Possibly Good News For Climate

The anti-science Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has been turned out of office by his own party. Abbott has marked his time in office by denying climate science and dismantling Australian measures to address the problem. Abbott was replaced by Malcolm Turnbull, who is known to be less conservative than Abbott. But, that really isn't saying much.

Does this mean there might be a more enlightened leadership in Sydney? We'll have to wait and see, but the early indicators are not encouraging. This is a quote from Fox News:

Turnbull split his coalition and lost the party leadership in 2009 over his support for a then-Labor Party government's proposal to make industrial polluters pay for the carbon gas emissions that they produced through an emissions permit trading scheme.

A coalition government under Abbott last year repealed a 2-year-old carbon tax and replaced it with a policy of paying industrial polluters 2.55 billion Australian dollars ($1.8 billion) in taxpayer-funded incentives to operate more cleanly. The policy imposes no financial penalty for polluting and critics say it won't be enough to reduce Australia's heavy reliance on abundant reserves of cheap coal to generate electricity.

In his first news conference since he was elected party leader, Turnbull foreshadowed no changes to climate policy.

"Policies are reviewed and adapted all the time," he said. "But the climate policy is one that I think has been very well designed. That was a very, very good piece of work."