Showing posts with label carbon tax. Show all posts
Showing posts with label carbon tax. Show all posts

Surely Australia Could Pay a Little More for a Cleaner Planet

It is so strange how support for Kevin Rudd's Emissions Trading Scheme has totally evaporated. Kevin Rudd rightly claims that his backing down from trying to pass the legislation cost him leadership of his party and the country, so great was public support for it then. Times have changed. With big rises in water charges and electricity charges across the country people just don't want a bar of it anymore.

The proof of global warming is considerable. Ice is disappearing from the North and South Poles. Those who still contend that it is made up just to get money out of the public must be living on another planet - in their minds at least. No one wants to be paying higher prices for essential items than consumers in other countries, but the world is changing. China is making major changes. to reduce pollution. Finland introduced the world's first carbon tax in 1990. That is two decades ago. Sweden followed in 1991. Great Britain brought in a climate change levy in 2001. Boulder in Colorado has had a carbon tax on electricity since 2007. There has been a tax on all fuels in Quebec from 2007. British Columbia initiated the most efficient carbon tax in 2008 with $10 tax per metric ton rising to $30 in 2012. So Australians would not be alone in paying higher prices.

Young Australian families today have never known hard times. Economies go in boom and bust cycles. Australia has been lucky in avoiding the busts due to a small population "owning" a tremendous resources base. It is the only country in the world with this economic advantage. Surely Australia can do it a little tougher and help show the way to a better world.
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Society

Australian Will Have a Higher Cost Of Living With a Carbon Tax

What has happened to Australian society that the support for a carbon tax, so high when Kevin Rudd was in charge, has vanished? It seems everyone thought that a tax on pollution wouldn't really mean a financial burden. With the sudden hits from water and electricity price increases they know that it will cost - a lot. Kevin is crying into his handkerchief saying they made me do it - his cabinet told him to give up his push for a carbon tax, so he says. Julia Gillard has apparently had a change of heart and it is now her baby.

Australians will have to accept that they will get less for their money in the near future. All countries will have to join the carbon club eventually. Not using as much petrol is a possibility, but doing without air conditioning particularly the wealthy that will be difficult. It seems the pillars of capitalism will be challenged. This is the kind of post-capitalism that twenty years ago hardly anyone would imagine. A society that really cares for the environment? That is something new. We have spent two centuries running rough-shod over the countryside, dumping pollutants everywhere. The time has arrived to get out the shovel and broom and start cleaning up.

Lower consumption will not be a problem. Permanent prices rises are in order across the board, with national GDP remaining at about the same level. The cost of living will be significantly higher. House prices will probably fall, though, due a lower capacity to pay. The problem lies in convincing those in developing countries that they will never enjoy the standard of living we in the West had for such a long time.
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News