The risk Abbott runs with this anti-ETS campaign is whether he can be both environmentally credible and economically feasible (to paraphrase the ALP’s tests on the CPRS) in his alternative measures. If not, it will very quickly look like a climate skeptic stance and also potentially blow a colossal hole in the Coalition’s much vaunted economic management credentials.

Not sure we can read much into a couple of booths in Chatswood and Hornsby. Every analysis seems to miss a rather important point – the Greens are to the left of Labor and some people who vote Labor are more likely to turn to the right and vote Liberal regardless of the whole ETS debate. Probably all you can say for the Abbott change was it sured up the ‘base’ – conservative – vote from running off to the 9 Fred Nile candidates!

Would be fascinating though if some of those results in Wahroonga and St Ives which swung to the Greens were repeated in say, North Sydney, at a Federal election.

The money bit-
“What is important is to see that we start measuring economic growth and biocapacity accurately, so that policies target both sets of variables in order to reverse the damage of the past.

The Copenhagen Conference of the Parties to come up with an agreement on climate change is clearly not making much headway. This may be the result of frozen mindsets, strong vested interests and ignorance[or Climategate]. The question is whether the additional time that the world would now have to arrive at an agreement at the next Conference of the Parties in Mexico will give us time and space to look at the larger problem of unsustainable development, of which climate change is at best a symptom. Human society cannot continue to ignore the vital dependence that exists between human welfare and the health of our natural resources.”

Yes he gets it just like any half intelligent agnostic on AGW can, or a Hansen believer or a skeptic like Bellamy. We all got that critical bit that “climate change is at best a symptom” and while AGW devotees were completely absorbed in their crusade for a global cap and trade they were totally blind to the many and obvious criticisms of the practical mechanism itself, let alone the simple fact that they were treating at best a symptom of the true greater problem Pachauri outlines. Jones, Mann, et al have done us all a great favour in letting wiser heads see the greater folly of it all (they fell for the same temptation as objective scientists) and politicians like Abbott will no doubt benefit from that in the short term. However after the flames of Climategate have finally subsided and the smoke clears, politicians like Abbott will be left to deal with that real underlying environmental concern Pauchari outlines. It’s deep and it’s there. They’ll either have the true answers to deal with that or if they don’t they’ll quickly fall from favour. That’s for the Abbotts and all of us to think about now. Also if you see your beloved Plan A going up in smoke you need to think about your Plan B.

That’s where I come back to. Assuming Copenhagen falls flat on it face again and with Climategate that appears certain now, do you (or Abbott and Rudd perhaps) see an immediate compromise with straight CO2E taxing and if so by how much?

Perhaps of the Greens had gone local there would have been a small difference.

The whole idea of the Greens flying in Hamilton is just bizarre on a number of levels.

Some of their candidates in others seats that I know reflect some strange process within the Greens whereby ability to engage people and have something resembling a personality is deemed to be a negative.