Thread: Carbon Tax on it's way through the House.

Originally Posted by frantic

Has anyone including chucaro looked to where the ETS certificates will be coming from?
Who here likes the idea of PAYING for a MONSTER coal power station in india, at completion of all stages will produce over 4000mw!!!, who will onsell ETS certificates to us and europe because it is more efficient than the old power stations in india.
Yes thats right $500million to 1 power plant in india in ets certificates so they can produce over 600million tons of carbon.Dont worry that there are several other new COAL plants being built in the third world that are all lining up to suck our stupidity carbon tax dollars away Let alone the crippling to the aussie manufacturing and steel industry.
http://www.thinktosustain.com/Conten...aspx?id=%20111

So, in the way that you think is that just because another countries pollute, it is ok for us to pollute as well
The same principle then we can apply to the cost of recycling and our contribution in collecting material and place it in a bin which in some councils cost more than $50 a year just to have it in our home. Why I should recycle and collect free materials to the recycling industry when other people just do not do it.
We have to do what we believe what is right for the enviroment and not look what the polluters are doing.
If the government have "balls"then it can put a barrier on products imported from countries that pollute the planet, but then I am dreaming, greed is the root of the problems in the planet.

How is a revenue neutral policy a tax grab???

I'm against it, but it seems allot of opinions on it are shaped by tabloid media with no real research.

There are advantages to the policy, and there is a strong backing from research groups for the tax and they are gearing up for the benefits that will arise. Treasury modeling also suggests it has a great potential for job growth over the next 20 years.

Don't believe all the scare mongering read the policy, study it and most will see it's not all doom and gloom.

Originally Posted by GEK064

Not sure on how such tax, higher and more far reaching than most other countries on earth, shown to reduce next to nothing on the global level can possibly be seen as a good move or to be celebrated?*

Would it not be better to support those very industries that will innovate the new path rather than punish those that know no better. Would it not be better to reduce all the tax subsidies that are given to the big miners whose very product causes the problem. Would it not be better to reward good behavior'that is just for staters - why have a trading scheme that will see money leave our shores.

Which ever way you cut it, this is just another tax, another money grab without purpose and without intent and I think it fair to say without support.

Hang on a tick, you are targetting the miners without any knowledge or proof.
The facts are farm animals actually produce the most polution in the form of Methane and CO2. Refuse produces a lot of detrimental gases.
Mining istself produces fairly little. Downstream processing which is not strictly mining produces quantities of emmissions depending on the processing. Way above mining is the pollution we as animals, car drivers and consumers produce. Dont even start ofn the foresty / wood pulp industry. Deforestation globally is truly the single biggest issue.
Maybe the answer is to take your car.
We as consumers demand electricity, so coal is mined, electricity produced and emmissions created, so we are back to the consumer.
We as consumers buy products made of plastic, steel (iron ore), nickel etc etc that create the need for mining and processing so we are once again back to the consumer.
Maybe look at the big picture before you go pointing the finger at one segement of industry you obviously know very little about.

I do agree we should reward companies with innovation with incentives, but I also think we should penalize companies that do not embrace or utilise cleaner technologies.

Anyone who thinks doing nothing would have been a better option should think again...

No carbon tax? Europe will make us pay instead
May 31, 2011
OPINION

At some point in the next few years the EU will impose general sanctions on those nations that don’t measure up to its standards on carbon control. There’ll be some fine and filthy politicking over it, of course. Economic superpowers like the US and China will either muscle up, impose their own retaliatory sanctions, or simply make life so difficult that Brussels comes to an arrangement that accommodates their raw power.

Smaller and middle power players, however, countries like ours, they’ll get bent over the negotiating table for some rougher than usual handling. If Tony Abbott is PM at that point – and he is convinced he can ride Gillard and Brown’s carbon tax back into office – he’ll huff and he’ll puff but in the end he’ll drop trow and take it, because the pain imposed by Europe will far outweigh any pain he needs to impose via a carbon price to avoid their sanctions.

Don’t believe it?


Potential EU sanctions are why we have the privacy legislation we do. The Howard government, of which Abbott was a member, made wrenching changes to Australian privacy law to avoid being penalised when doing business with Europe.

Next year, Qantas air fares will increase because of a 15 per cent penalty imposed by the EU on carriers from countries that have not introduced a carbon tax. Abbott can fume and rage all he likes, but his posturing will count for nothing in Europe.

And that’s just the beginning.

In the end climate change and carbon pricing is a debate we will have, in spite of Rupert Murdoch’s trained orcs and trolls scaring the bejesus out of people like Dick Smith.

Smith yesterday admitted he hadn’t joined Cate Blanchett in her pro-carbon tax ad, because he was scared of being vilified by the Murdoch press. Not just the Piers Boltbrechtson hive mind, but the journalists, and headline writers, the photographers and moderators and serried ranks of deniers and abusers who have gone to war with science and the future on Rupert’s whim.

I must admit, I think less of Smith for that, and a lot more of Blanchett. After all, her career and livelihood arguably depends more on maintaining a happy, unconflicted public image than his. And she would have known, as he did, what was coming when she shot that advert.

But she probably knew much worse was coming anyway, if Abbott and Murdoch’s goon squad get their way and this debate becomes less about science than it is about thuggery and wilful ignorance.


Read more: No carbon tax? Europe will make us pay instead

Originally Posted by Chucaro

<snip>
The same principle then we can apply to the cost of recycling and our contribution in collecting material and place it in a bin which in some councils cost more than $50 a year just to have it in our home. Why I should recycle and collect free materials to the recycling industry when other people just do not do it.
We have to do what we believe what is right for the enviroment and not look what the polluters are doing.
<snip>

Chucaro

Do you realise that because there is not sufficient capacity in recycling industries, that a lot of the recyclables and particularly the green waste is transported directly to landfill in the same trucks as the rubbish you placed in the other bin.

It is all window dressing, just as this carbon tax is window dressing. It is not going to reduce greenhouse emissions, because the big polluters are being compensated and the only people who will be paying for it are ordinary Australians. I have worked shift work, including overnight and weekends for 30 years and now have risen to a middle level manager and am earning over $85K and as such Juliar's Government will compensate me $3 annually with an expected impact of $463 annually. https://www.cleanenergyfuture.gov.au

I wouldn't mind paying this IF THE TAX WOULD ACHIEVE ANYTHING. less than one percent reduction in 39 years is ZERO improvement and as frantic suggested, how is buying credits from an Indian supersized coal fired power station that is a little bit more efficient than the old one going to help the Global environment? It isn't.

Chucaro with this tax YOU will be paying more for your power so that money can be passed to india to increase their power output/pollution output and they can pay LESS for their power BOTH of us from coal-fired power stations.
Besides backpackers,tourists and a few hundred HSV's what do we export to europe?
HMM do we export a hundred thousand cars? No we import them.
Do we export truck's and heavy equipment like excavators endloaders and tractors? No we import them.
Do we export computers, sound systems or medical specialist eqipment? No AGAIN!
If we taxed those imports at a rate to cover their unfiltered emissions from SHIPPING we would be able to compensate qantas and pay for other initiatives!

Your $460 a year will go towards the creation of jobs to strengthen the economy. It's not just about pollution it is about establishing Australia as a leader in clean energy research and development, essentially future proofing our economy so that it doesn't rely on the mining industry to sustain it.

Australia is in a great position to be an innovator and a leader in this field that will pay dividends going forward instead of relying on an industry that rapes the resources of our country to benefit foreign investors. The mining boom won't last forever as even without the carbon tax there will come a te when we can't compete with Luther resource rich countries with a lower cost of doing business.

Australia needs to move away from manufacturing and build on it's strengths as an innovative nation as that's where the future of industry for our country lies.

And bitching about a few hundred bucks a week is pathetic.

Also a point the scare mongers always forget to mention is that whilst it may not decrease our overall carbon footprint when you take into consideration population growth it is a major decrease in the per capita output.