Shikha Dalmia on Failed Green Strategies to Fight Climate Change

When Australia embraced a carbon tax two years
ago, global warming warriors were ecstatic. Australia had gone from
being environmental laggard, refusing to even the sign the Kyoto
treaty at first (just like the benighted US of A), to environmental
leader. They told the world to watch and learn.

But two weeks ago, Australia’s newly-elected Prime Minister Tony
Abbott scrapped the tax that was as popular in the Land Down Under
as Donald Sterling is here.

So if anyone needs to learn from the death of Australia’s carbon
tax, and the terminal fate of Europe’s cap-and-trade program, notes
Shikha Dalmia, it is the enviros themselves. And the lesson is that
“mitigation” strategies—curbing greenhouse gases by putting
economies on an energy diet—are not winning or workable.

Instead, envros should accept that the sins of emission
can’t be legislated away and abandon their quixotic quest for
radical cuts in emissions in favor of less economically destructive
coping strategies.

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