that emphasises budgetary responsibility that might make it possible.

In terms of the FDP's future, the Süddeutsche Zeitung (quoted by Der Spiegel) wishes that it could go back to its centrist role of moderating both of Germany's big two parties:

"Despite all its failings, the FDP used to have the reputation as a wise, clever party. That attracted voters. It no longer has this pulling power. In its heyday, the FDP was a fertile opposition within government: in the conservative governments of Konrad Adenauer and Ludwig Erhard, the FDP left its mark as a party of democratic justice, and in the center-left governments of Willy Brandt and Helmut Schmidt, it was the guardian of market economics. The FDP was a guarantor of continuity in the changing governments of the republic."

It is now the ambition of the 'realists' within the Green Party to be Germany's balance-of-power party.

Anxiety over nuclear power contributes to defeat for Angela Merkel in state held by CDU for sixty years

Tim Montgomerie

Extreme volatility is the big new thing in politics. Yesterday the Australian Labor party wasn't just beaten in New South Wales but "massacred". It was, wrote Jason Groves for ConHome, "the most devastating defeat in Australian political history". 

Last month Angela Merkel's CDU suffered a heavy defeat in Hamburg. Today, according to exit polls, her party is to lose control of the state of Baden-Württemberg - a state that the CDU has held for 58 years.

The Greens - exploiting fears about nuclear power in the wake of the Japanese tsunami - may top the poll, giving them the senior role in a partnership with the SPD. 200,000 anti-nuclear protestors marched in four German cities yesterday, helping to put the issue centre stage in today's voting.

Mrs Merkel had declared a moratorium on extending the life of existing nuclear plants. This announcement was seen by many as opportunistic, however, and hasn't saved her party in BW.

Although it's very unlikely that Mrs Merkel will face a leadership challenge the leader of her junior coalition partner, the FDP's Guido Westervelle may be toppled. Merkel faces no obvious rivals but her "risk-averse and pragmatic" leadership style is being criticised by members of her party. The Wall Street Journal (£) reports:

"Besides the nuclear question,and the euro zone's debt crisis, Ms. Merkel has also taken flak across the political spectrum for her handling of the euro-zone debt crisis—in which her decisions to bail out near-bankrupt Greece and to pump rising amounts of taxpayer money into a safety net for other countries proved controversial—and on the Libyan conflict, where she is accused of failing to back Germany's Western allies."

The results from Germany will encourage Alex Salmond to put the nuclear issue at the heart of his last-ditch campaign to save the SNP government in Holyrood. Trailing in most opinion surveys, the Scottish First Minister sees an opportunity in Scottish Labour's support for the nuclear industry. Herald Scotland reports Mr Salmond attacking Labour's "obsession" with nuclear power. “Different visions of the energy future of Scotland will clearly be a significant issue in the election campaign,” he promised.

Australia marked another electoral defeat for climate change

By Tim Montgomerie

It is still not clear who will be Australia's next Prime Minister. Conservative Tony Abbott looks likely to win one more MP than Australian Labor's Julia Gillard (73 to 72 in the 150 member chamber) but the balance of power is held by a maverick handful of independent-minded MPs. It is difficult to predict who they will choose to support and if their support will endure.

In a previous blog I noted that the overturning of Australian Labor's majority was:

(1) a huge upset (no first term, post-WW2 Australian government has lost its majority before); and

(2) a sign of the strength of Australia's conservatism (even Labor tacked markedly to the right on immigration, tax and family but still lost many seats).

We should not forget a third lesson; this was another defeat for climate change. Tom Switzer, Editor of The Spectator in Australia, reflects on this in the latest edition of the UK Spectator (not yet online):

"For years, the Aussie debate had been conducted in a heretic hunting environment: it was deemed blasphemy to dare question Labor’s grand ambitions to implement an economy-wide cap and trade scheme. Even many Cameron-style Liberals wanted to bow to Labor’s agenda. But Abbott bravely challenged this cozy consensus, reportedly describ- ing man-made global warming as ‘absolute crap’ and an emissions trading scheme (ETS) as ‘a great big tax to create a great big slush fund to provide politicised handouts, run by a giant bureaucracy’. At the time, commentators predicted that his ‘ill-judged’ opposition to the ETS would amount to ‘electoral oblivion’, a ‘politi- cal suicide mission’ and ‘the road to ruin’. If anything, it was a political godsend for con- servatives. Following the Copenhagen fiasco, and with the ETS beginning to look like an electoral liability, Labor apparatchiks went to water and postponed its introduction to 2013."

This is only the latest setback for climate change policy in the developed world...

CANADA: The biggest previous electoral defeat was in Canada where the opposition Liberal Party was heavily punished for its green taxes plan.

USA: Barack Obama has had to abandon plans for a cap and trade scheme despite his party controlling both houses of Congress. This means the reform is effectively dead in the water given the more sceptical Republicans are expected to make big gains in November's mid-term elections.

UK: In Britain the environment played almost no role in May's General Election and the Coalition has sent mixed signals on climate change since coming to power. The Telegraph blogged that George Osborne's Budget hardly contained any green measures and The Guardian recently reported a likely U-turn from Chris Huhne, Climate change minister, on "dirty" coal-fired power.

FRANCE, ITALY AND SPAIN: Outside of the Anglosphere - as summarised here - we've seen France cancel its carbon tax and Italy and Spain end financial guarantees for the expensive renewables industry.

If the 'rich' world won't make sacrifices for climate change (and we must not forget that Kyoto targets were repeatedly missed during the long years of economic boom and despite the export of industrial capacity) it is unreasonable to expect the energy-poor developing world to do so.

The environment can and should still be an important party of global conservatism. Protection of endangered species, recycling, energy conservation, planting of trees, cleaning rivers and limiting air pollution have all been championed by right-of-centre parties over the decades. It is these micro-environmental measures rather than economically destructive, unilateral and ineffective climate change legislation that must be the core of 'blue environmentalism'.

Right-wing turn boosts Australian Liberals

Writing from Australia, Matthew Parris notes how the Australian Liberals have so far defied the pundits and improved their electoral prospects since they dumped Malcolm Turnbull as their leader and also his enthusiasm for combating climate change:

"Here in Australia, where I’m spending a few days, something very odd has just happened to its right-of-centre opposition coalition. This week’s Spectator Australia is mischievously quoting opinions from mainstream commentators offered a while ago when a group within the Opposition (the Liberal-National Coalition) began complaining that their leader (then Malcolm Turnbull) and his friends had taken the modernisation of their party a step too far, and swallowed too readily the fashionable, government-led consensus on the need for action against global warming.

The national media were as appalled and smug as you can simultaneously be. The (Australian) Daily Telegraph summed it up: “Unless [Malcolm] Turnbull can bring the climate-change dissidents to heel, the Liberals will face humiliation at the polls.” Another national broadcaster called it “signing their own death-warrant”... Columnists announced that if the Opposition went on like this, it would face “electoral oblivion” (The Sydney Morning Herald) and “electoral wipeout” (The Australian).

You may know what happened. The rebel faction succeeded in ousting Mr Turnbull and replacing him with one of their own, Tony Abbott, under whom the Coalition has lurched to the Right across a range of issues, especially taxation...

Oblivion? Electoral wipeout? The Right, until quite recently in the dust behind the Labor Government, is now snapping at its tail."

Matthew Parris sees a warning in this for David Cameron: "David Cameron is lucky he was elected leader some years ago. In today’s climate he would never have topped the internal Tory poll... Mr Cameron knows he isn’t quite right for his party’s or the electorate’s present mood."  Aside from the issue of climate change Parris does not close that argument but let's return downunder...

The Australian's Editor-at-large Paul Kelly summarises how Kevin Rudd's green policies are causing difficulties on multiple fronts, including on a plan to improve home insulation:

"In 2009 green politics and energy efficiency dictated that Labor include home insulation as part of its $42 billion economic stimulus package. The ambitious plan was to insulate 2.7 million homes. [Environment Minister] Garrett had to make it work, but Labor's subsidy unleashed massive demand, quotes pitched to the $1600 rebate regardless of the size of the job, untrained installers, shoddy operators and a massive administrative task for his department to set quality standards and training for all installers."

Two installers have died while installing metal roof insulation.

Most Liberals are united behind the more sceptical environmental approach of new leader Tony Abbott but former leader Malcolm Turnbull continues to speak out in favour of the Labor Government's Emissions Trading Scheme (provoking grassroots disdain), saying that it is based in market mechanisms.

Although the Liberals are making progress - and are set to unseat Labor in Tasmania - it is unlikely that they can beat Kevin Rudd in the General Election, due within months. Every first term Australian government has been re-elected since WWII and current polls show that Labor will not be the first to fall at that hurdle. But the polls also show that Tony Abbott has made the contest more competitive and the meltdown Liberals feared only six months ago looks unlikely.

Australia's new Liberal leader easily passes first elections test

Just days after Tony Abbott became leader of Australia's centre right opposition in controversial circumstances, his party has won two federal by-elections, caused by the retirement of two senior members of his own party. The Sydney Morning Herald described the twin victories as "comfortable":

"Just days after Mr Abbott won the Liberal leadership from Malcolm Turnbull, the party coasted to victory in the Melbourne seat of Higgins, vacated by former treasurer Peter Costello, and the north Sydney electorate of Bradfield, formerly held by Brendan Nelson. The solid performance surprised many who thought the Liberals might suffer a backlash due to Mr Abbott's decision to overhaul the party's climate changing policy, withdrawing support for the introduction of an emissions trading scheme (ETS), which is favoured by Labor."

The Age (another left-leaning newspaper) concluded that Tony Abbott's "opposition to Labor's emissions trading scheme has support in the conservative heartland."

The Australian's Editor-at-Large Paul Kelly profiles the unpredictable 'Abbot effect' here:

"This week Tony Abbott smashed the mould of Australian politics. With the opposition divided and behind, he is forcing Kevin Rudd to an election on climate change, the issue that is supposedly owned by the Labor Party. This is either brilliance or sheer folly. Abbott does not accept the orthodoxies that have governed politics during the Rudd ascendancy, and this makes him dangerous for both Labor and Liberal. Abbott is an unpredictable and elemental force who defies the modern political rule book. No adviser can tell Abbott what to say or how to say it. After being elected Liberal leader by surprise, Abbott spent the rest of week throwing political grenades -- supporting individual workplace contracts, backing a nuclear power debate and killing the emissions trading scheme -- while his colleagues held their breath wondering how the public would react."