Malcolm Turnbull opens his mouth and emits CH4

Federal Leader of the Liberal Party and Leader of the Opposition, Malcolm Turnbull, chose the Young Liberals Conference in Canberra this weekend to announce his party's new climate change 'policy', A Green Carbon Initiative.

After waiting months to hear what Turnbull would put up against the Rudd Government's climate change policies and proposed emissions trading scheme, we now find that he has laboured hard to produce a little gas.

It seems that all that is really needed to save Australia from the ravages of climate change is for the Liberal Party to promise delivery of the near-mythical Clean Coal, a little biochar in the soil, converting a building or two to greater energy efficiency and a few renewable energy odds and sods thrown in for good measure - all leading to a carbon reduction equivalent of 150 million tonnes annually.

That's around 7 million tonnes for every man, woman and child across the nation.

All in the name of 'risk management', because after all (according to many Liberals) there is a chance that human-induced global warming may possibly not exist after all.

As for emissions trading. Well never you mind about that just yet - we haven't prepared a policy response at this time.

If this effort is the best that the Liberal Party can do in 2009 then they are clearly not ready for government.

According to Stock and Land farmers are not too happy with Turnbull either:

Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull has been warned his plan to trap greenhouse gases in soil could end up costing farmers if it means agriculture is included under an emissions trading scheme.
According to today's Australian Financial Review, senior research fellow at the University of Melbourne's Department of Forest and Ecosystem Science, Stefan Arndt, said if farmers were to benefit from biosequestration offsets being recognised under the ETS, they should equally be liable for their own emissions.
"We don't have enough evidence that soil carbon sequestration would outweigh the negative effects to farming, such as methane producing animals and the nitrous oxide emissions that come from putting fertiliser in the ground," Dr Arndt said.

While the Nationals are less than enthusiastic with his foray into biosequestration either.

Turnbull's A Green Carbon Initiative is found here.

Image from http://www.roberthkeller.com/