It’s across the front page of The Age and presumably The SMH but it is also posted at Drudge under the heading, Aussie Prime Minister seeks alliance to ‘dismantle’ Obama’s climate policy…. On Drudge it comes with an accompanying story, about icebergs on Lake Superior in June! (see the picture above). This is from the SMH, editorially assisted by myself to balance the editorial charaterisation posted by Mark Kenny as part of his story:

Tony Abbott is seeking a conservative alliance among “like-minded” countries, aiming to dismantle global moves to introduce carbon pricing, and undermine a push by [far-left] US President Barack Obama to push the case for action through forums such as the G20.

It’s not as if ruining your economies through actions to contain global warming is necessarily a left-right thing, it just turned out that way. Helping the poor by creating so many more of them is not my idea of policy genius. This is more my sort of thing:

[Mr Abbott] said it was important that policies to address output did not “clobber the economy” while not helping the environment.
The comments were immediately backed up by Canada with Mr Harper declaring there was no chance of any country acting for the planet if it involved costs to its economy.

“It’s not that we don’t seek to deal with climate change,” he said.

“We seek to deal with it in a way that enhances our ability to create jobs and growth, this is their position.

“No country is going to take actions that are going to deliberately harm jobs and growth in their country, we are just a bit more frank about that than other countries.”

The uncompromising attitude of both leaders suggests neither is inclined to yield to pressure from the US to revive the issue of climate change ahead of next years’ climate summit, nor back any international coordination such as additional regulations or a trading scheme.

Politics is politics. Icebergs in June at the start of summer but half the world is worried about global warming so you gotta say what you gotta say. But you must also do what you must also do. One more reason why bringing Labor back would be a step into the dark ages, in more ways than one.