‘Pathetically inadequate’ was probably the most frequent description of the government’s voluntary emissions proposal for the United Nations Climate Change Conference; the description fits their climate and energy policies more generally. Clearly, the wholly inadequate aspects are deliberate – but the problem is much broader. Members of the government have used the term ‘sabotage’ to describe the actions of environmental groups when they use the law to slow something like a proposed new coal mine. But the term more accurately describes the government’s own approach to environmental and energy policy, which is nothing less than a form of economic sabotage of the renewable energy industry. It is also an abdication of the basic roles and tasks of government.