Reflections on climate change, and the quality of Australian economists

Saul Eslake ponders Tony Abbott\u27s distrust of economists in Online Opinion. . I attended a conference of economists from around the world in Amsterdam last month at which, during one of many discussions about the handling of the Greek sovereign debt crisis, one of the European economists remarked that the world had become a funny place when the Head of the Catholic Church was a German and the Head of the European Central Bank was an Italian. Australia has become a funny place, too, when the ostensibly left-of-centre major political party advocates reducing Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions by using ‘price signals’ − in the hope that the combination of lower returns from processes which are intensive in their use of fossil fuels and higher prices for goods and services which are similarly intensive will spur the search for less fossil fuel intensive means of producing and distributing goods and services – while the ostensibly right-of-centre party advocates ‘direct action’, based on the premise that governments actually know the best means of reducing carbon emissions, and will pay people to undertake them. Read the full article Image: Alex E. Proimos / flick