Meanwhile I have two things to say about that. BHP & Rio Tinto.

Bernard, tell me precisely why you think I am barking f……….g mad. Go on, I dare you.

The only way change will be achieved is by us.

We need to let the corporate world know that we require change, so they will initiate more eco friendly marketing campaigns simply to draw us in.

A great example of this is at http://www.thegreenroad.com.au/about-the-greenroad

That is one australian company putting their money up and not charging us a cent, while making a real difference to the emission situation in australia.

The green paper on emissions trading says that the government will add an emissions permits tax to fuel and pay for it by reducing excise tax. In other words money from one tax bucket will be moved to another tax bucket so that there is no change to the price people pay. This is a good idea but it could be made more effective by giving the tax directly to purchasers. This could be done by giving Energy Rewards that can only be used for purchasing infrastructure to save energy or to increase the supply of emissions free energy. Energy Rewards are like shopper dockets. When Energy Rewards are spent the amount of emissions saved will be estimated and reported.

Energy Rewards will be saleable. That is, if you can’t think of any way to spend your Rewards on green infrastructure you can sell them for a discount to someone who can. The value of Energy Rewards will reflect the true costs of reducing greenhouse emissions and will be able to be used to set the price of emission permits.

The Federal government (or the ACT government) could trial the approach immediately in Canberra by returning a few cents per litre of the excise currently collected. The system would decrease the effective price of fuel while at the same time diverting money to infrastructure to produce green energy or infrastructure to save energy. The systems to implement this would happen overnight for no implementation cost to the government as every petrol station will want to give their customers Energy Rewards. Renewable infrastructure projects that will accept Rewards will appear immediately and companies will pay to participate and report the results of the expenditure. Importantly the spending will be market driven not government directed.

Both receiving Rewards and accepting them as payments are voluntary. Compliance with the rules require no legislation as standard contractual arrangements are made between people who get Rewards and Companies that supply goods and services. If anyone cheats on the contracts then they are not allowed to participate in the system.

The system provides an alternative market based mechanism for the expenditure of some of the money obtained from emissions permits. Rewards can be given to the poor, or to people who consume little energy or to companies who close down emission producing factories, or farmers who put carbon into soil or any other way that behaviour change benefits the whole community. As well as using pricing to reduce emissions the system uses the money from the price increases to Reward people for changing their behaviour in ways that reduce emissions.

The ALP must have total contempt for environmentalists to think we don’t notice their shoeprints on our shoulders and faces. Every year the Green Party gets another 0.5% of the baseline vote direclty correlated number of shoe prints. (I’ll say one thing about NSW Premier aspirant Nathan Rees - at least he has a horticulture degree.)

And another thing - I do like M’s reference to the CFC-Montreal Protocol process that was slogging it’s was through the policy machines of governmnents everywhere from say 1987 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol) - and still trying to mop up the cheaters even this year 2008. That highly extended and very qualified mulitlateral success tells me BK and other’s scepticism about sincerity is well justified. If the pace and limiations of the critically important Montreal protocol is our benchmark as “the most successful treaty of them all” for a CC threat about 1000 times bigger - we are really f*cked.

Which brings me to the political chronology of Rudd’s career - he was getting his teeth into work for the Goss premiership just about the time India and China were saying no way we can’t retool to ban CFC and HCFCs from manufacturing. They did agree though but only under threat of a US-Euro threat to embargo their cheap imports. The buyer’s leverage. What happens when their domestic markets are big enough that such a threat doesn’t/can’t work on GHG emissions for cheap imports? Their domestic populations will quite logically say it’s your 100 year legacy, you compromise your living standards.

Doesn’t look good folks, with or without a mandarin speaking PM.

The science behind anthropogenic global warming is a lot less certain than it was with ozone depletion and the solution simpler and less costly.
Two opposing positions here: http://www.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/200807/hafemeister.cfm
:http://www.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/200807/monckton.cfm

For several reasons we should act, but within reason and sensibly. Dr Peter Shergold’s sensible pre-electoin Coalition policy and Rudd’s are not substantially different but the changes are monumental in nature.
Remember Rudd’s backflip after Garrett’s comments during the election campaign when Howard pointed out the silliness of going it alone? Rudd has been playing silly politics instead of seeking bipartisanship. This can only impede the attainment of the ETS goal: to change behaviour such that industries and households become more energy conscious and to encourage alternative low carbon emitting energy production. The budget and this green paper are manifest failures. Tom McLoughlin’s comment is excellent but the Greens are not being any too smart either in this regard particularly Milne.

This is a discussion paper for the people, not a bloody document for the likes of this drivel to be published as “fact”.

Here is something to chew over. In Iraq, Palestine, Bangladesh and places like East Timor and Afghanistan there are very tiny carbon emissions and they live a metaphorical nuclear winter.

Why don’t the journalists stop whining and start thinking. Kevin Rudd cannot fix 12 years of neglect in 5 years without destroying all of us.

the obvious example is power generation, which may not generate a very impressive share of our gdp but is clearly essential to the viability of every other industry - and all of our essential services.

aluminium smelting is a different story - but there would be no net global emissions reduction from aluiminium processers going offshore to countries whose regulatory regime is looser - in fact quite the opposite.

i’m not disparaging the author here, but news media should be speaking to the broader macroeconomic realities of this very complex issue. too often rhetorical position statements like ‘corporate handout’ stand in place of sound and balanced analysis.

I used to work in that air bubble place so I know what they do, how they decide the lines and their complete disconnect from the world - they work in a place with cafes and restaurants on tap, with massive energy use and even more massive aircon use. The long corridors are almost 1 km long, I worked there during the CFC debate.

Now how about all the people like Pearse, Hamilton, the press gallery and others tell us what they have done to reduce their own emissions, how the hell cutting down trees to print books on does anything much, why they don’t put their books on CD’s for perusal on PC’s which are much more efficient than cutting down forests and how often they drive, fly all over the place and so on.

I practice what I preach mate. My electricity bill states my tonnage of emissions each year. Less than 2 tonne.

I don’t drive, have few appliances, do my shopping with a trolley and I conserve water and recycle all paper and plastic products.

So Bernard, what sort of bit do you do because government’s can only legislate, they cannot control the behaviour of the lazy.

Kapeesh? Do not ever again tell me I am barking f………..g mad, I have been at this conservation stuff since the Menzies era turned the place I grew up in into a desert that grows bugger all these days but has been recycling lawn watering water for 50 years.

Honest to god, if you want to call someone mad, find a press gallery journalist.

While it may seem irksome to assist the biggest polluters in this way, this is simply a form of wealth redistribution and will have no impact on the impact of the scheme. As long as the penalty for emitting without an emission unit is sufficiently harsh, the cap will be met (or very close to it) regardless of any rebate scheme. What the schemes may do is change where the behaviour changes are made. If excise reductions offset petrol price changes and car driving is unaffected by the scheme, the changes will be made elsewhere. But a cap is a cap: if your concern is to reduce emissions, then the rebates are irrelevant. If your concern is some notion of fairness (or retribution?), then that’s a different matter.