Australia: the worst place on earth for a carbon tax

14 July, 2011 by

Click to enlarge

Australia’s huge reserves of fossil fuels mean that a carbon tax is just about the worst possible thing anyone could do to our economy. Congratulations Julia!

IF ever there were a single country in the entire world spectacularly unsuited to be the sole imposer of a vast, unprecedented carbon tax, which no other country in the world is remotely duplicating, it is Australia.

Isolated from our strategic friends, far distant from our biggest markets, a member of no natural trading bloc or customs union, we have just one serious, competitive advantage in the global economy.

That is the abundance of our fossil fuel endowments. If ever there were a nation well advised to move slowly and carefully on policies to cut greenhouse gas emissions, we are it.

As Productivity Commission head Gary Banks commented: “It will not be efficient from a global perspective [let alone a domestic one] for a carbon-intensive economy, such as ours, to abate as much as countries that are less reliant on cheap, high emission, energy sources . . . Modelling aside, it’s common sense that achieving any given level of abatement is likely to be costlier in a country with a comparative advantage in fossil fuels.”

Banks here did something extremely dangerous. He pitted common sense against economic modelling. Part of the economics profession has gone weak at the knees because the government has labelled its bizarre new amalgam of vast new taxes, huge new bureaucracies, massive expenditure churn, endless new regulation, huge government subsidies for preferred companies and wildly unrealistic targets, a “market-based mechanism”.

The government’s carbon tax does not pass the commonsense test at any point. To call $8 billion in new taxes in the first year, and new government expenditure so great that it exceeds even the new tax intake, a “market-based mechanism” and economic reform just illustrates George Orwell’s insight that if you control the language, you can convince people that black is white and up is down.

The whole enterprise is built on a falsehood, the supposition that nations around the world are taking comparable economy-distorting actions to that proposed by the Gillard government.

There is no really polite way of putting this but it is simply, utterly and comprehensively untrue. This is critically important. Even if you accept that all the science about climate change is true, that does not indicate what the best response for Australia is. If the science is true, then the problem can only be tackled by global action. If global action is impossible, then nations should do their best to cut greenhouse gas emissions in ways that don’t hurt their economy too much, prepare for adaptation when it’s needed and work to produce technological breakthroughs that allow lower emissions technologies to work and become affordable. This is broadly what other nations are doing. None is doing anything remotely like our carbon tax. (source)

And an economist dares speak the plain and simple truth (and we hope more will say the same):

AUSTRALIA could shut up shop and move all of its people to Antarctica and it would have little or no impact on climate change, says Griffith University economist Ross Guest.

“In terms of the world’s carbon emissions, Australia contributes 1.5 per cent,” Professor Guest said.

“So the carbon tax will have no effect on global warming.

“What Australia does makes almost no difference.” (source)

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Dishonest Julia cops an earful

13 July, 2011 by

A very bad look…

It’s the shameless dishonesty that irks people, the never-ending economy with the truth, the incessant misrepresentations.

Julia Gillard cannot even bring herself to call carbon dioxide by its proper name, maliciously and deceitfully labelling it “carbon pollution” in a deliberate attempt to mislead and confuse the Australian public.

It is not elemental carbon that is being taxed, it is the gaseous compound carbon dioxide, and it is not a pollutant, it is a harmless trace gas essential for plant life. If she is unable to tell the difference, she is not fit to be an MP, let alone the Prime Minister.

If she lies about the one thing that is the VERY SUBJECT of her tax, how on earth can people trust her on anything else?

At least one voter got to tell Julia to her face what she thought, encapsulating the frustration many of us feel:

“Why did you lie to us and why are you continuing to lie?” one woman said.

Gillard: “I can give you an answer right now if you’ll let me [note the snarky tone as well – Ed]. What I want to do is put a price on carbon pollution. The big polluters are going to pay.

Woman: “I understand that. I’m not stupid.” (source)

And that’s exactly the point. Gillard and her team think we are stupid, that we won’t be able to see through the spin and propaganda and think for ourselves.

Treat the electorate with contempt and you will surely be banished to political oblivion at the first opportunity.

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Coldest July day in Sydney for 8 years

13 July, 2011 by

Chilly

From the High Temperatures Are Global Warming But Low Temperatures Are Just Weather department:

A sunny 19 degrees one day, a gloomy 12 the next – only once in the last 15 years has a Sydney day so warm been followed by one so cold, according to weatherzone.com.au.

If it doesn’t warm anymore between now and the morning, this has been a rare pair of days. By 4pm today it had only reached 12.1 degrees, after getting to 18.9 yesterday.

“Only once in the last 15 years has a colder day followed one so warm. That was in August 2008, when an 11.9-degree day followed a 20-degree one. In more than 150 years of records there have only been 11 occurrences in total, so you could call this a once-in-15-year event,” Weatherzone meteorologist Brett Dutschke said.

Sydney did have an equally cold day in July last year, so along with that day, this is the coldest July day in eight years. 

The city’s maximum temperature of 12.1 degrees is four below the average maximum for this time of year. For some western suburbs, it was even colder, only reaching nine in Richmond and 10 in Penrith, both eight below average and their coldest day in at least 15 years. (source)

Brass monkeys as they say.

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Russian heatwave in 2010 was "primarily natural"

13 July, 2011 by

CO2 Science

The moonbat media went to town last year about the Russian heatwave, blaming climate change and using it as a stick to beat us all into taking action on global warming.

However, a paper in Geophysical Research Letters shows that it was far more likely to have been a natural occurrence, finding virtually no change in July temperatures over a period of 130 years. Their conclusion:

“In summary,” to quote Dole et al., “the analysis of the observed 1880-2009 time series shows that no statistically significant long-term change is detected in either the mean or variability of western Russia July temperatures, implying that for this region an anthropogenic climate change signal has yet to emerge above the natural background variability.” Thus, they say their analysis “points to a primarily natural cause for the Russian heat wave,” noting that the event “appears to be mainly due to internal atmospheric dynamical processes that produced and maintained an intense and long-lived blocking event,” adding that there are no indications that “blocking would increase in response to increasing greenhouse gases.”

Read it here.

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Poll: 60% oppose the carbon [dioxide] tax

13 July, 2011 by

Online poll result

In the first poll to be taken after Julia Gillard’s announcement of the carbon [dioxide] tax on Sunday, the message is clear:

AUSTRALIANS have given the carbon tax the thumbs down, with 68 per cent saying it will leave them worse off and 63 per cent calling for Julia Gillard to bring on an early election.

The exclusive Galaxy Poll for the Herald Sun – the first major survey since the release of the carbon tax package on Sunday – also found 60 per cent of voters opposed the tax, 29 per cent were in favour and 11 per cent undecided.

The nationwide telephone poll of 500 people conducted on Monday night suggests voters believe the personal cost of the carbon tax outweighs the environmental benefits. [When the environmental benefits are nil, any cost, no matter how small, outweighs them – Ed]

Voters have not accepted Ms Gillard’s promise that more than six out of 10 households would be fully compensated or better off after compensation for the rise in the cost of living.

Only 10 per cent of voters said they would be better off and only 28 per cent believe Ms Gillard has a mandate to introduce the tax without holding another election.

The poll reveals 62 per cent of people think the Greens, who negotiated the package with Labor and the independents, have too much influence over the Government, while 30 per cent say the Greens are working effectively.

It finds 81 per cent believe the carbon tax will have little or no impact on the environment and 67 per cent believe it will be bad for the economy compared with 22 per cent who think it will be good. (source)

What do the other 19% think the carbon tax will do, I wonder? And another online poll shows much the same (see image).

Labor are heading for a massive hiding at the next election, all because Gillard was so desperate to stay in power that she sold her soul and that of the party to the environmental extremists. The (Green) chickens are coming home to roost.

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Peabody's $5bn coal takeover planned in 24 hours?

12 July, 2011 by

Hey, I know, let's spend $5bn!

Julia Gillard, desperate to jump on anything that will support her pointless carbon tax, claims that a massive takeover offer is a sign that her tax won’t hurt coal:

JULIA Gillard has seized on a $4.7 billion coal takeover bid as proof of the industry’s ongoing viability as it emerged Tony Abbott repeatedly questioned the purchasing company’s prospects under a carbon tax.

Shrugging off record low opinion polls this morning, the Prime Minister said the takeover of Queensland-based Macarthur Coal by US-owned Peabody Energy was an endorsement of her climate change plan.

“We are seeing the biggest takeover bid in Australian history for a coal company, ” she told ABC radio.

“You couldn’t get a better indication that business people see a good future in coal mining in this country. There’s more certainty now than there was before Sunday.” (source)

Are you seriously suggesting that a five BILLION dollar takeover proposal was conceived and executed in the 24 hours since your carbon tax announcement? That a business about to make such a massive investment just “did it on a whim” after seeing you on the telly on Sunday night?

You’re a lawyer, Julia. You know how these things work. It would have taken months of planning, research and due diligence before this announcement was made. And there’s plenty of that still to be done before the deal is signed. This would have been in the pipeline for ages, and Julia’s announcement had nothing to do with it whatsoever.

And Peabody has had its eye on Macarthur for ages, see here from 2010.

Delusional and desperate (and the media reported it all without any critical thought, as per usual).

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Labor's support in free-fall

12 July, 2011 by

Gillard on Q&A

And this is before the carbon tax was announced:

LABOR’S support has slumped to a record low, with the Coalition sitting at all-time highs as Tony Abbott extends his lead as preferred prime minister over Julia Gillard.

In the two-week lead-up to Sunday’s announcement of the carbon tax details, Labor’s primary vote fell three percentage points to a record low of 27 per cent, while the Coalition’s support rose three points to 49 per cent for its highest primary vote since the Howard government in October 2001.

Even with a steady Greens vote of 12 per cent favouring Labor on preferences, the Coalition recorded its highest two-party-preferred vote of 58 per cent and the ALP its lowest of 42 per cent based on preference flows at the August election last year. The Coalition’s two-party-preferred vote is the second biggest in Newspoll history, with the previous record of 63 per cent to 37 per cent set by Kevin Rudd’s Labor government during its honeymoon period in early 2008 over the Brendan Nelson-led Coalition.

All the gory details are here.

I forced myself to watch Gillard’s address to the nation, but I refuse to watch Q&A – an audience stacked with lefties, a left leaning panel and a lefty presenter (Tony Jones) makes it the media equivalent of a quick turn in the Colosseum for anyone even vaguely to the right of the far left. Here’s Andrew Bolt’s take on Gillard’s solo performance last night:

On Q&A last night, Julia Gillard:

  • dodged a question about her duty to seek an electoral mandate first before imposing this huge, risky and controversial tax.
  • dodged again a question on how her tax would affect the climate, and whether the effect was so small as to not be worth the effort.
  • again adopted her fatally patronising pitch, even suggesting we should be embarrassed at being beaten by those pesky New Zealanders who had (a very small) emissions trading scheme already. (“Just joking,” she trilled.)
  • got picked up even by warmist Tony Jones on her deceit at pretending China was cutting its emissions, when it is actually replacing small coal-fired power stations with huge ones, sending total emissions soaring.
  • was appealed to by a believer who captured the conceit of both of them by begging Gillard to use “simple” language so her “dear old mum” could be persuaded.
  • repeatedly used the deceit of calling carbon dioxide “pollution” without once being corrected by Jones.
  • twice dodges an invitation to debate Tony Abbott on the science of global warming.
  • again falsely claimed Margaret Thatcher backed what she was doing.

Gillard also claims there’s not enough respect for “the scientists”. Like this one?

Ah yes, but according to Gillard, there should only be respect for the scientists that agree with Labor’s policy. All the others are just filthy deniers funded by Big Oil. Surely you must have grasped this by now…

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Proof-reading the Guardian

11 July, 2011 by

Richard North

The incomparable Richard North, over at the EU Referendum blog, takes his blue pencil to the Guardian’s article about our dear leader’s “great big new tax on everything” (© T Abbott):

The Australian government has unveiled foisted on its people one of the world’s most ambitious insane schemes to tackle climate change destroy its economy, a plan to tax carbon dioxide emissions from the country’s worst polluters most productive industries.

After a bruising political battle to win support for crush opposition to the measure, the prime minister, Julia Gillard, said on Sunday that from July next year, 500 companies would pay $23 (£15) a ton for their carbon emissions in the largest emissions trading scheme episode of collective suicide outside Europe.

The government predicts that by 2029 the plan will lead to a reduction in emissions equivalent to taking 45 million cars off the road. The government will fix the tax for three years, before moving to a market-set price in 2015.

“It’s time to get on with this; we are going to get this done”, said Gillard.

In other words, as Richard says: “If we’re going to commit suicide, ’tis better it’s done quickly”.

Read it here.

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Terry McCrann: Julia in Wonderland

11 July, 2011 by

Climate sense

Another stinging attack on the nonsensical carbon tax policy:

HOW do you sensibly analyse an utter policy mishmash conceived in some phantasmagorical Julia-in-Wonderland Canberra world?

That is a mind-boggling combination of insanity and stupidity?

This is a policy that proudly boasts the average household will get $10.10 in compensation each week to cover the $9.90 in extra costs that households purportedly will face.

You can all save the Barrier Reef if not indeed the entire planet and be a thumping 20c a week better off. Every five months or so the average household will be able to shout itself a single cafe latte in collective celebration.

That a treasury could prepare figures of such exactitude, that a government and a prime minister could announce them, without the slightest sense of their fundamental and total absurdity, shows a major disconnect from reality.

That’s reality in the broad: you reckon you can calculate the consequences of such mammoth and wide-sweeping change to our economy and our lives down to an exact 20c?

But also a disconnect in the privileged palaces and ivory towers of Canberra from the reality of people’s everyday lives dealing with power price rises and those of food and all the rest in supermarkets.

We now have as official Gillard Government policy that the emissions from petrol used in cars and small trucks are OK; but the emissions from diesel used in semis are evil.

That a tonne of coal going into a power station is so bad that we must spend billions buying back and closing a big chunk of our coal-fired electricity sector.

But a tonne of our coal going into a Chinese power station is wonderful.

So it’s bad for Australians to have cheap power from our coal, but it’s just great for the Chinese to have cheap power from our coal. Can you get more Julia-in-Wonderland than that?

Read it all.

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Carbon tax a "brazen fraud"

11 July, 2011 by

Bad for Gillard

Andrew Bolt’s column on the carbon tax announcement sums up the frustration and disenfranchisement many of us are feeling this morning:

JULIA Gillard’s carbon tax is the most brazen fraud perpetrated by an Australian government.

Warming believers should be outraged that the tax is so useless. Sceptics should be outraged it’s so pointless.

It offends the intelligence of everyone and threatens the jobs of thousands.

For nothing.

The Prime Minister yesterday claimed “the science is in” and man’s gasses were heating the planet dangerously.

But not even Gillard dares to claim that the tax she’s finally unveiled will stop any of that warming, or change the climate in any way – because it won’t. It can’t. (source)

News.com.au runs a poll on the carbon tax, and the results aren’t pretty. However, GetUp has obviously been mobilised to vote on this, as the results are far less dramatic than they were yesterday evening, but they are still damning (see graphic):

ANGRY Australians have vowed to vote Julia Gillard from office at the next election after today’s controversial carbon tax announcement.

Scores of voters rejected the plan soon after details of the $24.5 billion package to tackle climate change were revealed, with more than 80 per cent who voted in a national online poll saying Australia shouldn’t have a carbon tax.

Almost 100,000 votes were cast by more than 25,000 people across four polls in News Limited’s “Carbon Tax Plebiscite”, with 87.1 per cent saying they planned to change their vote at the next election in light of the tax.

More than 70 per cent of voters, or 15,866 people, said they now planned to vote for the Coalition at the next election while just 8.51 per cent said they would support a Labor government.

Just 13 per cent of voters said they wouldn’t change their vote at the next election. (source – vote at the link)

Industry is unimpressed:

CANBERRA’S grand carbon tax reform package will only raise the growing alarm in the business community that the Gillard government just doesn’t understand the meaning of the bottom line or the pressures facing industry and the economy.

It will be hard enough to convince highly sceptical voters that the carbon tax is an important economic and environmental reform that won’t leave most of their budgets worse off.

But most of the business community, already coping with massive structural changes, will be even less persuaded that this scheme has merit, let alone that it deserves the title of major reform. The $23 a tonne tax is high enough to increase costs on business but not sufficiently high to do what the government promises it will — drive substantial change in energy use, provide investment certainty or reduce global warming.

What it does produce is the churning of billions of dollars in and out of Canberra, intrusive and inefficient regulation and a (hopefully) modest drag on economic growth just when the non-mining sector feels so weighed down. (source)

Tim Blair takes Gillard’s address to pieces:

“Most Australians now agree our climate is changing, this is caused by carbon pollution, this has harmful effects on our environment and on the economy and the government should act.”

Most Australians don’t want a carbon tax.

“The first Australian government to announce a plan for a carbon price was John Howard’s back in 2007.”

And look where it got him. And Kevin Rudd. And Malcolm Turnbull. Gillard is shooting for a climate change four-peat.

“A lot has happened since then; the debate has been difficult and divisive. But we have now had the debate – 2011 is the year we decide that as a nation we want a clean energy future.”

Whoa! The debate is over now? The Prime Minister’s powers evidently now extend to public opinion.

Frankly, she could do with a little more practice on her own cabinet first.

“Now is the time to move from words to deeds.”

Several words from which the Prime Minister dearly wishes we could move: “There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead.”

That sentence didn’t survive as fact for even one year. (source)

Jo Nova:

“Great nations rise and fall. The people go from bondage to spiritual truth, to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence back again to bondage.” Henning Webb Prentis, Jr., President of the Armstrong Cork Company 1943

The quoted passage from Prentis is known as “the fatal sequence”, and the only good news is that we don’t have to stay on the road to bondage. The message about the real science and economics is spreading from BBQ to BBQ, dinner to dinner, through letters to the editors, and through phone calls to radio stations. Information is our friend, and when it comes down to it, we can do it without the lamestream media, and the ABC. They can rubber-stamp the government PR, and union sponsored activists can try to cancel speeches that might reveal the truth, but these distant messengers don’t come between family and friends.

Word-of-mouth spreads the story with an exponential growth curve. There’s a one way stream of people leaving the “carbon faith” and shifting to skepticism, there’s  virtually no flow the other way.

Sooner or later the hard rock meets the immovable force and when 70% of the country know that the tax is a lie, based on deceit, wallowing in corruption and plastered with vested interests it will be all over — all over for the tax, all over for Labor Party credibility, all over for the witchdoctors who think they can change the weather. (source)

Letter from Viv Forbes:

Carbon Tax Mark 4 is flimsy but dangerous.

Because of public opposition to a new tax on everything, the tax has been gutted. The PM hopes to buy public support by giving exemptions to almost everyone and offering widespread bribes to voters. It is now feeble and ineffective.

But the Green-Gillard coalition is desperate and such people cannot be trusted. They will say or promise anything in order to get this new tax introduced.

Once on the law books, the exemptions will be whittled away, the tax rate will increase and the tax bribes will disappear. It is a stealthy cancer in the gut of the Australian economy.

The cost of electricity, food, fuel and travel will increase, but few people will recognise the root cause. Politicians will blame “Woolworths, power suppliers and Big Oil” for the pain.

This new stealth tax is the thin edge of the wedge.

It will have no effect on the climate, but is a fiscal weapon too dangerous to be left in the hands of green extremists.

Leaving Bob Brown loose with the vast powers of a carbon tax is like leaving the grandkids alone in the hayshed with a box of matches.

“Abolish the Stealth Tax” will be the next election slogan. (source)

As everyone now knows, the tax will do nothing for the climate, and even warmist Adam Morton from the Sydney Morning Herald acknowledges that fact. And points out what many commentators miss, namely that Australia will have to buy permits to reach even the modest target set for 2020:

ONCE you can get past the extraordinary compensation packages – some justifiable, others less so – the real test of the carbon price package is pretty basic: will it cut Australia’s carbon dioxide emissions?

Beyond that, will it set up the economy for potentially even deeper cuts down the track?

The answer to the first question is probably yes, though it depends on how you define a cut in emissions.

…

What does all this mean for emissions? It depends on your perspective. Treasury modelling suggests Australia’s emissions will rise slightly in the years ahead before starting to fall in a couple of decades.

They will quickly be significantly lower than they would be without a carbon price, or under most analyses of the Coalition’s ”direct action” policy. But it also means Australia will only reach its targets by buying international carbon permits – 101 million tonnes worth in 2020, and many more by 2050. (source)

With such lukewarm support from one of Gillard’s cheerleaders, it looks as though the tax will annoy everyone. Not enough to please the Greens, and too much for everyone else. And we hope voters have long, long memories.

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