From Jo Nova.
Australians may have missed what happened this week in the US (especially if they only watch the ABC). Climate Change is over as a voting issue. Will Australian Opposition Leader, Bill Shorten, get the message? Just last month he pledged to put carbon trading on the next election agenda (again). The conservatives across the nation must be cheering.
In the US, Tom Steyer threw $74 million into a campaign to convince voters to be very afraid and vote out the Republicans. Nearly all of Steyers favourite candidates failed. It was no accidental issue. The NextGen Climate Action Super Pac took Steyers money, and spent it all (and more) to push President Obama’s green agenda, specifically targeting coal “for extinction”. The Republicans supported energy of all kinds from coal to oil, fracked gas, and more pipelines.
This was the “biggest investment the environmental community has ever made in politics”, and yet it failed dismally:
[Washington Post] The spending plans are laid out in a document, acquired by The Post, that summarizes the activities of five top green groups — the Environmental Defense Action Fund, Steyer’s NextGen Climate, the NRDC Action Fund, the League of Conservation Voters (LCV), and the Sierra Club – and has been circulated internally among them. Asked about the document, which is dated October 17, LCV president Gene Karpinski commented, “this is by far the biggest investment that the environmental community has ever made in politics.” Karpinski said that LCV will spend over $25 million this year, compared with $5 million in the 2010 election cycle and $15 million in 2012.
Links at the link.