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As President Obama prepares to host a ‘jobs summit’ tomorrow, the Australian parliament has offered him one idea to help jump start our economy.  Earlier today, the Australian Senate defeated their version of the job-killing cap-and-trade climate legislation. The legislation was expected to pass, but after months of debate, the opposition party dumped its leader and handed the reins to new leader Tony Abbot, who united his party in opposition to the energy tax. Abbot described the legislation as “a great big tax to create a great big slush fund to provide politicized handouts, run by giant bureaucracy,” and the bill went down in the Senate, 41 nays to 33 yeas. 

One can only hope that the Obama Administration and Congressional Democrats are listening. Already, the U.S. legislation has been sidelined to next year, “in a sign of weakening political will to tackle a long-term environmental issue at a time of high unemployment and economic uncertainty.”  And further hindering its prospects is the bipartisan opposition to the legislation, as many moderate Democrats aren’t very excited about the idea of voting for another tax increase that will kill jobs.

Despite this opposition at home, President Obama plans to go to the Copenhagen Conference next week with the promise of signing onto provisional emissions reduction targets in order to appease the international community. But Obama’s insistence that the US needs to be a leader on climate change begs the question: how does sacrificing the American economy in order to obey international regulations equate to taking the lead? 

If the Aussies’ move today is any indication, the answer is to throw Cap-and-Trade on the barbie.