From a friend (21 December 2009):

The reason/one of the reasons that the Government’s most recent ETS proposal was unpopular and deemed ineffective by some was because it acted politically (influenced by industrial interests and by its own lack of serious will) and compromised the ETS. As it has apparently done in the market for some new green industries.

Being able to influence the quantity of permits it also ipso facto affects the price the market sets (that being the nature of markets).

Now is probably not the time to be spouting free market theory; even the Chairman of the Federal Reserve of the United States from 1987 to 2006, Alan Greenspan, said he was distressed to see that his free market ideology failed so spectacularly (global financial crisis etc).

Nevertheless, ETS seems to be the favoured way to go. Unless you’re this guy:

“Carbon trading is a system dismissed by the world’s most influential scientist on global warming, James Hansen, who, as director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, essentially invented and popularised the concept of human-induced global warming.

“Hansen believes carbon trading schemes, especially those as complex and compromised as the scheme proposed by the Rudd Government, are misguided: ”These cap-and-trade trading schemes are a terrible idea. They are a way to continue business as usual … ”

“Business as usual is exactly what the Rudd Government, the unions and the Labor patronage machine are all about. The soaring rhetoric about climate change is just carbon emission.”

That’s from Paul Sheehan in today’s Herald: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/rudds-green-credentials-a-lot-of- hot-air-20091220-l7ez.html

Now Mr Sheehan seems a bit wobbly on the balance front; but if you want to see lack of balance verging on nut job … listen to Professor Ian Plimer (last week on Lateline he was classic).

I heard on the radio on Saturday that even one of his supporters who went to listen to him in Copenhagen said they knew he was a charlatan but still felt encouraged by his climate change denialism.

But you can’t criticise the deniers for knowing one thing and acting inconsistently: look at all those supposed believers who battled it out in Copenhagen … oh yeah, they were politicians weren’t they.