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The Forum > Article Comments > The political dangers of a climate crusade - a lesson for Rudd from the UK > Comments

The political dangers of a climate crusade - a lesson for Rudd from the UK : Comments

By Chris Pope and Matthew Sinclair, published 4/8/2008

While the climate debate is often dominated by clamorous activists, ordinary voters tend to favour a more pragmatic approach.

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Whoever wrote that headline can be safely described as an idiot (and it's not the article writer, if I'm not mistaken). The article never mentioned Rudd, nor Australia.

So who's drawing it as a 'lesson for Rudd'?!

(Not only that, pre-empting the results from Newspoll and getting it badly wrong make... not looking good.)
Posted by Chade, Wednesday, 6 August 2008 7:34:40 AM
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This paper was written for the American Enterprise Institute a neo-con think tank that has been around since 1943 to promote free enterprise capitalism.

The AEI is one of the leading architects of the Bush administration's foreign policy in relation to Iraq. Mrs Lynne Cheney is a Senior Fellow

In 1980, the American Enterprise Institute for the sum of $25,000 produced a study in support of the tobacco industry titled, Cost-Benefit Analysis of Regulation: Consumer Products. The study was designed to counteract "social cost" arguments against smoking by broadening the social cost issue to include other consumer products such as alcohol and saccharin. The social cost arguments against smoking hold that smoking burdens society with additional costs from on-the-job absenteeism, medical costs, cleaning costs and fires.[3] The report was part of the global tobacco industry's 1980s Social Costs/Social Values Project, carried out to refute emerging social cost arguments against smoking.

In February 2007, The Guardian (UK) reported that AEI was offering scientists and economists $10,000 each, "to undermine a major climate change report" from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). AEI asked for "articles that emphasise the shortcomings" of the IPCC report, which "is widely regarded as the most comprehensive review yet of climate change science." AEI visiting scholar Kenneth Green made the $10,000 offer "to scientists in Britain, the US and elsewhere," in a letter describing the IPCC as "resistant to reasonable criticism and dissent."
see http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=American_Enterprise_Institute
Posted by billie, Wednesday, 6 August 2008 8:13:39 AM
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Chade: << The article never mentioned Rudd, nor Australia.

So who's drawing it as a 'lesson for Rudd'?! >>

Indeed - on the face of it, this appears to be an appalling piece of editorialising by OLO. Sort of makes their claims to be simply presenting both sides of the climate change debate look a bit disingenuous, doesn't it?

On scanning the article, it appears to be little more than industry spin that exemplifies the ethical vacuum in which the denialist camp increasingly operate. While it's to be expected that the vacuous Marohasy and the IPA would publish this kind of dross, surely OLO should try and do better.
Posted by CJ Morgan, Wednesday, 6 August 2008 8:35:40 AM
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