Shelby, Garrett has had some problems adapting to party politics (off-the-cuff policy announcements and jocular remarks to rightwing journalists) and the response has been to confine him to domestic environmental issues. Government is different from Opposition and he may do better there.

Any thoughts on Peter Garrett’s being gagged on climate-change matters? And what was the point of making him Environment Minister, then?

How, exactly, does it suggest that?

Labor will introduce emissions trading and both short-term and long-term binding targets.

Short term binding targets during the Kyoto time frame that achieve minimal reductions below existing levels is kind of a yawner. Yes Rudd will introduce emissions trading whereas Howard did not. And the difference this will make in actual emissions will be negligible.

And long term this remains the fundamental issue:

“Rudd has stuck to the insistence of former Prime Minister John Howard that Australia will not sign on to the post-2012 continuation of the agreement if the emerging global powers, and global-sized emitters, China and India, are not party to it.”

That is the critical sense in which Rudd’s position matches both Bush’s and—wait and see—that of an incoming U.S. Democratic president.

Labor will introduce emissions trading and both short-term and long-term binding targets. Until a year or two ago, Howard rejected all these things. Bush still does. Admittedly, Howard’s backdown in the last couple of years moved him much closer to the Labor position, and further away from Bush, but this would surely not have survived an against-the-odds election win.

“…Rudd has stuck to the insistence of former Prime Minister John Howard that Australia will not sign on to the post-2012 continuation of the agreement if the emerging global powers, and global-sized emitters, China and India, are not party to it.”

And

“But for all Howard’s bluster, and despite Rudd’s decision to sign up to Kyoto just a month before its first five-year term ends, Australia is almost on target to meet Kyoto emission standards anyway.”

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/12/04/asia/australia.php

In other words, signing up for Kyoto is going to cost Australia little or nothing in the short term, and in the long term, Rudd’s post-Kyoto position seems little different than Howard’s (or Bush’s for that matter).

• Because one year doesn’t matter very much, that’s why it’s not a serious argumnt.

The Climate Stewardship Act got 43 votes much more recently against the strong opposition of the Administration. If Bush had wanted Kyoto ratification, he could have had it.

Whereas, we have to wait from the election on November 4th until the end of January until finally being rid of Bush/Cheney and their cronies in the Senate and House.

I’d love to add the abandonment of this idiotic 18th-century anachronism to the list of minor tweaks that a second Constitutional Convention might make.

And yes, I think we’ll be close to a 2/3rds Senate majority in 2009 that’d feel enough pressure to ratify Kyoto.

Kyoto is not American law, and therefore the President has no authority to act on it, either Clinton, Bush, or whoever comes along in 2008. Until the 2/3rds of the Senate ratifies Kyoto, the President has no power.