B says:
so, r u against the carbon trading thing????
so….. tell me why????
I say:
“It’s hard to explain in just a small comment on FB. Basically it’s claimed as a market based solution, it will create a bubble, bubbles in economics are bad, Australia making 1% of the world’s man made carbon, jumping in first will kill our exports leading to 20% or higher unemployment. If India, China or the US do it then we should otherwise they won’t trade with us (killing our exports again). We need to focus on real pollution. Carbon levels have been way higher 100′s of years ago because of volcanoes. Graphs by the IPCC are rigged so they can get more funding to keep telling us the sky is falling. Bob Carter of Cook Uni Qld writes good stuff on carbon. Carbon makes plants grow. Carbon in the ocean mainly comes for the earths center of the earth (kinda like volcanoes). Hence around these carbon spewing hole on the ocean floor, lot of seaweed grows.
The founder of the LDP wrote an alternative to an ETS. It’s a cost neutral carbon tax. It’s very deep in economic mumbo-jumbo and I’m yet to decide on it but the premise sounds bad.
The nanny statist believe taxing things higher makes people buy them less.
This has been proved wrong in many cases, so they’re either lying or revenue raising so the pollies get pay rises each year. Example of “taxing to deter” epically failing: alipops – everyone just buys straight booze. Tax on fatty foods – It’s not in yet as such, but the GST was placed on take-away and junk food in the supermarkets. Stats show the 10% increase in junk food price did nothing to stop us eating it. Smokes – Shit heads in the outer suburbs are more likely to rob a servo or intimidate others in public to scab smokes.
The purpose of government isn’t to raise us like we are passive ants. It’s purpose is to protect the individual from the initiation of force from thugs.”
Our mutual friend Adzo add some comments:
“Governments distort the market from running cleanly, effectively and accurately through policy intervention. Pollution, in this case carbon, will be just another commodity that is traded. For business, a carbon tax or whatever, will be just another input cost that will be offset by raising the cost of the final product. Problems come when localised governments impose policy distortions at a local level, on a commodity which will be traded in a global marketplace. Kyoto, Copehagen, whatever are meeting to try and get some buy-in but also uniformity in the policy intervention to prevent local distortions have a disproportionate and massive impact locally due to the ability of business to relocate to another area where the local distortions are eased or minimised. Therefore legislating a local ETS that is pre-emptive of international settlement on consistent terms, is an incredible gamble for a bit player like Australia. Kinda like putting the cart before the horse and then betting ‘all or nothing’ that it will win the Melbourne Cup!”
