Carbon Tax. Want it ?

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Are you for the Carbon tax ?

  • Yes.

    Votes: 9 8.2%
  • No.

    Votes: 101 91.8%

  • Total voters
    110
D

Dave

Guest
Personally I think its a crock of shit but hey, lets see who's for it.

We need a new poll me thinks.
 
I'd like to vote "unsure at this stage".

At the moment we're still quite happy to pump out pollution and not do anything to balance it (like plant lots of trees). From an ecological viewpoint, that's not very clever.

There's no incentive (right at this moment) for anyone to innovate towards a greener means of production of items. Take, for instance, the manufacture of concrete. You have to use a lot of heat to produce it - it's quite "carbon intensive". Is it viable to obtain that heat from solar energy? I don't know. I do know that CSIRO are trialling a "Stirling" engine at the research centre in Newcastle - you can see it as you drive past. This thing generates a massive amount of highly focused heat and doesn't use any combustion or electricity to do it.

That is fine for a research project but it's not viable for industry just yet, and won't be without some need. The saying "necessity is the mother of all invention" is more true than you'd think - and perhaps - MAYBE - this carbon tax (or price, depending on which side of politics you want to argue it from) is just the incentive needed to push that innovation along.

Whichever way it goes, we need to make some progress to reduce how much we damage the environment. I don't know that this proposal is THE answer - it probably isn't - but it might just be the necessary first step towards the answer we humans need to provoke us into finding better ways to doing things.

For now, on the carbon tax issue, I'm going to sit on the fence and watch what happens.

Worst case is we can vote this lot of idiots out and hope the next lot of idiots fix it - historically that's not always been successful, but hey, we'll eventually find out!
 
Although I'm all for cleaning up the air and landscape, I strongly think the Carbon Tax is not the answer, and the argument/science the government is putting forward to support it is seriously flawed, and after politicians have twisted the facts and figures there is an element of deceit.

The cost/impost will be way too much for the average Joe to handle and the risk of companies going overseas is too high.

eg. How does it help the country if:
A Zinc smelter in Tassy can produce a tonne of zinc and for that tonne of zinc spew out 2 tonnes of carbon dioxide, then after a carbon tax they move the smelter to china and import back to Australia. (plenty have already done it. look at hills hoist) Now we have a case where there jobs are exported, the product is imported, then that same tonne of zinc now spews out 6 tonnes of carbon dioxide due to lack of pollution controls in china, and due to lack off proper town planning in china it will probably be right next to a kindergarden. (one reason its cheaper there, not just labour)

So in summary:
- Costs us more (bad)
- Exports Jobs (bad, do you work in manufacturing)
- Imports more product - most likley from a country without pollution regulations + emmisions in the transport process (bad)
- sends industry from a country with strict controls to a country with loose controls (bad, more carbon in the air despite the tax)
- then some of the money raised from the carbon tax goes to other countries as mitigation for climate change (bad if you dont trust those gov's with cash)
- 6bil is tipped to go into treasury from the tax for administration of the tax (bad if you dont trust them with the cash)

A quicky of the top off the top of the head is, maybe the government can stop giving money to corrupt goverments by way of aid and use that for green programs - geo-thermal tech maybe.

Chris
 
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I manage a regional bus company, one of the major advantages of public transport is that it reduces car journeys and hence reduces over all carbon emmisions.

But one of the major costs of bus transport is the fuel and the carbon tax will hit this industry very hard, increasing costs which will reduce patronage which will force commuters back into cars increasing over all carbon pollution.

For this particular industry the carbon tax is a very very bad way of trying to reduce carbon emmisions.
 
Rant on

It is incumbent on rich nations to clean up their act first - to lead the way. A carbon tax (or any other price on pollution) in Australia shows the world (i.e. China, India) the path to take, provides a workable model and gives them license to follow. Without a tax (or price) in rich nations why would developing nations clean up their economies?

A carbon tax may well become a consumption tax. If you don't want to pay more tax, use less stuff. For the most part, those that say we can't afford to take action against pollution suffer from affluenza - confusing wants with needs.

Rant off
 
Rant on

It is incumbent on rich nations to clean up their act first - to lead the way. A carbon tax (or any other price on pollution) in Australia shows the world (i.e. China, India) the path to take, provides a workable model and gives them license to follow. Without a tax (or price) in rich nations why would developing nations clean up their economies?

A carbon tax may well become a consumption tax. If you don't want to pay more tax, use less stuff. For the most part, those that say we can't afford to take action against pollution suffer from affluenza - confusing wants with needs.

Rant off

If you think China or India will follow us because we will save a piss in the ocean worth of carbon, your kidding yourself. These types of countries will never give a shit. They will however, be mighty happy when they start getting more work from us due to the costs being to high in Australia, ie/ manufacturing.
 
Actually China does care, we(CSIRO) are currently engaged in a number of CO2 and SO2 reduction projects with them.
 
I've gotta jump back in on this too.

Yes there are going to be manufacturers who look to source goods off-shore if the carbon tax/price is introduced.

But if every company went and did that, China would hardly notice (as populations go, Australia is a small country) but we'd have 50% or more unemployment. I really can't see it happening.

I would hope - and this hope might be misplaced - that many of the companies would immediately start to look at ways to use alternative methods to produce their goods. Asking them to go plant a tree for every Kg of carbon to offset it is ridiculous - the companies would go bust doing that, but they may seek alternatives or develop new technologies.

I think somewhere in the middle of that we'll end up with a balance. Whether we'll all be happy with it or not is another matter altogether!
 
If you think China or India will follow us because we will save a piss in the ocean worth of carbon, your kidding yourself. These types of countries will never give a shit. They will however, be mighty happy when they start getting more work from us due to the costs being to high in Australia, ie/ manufacturing.

They give a real big shit - and have the fastest uptake rate of renewables of any developed or developing nations.

Our contributions to global CO2 emissions are highest per capita in industrialised world - in a country blessed with so much solar and geo-thermal potential :sad:

They get more jobs from us because we buy the cheap & nasty products (because we think we're getting a bargain, and life's oh so tough) - affluenza again! And because we have failed to develop our economy beyond grow, dig, sell!
 
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I still believe it will not make a difference. The way to reduce pollution is reduce the worlds population. Australia pollutes much less than most countries and carbon tax needs to be aimed at them.
 
I still believe it will not make a difference. The way to reduce pollution is reduce the worlds population. Australia pollutes much less than most countries and carbon tax needs to be aimed at them.

Yes - a little restraint on the rug rat production world-wide would be a great help.

The carbon tax will be imposed on CO2 intensive goods etc regardless of point of origin - making Chinese cheap and nasty just nasty.
 
Personally I dont think people have caused anything to do with global warming.

Its a weather pattern.

Here's one for use. Remember when things were designed to last ?

Now we live in a world of cheap shit that fails faster and you through it away.

^ How is that going green ?

Gotta agree with Tiburn.
 
"For" or "against" the impost of a carbon tax doesn’t detract from the Australian Government abstaining from signing the Kyoto Protocol till it became an election policy. 2012 is nearly here and we gave ourselves only 3 years to lower emissions to the target, which could have been achieved IF we’d started earlier. Now it’s like we’ve set ourselves up for a fail on a global stage *sigh*. What credibility can we (Australians) have by trying to lower our CO2 output with one hand and selling coal by the tanker load to other countries with the other – that go on to burn it for power as we do.

I say “no tax”. Once a tax is imposed it is very unlikely that it will ever be ousted. We should look to rewarding green initiatives over taxing so-called polluters. Australians are over taxed already and the mismanagement of our public funds is all too apparent so if the government cleaned up its handling of public funds we wouldn’t need to introduce another tax. It’s as though we’re getting to the death knock on our Kyoto responsibilities with a big FAIL and creating an excuse

Just wait for it……….

“Australia, why haven’t you reached your emissions targets of 1% reduction on 1990 levels by 2011”

“Yeah we’ve increased by 5%, but we introduced a tax in 2011, so we really are trying – honest!”
 
But if every company went and did that, China would hardly notice (as populations go, Australia is a small country) but we'd have 50% or more unemployment. I really can't see it happening.

Manufacturing in Australia is SFA. 5% of employment and decreasing. the real cost is we sell the raw materials to china, who make it into inoput materials, which we then have to import back. OPn the same ship there comes a pile of finished goods that are cheaper than the raw material.
 
Looking at Nostradarmus and his malarkey.....who gives a shit we will all be done and dusted pretty soon anyway.
Tectonic plates are shifting, Nuclear power plants are exploding, tsunami's are flooding, bushfires are burning, lands are flooding, locusts are plaguing, the world is warring .....Now to complete the whole sideshow we need to have a comet impact and bring on another ice age.......Probably be a tax for that too!
 
All I can add is if things go up in price for me I'll just pass it on to all those pensioners I do work for ppfffffttt!

Brad
 

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