I have a problem getting my head around the Orwellian logic used in favour of this tax.
There is a huge amount of talk about sequestering carbon, (don't you just love that word, sequestering, it makes nearly every thing okay), sequestering carbon in the ground. Land owners and prospective land owners are rubbing their hands in glee at the profits to be made SEQUESTERING carbon. We had better just hope that their profits are not so attractive as to prevent them from growing food entirely.
Anyhow, here we are, about to be taxed on emissions from the energy industry which is going to make additional profit from the actual emissions themselves by putting it back into the ground and I have to ask myself this, that if it is such a huge priority to prevent carbon from getting into the atmosphere WHY THE FARK DO WE NOT JUST LEAVE IT IN THE GROUND TO START WITH.
I can just see George Orwell shaking his head and saying I told you so but you would not listen.
"This country is already buckling under the weight of welfare hand outs and now hardly is the time to be increasing them".
Is it????, If you look at the entirety of government spending do you think that unworthy welfare recipients are such a huge drain on the public purse? And by unworthy, are we talking about tax breaks given to family trusts, are we talking tax breaks to negatively gear, what about the money we pay to millionaires to help them with their health insurance? What about eliminating funding to my local school, you know the school that has just built their second water polo pool, to match their new underground carpark,and their new performing arts centre????? no fair enough pick on single mums, disability pensioners and the unemployed.....easy targets
If you think a miniscule carbon tax is bad, imagine what the GST did to the economy.
Best interview on Lateline for quite a while was on last night. Don't think it's on Yoochoob but with any luck, this link should play it for you:
www.abc.net.au/reslib/201108/r808784_7199324.asx
otherwise, go to www.abc.net/lateline and look for the Joe Hockey interview.
Gotta love Joe... honestly! If only he'd spend as much time studying his party's policies as he does putting the boot into the other guys he'd probably do really well.
I do love Joe. I didn't see that he was putting the boot in but that he was pointing out how much better the coalition's policies are.
When you have a guy that says:- "It is a good idea for an individual to pay down debt and it is also a good idea for government to pay down debt.", you have a bread and butter treasurer which is what we need.
He who has the cash wields the power. Gillard's lot are spending money on worthless things like there is no tomorrow and need the carbon tax to fund their handout policies.
I suppose if you PLAN on being one of the FORTY you would want to get as many of the handouts as you can before you step off the end of the plank.
"Gillard's lot are spending money on worthless things like there is no tomorrow" Given that the NBN is a communication system for the next century, and high speed rail is a transport system for the next century, it makes sense to try to make sure there IS a next century by putting a price on carbon.
Copy and paste from http://cecaust.com.au/main.asp?sub=global_warming&id=main.html
Nature craves more carbon dioxide
Government policies to force drastic cuts in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, out of fear of CO2 as a "pollutant", are insane-a fact underscored by recent testimony before the U.S. Senate by award-winning Princeton University physicist Dr. Will Happer.
In the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearings on 25th February, Dr. Happer declared man-made global warming fears were "mistaken" and noted that the Earth is currently in a "CO2 famine."
Dr. Happer stands alongside more than 31,000 scientists who have signed a petition opposing the quack science of global warming-a petition which makes the specific point that "there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth."
The global average atmospheric CO2 concentration is currently a tiny 387 ppm (parts per million)-just a trace gas-and trees and plants are craving for more, yet fools are threatening to decimate our economy, in order to reduce this life-giving gas. In the last 600 million years of Earth's history, only the Carboniferous Period (approximately 300 million years ago) and our present age, the Quaternary Period, have witnessed CO2 levels less than 400 ppm.
Commercial greenhouse operators are advised to add enough CO2 to maintain about 1,000 ppm around their plants. Carbon dioxide generators for greenhouse operators produce CO2 by burning liquid propane or natural gas. The healthy plants respond just as plants have responded for most of the history of life on earth when CO2 concentrations were naturally this high, if not higher.
The dinosaurs survived just fine when CO2 concentrations exceeded 2,000 ppm and 450 million years ago, late in the Ordovician Period, the earth went into an Ice Age when carbon dioxide levels exceeded 4,000 ppm-so much for CO2 induced global warming! Coral has thrived throughout these enormous natural climatic and atmospheric changes.
Exhaled human breath contains about 4% CO2. That is 40,000 ppm-levels which carbon reduction fanatics would consider to be concentrated pollution.
Any carbon tax, or emissions trading scheme (cap-and-trade) would destroy essential industries and the human population which depends upon those industries, on the basis of a clear fraud, and therefore must be vigorously opposed.
Copy/paste:
Even the WSJ criticises Julia!
Yes, the Wall St Journal has had a piece on how NO-ONE else is doing carbon taxing (or the schemes are failing) - and how this carbon tax will cripple the economy.
_______________________________________
The Last Carbon Taxer
Wall St Journal, REVIEW & OUTLOOK ASIA - JULY 17, 2011,
# Carbon cap and trade is dead in America, the Chicago emissions trading exchange has folded, and European nations keep fudging on their Kyoto Protocol promises. But Al Gore's great green hope still has a champion: Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, who announced last week that her government will impose a cap-and-tax regime.
Her Labor Party-led coalition wants 500 of the country's "biggest polluters" to buy carbon permits issued by the government, starting next year. Canberra would then create new bureaucracies to re-allocate that money to interest groups and selected businesses, to the tune of billions of dollars annually.
The news has caused a public uproar—not least because Ms. Gillard ran and won last year on an explicit promise not to pursue such policies. She ousted her predecessor in a backroom coup after his popularity tanked because of climate-change boosterism and promises to raise taxes. But Ms. Gillard's Green coalition partners hold the balance of power in parliament and pushed hard for cap and trade. The PM caved and has now been labeled "Juliar" in the popular press.
The Gillard government estimates its plan will increase electricity costs by 10% and gasoline by 9%—increases it calls "modest." That's easy for politicians to say. In a nationwide poll taken after the announcement, 60% of voters opposed the tax and 68% said they'd be financially worse off because of it. Ms. Gillard's popularity has plumbed new lows.
The plan is economically damaging enough that even the normally timid business lobby—many of whose members originally supported climate-change legislation—is speaking up. Opposition leader Tony Abbott slammed the plan as "socialism masquerading as environmentalism," and he has a point. The government plans to use some of the carbon tax receipts to triple the income threshold before the income tax hits. In other words, this is in part a scheme to redistribute income from energy users to Labor voters. It is an odd kind of tax reform that narrows the tax base.
All of this for negligible environmental benefits. Australia emits 1.5% of the world's greenhouse gases. Even if the country cut its emissions to zero, the move would do little to reduce global emissions. Australia's per-capita emissions are high compared to other developed nations because it's a sparsely populated continent blessed with an abundance of natural resources. Aussies have developed profitable, world-class natural resource and energy businesses that have lifted incomes at home and helped supply developing countries like China and India. This is bad?
It is if you believe in the theology that loathes carbon fuels and wants government to allocate the means of power production. In a speech Thursday, Ms. Gillard vowed to press forward with cap and tax and said that her convictions are "very deeply held." We'll see if her government can survive them.
