Barnaby Joyce: I'll support a clean energy target – if coal is included

The deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce says he’s prepared to support a clean energy target such as the one recommended by the chief scientist, Alan Finkel, if the Liberals agree to set a threshold allowing high-efficiency coal in the mix.

Barnaby Joyce plays catch with a lump of coal in
parliament in February. The deputy prime minister and
 Nationals leader wants ‘better coal-fired power stations’. 

Joyce told Guardian Australia on Thursday he was prepared to take a positive recommendation to the Nationals party room on the clean energy target if it was set at a level at which coal was eligible for certificates.

But he said the Nationals were not able to take a formal decision on the central recommendation of the Finkel review until cabinet has resolved where to set the threshold.

Read Katherine Murphy’s story on The Guardian - “Barnaby Joyce: I'll support a clean energy target – if coal is included.”

(Is Barnaby Joyce, stupid, naive, ideological blind, crazy like a fox or just plain crazy? Most every climate scientist in the world, well 97% and that in any terms is “most”, are convinced by the science that coal must remain where it is - in the ground; and most certainly not dug up, shipped to power generators here in Australia and around the world, burnt and in the process releasing carbon dioxide and worsening the world’s near insurmountable challenge with climate change - Robert McLean)