Have you seen the new ad on television asking you to say yes to the carbon tax? It’s interesting that at the time of its premiere there was not carbon tax policy in the public domain to say yes to.
It is a good ad as it sends a positive vibe. Political parties should perhaps take note.
The effects on the economy are predicted to be either fruitful or dire. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle.
Jobs will be created, but this gives no respite to those likely to lose their jobs if polluting industries are downsized.
There will be some form of compensation to ordinary Australians, but will it be enough once the costs of the carbon tax are passed on to consumers. Will it ever be enough for a public forever reliant on the government? Surely the necessity of compensation should make people feel that this is a bad policy.
Cate Blanchett has copped some criticism for appearing on the ad. For this I largely agree with Wayne Swan when he said, “I admire someone who stands up for something that they believe in”.
Her line in the ad is to say that saying yes to the carbon tax is saying yes to “doing something about climate change”. Surveys have been presented suggesting our desire for “action on climate change”. Even if you believe in human induced climate change surely this can’t be the first course of action. Surely there are many actions available that will act on the environment more effectively.
The vast majority of us would be in favour of good environmental policy. Unfortunately a lot of policies seem to miss the point of being good stewards of the environment. Instead the policy agenda gets hijacked by those preferring to instil a radical ideology. So polluters must pay, regardless of the direct costs to them, and the indirect costs to the ‘ordinary Australians’.
Needless to say it will be implemented, as Gillard is too proud to take it off the agenda. She’s fully committed now. Plus her mere existence relies on it going ahead. The Greens have her in their pocket.
If she hadn’t lied about it in the first place perhaps she would have more credibility. All this might not have happened. Although if she had told the truth she might not have become PM in the first place. An interesting thought.
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7 comments:
I agree that detail on the carbon tax is a bit 'light on'. Although in the current political environment I don't think that the government really had much of a choice.
Considering length of the discussions that are taking place in the multi party climate committee, I'm sure that the move towards a carbon tax would have leaked to the media immediately, so they had to announce their intentions, as broad as they still are.
Regarding compensation - I'm confident it will be sufficient for the most needy in our communities, and probably insufficient for those who can most afford it (myself included). Again, we will have to wait for those details. I vehemently disagree that the necessity for compensation defines it as bad policy. Costello increased the age pension by 2% as compensation for the GST.
I think it's a bit rich to call action on climate change a radical ideology. Significant action yes, but it's hardly based on the values of a few. As much a climate science sceptics wish to make claims to contrary, the scientific community is heavily weighed on the side of climate action. No scientific body of national or international standing has maintained a stance rejecting human-induced climate change, and those scientists who do question the science seem to be disproportionately comprised of mining geologists. Surely anyone can see the conflict of interest here?
I'm certain that anyone with a background in economics knows that in order to change consumer behaviour it is necessary to involve a market-based mechanism. I'm sure we could launch some touchy-feely advertising campaign (perhaps starting Cate Blanchett) extolling the virtues to buying carbon neutral products, but seriously - it's not going to work unless the alternative hits the hip pocket. Malcolm Turnbull knows that - so does Abbott and Minchin. These alternative policies are just there to reassure the people that he's safe to vote for (he's not a climate change denier), yet the government's action on climate change is a disaster looming for our country of huge proportions.
This is just a GST-style scare campaign that the Labor Party had coming after their carry-on in the lead up to the 1998 election. They wrote the lines - why do they seem incapable of countering them with clear arguments like Costello did?
I hope the standard of communication improves once the committee reaches a conclusion. I guess it is difficult to sell a product that's still on the production line. I'll wait and see.
Some thoughts, if I may.
Cate Blanchett has since gone public defending her actions and making political statements. However, considering she does not live in Australia, I believe people are justified in simply telling her to butt the hell out. Even so, if I am not satisfied by what I hear from the political and scientific realms, I am not going to be swayed by the opinion of an actress.
The Gillard woman and Prime Minister Brown insist on calling this national travesty a “carbon tax”, when it is in fact nothing of the sort, unless they are also taxing fresh food, diamond rings, HB pencils, and many modern industrial materials. The only place we are urged to get our knickers in a knot though is where carbon exists in chemical compound with that equally insidious element called oxygen, in a ratio of one to two. It is a carbon dioxide tax, not a carbon tax.
No matter how many times Prime Minister Brown complains about the “big polluters”, carbon dioxide is not – and cannot be – a pollutant. Infinitesimal increases in the concentration of naturally occurring substances do not constitute pollution, unless I could be called a polluter if I empty my salt shaker into the ocean. For that matter, have I polluted if I bury my excrement? What if I exhale? What a terrible ecological disaster!
The need to compensate demonstrates the absurdity of the policy, but not because it will offset the effect on reducing emissions in proportion to the monetary relief it brings. No matter how much you bop Energy Australia on the head with the taxation club, a reduction in demand for their product will not automatically decrease their emissions. They exist to make money from selling electricity. If Johnny consumer is fully compensated, he will not change his behaviour, the demand will not change, so the emissions will not change. But even if demand is reduced, power stations are forced to run less efficiently. This will certainly increase the level of emissions per megawatt hour, and may even increase the gross amount. So it does not necessarily follow that less demand means less emissions. This is one reason why the home solar energy feed-in schemes have increased the price of electricity for the rest of us. It therefore makes good sense to compensate consumers in that regard. However, what about the poor old power company? Running on a shoestring budget to start with (responding to government pressure to keep electricity prices down), and now slapped with an enormous additional expense, how exactly is it that they are expected to reduce emissions?
It becomes clear then that this is not about helping power companies reduce emissions, but rather about destroying the coal-fired power industry. Make no mistake, the Greens want that industry to cease to exist, and even though they have convinced themselves that this perverse desire is environmentally motivated, the fact that they do not change their view in the face of plain evidence to the contrary demonstrates that this is really about knocking down big corporations and redistributing the wealth. They believe all big industry and big business is evil and creates poverty.
More to follow...
But what is a tax on carbon dioxide emissions designed to do? Make no mistake, this is not intended to have any effect on any climate characteristic other than Global Warming. The issue is inescapable – we are not talking about cooling, or weather extremes (except as a possible by-product). If we are talking about carbon dioxide, then we are concerned primarily about problematic global increases in average temperature. There has recently been a tendency to shy away from the term “global warming” (in preference for the less committal “climate change”), but global warming is the only issue relevant to carbon dioxide. If the world is not warming, we do not need to worry about carbon dioxide. The logic is, and has always been, the following:
1. Global average temperature is dependant largely on atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration.
2. A rise in the concentration will raise the temperature.
3. Such a temperature rise will cause adverse climatic effects like rising seal levels and increased storm activity.
4. It will also cause damage to sensitive environments like the Great Barrier Reef.
5. Human industrial activity significantly increases the carbon dioxide concentration.
6. We are already seeing the effects of global warming.
7. If we go on, the effect will be catastrophic.
8. Reducing emissions will help mitigate the coming disaster.
9. A carbon dioxide tax or emissions trading scheme will do this.
There is only one tiny problem with this argument. It’s bollocks. Every single one of the above points is at best tenuous and at worst completely false.
Still more...
1. Though there is a correlation between these two effects, it is not beyond reasonable doubt which is the cause and which is the effect, nor is the correlation without significant anomalies that have not been explained.
2. It is true in general that higher temperatures accompany higher concentrations, but it is far from a universal axiom, and only works when these changes are very large (tens of percentages).
3. These are not known for certain, however the sea level one is probably true (some historical evidence exists), but the storms one is much more tenuous. In either case, no one can say how much the change will be for a given temperature change.
4. The truth about the reef is that it has never been in better shape, according to scientists who have actually studied it over long periods.
5. Over the last century, human industrial activity has affected the concentration by such a minute amount that it is impossible to measure the divergence from natural fluctuations with current technology. However, mud core and ice core data indicate that the concentration has been several hundred per cent higher than today’s levels in the past.
6. We have indeed seen things like receding glaciers. However, the global average temperature has been cooling since 1998 (which was abnormally warm for reasons no one has been able to explain) and had returned to 1979 level by 2008. Data do not extend further back with the same rigour. In other words, the available evidence allows the real possibility that warming may not be occurring at all.
7. If available rigorous historical data is projected long term, the increase will only be restricted to approximately two degrees of warming by the end of the century, which is well within the historically normal range. Other alarming projections result from computer models known to be inaccurate and designed with the starting assumption that warming will occur. They have never yet produced results for the past that adequately reflect the observed reality, therefore their projections cannot logically be reliable.
8. If the total aggregate historical effect of mankind’s industrial carbon dioxide emissions is, at present, unmeasurably slight; then even the total and instant eradication of such emissions would have no discernable reversing effect.
9. These economic measures can reasonably hope to achieve a reduction in emissions by perhaps 25%, perhaps more or perhaps less, depending on the nature of the economy in question. However, given economic realities, we can probably only hope for a reduction in the rate at which emissions increase.
In other words, a carbon dioxide tax will slightly slow the increase in emissions, having no impact on atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, regardless of how much of the rest of the world joins in. Changes to these carbon dioxide levels may or may not affect the global temperature and, in turn, this might have some slight affect on the climate, but it is not possible to predict exactly what, if anything.
It is often objected that the weight of scientific opinion is in favour of anthropogenic global warming. It should suffice to point out that consensus is in fact anathema to science, because science is supposed to deal exclusively in hard facts. If it is nebulous enough to require an appeal to majority opinion, it is not science at all. It will not be necessary to support this statement with any further examples than the consensus held among scientists in the past that blood did not circulate, but was created in the liver and consumed by the body. So much for consensus.
And Furthermore!
According to the government’s “climate guru”, former chairman of Lihir Gold Limited (one of the biggest genuine polluters on the planet due to their propensity to pump gold mine tailings into the ocean) Ross Garnaut; Australia is not a “pissant” country, and we will be world leaders in this endeavour. Not to burst his bubble too much, Australia accounts for 3% of the world’s emissions. In other words, we have no influence at all on 97% of them. And there is no reason at all to expect the rest of the world to follow our example, especially when they see the effect on our economy.
It remains only to make one last point. Given that all this effort is going to have a negligible impact on climate change, we are still faced with the virtual certainty that such change will occur naturally. If climate change is merely a natural phenomenon, we have wasted all this effort boxing the shadow and we still have done nothing about the real problem. If the climate changes anyway, what are we going to do about it? As Senator Barnaby Joyce rightly says (unusual, I know), “no one is going to change the climate from this building”, that is, from Parliament House. Surely we should give up such futile endeavours and concentrate on buffering ourselves against the potential effects of such changes. The developing world is showing no sign of tackling emissions, yet no one who believes this is a problem as paying any attention to the risk that they never do. I suggest that we have got the focus all wrong. All the debate should be about how we are going to cope with large changes in the climate, not on how we might stop such changes from happening.
End of rant.
LB
I must print a retraction - I have been reliably informed that cate moved back to Australia a few years ago from the UK and now ordinarily resides in Hunters Hill. My apologies to Cate, and I affirm her right to make silly statements about domestic politics to her heart's content.
LB
Wow, 'Anonymous', still working through your epic. Thank you, though, for laying out the facts in such certain terms. I find that so many people are so ready to take what they're given by the government and the media at face value, who tend to appeal to that gratifying trick of making the general populace feel much better about themselves because they're saving something by busting their guts.
A couple more interesting things to note:
It is highly possible that the sea levels will rise when the Earth gets cooler as opposed to warmer, as more gaseous CO2 is able to be dissolved in the Earth's oceans at cooler temperatures. According to the work of Archimedes, this will induce an amount of displacement that is proportional to the total volume of the CO2 gas. Now, when moer gas is added to a system, it necessarily increases the total kinetic energy. This means that the oceans must further expand, and their levels rise.
Another point to mention, is that of the Plague phenomenon. Readers may recall, from avidly studying the history of the Middle Ages, that when the Bubonic Plague had a stranglehold on England, the world was going thorugh one of its deepest coolings ever. As we know, by climate standards, this wasn't so long ago, and indeed, true climate models indicate that we're in the same cooling, although its nowhere near as severe. But I digress. The thing about it is, one of the world's worst epidemics was allowed to rear its ugly head because of cold as a major factor, which allowed no ground/ houses to dry out, so people were surrounded by bacteria-infested mud, and their metabolisms shut down prematurely due to lack of nutrition and, you guessed it, cold. Not only so, but they were often exposed to carbon monoxide poisoning, because they had to light fires inside their homes, whose venting systems were often tenuous at best. So, the fact is, we should probably more appreciative of any warming that might be occurring, because it takes us further and further away from such diabolical catastrophes.
Oh, and were the readers aware that, when a carbon tax comes in (I say when because it's highly likely), industries will be able to purchase emission permits? So they'll be able to continue emitting the same 'pollutants' (Water vapour, if you're a power station), but have to pay for it. A sure-fire...oh sorry. A sure-clean-solar-panel way of bringing down business, without being absolutely sure their emissions are causing the havoc that's being purported. I ask you, what, exactly, is the point?
And might I also mention, that the worldwide bodies for climate science have probably been put together by authorities who need enough scientific people to agree with them so they can stress their ideas to us mere commoners. So I daresay there's bias on both sides. The mining geologists weren't the ones who created the fudged data.
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