Darkness at Noon

Kenneth Davidson writes in today’s Age:

The Rudd Government’s carbon pollution reduction scheme (CPRS) is a thoroughly compromised version of an emissions trading scheme (ETS). It deserves to be rejected in the Senate even if it requires an unholy alliance between the Greens and the climate change deniers in the Coalition parties.

I honestly have no idea what I would do if I were currently sitting in the Senate chambers (for any party).

There is no doubt that Davidson is right – the CPRS is a joke – and to add weight to that, he quotes extensively from a report by Friends of the Earth who always do a fantastic job. So is it better to have a bad mechanism in place or no mechanism at all?

But if this is the best we can do in Australia, I can only assume that other countries are going through the same sorts of debates and, thanks to the structures that our global economy is built on, it is little wonder that there just isn’t the political will to get an effective Emissions Trading Scheme (in terms of genuine reductions in carbon emissions) of any form up.

The coalition are concerned that if Australia were to get on with the business of building a post-carbon economy that no one else would follow suite and we would lose any competitive advantages we may already have. Of course the flip side of that argument is that it would position us ahead of the pack so that when everyone did start to catch up we would be in a highly advantageous position.

So in the lead up to Copenhagen, I’m astonished that not one country can really stand up an say, “We have already reduced our carbon emissions to 20% below 1990 levels and are on track to be carbon neutral but 2020″. A lot of countries are doing a lot more than Australia, but no one can really stand up and say “we’ve done it”.

Why?

So, Murdoch is upset because Google is ’stealing’ ‘his’ content. It just defies belief. Presumably he is a man of at least a modest intellect, but he still can’t grasp some pretty basic concepts.

Google is sending content to New Ltd websites which is surely good for News Limited. I read somewhere that The Age now earns more revenue from its online advertising than it’s print advertising (please correct me in the comments if I’m wrong) – presumable the figures aren’t too different for New Ltd. So surely you want to utilise this revenue stream and have more people visit your site? No, says Rupert, that’s stealing!

So to combat this, News Ltd is teaming up with Microsoft (has there ever been a less holy alliance of copyright evangelists?) to de-indexing New Ltd websites from Google and include them in Bing instead – presumably at a not quite so small fee.

Two things come to mind. Firstly, go right ahead, you’re shooting yourself in the foot, I will never use Bing and it’s pretty rare for me to look at a New Ltd site and this move is making both less likely. Secondly, isn’t there some Antitrust/Competition Law implications to this? Doesn’t it massively restrict a competitive environment? Could someone let me know?

I’m about to lose all faith in the Obama administration – not sure if I’m surprised it took this long or not.

Boing Boing has pointed out that “internet chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret copyright treaty whose text Obama’s administration refused to disclose due to “national security” concerns, has leaked. It’s bad.”

The Treaty would place a strong emphasis on ISPs playing police, even on user generated content, which would pretty well kill sites like You Tube and Flickr as monitoring this information is simply too resource intensive.

It would see people’s internet being switched off if they were caught infringing copyright and enforce “take-down-notice” arrangements in the Treaty.

Michael Geist has a more detailed breakdown. I have no doubt that Australia will sign up to this treaty which is just madness.

If only we would ignore treaties like this the way we ignore other treaties that deal with human rights and refugees.