Carbon Tax Poll

[ameerat42]

Thanks for that link, nonas. I took this excerpt from it, near the end:

...Monica Prasad: Personally I do prefer a carbon tax, because of all these problems of price volatility etc. But I do think that a carbon tax is not going to work without the alternative energy, it's just going to get you more revenue...

4-get about what other countries are doing/have done, UNLESS you are going to examine in minute detail just how their schemes work and what they're designed to do - AND if they are doing it! Just to introduce a Carbon Tax because [...some northern European countries have one...] does not mean that it is therefore a given that we should do the same, or be considered delinquent if we don't.
Am 4 now.

[ricktas]

I voted NO as well. if they (the govt) intend to give 50% of the tax back to us as tax breaks, why not just halve the tax as it stands now. We need a solution to the carbon/global warming issue, not another tax. All I see this doing is making me pay more for my power, rather than effectively cut how much power I use. Most people I know have been looking at ways to reduce their bills over the past few years, especially the last couple, and have already done all they can to minimise their bills for power etc, the same as they/we have done for groceries etc.

[ricktas]

I believe a CT is an important thing to implement for the following-
- It will encourage us to use less electricty made by non-sustainable means.
.

yes, but here in Tasmania a vast majority of our power comes from Hydro schemes (non/less polluting by a long way), yet we will still be paying the tax! There is no incentive at all to ensure those that source power from a clean source benefit, under the current carbon tax idea. Rather the Govt have decided to minimise the impact on the lower income groups, not those who do reduce their carbon footprints? It is a flawed idea in its present form!

[Kym]

Kym !, give yourself a 7 day ban for deliberately mis spelling Julias name.

Can't Rick's and my accounts are locked - we can't even ban each other

[kiwi]

If the european ets is so successful why have the Germans announced the decommissioning of all nuclear plants by 2020 ?

[junqbox]

If the european ets is so successful why have the Germans announced the decommissioning of all nuclear plants by 2020 ?

ah, ###ushima maybe

F u k u s h i m a
System appears to have a problem with place names

[Art Vandelay]

I'm with Lance's post above and also far from convinced of man made CO2 causing climate change. I am however passionate about caring more for our environment and cutting back our use of the finite supply of natural resources and replacing with sustainable means. A carbon tax won't do didly squat to solve any of that, it's just shuffling money for no tangible result.

With some judiscous use of the endless pools of money being spent (and continuing to be spent) on this whole self proficising debacle over the last 10 years or so, we could have have had some real changes instead.

[PH005]

If the Government was serious. Why not Stop the export of coal ? Sort of like opposeing nuclear weapons but selling yellow cake to dodgy buyers. Yes I know the answer.

[Kym]

I've said this before...

There are serious things that can be done that reduce cost and CO2 ... Namely move ALL interstate heavy road transport onto Rail!!
If you use Rail for the long haul the effect is (door to door - i.e including local handling at each end) is 20% of the fuel usage!!

Rail even costs less, around 15% less Sydney to Melbourne and 40% less Sydney to Perth - only vested interests are keeping heavy road transport alive.

This would also mean less road maintenance costs, less drugged up truckies etc.

IF they were serious this is the sort of action that makes a substantive difference.

[junqbox]

Quote "A carbon tax won't do didly squat to solve any of that" (same sentiment from various above)

If this was the case, then increasing the excise (tax) on cigarettes wouldn't make any difference either, except that each time the excise is raised there is a matched 10% (+/-) drop off in smoking.

[junqbox]

man made CO2 causing climate change.

The science does not say it CAUSES, rather it says it CONTRIBUTES

[Cris]

NO- just NO, i wrote a response but changed it so I wouldn't get banned.

[ving]

<2c>
I personally have my doubts as to how much change to the climate we actually cause... human beings as a race are very ego driven and it would be just like us to believe that we have the power to cause catastrophic changes in weather patterns and the like.

in actual fact, what we are calling climate change (and formerly called global warming (but thats a different argument)) is nothing more than a naturally occurring cycle of extreme heat and ice ages... its scientifically proven!

that said a carbon tax isnt such a bad thing as we do tend to pollute the hell outta the place.... but i'd drop another tax that is less fair and possible on a consumable that we generally cant do without....


*sigh* ok, global warming... why dont we call it global warming any more? it is because its not? the climate for sure is changing but try and tell me that a 2 degree night in sydney in may is "warming"... generally i think the name is harder to justify. the climate changes and thats a given, some would disagree on the warming aspect though.

</2c>

[Boo53]

I voted yes and I think Junqbox has said most of what I would like to say.

But I would agree with Kym's concerns about the possible(probable) end destination of any money aimed directly to third world countries, but direct aid may be able to overcome some of those issues.

As for Rick's comments regarding Tasmanian hydropower, as its carbon neutral there would be generally no tax, but any tax breaks would be available to all Australians so Tassy should be in front.

The CT, at least on coal power would also help the SA hot rock power to be more competitive, and that is a huge carbon free source, as are the potential sites in the Hunter & Latrobe Valleys and the Otway basin.

http://www.geodynamics.com.au/IRM/content/home.html

http://www.petratherm.com.au/australia.html

http://www.youtube.com/user/potholer.../7/fbW-aHvjOgM

[Art Vandelay]

Quote "A carbon tax won't do didly squat to solve any of that" (same sentiment from various above)

If this was the case, then increasing the excise (tax) on cigarettes wouldn't make any difference either, except that each time the excise is raised there is a matched 10% (+/-) drop off in smoking.

So if the carbon tax is collected off miners/power stations and what not, then 50%-60%* is then redistributed back to "us" users as subsidies for increase costs & the balance sucked up into our forever inefficient gov't coffers, what's actually going to be left to do anything purposeful with ?

* Estimates put forward in recent media articles.

[Bennymiata]

This carbon tax actually has nothing to do with trying to reduce carbon emmissions.

The fact is that governments around the world are broke, and need to find a new form of taxation.
Just increasing income tax, company tax, sales taxes etc are very unpopular, but hey, this new anti-pollution tax is the answer!
We can even introduce it and tell people that they should feel good about it, because it wil save the world from climate change!!
Now we have a way to tax the air people breathe!

Originally, it was called Global Warming, then when they realised that the world is not warming, they changed the name to Global Climate Change.
Duhhhh, of course the climate is changing, it changes not only every day, but even every hour!
Back in the late 70's, they were saying that we are headed for another ice age!
Can't they make up their minds?

How boring would it be if the climate was exactly the same all the time?

The ex US Vice President Al Gore started all of this with his non-factual movie, An Inconvenient Truth(?) (and in the UK, a disclaimer has to be shown before this movie is shown there to tell poeple that what is contained in the movie is mostly BS) so that it would give a big boost to his emmissions trading company, and you know what, we fell for it!

Here is a guy telling us how diabolical it will be for all of us and if we don't so something right now it will all be too late and the world's weather will change forever, and we will all die a painfull death.
In the mean time, as he's counting all his money, he flys around the world in a private jet, and on land, only travels by helicopter and limousine and rents entire floors of top hotels to stay when he is away from any of his multitude of huge houses that chew more than 5 times as much electricity than any of our homes, and he's telling us that WE have to do something!

As man is only a very minor player in the various emmissions on earth, why are we worrying about it?
The sun, the oceans, the volcanoes etc etc are the real culprits as they are responsible for around 97% of CO2 etc., and even if we stopped all manmade emmissions, it wouldn't make a skerick of difference to the earth or its weather.

What are they going to do with the money they get from the Carbon Tax?
Most of it will just be given back to the lower income people (and how is THAT going to get them to reduce their emmissions?) and most of it will go into administration so Juliar can keep her union bosses happy with all the extra workers she has to hire to look after it (actually, these people have been employed on this for the last 3 years in a very fancy, expensive building in Canberra with leather lounges everywhere, 50" plasma TV and Blu Ray players and Nintendo games etc - a friend of mine helped build the building, and these people have just been twiddling their thumbs for the last 3 years, some of them on salaries over $200K a year), yet not ONE word has been said as to how this will help the Global Climate change BS.
In fact, with all these extra people working on this, in their fancy office buildings chewing up even more electricity and fuel to get around, it will actually make things worse!

Now, if they said that they were going to use the money to put up catalytic converters on all the active volcanoes, and do something about the gaseous emmissions from the frozen methane at the bottom of the oceans, then I would think that they may do something, but just to take money away from us is not going to help one iota.

So what happens if we have no ice on the polar caps in summer?
Not much actually.
The last time this occured in the 14th century, mankind explored the world, and mankind actually did pretty well out of it, and the polar bears survived and in fact, there is a lot of evidence to suggest that polar bears would be better off, by having more food, if there was no ice on the poles.
There have been many long periods in earth's history when the CO2 levels were actually THOUSANDS of times higher than they are now, and the earth survived, as did the plants and animals.
The fact is that we don't know what changes the weather will have in the short, medium or longer terms, and there is no evidence to show that we will be worse off IF the climate does change.
In fact, if the CO2 levels double, plants will grow 40% better than they do now, and food production will increase accordingly.

Perhaps we should try and make more CO2 to help the environment!

[ving]

kill all cows and termites... that will fix the problem.

[Lance B]

I believe a CT is an important thing to implement for the following-
- It will encourage us to use less electricty made by non-sustainable means.
- The money which will be returned to users, particularly in the lower socio-economic groups, can be spent on purchasing more economical devices.
- Encourage companies to look at more innovative ways to do what they currently do in a less pollutive way. EG- Automobile manufacturers are developing Hybrid, Electric and Hydrogen (among others) cars because of the punative financial measures implemented by governments, particularly Europe and California, which has resulted in more fuel efficient petrol/diesel cars and the proliferation of the alternative based fuel cars, as above.
- The CT is not intended to a long term measure, the process is designed to become a Emmision Trading program after a given period of time.

What is the alternative (be honest with yourself before you start ranting back at me).

Nuclear. I know I will be lambasted for this, but it is our only real alternative. Please read on.

Did you know that coal kills more poeople due to cancers than every other power source ever used? Yep, it has stored radioactivity in the coal which is released when burnt and this accounts for huge numbers of deaths each year. In fact, nuclear has the lowest death rate per terawatt of electricity production!!

This is just one good article:
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Opi...439/story.html

Take note of the following excerpts:

"Premature deaths as a result of exposure to radiation released during the meltdown at the Chernobyl nuclear reactor 25 years ago are now predicted for just over 200 people a year. That totals 16,000 deaths by 2065. This looks like a scary figure until you compare it to the premature deaths caused by inhaling fine particulate matter released during the burning of fossil fuels, of which coal is the worst.
Over the same period of time, the number of people dying prematurely from exposure to fossil-fuel pollution will be 108 million. So, for every person killed by radiation from the Chernobyl accident, 6,750 will be killed by coal-fired electrical generating stations, household furnaces, fireplaces, barbecue briquettes, mowing the lawn and, of course, driving to the drugstore to pick up those potassium iodide pills."

And

"One should also, I suppose, add in the 63-million premature deaths that will occur between now and 2065 because of traffic accidents — one more consequence of burning fossil fuels.
So let’s add them up. It turns out that for every person expected to die prematurely because of exposure to radiation from the worst nuclear accident in history, 12,741 will die before their time thanks to exposure to fossil-fuel emissions.
Put another way, the calculation of premature deaths per terawatt hour of energy production comes to this conclusion: for coal, 161; for oil, 36; for biofuels, 12; for natural gas, four; for nuclear, 0.04."

The thing is, everyone focuses on things like ###ishima and the nuclear accident, yet not one person has died from it yet and only a handful will over the comign years, yet everyone has lost sight of the fact that the death rate from the actual tsunami was in the tens of thousands!!!

Continue as we are? Not very generous towards our future generations. We don't think too highly of the peoples who have gone before us and created devastating environmental vandalism.
Direct action? Doesn't actually encourage strong action by those who believe they can afford to run un-economical/environmentally unfriendly lifestyles.

At this point in time an actual dollar figure has not been officially announced, so there is much mis-information being spread by the likes of Mr Abbott, Mr Jones (et al), and others. China and India are actually investing in more environmentally power production processes than we are because they know as their usage will increase in the future they cannot be a slave to resources which are only going to go up in price as availability goes down.

The ALP are doing a poor job of communicating the need, The LNP (with a few notable exceptions) are pressing forward with a small minded negative campaign designed to continue the lining of the pockets of their more ardent supporters (anyone still feel sorry for the 'poor boys' club of Rhinehart, Palmer & Twiggy? (top 10 richest) and how they were going to be devastated by a Mining Tax). Given the LNP's track record on infrastructure growth/maintenance it's little wonder their policy is 'do nothing' till it breaks completely.

We as a country, and as individuals, are responsible for our actions and can leaders of how best practice can be implemented. Australia is know as being an innovative country, this is one of our opportunities to prove how innovative we can be.

Or we can sit back and wait for the tele to go blank and die of asphyxiation from poor air quality.

Rant ended.

Asphyxiation due to poor air quality? Hmm, you are way overstating the facts. That will never happen as carbon dioxide accounts for .039% of our atmosphere and mans contribution to that has increased it by a miniscule amount.

Lets look at converting cars to electricity, either by storage battery and running an electric motor, or by converting water into hydrogen and either running the cars via a fuel cell to power an electric motor, or by using an internal combustion motor and burning the hydrogen. All viable alternatives to fossil fuel cars. However, whatever these optioons, they require electricity to function. Where does it come from? From power stations. What fuel will drive these power stations? Nuclear is the only real alternative, and please do not suggest that solar or wind or any other pie in the sky idea will do it. It just can't supply enough power due to present and more importantly future demands of the world.

Let's look at Australia for an example . We currently use 222,000,000,000kwh (222 billion kwh) of electricity per year (http://www.indexmundi.com/australia/...nsumption.html). Now, if we decide to use electric cars and even a minimal 50kw motor, most will need much more, think trucks and buses etc, and there are 16 million cars (http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/9309.0/), that equates to 800,000,000kw being used (50kw motor x 16million cars/trucks etc). Now if we all drive the average 15,000kms (average driven by most car owners) at an average 60kmh, then that equates to 250 hours of use. So, 250 x 800,000,000kwh = wait for it........ 200,000,000,000kwh (200 billion) per year, the same as our current consumption of electricity now and we don't even use electric cars yet!! So, we have to double our electricity output just to meet the demands of electric cars!!!!! This would go for the USA, Europe, Japan and all other 1st world countries and we have haven't even factored in the developing nations like China and India just to name the big two!!!!!. And they haven't even begun to use household electricity like we do yet, let alone have more to be able to power up a car!!!

Now, all this pie in the sky talk of solar, wind etc is just that, pie in the sky. How on earth does anyone think we can add double to our worldwide output of electricity without a mix of nuclear somwhere in there?

[Lance B]

This carbon tax actually has nothing to do with trying to reduce carbon emmissions.

The fact is that governments around the world are broke, and need to find a new form of taxation.

Bingo. You've just hit the nail right on the head.

The beauty of a carbon tax is that it is exactly the same as religion as there is no proof and we need to wait hundreds of years before we would even begin to know that it is real or not, just like having to wait until you die to know if there is a God. So, all these arguments are irrelevent to the government as they will be well out of office and all of them dead before any proof that it is a hoax ever comes to fruition. It is the new religion replacing God as their new deity. Since religion belief has been decreasing in the western world, there has been a direct correlation to the uptake of green thinking and the concern that man is detroying the planet in some way or other. In other words, people are trying to clutch onto some form of thinking whether it be religion or whatever. Back in the early 70's, the same "respected" scientists were even saying we were going to have another ice age. Then it was the hole in the ozone, which they have since found has always been there and just fluctuates (like climate) and now there is evidence (hushed up be many greeeny types) that it actually is helping to rebuld ice over Antarctica by the tune of 100,000kms every 10 yeasr!!!!

Just increasing income tax, company tax, sales taxes etc are very unpopular, but hey, this new anti-pollution tax is the answer!
We can even introduce it and tell people that they should feel good about it, because it wil save the world from climate change!!
Now we have a way to tax the air people breathe!

Originally, it was called Global Warming, then when they realised that the world is not warming, they changed the name to Global Climate Change.
Duhhhh, of course the climate is changing, it changes not only every day, but even every hour!
Back in the late 70's, they were saying that we are headed for another ice age!
Can't they make up their minds?

How boring would it be if the climate was exactly the same all the time?

The ex US Vice President Al Gore started all of this with his non-factual movie, An Inconvenient Truth(?) (and in the UK, a disclaimer has to be shown before this movie is shown there to tell poeple that what is contained in the movie is mostly BS) so that it would give a big boost to his emmissions trading company, and you know what, we fell for it!

Here is a guy telling us how diabolical it will be for all of us and if we don't so something right now it will all be too late and the world's weather will change forever, and we will all die a painfull death.
In the mean time, as he's counting all his money, he flys around the world in a private jet, and on land, only travels by helicopter and limousine and rents entire floors of top hotels to stay when he is away from any of his multitude of huge houses that chew more than 5 times as much electricity than any of our homes, and he's telling us that WE have to do something!

As man is only a very minor player in the various emmissions on earth, why are we worrying about it?
The sun, the oceans, the volcanoes etc etc are the real culprits as they are responsible for around 97% of CO2 etc., and even if we stopped all manmade emmissions, it wouldn't make a skerick of difference to the earth or its weather.

What are they going to do with the money they get from the Carbon Tax?
Most of it will just be given back to the lower income people (and how is THAT going to get them to reduce their emmissions?) and most of it will go into administration so Juliar can keep her union bosses happy with all the extra workers she has to hire to look after it (actually, these people have been employed on this for the last 3 years in a very fancy, expensive building in Canberra with leather lounges everywhere, 50" plasma TV and Blu Ray players and Nintendo games etc - a friend of mine helped build the building, and these people have just been twiddling their thumbs for the last 3 years, some of them on salaries over $200K a year), yet not ONE word has been said as to how this will help the Global Climate change BS.
In fact, with all these extra people working on this, in their fancy office buildings chewing up even more electricity and fuel to get around, it will actually make things worse!

Now, if they said that they were going to use the money to put up catalytic converters on all the active volcanoes, and do something about the gaseous emmissions from the frozen methane at the bottom of the oceans, then I would think that they may do something, but just to take money away from us is not going to help one iota.

So what happens if we have no ice on the polar caps in summer?
Not much actually.
The last time this occured in the 14th century, mankind explored the world, and mankind actually did pretty well out of it, and the polar bears survived and in fact, there is a lot of evidence to suggest that polar bears would be better off, by having more food, if there was no ice on the poles.
There have been many long periods in earth's history when the CO2 levels were actually THOUSANDS of times higher than they are now, and the earth survived, as did the plants and animals.
The fact is that we don't know what changes the weather will have in the short, medium or longer terms, and there is no evidence to show that we will be worse off IF the climate does change.
In fact, if the CO2 levels double, plants will grow 40% better than they do now, and food production will increase accordingly.

Perhaps we should try and make more CO2 to help the environment!

[ApolloLXII]

If we do nothing then the levels of pollution will continue to rise and the disrupted weather patterns and systems will continue to become more severe. Rather than thinking about your hip pocket, think about the future generations who will have to deal with the mess we and previous generations have created. Should we allow greed to come before the future of the entire planet? That is what is driving the opposition by industry who are thinking only of their profit margins and shareholders. Everything has it's price, including the very future of the human species who seem hell bent on profiteering themselves out of existence.

The truth of the matter is that we have to make sacrifices in order to ensure that future generations are able to enjoy a similar kind of lifestyle that we have today. Rather than listening to boffins and scholars etc saying "Yes, we need a carbon tax" or "No, it's a load of rubbish", try taking a look at the very thing that will be adversely affected if nothing is done, the world (and I mean THE WORLD, not just Australia or your own backyard). Unseasonal weather, killer tornadoes, the snow on Mt. Everest becoming less and less, glaciers that have existed for hundreds of years disappearing, above average rainfall, record snowfalls, bigger and larger hurricanes. Don't you think nature is trying to tell us something? It cannot be written off as "100 year events" or just a blip in the weather. If there is no action taken on carbon emissions then all of those things are, over time, going to accelerate and get worse.

If Australia leads the way in instituting a carbon tax, other countries will follow. Those that don't will find themselves frozen out of the world market place because, as we all know, money talks and the stuff that drops out of the bulls' behind walks (although I've never seen a walking bull-pat. ). Yes, prices will rise with the introduction of a carbon tax but that's the whole point. Our consumeristic society is to blame for part of the problem in the first place and we are going to seriously have to reduce, reuse and recycle more than we as a society do now otherwise we all stand to be condemned by those who will follow us in years to come. They'll say, "They knew or denied what was happening but, for the sake of a few bucks, they weren't prepared to lift a finger to ensure we have a future."