Australia Defeats Cap-and-Trade

Robert Tracinski reports that "In a potential preview for America, the Australian Senate has just defeated that country's version of cap-and-trade by a vote of 42-30." Tracinski notes that while most media coverage predictably ignores the real reasons behind the defeat, concentrating on the mining lobby and other causes, he says:

In fact, the bill was defeated because there is now serious disagreement in Australia on the very existence of human-caused global warming. That's the backbone behind the collapse of what was supposed to be bipartisan agreement. As Senator Nick Minchin put it in a blistering speech opposing the bill, "this whole extraordinary scheme, which would do so much damage to Australia, is based on the as yet unproven assertion that anthropogenic emissions of CO2 are the main driver of global warming… The Rudd government arrogantly refuses to acknowledge that there remains a very lively scientific debate about the extent of and the main causes of climate change, with thousands of highly reputable scientists around the world of the view that anthropogenic emissions of CO2 are not and cannot be the main driver of the small degree of global warming that occurred in the last 30 years of the 20th century."

I hope Tracinski is right that this could be a preview for America. But as I discussed this previously,

our own Congress and press would do well to follow in Australia's footsteps. Nancy Pelosi is set to try and ram the Waxman-Markey bill through the House today, and she'll probably succeed. Hopefully enough Senators will show the same intellectual curiosity that Australia's [Senators] did, and defeat their version of the bill. Doubtful, I know.