Just don't tell me the debate's over…
The truth will out
Just one line from his latest report is enough:
“Australian households will ultimately bear the full cost of a carbon price.” (source)
So it isn’t the big polluters, is it Julia and Greg?
Lies, lies and more lies from our deceitful government. When will it ever end?
"Low carbon" China
See? Australia is lagging behind China in cutting emissions. Disgraceful. We must follow China’s lead and implement Julia and Greg’s wonderful carbon tax to cut our emissions from 1.3% of the global total to just a teensy-weensy bit less than 1.3%, at a cost of several billion dollars each year, which will be slugged mercilessly from the wallets of every family in Australia…, every year…, for ever…
CLIMATE change adviser Ross Garnaut says China is experimenting with carbon trading in a number of large cities because it knows that’s the cheapest way to reduce emissions.
The economist held talks today with the man responsible for China’s climate change policies, Xie Zhenhua, ahead of ministerial-level meetings.
Professor Garnaut said the emerging power was trialling carbon trading in five provinces and three cities – Tianjin, Shanghai and Beijing.
“The way China tends to do these things is they try them out, sometimes in different ways, and if they seem to be working they adopt them nationally,” Prof Garnaut told reporters, adding he wouldn’t presume what China’s next step would be.
“(But) they are experimenting with broader approaches like a carbon price because the economists in China as well as other places have worked out that’s a lower-cost way of doing things.”
Maybe we should copy China in other ways, like building a new coal fired power station every fortnight… no, wait. Laughably, even Greg Combet is citing China as a shining example of “tackling climate change”:
Mr Combet’s climate change department put out a briefing paper today, outlining the action China and other countries were taking to reduce emissions.
“Thirty-two countries and 10 US states already have emissions trading schemes in place,” the paper states. [24 of those countries are in the fraud-riddled EU ETS, aren’t they? And it’s nine US states now that New Hampshire has bailed out of the RGGI, isn’t it – Ed]
On China, it notes that Beijing’s latest 12-year plan speaks of an imperative for the country to establish a “green, low-carbon development concept”.
China’s new targets include:
- increasing the proportion of non-fossil fuels in energy consumption to 11.4 per cent by 2015;
- reducing energy per unit of GDP by 16 per cent by 2015;
- reducing carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP by 17 per cent by 2015.
China? Low carbon? My aching sides. Of course, the “trick” to “hide the incline” is the magic words “per unit of GDP”. So let’s do the math, as our US friends would say. China is likely to have a GDP growth over the next four years of, say, approximately 9% per year, so if we take 2011 as a baseline 100 units of GDP, 2012 will be 109 units, 2013 will be 118.8 units, 2014 will be 129.5 units and 2015 will be approximately 141 units. So reducing emissions by 17% per unit of GDP actually works out as an increase of 17% on 2011 figures in absolute terms.
If we take China’s 2007 emissions figure of 6.5 Gigatons of CO2, which is probably far less than in reality today, that means an increase of about 1.1 Gt CO2 per year by 2015. For comparison, Australia emitted just 0.3 Gt per year in 2007. Which means in just four years, China will increase its emissions by nearly FOUR TIMES Australia’s annual total. Any reduction our pointless carbon tax might make will be simply lost in the noise. If we manage to reduce emissions by 10% by 2015 (highly unlikely), that equates to one fortieth of China’s increase – a joke in other words.
The reality of China is that it is far more concerned with raising its population out of poverty than “tackling climate change”, and nothing Australia does will make the slightest bit of difference.
More spin than a launderette from Garnaut and Combet – but what else do we expect?
Read it here.
Climate sense
That’s the cost/benefit analysis of a price on carbon in Australia, as Bob Carter points out in a letter to The Australian this morning:
OUR new Climate Commissioner, Tim Flannery, says that his role is to provide accurate information to the public about climate change. (Letters, 15/2).
Perhaps he might start by answering the two most critical questions that taxpayers have in mind.
The first is how many degrees of warming will be averted by a cut in Australian CO2 emissions of, say, 20 per cent by 2020. Second, what extra costs, including all flow-through costs, will be imposed on an average family by the taxation strategy that is aimed at producing such a cut. Available estimates indicate that the answers to these questions are: (i) less than one one-thousandth of a degree Celsius by 2020; and (ii) more than $2000 per family of four per year.
Australian battlers, on whom the extra costs will impinge the most, are unlikely to view this as a good public policy option, and if Flannery has more policy-favourable figures in mind, then now might be a good time to share them with us.
Bob Carter, Townsville, Qld
Seems like great value, doesn’t it?
In the even-redder corner, the Greens!
Grab the popcorn and reserve a front row seat for the political punch-up of the year. The Greens and Labor will go head-to-head over the pointless carbon price, with the miners and the opposition throwing punches from outside the ring. Priceless!
JULIA Gillard and the Greens are on a collision course over the assistance levels for big greenhouse gas emitters in the government’s proposed new carbon pricing regime, as mine companies prepare to combat suggestions Australia is a “laggard” in international efforts to combat climate change.
The Prime Minister pledged not to throw out the “good work” on transitional arrangements for big polluters that was part of Kevin Rudd’s emissions package, but Greens deputy leader Christine Milne warned they would “not pass muster” if the multi-party climate change committee was focused on getting the best result.
The clash came as The Australian learned that resources companies were gearing up to fight what they called “exaggerated claims” about international efforts to combat climate emissions. Fresh from demolishing Mr Rudd’s prime ministership over the mining profits tax, the resources industry is preparing to oppose any carbon pricing scheme seen to be “out in front” of climate change efforts by the nation’s competitors. A briefing to mining executives prepared by the Minerals Council of Australia, obtained by The Australian, warns: “We need to be alert to exaggerated claims about the efforts under way in both developed and developing nations.” (source)
Seconds out, round one. Ding, ding.
Australian Climate Madness 
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