A tax that will be added to everything.

Actually, it’s not. At least, it wouldn’t be if the opposition weren’t insistent on ‘compensation’.

A straight royalty payment on each tonne of carbon emitted would impact products in direct proportion to the amount of carbon released in the manufacture and distribution of each product.

No carbon emitted, no royalties payable.

That would reward businesses that find better ways to manufacture equivalent products, or substitutes. And punish those that don’t or won’t.

Use the market, Luke.

But anyway. Consumerism denies the capacity for a Serengeti tribesman to have a cold drink (or clean water), because the capital required to provide him infrastructure is tied up by consumers in the developed world servicing debt to pay for their lifestyle.

I do tend to agree though that an ETS on its own is too soft a tool to meet the reductions targets required to actually achieve the desired result. What is required is the phased abandonment of the toxic carbon based economy to replace it with a renewables based system. The ETS, that allows emitters to buy their way out of meaningful reductions, smacks of Papal Indulgences. Sure, let the farmers claim carbon credits for there agriculture, but continuing the subsidising of the coal industry at the expense of the renewables sector is slow economic suicide.

Then stop insisting everything be wrapped in plastic for “hygiene” purposes.

Do you need a mobile phone, a Blackberry, a PC, a laptop and two iPods?

Does your partner?

Do your kids?

It’s called the Butterfly Effect.

No-one is arguing about the need to reduce waste and physical pollution.

But an ETS does and will do NOTHING to address those issues.

Consumerism will never stop.

Besides why should I deny a Serengeti tribesman the right to a cold drink and a cheap TV?

Why should you?

The problem as I see it is that we attempting to use Economic tools to deal with a problem that is caused by Economics itself. It’s like trying to cure cancer with cancer.

It brings to mind the standard reason for excluding agricultural emissions from the CPRS: “it’s too hard to account for”. I suspect that if the word “subsidy” were to replace “emissions”, it wouldn’t take too long at all for the farm sector to get their application forms designed & filled out!

Seriously though, whatever economic mechanism is used, it needs to drive behavioural change from the bottom up, and so for consumers & producers the uncomfortable truth is: if there’s no pain, there’ll be no gain in emissions reductions and no safe future for anyone.

Plugged into what overnight - coal-powered 3-phase or the windmill on your roof?

“….Educate people, about the need to conserve. Reduce waste, packaging….”

This has nothing to do with an ETS, AGW or climate change.

“…Develop a “can-do” attitude in people that makes them see that their consumption patterns are a serious component in global pollution, and that they can make a difference by even small changes in behaviour.

Again, this has nothing to do with an ETS, AGW or climate change.

You are simply agitating for carrot and stick social engineering to affect behavioural change…how “Whitlamesque” of you.

It’s a tax. An all pervasive tax. A tax that will be added to everything.

I note also - with no sense of irony - that the vested interests at the ‘Climate Institute’ conveniently gloss over the total failure of the European Union’s carbon ‘trading’ program.

Why should we ascribe to something that is clearly broken, John?

“…under both scenarios Australia’s 2009 trillion dollar economy grows to $1.2 trillion by 2020, creating about 800,000 new jobs…”

Rubbish.

Australia’s population growth - along to the projected 35 million by 2049 - would see these jobs ‘created’ anyway.

To suggest that they will be created by a CPRS is ridiculously false and misleading.

And patently untrue.

Surely we are well past the “Nero fiddling whilst Rome burns” analogy. If we are unable to mount a carbon disincentive approach, how about directing our physical and intellectual resources towards something we can do?

In the end, a carbon tax is about reducing consumption, and whatever consumption does persist, it should have lower carbon impact. That devolves positive action to grass roots where it can become effective virtually overnight. I’m saying that given our legislative impotence we should direct our strategies to a practical expression of carbon reduction, and that government ought to be enabling a “bottom-up” course of action. Engage the community.

What might we do? Well bring on electric cars, make them affordable. Insist on low emissions for combustion powered vehicles in absolute terms not just a good % gas emissions. Educate people, about the need to conserve. Reduce waste, packaging. Develop a “can-do” attitude in people that makes them see that their consumption patterns are a serious component in global pollution, and that they can make a difference by even small changes in behaviour.

How to pay for all that sort of thing? Well there was money for the stimulus package(s), direct some of that. Make a reliable Budget commitment to fund effective action against anthropogenic based climate change. Intriguing how the World found trillions of dollars to deal with the financial crisis but little money to deal with climate issues that threaten our very existence as we know it.

To trot out a “Whitlamesque” expression - It’s Time…

So why is 15% insufficient, then, if it leads to emissions peaking in two years time (which I find very hard to believe, by the way)??

But Braveheart’s arguments for a carbon tax also have merit. There is little point in ignoring the realities of the political context. The purist approach might produce lower emissions in the unreal world of modelling, but the months of wrangling and backroom negotiations make it clear that no government could ever get a purist scheme up.

In the messy world of reality, the chances of reducing total global emissions at all are highly dubious.

There are however many reasons to move away from over-relance in fossil fuels, but to have any chance of doing this we need to erode the price differential between conventional power and power from sustainable sources.

A more simple strategy might have some chance of being accepted. It would run up against the same vested interests that have bedevilled the CPRS. But it would be harder to tinker with and more transparent, I would have thought. Power companies would simply pass the tax on to consumers at a fixed and known rate. We would all have to pay more, but that is the point, isn’t it??

The only options on the table at the moment are:
1. The hopelessly-compromised CPRS
2. Nothing.

Option 2 looks pretty attractive at the moment!

Carbon tax is the only other option that might get up if Option 1 is defeated.

I still prefer a tax model though - all these accounting models mean that rorting is inevitable, and relies on a market price which is controlled ardently by the government.

Sigh

Wonderful work Climate Institute

Well, this may be true in an simplistic sense, but in reality, most if not all ETSs to date have been far too poorly designed to effect decent carbon cuts, whereas a well designed tax can be tweaked over time and so used as a lever to force cuts in carbon pollution at the (scientifically) required rate. Tobacco tax hikes and the consequent drop in its usage are a good example of this. An ETS could only achieve this if it was so pure as to have minimal or no free permits, polluter compensation or offsetting.

Other advantages of a tax approach are that a known tax rate would provide certainty for businesses and governments in their forward planning; existing tax collection mechanisms are already in place; and there’d be no need to create a new “free market” with all its attendant speculators, windfall profits, loopholes and other unscrupulous actions such as carbon offset scams. In the light of the current CPRS offering, I think the carbon tax approach is worth reconsidering.