Climate Policy Objections Heat Up Down Under

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H. Sterling Burnett

Managing Editor, Environment & Climate News at The Heartland Institute

H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D. is managing editor of Environment & Climate News and a research fellow for environment and energy policy at The Heartland Institute. Burnett worked at the National Center for Policy Analysis for 18 years, most recently as a senior fellow in charge of NCPA’s environmental policy program. He has held various positions in professional and public policy organizations, including serving as a member of the Environment and Natural Resources Task Force in the Texas Comptroller’s e-Texas commission.

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The Saltbush Club, an Australian group whose members include scientists, scholars, environmentalists, farmers, and business people, among others from a variety of disciplines and walks of life, was formed out of concern the Australian government’s energy policies and its participation in the Paris climate agreement were harming people and the economy. As their website states,

Despite this diversity in education, occupation, and skills, the Saltbush Club are united in one thing—a deep concern that both sides of politics are supporting climate/energy policies that will provide no benefits for the environment but huge costs to consumers and employment prospects by damaging Australian industry with crippling power costs. NOT ONE of them has seen proof that man’s emissions of carbon dioxide can control global climate or will cause dangerous global warming.

Among its efforts, the Saltbush Club has published a list of 10 reasons why Australia should withdraw from the Paris climate agreement. Among those reasons are the following:

1. The science is NOT settled—hundreds of scientists in Australia and thousands more throughout the world reject the theory that human production of carbon dioxide is driving dangerous global warming. And the 102 computerized climate models have always predicted more warming than has occurred.
2. There is no unusual global warming. Since the last ice age ended there have been warm eras hotter than today’s modern warming—the warm peaks are getting lower, not higher. Climate has always changed in response to forces far greater than human activities.
3. Carbon dioxide is NOT a pollutant—it is an invisible natural gas that supplies the whole food chain. More carbon dioxide is beneficial to the biosphere—forests, grasses, and crops grow better thus benefitting all animal life that relies on plants.

   (BTW: The Heartland Institute, among other groups, has hammered these three points home repeatedly over the past decade.)

4. Australian energy policies, taxes, and targets are making electricity more costly and less reliable, hurting consumers, and driving industry off-shore.
5. Compliance with the Paris Agreement will destroy industries and jobs, encourage bureaucracy, and transfer controls and money to affiliates of the United Nations.

In the light of this evidence, the Saltbush Club encourages Australia’s Prime Minister to follow President Donald Trump’s example and lead Australia out of the Paris climate agreement.