VITAL NEWS AUSTRALIA.

 Andrew Bolt

SO you think I exaggerate when I say global warming is just the latest cause of the closet totalitarian?

Then pay close attention to an experiment the warmists are about to inflict on the people of Norfolk Island.

Be warned. What’s being trialled there with $390,000 of Gillard Government money may, if it works, be spread to the mainland, say the researchers.

Which means it’s coming for you.

The plan - and, no, I’m not joking - is to put Norfolk Islanders on rations to fight both global warming and obesity.

Funded by the Australian Research Council, and approved by the Socialist Left Science Minister Kim Carr, researchers from the Southern Cross University will give each volunteer on the island a “carbon card”.

Every time they buy petrol, electricity or an air flight, they will have “carbon units” deducted from the fixed allowance on their card.

More units will be lost each time they buy fatty foods, or produce flown in from a long way away.

If, at the end of each year or so, they have carbon units left over, they can sell them. If they’ve blown their allocation, they must buy more.

But each year, the number of carbon units in this market will be cut, causing their price to soar - and thus the price of extra food, power and petrol to rise - because the idea is to cut greenhouse gases and make Norfolk Islanders trim, taut and terrifically moral.

Conservatives well aware of human fallibility will immediately spot the obvious flaw in this latest scheme of the Left to remake humanity.

It’s this: what happens when people run out of their carbon rations, and can’t afford the extra units they need to buy more fuel, power or even food?

This is precisely what I put this week to Garry Egger, head of this experiment and professor of Lifestyle Medicine and Applied Health Promotion at SCU.