Slashdot Mirror
Australia Repeals Carbon Tax
schwit1 notes that the Australian government has repealed a controversial carbon tax. After almost a decade of heated political debate, Australia has become the world's first developed nation to repeal carbon laws that put a price on greenhouse gas emissions. In a vote that could highlight the difficulty in implementing additional measures to reduce carbon emissions ahead of global climate talks next year in Paris, Australia's Senate on Wednesday voted 39-32 to repeal a politically divisive carbon emissions price that contributed to the fall from power of three Australian leaders since it was first suggested in 2007.
Taxes are exactly the wrong way to do this.
It seems like a good idea. Until you realize what exactly do they do with taxes? We see the big ticket items sure. But there are zillions of other ways we are being ripped off.
http://steshaw.org/economics-i...
We over and over do exactly the wrong thing to save the world. Which ends up doing the opposite.
I make a grand prediction here. They gain and lose nothing by removing this tax. Other than a cost that their public must shoulder. The producers are not going to eat the cost that is for sure.
As an Australian, I am bitterly disappointed in my Government. Whilst the rest of the world is ramping up their climate protection measures, our government is ramping up their BIG Industry protection measures. This is the same government that believes that wind farms are an ugly blight on the landscape (and attempting to block many new farms) whilst allowing large coal mines to go ahead. Because a very quiet white propeller on a pole making no pollution is much more horrible to look at that a giant hole in the ground with dozens of house sized trucks dragging out overburden and dumping it in a giant dirty pile.
If you are worried about your access to coal is going to be reduced because your own Government is closing coal mines, don't worry! you can just come and buy a freighter load of coal for less than it costs to remove it from the ground!. And again, don't worry! the trucks used to extract the coal will have all the modern pollution preventing technologies applied to them.. so the environment will be protected.
Outside of the government there is an enormous ground swell of alternative energy research and technologies being installed by Joe Average in their own house.. Much to the governments disgust
Unfortunately, the Australian federal government is a 100% owned subsidiary of the mining companies. Although the prime minister is a moron in his own right, he's only doing what his bosses tell him to do.
People will vote themselves entitlements at the expense of future generations. It's the fatal flaw of democracy.
I'm not sure it matters much anyways. Barring a total miracle like Rossi's unicorn reactor it seems we've already passed the point of no return. If you haven't had kids -- don't. As painful as that sounds.
Is this an Aussie no to Kyoto, then?
No surprise, really...just one of many more to come, I think.
The $100 lamb roast predicted by Barnaby Joyce never came to pass. And a cow costing as much as a house? Excuse me as I laugh harder, since there has been no rise in food prices attributable to the tax, and the price of food won't fall because of its repeal. The only thing that will happen is that more coal will be burned and more pollution, since the costs of externalities won't be internalized.
So good job, I guess, and buy stock in coal companies.
Voters love the environment until it costs them money.
The Australian economy is having some troubles, but by world standard we are doing OK. Some poeple are genuinely doing it tough and struggle to afford the higher prices caused by the carbon tax, so they want it repealed. More poeple still *think* they are doing it tough, but can still afford ciggies and pay TV. These are a prime demographic for swinging votes, so the government loves to give them a price cut too.
Fearmongering and a brutal budget this year have made things worse, we are going into Austerity mode (when it is arguably not required) so poeple think that doing something responsible for the environment like the carbon tax is just a "nice to have" and easily discarded.
Makes me sad to be an Aussie sometimes. The current government has agressively wound back the clock on science and social responsibility:
- Abolished Australian Renewables Energy Agency, worth $1.3 billion.
- Stretched $2.5 Billion Emmisions Reduction Fund over 10 years instead of 4
- Cut $460 million from Carbon Capture and Storage
- Scrapped the National Water Comission and the Standing Council on Enviroment and Water
- Cut $110 milliion from CSIRO (the research group that developed WiFi and lots of other cool things)
- Cut $75 million from the Australian Research Council
- Cut $80 million from the Cooperative Research Centres program
- Cut $8 million from the Australian Institute of Marine Science
- Cut $120 million from the Defence Science and Technology Organisation
- Cut $28 million from the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation
- Cut $36 million from Geoscience Australia
1) No tax on breathing
2) One less revenue stream for government
3) More freedom for emitters of CO2
4) Happier plants since they need CO2
Oh, I forgot to add - they *didnt* cut the $222 million school chaplaincy program. The agenda is clear, they are just religious luddites.
Would having nuclear power as an option be better?
Aussies have this imagined persona of the "Aussie battler".
I guess that is until it comes to do any real battling, like reducing carbon emissions and settling refugees.
Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
Time to put a big pot of carbon on the barbie!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Oh, I forgot to add - they *didnt* cut the $222 million school chaplaincy program. The agenda is clear, they are just religious luddites.
Cheer up and take heart in the fact that even in these tough times of austerity they did at least commit to buying 58 more Joint Strike Fighters for $12.4 billion. Cut down on sicence and buy more flying lemons, at least they have a sound strategy.
Why do you assume things will continue to go the way they are indefinitely until some emergency occurs? The argument is that austerity at this time is unnecessary, and that other measures could lead to things improving in the future without adversely affecting us now.
As for the minerals boom, it's not really going anywhere (people will still need massive quantities of iron and such in the future) and we haven't capitalised on it because passing taxes to distribute the wealth from the minerals apparently isn't possible with our current political parties. Minerals aren't a renewable resource, it seems entirely daft that the overwhelming majority of the value from extracting them goes to a couple of people; it's not like anyone could come along and do the same thing in the future, they're destroying that resource permanently. It's not "robbing peter to pay paul", it's Peter destroying the town water supply so Paul can't have any in the future, and the government wanting to preserve that supply.
Check yourself, anyway; unlike the person you accuse of making up their mind then finding facts to support it, you have made up your mind and found no facts, just empty rhetoric, to support it.
Oh, I forgot to add - they *didnt* cut the $222 million school chaplaincy program. The agenda is clear, they are just religious luddites.
Hmm, so the current Liberal PM, Tony Abbot is a "religious nutter" for supporting the chaplaincy program.
Wheres the previous Labor PM, Kevin Rudd (his political opponent)'s position was :
“I have always been a strong supporter of the role of chaplains in our schools — because they make a difference. They provide an additional adult role model in the school. They help connect the school community, including parents and teachers as well as children themselves. They can arrange expert help with specific challenges, such as dealing with family breakdown, bullying, self-esteem, drugs, grief and behavioural management problems.”
Oh. Ok, let's try his predecessor, Julia Gillard who is famously an atheist, surely she'd think it was terrible. She had this to say to an ABC reporter in 2010:
"I think it's a great program... I believe it's a great program" (And that $222 million figure is from when she increased the funding to it.)
However much you might dislike churches, governments of both persuasions have consistently found the chaplaincy program to be a good thing. And the problems they have faced in court have been around how the federal government funds local programs (rather than going through the states), not actually around what the chaplains do.
I don't understand why you Aussies think this even matters. Do you know how much carbon you guys produce next to China or India? A laughably small amount. You could start building factories tomorrow in the outback that did nothing but spew raw CO2 into the atmosphere and it would take you hundreds of years to catch up to China alone.
If CO2 is to really be reduced the effort falls squarely on large semi-developed countries like China or India. Even the US has already cut back as much as they can, and that without a carbon tax also... we just weren't as stupid as you to pass it to start with.
You guys are just wising up to the reality that carbon taxes are as much a ruse to make people money as anything else. Where do you think "carbon taxes" go anyway...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
In terms of the "global warming problem", at least. The population of Australia is a rounding error. (7,050M global population - 23M Australians = still over 7B people; Australia is about 3/10th of 1%). The entire population is less than the city of Shanghai, or Karachi, or Beijing... The top 20 cities in the world have 10 X as many people of the Australian continent.
Good on them that they are voting not to piss in the wind. Specifically, this wind.
Even if humans can significantly affect the rate of change of global warming, taxing the most advanced economies is not going to help as much as doing [insert magic policy here] to change the course of the emerging economies which are going down the path that the 1st world traveled half a century ago.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
their strategy.
Forcing people to comply is failing.
I could suggest consentual systems that would have a big impact on our global carbon debt. The politicians won't like them because it won't give them any power.
It will help the environment though.
So... at some level, people are going to have to decide which matters more to them. Power and money or real change?
If you want real change now is the time drop these stupid programs and go with something consensual that will have a real impact.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Never underestimate the power of advertising and lobbyists.
Advertising (i.e. money) has limited power, the true power, the true currency of politics is votes.
A motivated and well informed voter is not swayed by advertising. Only the indifferent or disinterested are swayed by advertising.
In the U.S. recently an upstart college professor spent $100,000 in an election and defeated a power incumbent who spent $5,000,000. The professor had motivated voters, the incumbent had money.
As for lobbyists in the U.S, the most powerful are those who deliver motivated voters on election day, not those who merely make campaign contributions.
And it seems that a certain Democrat has a problem with Australian democracy too.
You're missing the point.
The existance of the chaplancy program is not the issue. I don't agree with it in principle because the government shouldn't be funding non-secular activities, but I can see the merit in some sort of school counselling and support.
The real issue is the Liberals have cut science and environment funding, but retained a controversial religious based program. It appears to be inconsistent with responsible, secular government.
Wind back a few years and think about the negotiation between the parties - where a trading scheme was proposed but the Libs rejected it and said they would compromise with a carbon tax. Thus the carbon tax was pushed as better than nothing but then the Libs kicked Turbull out and backflipped on their own idea. The ALP pushed it through anyway instead of taking the time to do something better.
That's how we ended up in the situation even if it wasn't a good idea.
As to what is happening now, it is as simple as the new government removing anything with the faintest scent of the previous one to try to make it look like the earlier government achieved nothing. That's had side effects like today's elimination of a forestry research group that's been running for 85 years. Maybe we'll get something other than knighthoods all round for the Party boys after the wrecking period is over but sadly it's still too early to tell.
It's reminding me of the utter disgust I felt at watching student politics back in the day - especially since there some of the same clueless yobs involved and they don't seem to have done any growing up since. It's also a good reminder of how destructive party factions are and how it can limit the available talent pool.
You know, reacting violently when you don't get your way is just like a 3-year-old. In politics, sometimes you don't win. And your opponents are humans just like you - they're not "beneath contempt" just because they disagree with your political opinions. Continuing down this road is how we got Auschwitz.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
I can't put how I feel in words on any other site, so here goes:
FUCK FUCK FUCKING FUCKITY CLUSTERFUCK!
Fuck them and the lying cunts who bribe them!
Fuck them and the fucktards who voted for them!
Fuck them and the stupid shitheads who bleat about "warmists" on the internet (even here on Slashdot)!
And finally, FUCK EVERYONE who voted to repeal the tiny bit of sensible legislation passed in the last fucking decade. You are beneath contempt.
Thank you Slashdot, for having no profanity filter (apart from all you caring moderators, of course, all of whom I personally love and respect).
Fuck yeah, I didn't vote for the cunt either. One gigantic step backwards.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Cheer up and take heart in the fact that even in these tough times of austerity they did at least commit to buying 58 more Joint Strike Fighters for $12.4 billion. Cut down on sicence and buy more flying lemons, at least they have a sound strategy.
That $12.4 billion buys them the continued good will of the world's strongest military power. It's not really about the Australian air force, it's simply cheap insurance.
My country does the same but only half heartedly tries to claim it's all about strengthening the air force. Hell, if we're really lucky there might actually be some decent jet fighters in it for us in the end. That's not the main point though.
sigs are hazardous to your health
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
The true classic - praising the bravery of Japanese submariners attacking Sydney. To put that in perspective Americans could consider an example of praising the pilot who dropped the first bomb on Pearl Harbour.
He's a political infighting attack dog that never should have been put in charge of anything more substantial than a sausage sizzle - so long as somebody else is counting the takings and there are no girls for him to grope.
It's about buying the fringe instead of mainstream religious vote so the "nutter" tag is very apt.
Some of those bunches like Hillsong Church, Exclusive Bretheren and Magnificant Meal are very dodgy in the way they operate no matter what they pretend to or do believe.
Australia doesn't have the infrastructure to seriously consider nuclear power and consumes too little electricity for it to be able to justify spending to create that infrastructure. There is a small research reactor (I've worked with two materials scientists from there) but it's not capable of providing much of a seed for the required infrastructure - that would require a lot of people equipment etc from overseas and a long time to establish. So it's seen as too much pain for too little gain.
Taxes are exactly the wrong way to do this. It seems like a good idea. Until you realize what exactly do they do with taxes
Doesn't matter much what they do with the taxes because that is not the point of the tax. The point of the tax is to eliminate an externality because of a market failure. Users of fossil fuels and certain other carbon emitting technologies are presently able to dump any amount of carbon into the environment without cost or consequence to them regardless of the actual cost to society. If the science is to be believed, carbon emissions are having a significant and measurable impact on our climate. Therefore it makes sense to have the government tax these emissions to ensure that the emitters are paying something close to the full economic cost of their pollution. If carbon has a cost then there is an economic (market) incentive for emitters of carbon to try to find ways to reduce the amount of carbon they release. Right now there is no cost to emitting carbon so there is no incentive to reduce carbon emissions.
But because such penalties impact all businesses in whatever country is collecting them, it won't really change things
You are talking about tax incidence but you don't have the logic correct. We ALREADY are paying for whatever cost carbon pollution has but it is spread out equally among all people regardless of their use of technologies that rely on carbon emissions. There is no direct incentive for anyone to worry about emitting less carbon. A tax would create a direct economic burden on those who use more carbon which which in turn will motivate those who use more to try to find ways to use less. If you get more benefit from carbon emission (like a power company or a heavy consumer of electricity) then you should have to pay more of the burden. As it stands each of us has to pay for the effects of carbon pollution in an amount unrelated to the amount we generate.
because all of those businesses will simply pass along the new government-mandated increase in their overhead along in the form of higher prices.
They already are passing along the cost, just not directly. Instead of paying for it directly, we pay for it through environmental effects. Climate and the resulting weather changes affect crop yields, business patterns, healthcare, etc all of which have very real and measurable costs. But the cause of those costs has zero incentive to mitigate the effects of carbon pollution because they do not have a direct economic cost of their actions. It's basically the Tragedy of the Commons, writ large.
Existing and living are not the same thing.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
Advertising (i.e. money) has limited power, the true power, the true currency of politics is votes.
Advertising gets votes, ergo it is a distinction without a difference. Advertising doesn't get all or even most votes but it doesn't have to. It merely has to get enough to tip the election which advertising demonstrably can do. You will not find one person who has been involved with an actual campaign who will tell you money doesn't matter. It's not the end-all-be-all but it matters quite a lot.
A motivated and well informed voter is not swayed by advertising. Only the indifferent or disinterested are swayed by advertising.
First off I guarantee you that a well informed voter can sometimes be swayed by advertising. Happens all the time. Second, there are LOTS of disinterested voters out there. I am regularly asked to vote for local officials who I know absolutely nothing about and even when I care I simply have limited time and motivation to learn about them. People demonstrably tend to vote for people they've heard of over those they haven't regardless of their actual positions on issues. That's how incumbents tend to get re-elected. Guess what a really good way to hear about someone is? Advertising!
In the U.S. recently an upstart college professor spent $100,000 in an election and defeated a power incumbent who spent $5,000,000. The professor had motivated voters, the incumbent had money.
That's pretty much the exception that proves the rule. You neglected to point out that the incumbent was a high ranking member of congress who had spent relatively little time campaigning in his district. He screwed up. No amount of money will help you if you don't actually pay attention to what matters.
Voters love the environment until it costs them money.
Correction. Voters love the environment until they think it costs them money. It already costs them money even when they don't think it does. They just get all selfish when it is clearly coming out of their pockets instead of out of everyone's.
It's cheap for the person dumping pollutants into the stream and in the short term it's cheap for the dumper's customers too. But there is a cost to be paid and it WILL be paid in some fashion. Focus on short term profits and you will pay more in the long term. It's hard to get concerned about and invisible, ordorless, non-toxic pollutant like carbon. Any effects from it will take decades to manifest themselves and the evidence of carbon causing problems is subtle and hard to explain.
A pox on whoever decided that the tax code was a legitimate way for government to manipulate citizens' behavior.
If I were the government, I would do it by mandated carbon emission levels per watt of power generated by power companies. The idea is similar to the way that fuel efficiency standards were mandated for automobiles and led to vastly more fuel efficient cars.
And if you have a standard and enforce it by penalties (presumably financial ones) how is that really any different from a tax aside from taking longer and being less effective? We use mandated fuel efficiency standards because that was a politically acceptable compromise, not because it was the best policy. The fastest way to get fuel efficient cars is to raise the price of fuel for those cars. The higher the price of fuel the more consumers are going to begin to buy more fuel efficient cars. The EU has much higher fuel prices and as a result has higher average fuel economy in the cars people buy even after the recent increase in mandated fuel standards. If people actually want to buy more fuel efficient cars then companies will find ways to supply them. Taxing fuel is a proven effective way to get people to take an interest in fuel economy.
What will you say when cold spells become worse in 2020 ? Our star is quieting down.
...with the Land of Oz when they found out about the man behind the curtain.
" Do you seriously think they are going to produce coal at a loss? "
Yup. One of the ways the coal industry has been fighting "green" technologies? Plunging the price.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...
The coal industry has a century or two of establishment. They have no startup or R&D costs; everything is amortized; they have a heavily legislative-friendly environment.
Johhny Come Lately Solar And Wind is counting on profits within a certain time period to become profitable.
All the coal company has to do is undercut them on price long enough to bleed them dry...or endanger investments enough that further investment dries up.
Please help metamoderate.
It would be better to clean PM2.5, SOx, NOx, metals etc emissions. CO2 "mitigation" is a waste of time and money, an excuse for monster governments.
Doing carbon taxes on nations that are much cleaner than nations like CHina, will ONLY make things worse.
Instead, they should do taxes on consumed goods so that it forces all nations,including their own, to change.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Would be the right kind of carbon tax to have.
The world needs several "Manhattan Project" scale initiatives to invent and commercialize effective zero-greenhouse-emissions energy and transportation technologies.
If it's cheaper to pay the carbon tax than to change your ways (i.e. your industry / transport) then the carbon tax isn't high enough, and hasn't been put into funding effective alternatives to fossil fuel energy infrastructure.
Replicant wisdom applies:
Roy: There's only two of us now.
Pris: Then we're stupid and we'll die.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
a huge breakthrough in green energy.
No wait, there is. It's called a CARBON TAX.
- Pays for the development and rollout of the new technology.
-Incents people to purchase and use the new technology.
[SARCASM]Sounds like a terrible idea![/SARCASM]
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Per capita CO2 emissions is the only fair way to assess this:
Tonnes CO2 per person per year
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Australia: 16.75
China: 6.18
India: 1.64
2010 data:
Source: http://mdgs.un.org/unsd/mdg/Se...
So in summary Australia is 2.7 times as bad a greenhouse gas emissions offender as China and more than 10 times worse than India, on a per person basis.
It's not going to work to say: You poor guys tighten your belts a bit more eh, when the real numbers are as they are shown above.
It's massive hypocrisy to blame China and India for this problem.
Lead by example Australia. Cut your emissions in have to 8 Tonnes CO2 per person, then you might ask China not to grow to more than 8 Tonnes per person.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
"in half"
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Australians are plants!
Sorry, did you say a public debate about the science.
You mean by all those public people properly qualified to assess the process and outputs of science?
Yeah, that sounds like a great idea to assess the truth of the claims of "expert consensus" science.
While your at it, why don't you start a public debate on whether the Higgs Boson exists, and if so,
which God it is the God particle of.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
It's really stupid to think in numbers per-person when the problem is an absolute quantity emitted into the atmosphere.
I mean, just look at the data
You emit 1.19% of the total CO2 emitted by all countries. What are larger cuts on your part really going to do?
Australia's numbers are high because you don't have tens of millions of people living in dirt huts. Really want to do that? And the laws repealed were changing the number from what, 17 to 16.75...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Most advanced STEM people I know (PhDs, 1500+, patents, etc) have refrained from expressing their concerns and doubt for a long time, some figuring they missed some details or not worth the hassle. Now they can be reasonably certain how busted the CAGW data, models and technical processes are. Politically this becomes an existential fight to remain somewhat free, while some totalitarians are making the big grab. It has become worth the hassle.
My eyes must be getting bad, when I clicked this link, I thought Australia repealed a cartoon tax.
So I thought XKCD would be getting more readers.
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT
I'm so embarrassed for my country. I did not vote for the bunch of clowns currently "running" this country.
The carbon tax (which was in fact a carbon price) was working, emissions were down, it was raising money that helped the budget, and was having a minimal impact on consumers. The biggest argument against it - that it was raising gas and electricity prices - was incredibly overblown. The biggest cost for both was actually caused by massive over-investment in infrastructure when demand was falling. Like the oil men that ran the US when Bush was in office, we've been co-opted by Coal men.
BTW, this is not he first thing this government has set out to destroy. They've already nobbled the National Broadband Network, which would have been a world-leading piece of infrastructure. Now... It's not national, it's not really broadband, and it's barely a network!