“Rural areas have much worse sharks circling them than climate change sceptics,” said The Nationals’ Senator Ron Boswell today in response to Ross Garnaut’s recent comments on Sky News. “The real sharks are those who want rural and regional areas to pay for climate change policy while professional climate change touts earn big bucks and resort to name calling to justify themselves.” “The real ignorance is that of city based academics and professional elites refusing to see how their grand ideas impact on the small family farmer at the end of the day.” “Labor’s ETS imposes a cost on these farmers and miners that their overseas competitors won’t have to pay so their markets, their livelihoods are threatened. There is plenty of hard evidence to back up these concerns.” “It’s all very well for wealthy city dwellers who can afford a power price hike but that is only the beginning of the problems that will face many in rural and regional areas under Labor’s ETS.” “The problem with public comment that relies on Treasury modelling to extinguish fears about the economic backlash of an ETS is that it ignores the key assumption of coordinated global action on emission reductions.” “Without coordinated global action the Treasury model outcomes are worthless.” “Skynews reports Garnaut as defining a climate shark as ‘anyone who played on the human instinct to deny bad news’. In that case, Garnaut should look at his own actions in denying the economic fallout from Labor’s ETS on rural and regional areas as detailed by many experts to Senate Committees.” Senator Boswell said that his chief preoccupation and concern had nothing to do with the science but was all about the impact of Labor’s legislative response. ENDS Sky News Transcript webpage – http://www.skynews.com.au/eco/article.aspx?id=377446