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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schwit1 notes that the Australian government has repealed a controversial carbon tax.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.
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
Oh, I forgot to add - they *didnt* cut the $222 million school chaplaincy program. The agenda is clear, they are just religious luddites.
AGL are reporting that their most polluting coal fired electricity plant(s) is now $186M less profitable due to loss of government funding provided entirely by the carbon tax. Essentially it was funding pollution, not penalising it. PEr the AFR: http://www.afr.com/p/business/... (paywalled, but the summary say it all) The carbon tax never did anything due to a ridiculous number of exemptions and pay-back subsidies designed to protect labour voting areas - one of which the above coal fired plant is in.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
I could suggest consentual systems that would have a big impact on our global carbon debt.
Why don't you, then? Instead of simply waving your hands and expecting us to accept your claims?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
A pox on whoever decided that the tax code was a legitimate way for government to manipulate citizens' behavior.