A tax that will cut our emissions...

[hutch]

I don't think it is a secret here that I am a strong believer that AGW is a fraud being perpetrated on the people of the world...

Lets leave that one alone for this thread...( I only have one warn point left)

If you want to take that up with me I am happy to do so at the "Global Cooling" thread.

I don't believe the introduction of a tax on carbon dioxide will do anything to reduce the temperature of this planet, even if AGW is real...I have yet to read anything anywhere that shows me that it can....

Carbon guru stumped by two questions

And what are those two questions?

One, how much will this cost?...Two, how well will it work?An interview between Andrew Bolt, Herald Sun columnist and Jill Duggan, who helps to run Europe's emissions trading system, which is the biggest in the world, covering 25 times more people than we have here.

AB: Your target is to cut Europe's emissions by 20 per cent by 2020?

JD: Yes.

AB: Can you tell me how much - to the nearest billions - is that going to cost Europe, do you think?

JD: No, I can't tell you but I do know that the modelling shows that it's cheaper to start earlier rather than later.

AB: Right. You wouldn't quarrel with Professor Richard Tol - who's not a climate sceptic but is professor at the Economic and Social Research Institute in Dublin? He values it at about $250 billion. You wouldn't quarrel with that?

JD: I probably would actually. I mean, I don't know. It's very, very difficult to quantify.

AB: Right. Well, you don't know but you think it isn't $250 billion . . . What sort of temperature reduction do you imagine (you'll get) from that kind of investment?

JD: Well, what we do know is that to have an even chance of keeping temperature increases globally to 2 degrees ... you've got to reduce emissions globally by 50 per cent by 2050.

AB: But from the $250 billion -- or whatever you think the figure is -- what do you think Europe can achieve with this 20 per cent reduction in terms of cutting the world's temperature?

JD: Well, obviously, Europe accounts for 14 per cent of global emissions. It's 500 or 550 million people. On its own it cannot do that. That is absolutely clear.

AB: Have you got a figure in your mind? You don't know the cost. Do you know the result?

JD: I don't have a cost figure in my mind. One thing I do know, obviously, is that Europe acting alone will not solve this problem alone.

AB: So if I put a figure to you - I find it odd that you don't know the cost and you don't know the outcome - would you quarrel with this assessment: that by 2100, if you go your way and if you're successful, the world's temperatures will fall by 0.05 degrees? Would you agree with that?

JD: Well, I think the climate science would not be that precise. Would it?

AB: Ah, no, actually it is, Jill. You see, this is what I'm curious about; that you're in charge of a massive program to re-jig an economy. You don't know what it costs. And you don't know what it'll achieve.

How grossly irresponsible to impose untold costs for an unknown outcome that is, in fact, so very small as to make the whole exercise pointless.

Now, if that's the case with huge Europe, how much more so is it with us?

In fact, if Gillard shut down our economy completely and shot every burping cow , the temperature by 2100 would fall just 0.01 degrees.

All pain, zero gain. Hear it from John R. Christy, who this week gave evidence on global warming to the US House of Representatives' Energy and Commerce Committee.

Christy - unlike our new Climate Commissioner, paleontologist Tim Flannery - has impeccable credentials in climate science.

He is a professor of atmospheric science and director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, and was a lead author for the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Over the past 32 years, he said, the warming trend seemed to be a third of what global warming models predicted, which suggested they "overestimate the response of temperature to greenhouse gas increases".

Recent natural disasters in Australia were just part of the natural cycles, and plans to "stop" warming with, say, an emissions trading scheme were futile.

"We calculate that the impact of legislative actions being considered on the global temperature is essentially imperceptible." Huge cost. No effect.

So I urge you: ask the politicians flogging this "carbon tax" the most basic questions you'd ask any salesman: How much? And what will it do?

And if their answers are as clueless as Duggan's, tell these shysters you're not buying.

http://www.heraldsun...f-1226020074441

[hutch]

Penny Wong on why there shouldn't be a Carbon Tax....

Penny Wong - Speech to AIG luncheon 6^th February 2008:

"The introduction of a carbon price ahead of effective international action can lead to perverse incentives for such industries to relocate or source production offshore" and "There is no point in imposing a carbon price domestically which results in emissions and production transferring internationally for no environmental gain."

Penny Wong – The Australian 23^rd February 2009:

"A Carbon Tax does not guarantee emissions reductions." <br style="margin-top: 0px; ">

A carbon tax is "A recipe for abrupt and unpredictable changes as the government would need to adjust the tax frequently to try to meet the emissions reduction target, each time subjecting these adjustments to the inherent uncertainties embedded in the political process."

What has changed?

[watertrade]

where is your Global cooling thread Hutch? I saw it originally but can't find it now.

[mac]

i think the theory is taxing fossil fuels coal, petroleum products and natural gas—in proportion to their carbon content increases the competitiveness of non-carbon technologies

So wind, sunlight, hydropower, and nuclear energy will become more common

I can understand taxing big industry's will make them look more towards using less fossil fuels, but will they use the revenue to make renewable energy sources more affordable to the public

i dont agree on taxing fuel for the general public, as some cant even afford current fuel prices

[rahli]

I'm still trying to get my head around how Bolt can predicted the 90 year outcome (2100) of a policy aimed for a 20 percent reduction by 2020.

[hutch]

where is your Global cooling thread Hutch? I saw it originally but can't find it now.

 

For some reason it got moved.....it is Skybacons thread but...warning....gets graphic and embarrassing at times...passion and wine...

http://www.shaman-australis.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=26444&st=400

[synchromesh]

Climate of Change - Part 2

Broadcast: 13/03/2011 3:00:25 PM

[nabraxas]

A carbon tax will not solve global warming, it will only provide the seed funding for the technologies that will.

WE NEED TO FIX global warming. Global warming is real. It's a man-made problem. But we need to recognise the current solution is not working.

The current solution is to make fossil fuels so expensive nobody will want them. That sounds like a great idea but it's not only economically inefficient but it's also politically impossible. What we need is a better solution. It's about innovating green energy to be so cheap that everybody will want it.

If you look at data from the International Energy Agency from 1974 until 2009 on how much OECD countries spend on energy R&D as a percentage of GDP, you can see that we had a huge boom in investment research and development in the late 70s and early 80s. Since then it's declined and it has not picked up since we started talking about global warming.

This is because everybody talks about cutting carbon emissions, and how much they need to reduce in the next five or 10 years. Whereas the real solution has to be about making sure we get new, breakthrough technologies in the next 20 to 40 years.

There's a significant under-investment in the solutions that are going to carry us through.

That's why I helped organise something called the Copenhagen Consensus on Climate where we asked some of the world's top climate economists including three Nobel laureates to find what are the smartest ways to deal with climate change. They essentially said 'invest dramatically more in research and development.' They recommended we spend 0.2 per cent of GDP on research and development in demonstration of non-carbon emitting energy technologies.

This is about $100 billion per year. It would be about $1.6 billion a year for Australia. The studies show that this would actually solve global warming in the medium term and, crucially, for every dollar spent on investing in research and development we would avoid about $11 of climate damage. That's a very good way of spending a dollar.

Unfortunately that's not the standard solution. That's not what most people talk about.

If you look at the Kyoto Protocol, the only real legal agreement that we have on climate change, it would have cost about $180 billion globally per year to implement and maintain. Yet it would have had virtually no impact - about 0.004 degrees temperature reduction by the end of the century. And of course because we've done virtually none of it, the temperature reduction will be even less than that.

If you look at the only legal promise into the future on the books from the EU 2020 Policy the cost is $250 billion a year. Yet the impact will be about 1/20th of one degree Celsius by the end of the century.

So after we spend about $20 trillion over the century we will have done something that you can't even measure. That's not a smart way to spend money. It turns out that for every dollar spent on emissions reduction you'll avoid about three cents' worth of damage from climate damage.

The current approach of trying to reduce carbon dioxide emissions is not working for a very simple reason: we've failed to remember that we don't burn fossil fuels simply to annoy Al Gore. We burn fossil fuels because they power virtually everything we like. They keep us warm. They keep us cool. They light our rooms. They light our operating theatres. They feed us.

Demanding to cut carbon emissions is politically not going to happen, either. If you look at the economic growth and the CO2 growth over the last quarter century there is a very strong correlation. That's why most politicians realise that a promise to cut carbon emission growth, is a promise to cut economic growth. It doesn't cut it back to zero but it does have a real cost.

So when we talk about the Australian carbon tax, we need to recognise any realistic carbon tax will do very little to solve global warming.

The damage cost of a tonne CO2 emitted is about $7 per tonne. Any economist would say CO2 should therefore be taxed in principle. But the carbon tax in and of itself is something that's not going to have a major environmental impact. A carbon tax really is about realising that the revenue raised can be used to fund green research and development which will be the significant part of the solution.

We should focus on innovating cheap, green energy rather than the current solution of making fossil fuel so expensive nobody wants it. It's 500 times more effective than the current approach. It's $11 back on the dollar rather than two or three cents back in the dollar. It would actually fix global warming in the medium term.

And a carbon tax is a small part - but only a small part of this. It can raise the revenue for green R&D but the real issue is make sure we spend much, much more than what we're spending today on green research and development.

We need to stop spending money where we do only a little good and start spending money where we can do a lot of good.

Bjørn Lomborg is famous as "The Skeptical Environmentalist", the title of a book he authored. He is adjunct professor at the Copenhagen Business School in Denmark and Director of the Copenhagen Consensus Centre.

 

http://www.abc.net.au/environment/articles/2011/03/09/3158295.htm

[Sheather]

This is about $100 billion per year. It would be about $1.6 billion a year for Australia. The studies show that this would actually solve global warming in the medium term and, crucially, for every dollar spent on investing in research and development we would avoid about $11 of climate damage. That's a very good way of spending a dollar.

Oh rly? Funny, that giving people money will make their imaginary problems disappear.

The fact is we should have started putting a whole lot more money in to "green" energy a decade ago, regardless of global warming's truthfullness. (I only say a decade because I have not so much knowledge of the tech etc further back than that.)

@Mac - nuclear may become more common, but hopefully not so much as the renewable sources. I fully agree with the big industry tax for such a thing, on the condition that they wouldn't just raise their prices to compensate and then some...

[hutch]

@Mac - nuclear may become more common, but hopefully not so much as the renewable sources. I fully agree with the big industry tax for such a thing, on the condition that they wouldn't just raise their prices to compensate and then some...

 

A business is in business to make money whether that be for the owner or investor. If you load a business with a cost like this they will have no choice but to pass it on.....then people like me...broke and worthless, will be compensated....I know if Gillard gets this through I will make money out of it. I could be selfish and throw my full weight behind it but I know this is wrong for the environment and the economy. This is not a tax that will save man kind....I believe with all my heart we are fucking this planet in one way or another...Just watch the amount of butts that are still thrown from motor vehicles and have a look along side our major highways at the garbage that is discarded without so much as a second thought. Poisons in our water ways, pesticides contaminating our food and so on, the list is endless.

But the question still is, will this tax slug cut our emissions? I don't want to argue whether any thing at all needs to be done to limit carbon. My opinion on that is clear in another thread. Given this is the biggest tax to ever be put before the Australian people I want to know for sure that it will do what they say it will. What that is they haven't said yet And I'm called an IDIOT

Will the introduction of this tax reduce global temps and by how much and how much will it cost me?

If I was buying a car to go four wheel driving in I would be a fool to buy a Mazda 3.....What am I buying here? simple questions and nobody can offer up simple explanations.....

[hutch]

http://www.abc.net.a.../09/3158295.htm

 

Remember they had the electric cars back in the seventies....GONE! The first cars ever built were electric and were preferred over the dirty smelly combustion engine which had to be manually cranked...the fact that oil was so cheap and big multi national companies could make trillions of dollars in profits killed them off.....They chose the wrong technology for the interests of the planet over greed...Thats how it all works...We should look at who has to gain the most out of taxing air....I will be posting more about that later...

[nabraxas]

A carbon tax will not solve global warming...The current solution is to make fossil fuels so expensive nobody will want them. That sounds like a great idea but it's not only economically inefficient but it's also politically impossible.

The fact is we should have started putting a whole lot more money in to "green" energy a decade ago, regardless of global warming's truthfullness. (I only say a decade because I have not so much knowledge of the tech etc further back than that.)

1941 Russell Ohl invented the solar cell, we should have started investing in R&D for "green" energy back in the 70's; just like as the driest inhabited continent on Earth we should have been investing in R&D for recycling, capturing, storing & using water more efficiently since the 70's;

but as always it's "Wait 'till the last minute" so as not to scare people or upset big business...& then the "solution" is a massive waste ov money..

[dr dognutz]

A carbon tax is a great idea if it is implemented properly. If you are worried about the big companies passing on the additional costs to you as the consumer then you should be taking a good look at your lifestyle and your own impact.

If your power bill goes up then switch to solar, if your food bills increase then extend your veg garden, If your water bill goes up then install a water tank.

There are a million practicle things we can all do to live more sustainably but it seems very few of us are actually implementing any of these.

Increased costs via a carbon tax would force alot of people to reassess the way they live, im all for it.

I do not beleive the tax will end global warming/climate change but i think if the funds generated are going towards more sustainable living projects and helping the environment and at the same time making people aware of their own impacts how can it be a bad thing?

im wide open now

[shortly]

A carbon tax is a great idea if it is implemented properly. If you are worried about the big companies passing on the additional costs to you as the consumer then you should be taking a good look at your lifestyle and your own impact.

If your power bill goes up then switch to solar, if your food bills increase then extend your veg garden, If your water bill goes up then install a water tank.

There are a million practicle things we can all do to live more sustainably but it seems very few of us are actually implementing any of these.

Increased costs via a carbon tax would force alot of people to reassess the way they live, im all for it.

I do not believe the tax will end global warming/climate change but i think if the funds generated are going towards more sustainable living projects and helping the environment and at the same time making people aware of their own impacts how can it be a bad thing?

im wide open now

 

What makes you think you will be allowed to make changes to reduce your costs?

You need to continue consuming whether you do or not.

My neighbors power bill went up so she installed a roof full of solar panels & reduced her power bill, now she gets bills for not using the minimum amount of electricity.

My water bill has gone from $80 (2005)to $648 of which $567 is access fees etc that i get to pay for the privilege of having access to town water etc (that we had paid for through rates & taxes before it was given to private enterprise) regardless of whether or not i use it.

All the tax will do is pad out consolidated revenue & like all taxes & levies once it comes in it will be here to stay. Getting a gov to give up a tax is like asking a smoker to give away the fags, they know they should but its so just dammed hard.

Don't worry the free market economy will fix everything

[hutch]

A carbon tax is a great idea if it is implemented properly. If you are worried about the big companies passing on the additional costs to you as the consumer then you should be taking a good look at your lifestyle and your own impact.

If your power bill goes up then switch to solar, if your food bills increase then extend your veg garden, If your water bill goes up then install a water tank.

There are a million practicle things we can all do to live more sustainably but it seems very few of us are actually implementing any of these.

Increased costs via a carbon tax would force alot of people to reassess the way they live, im all for it.

I do not beleive the tax will end global warming/climate change but i think if the funds generated are going towards more sustainable living projects and helping the environment and at the same time making people aware of their own impacts how can it be a bad thing?

im wide open now

 

No your not....I'm the newer kinder hutch.....your entitled to your opinion and I want to hear it...If you can show me this tax is good then go for it...

How will you explain to those who don't have the same resources that you obviously have that they must not use the cheapest source of power available. Some pensioners are missing meals now to keep the power on....A lot of people have been disconnect from mains power for not being able to pay their bills. The cost of living is killing many of us off....You may lead a charmed life style now with a good job, great pay, all the perks...sure you are happy to pay...now...Things change...I know..it has happened to me..I used to earn 150k per year. I now live on a bloody pension....How many mega rich environmental evangelists will change their life styles to comply? How many will ditch the car and walk. How many will stay at home and not traverse the globe in an aircraft? You are asking the poor of this country to change their ways but think nothing about the hypocrites who never practice what they preach...

Again, this is not about if or if not the environment is broken. This is about a tax! Is this tax going to drop the earths temps and by how much and how much will it cost...

Still not seen anything anywhere that shows this will do what they say it will. It will just cripple this country and send jobs off shore.

[synchromesh]

Five big points I can think of from the top of my head:

* Gillard and her mining mates kicked Rudd out of office because he wanted to implement that mining tax. Such behavior does not make me believe that we have an Earth saver on our hands.

* Most Australians are already struggling with the consistent increase of food, fuel and utility prices. If the carbon tax makes this worse in any significant way, then you can expect to see a lot more beggars in the streets.

* The air is nobody's to own.

* Even if Australia stopped using fossil fuels altogether, it would have little to no effect on "global warming".

* G.S.T.

[Torsten]

synchro - I agree that gillard is not an earth saver, but your other points irk me.

Do you really think australians are struggling? we are one of the wealthiest countries on the planet and one with one of the lowest rates of poverty. The mantra of the struggling middle class is just a tool that politicians use to make you and me and everyone else feel like there is something wrong and we should be doing better. People in australia will always struggle because we always want more than we can afford.

The air is nobody's to own, but it is a collective resource and need to be managed. Just like all other resources. we also don't allow waste water disposal without any controls [although one has to question how good those controls really are], so we should not allow disposal into the air that affects everyone.

It is obvious that a small country like australia will not make a huge difference to global warming. but if no one does it then where do we start? These things often have to start with the smaller guys by embarassing the bigger guys. I am a firm believer in not using resources beyond our means, ie I feel that using any unsustainable allocation of any resource is like borrowing a mortgage. Eventually it has to be paid back. Those who start paying back earlier are usually the big winners in the long run, while those who delay are the losers. I'd prefer to err on the side of caution. Whether a carbon price is the right way to go I am not sure.

Hutch - when I was 7 I first learnt about AGW. That's about 35 years ago. As an environmentalist I spent all my youth campaigning against it. Until the early 90's the people who tried to bring this to the attention of the world were the conspiracy theorists and fringe nutters [ie worse even than what the sceptics are now]. You are probably too young to know the difficult history this concept has had especially since aussies in those days didn't generally become poltically aware till their 20's. I try and keep an open mind, but after fighting for that recognition for so many years it is hard to let it go unless there is some overwhelming evidenceto tip the balance.

As for moved threads, I noticed that the news section was getting more and more chatty, so I moved a few threads to chill. This included a few global warming threads. So as not to be biased I moved an equal number of pro and contra threads.

[hutch]

[quote name='Torsten' timestamp='1300091474' post='294742'

Hutch - when I was 7 I first learnt about AGW. That's about 35 years ago. As an environmentalist I spent all my youth campaigning against it. Until the early 90's the people who tried to bring this to the attention of the world were the conspiracy theorists and fringe nutters [ie worse even than what the sceptics are now]. You are probably too young to know the difficult history this concept has had especially since aussies in those days didn't generally become poltically aware till their 20's. I try and keep an open mind, but after fighting for that recognition for so many years it is hard to let it go unless there is some overwhelming evidenceto tip the balance.

 

Something I hate to win but I think you will find I am older than you. I remember very clearly global cooling....if you were 7 in 72 I would like to know how you managed to end up on the other end of that debate...you were way before your time. We were going to freeze...

But, just to keep every one on track, this is not about AGW, true or false...will a carbon tax do what they say it will?

[dr dognutz]

It seems like my last post pissed a few of you off, i'm going to stick with my comments tho and take the critisism on the chin.

hutch: I made a clear point that i did not think the tax would solve any global warming/climate change problems... I did make a point that if the funds are spent in an appropriate way that will encourage sustainable living then that would be a good thing. What gives you the impression that im sitting on a ton of cash? im not privelaged, i just implement things around my home that minimise my impact on the environment. you dont have to be rich to do that... and before you go crying poor and telling me about how badly us aussies are treated take a breath and have a think about the however many billion ppl are living on $2 a day or less.

I have a tank for water, a veg garden that i work very hard, i've got solar hot water and subsidised electricity... i also have 2 dogs, 2 kids and a sponser child. i go hunting and fishing, support my local organic farmer.....i could go on and on im just trying to do my bit. wat are you doing? apart from ripping me down for having an opinion.

at the end of the day its just another tax... its not the first and it wont be the last, get used to it and get on with your life.

[synchromesh]

synchro - I agree that gillard is not an earth saver, but your other points irk me.

 

If Gillard isn't an Earth saver, then the other points are irrelevant...

A thief is a thief is a thief.

Do you really think australians are struggling? we are one of the wealthiest countries on the planet and one with one of the lowest rates of poverty. The mantra of the struggling middle class is just a tool that politicians use to make you and me and everyone else feel like there is something wrong and we should be doing better. People in australia will always struggle because we always want more than we can afford.

 

What about the working class?

The air is nobody's to own, but it is a collective resource and need to be managed. Just like all other resources. we also don't allow waste water disposal without any controls [although one has to question how good those controls really are], so we should not allow disposal into the air that affects everyone.

"Managed" as in "profited from"? Because that's all we're talking about here.

It is obvious that a small country like australia will not make a huge difference to global warming. but if no one does it then where do we start? These things often have to start with the smaller guys by embarassing the bigger guys. I am a firm believer in not using resources beyond our means, ie I feel that using any unsustainable allocation of any resource is like borrowing a mortgage. Eventually it has to be paid back. Those who start paying back earlier are usually the big winners in the long run, while those who delay are the losers. I'd prefer to err on the side of caution. Whether a carbon price is the right way to go I am not sure.

If anybody should be embarrassed, it's us...

Australia: the Lucky Tax Country

[synchromesh]

at the end of the day its just another tax... its not the first and it wont be the last, get used to it and get on with your life.

 

A tax on babies and air is not just another tax...

[shortly]

I wasn't pissed off per-say, well not at your comments at least.

What does piss me off is that we continually get told that we live in a user pays environment, which would be fair enough, but if corporate profits look like dipping we get billed for the resource whether or not we use it.

So there is no real incentive to conserve (insert resource here) if it isn't going to cost any more to squander it, and many/most ppl do simply because the incentives have been diminished by the need to prop up revenues.

People are lazy and aren't going to change unless there is either an immediate advantage for them or they get poked from a sharp stick so charging more for using less or charging more & handing the cash back seems rather a pointless proposition.

And yes i would be happy to pay the tax if it were used for R&D into alternative energies

or low N crops or something that would benefit everybody, but i fear that im just pissing in the wind & all i'm likely to get is wet feet while consolidated revenue grows with the new tax.

[hutch]

It seems like my last post pissed a few of you off, i'm going to stick with my comments tho and take the critisism on the chin.

hutch: I made a clear point that i did not think the tax would solve any global warming/climate change problems... I did make a point that if the funds are spent in an appropriate way that will encourage sustainable living then that would be a good thing. What gives you the impression that im sitting on a ton of cash? im not privelaged, i just implement things around my home that minimise my impact on the environment. you dont have to be rich to do that... and before you go crying poor and telling me about how badly us aussies are treated take a breath and have a think about the however many billion ppl are living on $2 a day or less.

I have a tank for water, a veg garden that i work very hard, i've got solar hot water and subsidised electricity... i also have 2 dogs, 2 kids and a sponser child. i go hunting and fishing, support my local organic farmer.....i could go on and on im just trying to do my bit. wat are you doing? apart from ripping me down for having an opinion.

at the end of the day its just another tax... its not the first and it wont be the last, get used to it and get on with your life.

 

I certainly didn't see myself as ripping you down....far from it I thought....I too have tank water, I live on it with no other source..My vegie garden once was my pride and joy until Dec/ Feb and just now...floods and lawn grubs have stuffed it a bit as of late but thats just part and parcel of living in this wonderful country....I will recover it...

All your solutions cost a fair bit to implement... unlucky for me...I can't rake up enough for a weekend away for my anniversary. I'm a sucker hey.. I have 3 dogs, one cat, 2 cows, 3 pigs, 9 chickens, 1 rooster, 2 red-claw and hopefully heaps of perch...I obviously have excluded those animals I have ate recently....I'm carbon friendly I work bloody hard as well but due to things beyond my control I can no longer earn a motza...well not yet at least...I have two kids, both grown and I'm busting for a grand child sometime next year...they are trying... I hunt quit a bit with a mate on his 1000 acre property and I love fishing but I am now going to sell my boat to make ends meet...I frequent our local farmer markets in Gin Gin, Qld and try and grow in excess of what I need to on sell there....and I share with my friends and neighbors...what you are really saying is "look at this denier picking on me...jump to my support"...wrong thread....

Again...Will a tax on Carbon Dioxide cut the worlds emissions, by how much and how much will it cost me....and YOU?

[Torsten]

What about the working class?

working class is not a relevant temr in this context. I was referring to anything above the lower class, which also includes much of the working class.

"Managed" as in "profited from"? Because that's all we're talking about here.

This is a concept that simply does not make sense. How does a government profit? It can't. All money collected is spent. It's not like the owners of a company that spend money on themselves. Giovernment spends the money on the people. Whether it does not well is a different argument, but to say that a government profits is just silly.

Australia: the Lucky Tax Country

another myth. Despite the whining of the politicians for their own gains, Australia is one of the lowest taxed developed countries. Given that australia has a higher than average infrastructure cost burden in comparison to other countries we are even more disproportionately untaxed. This sort of tax whining that's going on in australia is laughed about in europe.

[qualia]

The current solution is to make fossil fuels so expensive nobody will want them. That sounds like a great idea but it's not only economically inefficient but it's also politically impossible. What we need is a better solution. It's about innovating green energy to be so cheap that everybody will want it.

yep. i find it highly hypocritical that just a few months ago the gillard government cut funding to research cleaner cars. such hypocrisy, in my eyes, can only be rectified by putting any profits from a carbon tax into green energy. i also find it quite it quite funny that people will shit all over the mainstream press when there's a story against drugs or whatever, yet when those same mainstream rags present a story that supports their world view, all of a sudden they're a bastion of unbiased rational journalism. clearly the story in the original post is a biased and sensationalist as any thing else in those rags, i'm surprised you even considered that newsworthy.