Pollution reduction. Less reliance on foreign, imported energy. Better building standards. Advancement of zero or low emission technologies. Better health for those that live near coal power stations. Eliminate the need to rip up forests for 20 years worth of coal. A livable planet for future generations. Reducing accidents like the recent BP disaster. Force the big polluters to put more money into R & D on renewables instead of propaganda. The list goes on. BTW, I work in the oil and gas industry.
Lets just call the carbon tax what it is - Gillard giving Goldman Sachs what it wants to feather her own future nest, and that of her traitorous masters who were exposed giving away information to a foreign power in Wikileaks last week. Giving Australia's money to the international derivatives market is borderline treason. If she is going to tax carbon in Australia, then the money needs to be accounted for to the cent and spent in Australia.
Queensland is close to brownouts because they have failed to use proceeds from their natural resources in order to keep their infrastructure up to date, same here in WA.
Have you seen the Chinese factories where solar panels are made? Just do some research. Are you aware of a single wind turbine or solar panel manufacturer in Australia? What percentage of the market are they? Huh? Solar panels run on 40 year old technologies. They are going no where Australian coal powered stations? Sorry maybe their bad in china, but we have slightly higher emission standards here. Where? / Making people poorer does not stop them from polluting. What like a coal spill?
That is actually the plan for the first 3-5 years the tax is in place. After that they're looking to transition to some type of ETS, but the last one was such a kerfuffle that they're just going to start pricing carbon now and work out the details of a trading scheme later. Trying to create an open market from scratch is hard, so the government is going to get the ball rolling and do a handover to the market once things are up and running. As Clawhammer indicated, nobody wants to invest in more power plants until they know how much a price on carbon will affect them so they haven't. Demand has increased and prices have risen as a result, so the sooner the government gets on with implementing a policy the better off we'll be.
A carbon tax presupposes that there is time to change via economic means. Its already to late for that. Unless the majority of the scientists are wrong its already baked in.
All this Western style political hypocrisy seems designed to make the politicians feel all warm and caring because they have gone environmental. An energy conference here, an environment conference there. It's all very nice flying all over the world creating more CO2 in private jets. Flavour of the century stuff. Veneer thin integrity, apathy on the inside.
OI YOU LOT! YOU WILL REJOICE THIS TAX FOR THE GOOD OF THE NATION AND THE ENTIRE WOR.... Oh who the hell am I kidding? I say we fix the problem by super gluing the wonder-moll's mouth around a V8 exhaust pipe and tell to eat carbon whilst we rev the living shit out of the engine. Problem solved.
Released this month: http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2010/03/out_of_running.html Read the full report if you like, but the summary is pretty good.
I assume you're trolling? Sure, making a solar panel might create pollution, but so does making a coal fired power station or oil platform, but once made stops polluting and just provides zero emission electricity with zero fuel input cost. I'm pretty sure we don't import our sunshine, wind and waves. Sure we import solar panels, but we also import coal power stations and oil platforms. Solar panels and wind turbine are not energy. Burning coal to make electricity is technology far older than 40 years, so by your reckoning it also is going nowhere. Buildings designed properly, use far less energy to run. If you think mining coal doesn't wreck the environment, I can't help you with that one.
Ok so this article is put out by a politically Left wing, activist organisation. It talks of the renewable industries in Spain, Germany and China. As you can imagine, being a left wing activist organisation it has a very positive spin on these countries and their renewables. Funnily enough it doesn't talk about how Spain and Germany are winding back their investment in these massively subsidised, incredibly inefficient and loss making industries. They just cant justify the staggering cost. As for china, if you believe anybody can get accurate figures out of that place, then I have a bridge to sell you. Or maybe a windfarm
It can also be expensive.... the model for the ETS is the US's Sulphiur Dioxide Trading scheme. At the beginning of the year/permit period, the Govt puts a bunch of 'permit tickets' up for auction (say 1 ticket = 1 tonne). The various companies bid against each other for the permits setting an intial price. The rich companies can afford to pay more upfront for more tickets (more than they forecast they need). As the year progresses..and a company finds they're over emitting and don't have enough permits, they can buy surplus tickets off companies that don't need them... this further refines the market price (sometimes up, sometimes down). The regulator/Govt, monitors the market and depending on how the industry is able to cope with the new permit system, may choose to increase/decrease the number of permits available at the next auction. With a carbon tax...the price is set and fixed, has no flexibility and may not be reflective of the industry's ability to cope, but at least the companies have something to plan on. A trading scheme means the price keeps fluctuating and makes it difficult to forward plan.
Governments have had years and years to address these issues and done next to nothing about it. Now they've cracked a solution. Tax us so that we pay for the previous investment costs of those industries and then turn it into an international derivatives market. The fact is that any government that was not filled with self serving lickspittles could have made Australia self sufficient in just about any industry with cheap and abundant food, good FREE education, clean water and air with solid public transport systems years ago. We are the future generation paying for their gold card pensions and corruption. Check out any political commentary for the last 50 years and see if any of that advice was followed. They've known about this problem for a generation or more and self interest and profitability has prevented any action. Even at this stage they still ignore the problem and just impose a tax. Traitors all.
i have to agree with big ad on china attempts to move into tomorrows market at least they are trying sure they might make more pollution while their doing it but they are at least doing something our government are doing sweet FA but taxing australians . they put a few wind turbines around to appease the people so they look like they r doing something.Il be happy when i see a large scale alternative energy programme in place..they spend billions on crap but wont spend where its actually needed
I keep forgetting about the clean green Chinese cities & how cynical I tend to be lately. Oh & about baby Polar bears clinging to icypoles in the middle of the Atlantic. Cute lil guys.
