Well spotted Steve - and absolutely true!
A carbon tax will result in winners and losers just like anything else. The conventional electricity generation industry is massively opposed because 40% of our greenhouse emissions comes from electricity generation, which means 40% of any carbon tax revenue would be coming from your electricity bill.
Fine by me but there are lots of people in our society who like to use electricity as a form of social security through large subsidies to households. My view is that's what a social security system is for... without a decent price signal to reduce electricity consumption who is going to bother?
A carbon tax would fundamentally change the way we generate electricity for example with a shift from coal to gas fuels (at least on the east coast!). All the coal mining and power companies are squealing "sovereign risk" conveniently forgetting that this has been on the cards for at least the last fifteen years or so! Seems that the electricity industry thinks it should be immune from any risk...
The fact remains that if Australia wants to reduce its emissions then the most inefficient brown coal power stations have to shut down and new modern, efficient combined cycle gas plant take their place. If that doesn't happen (among other things) it will all be smoke and mirrors...
So the ETS is a way the politicians can placate all the special interest groups through its myriad of exemptions and assistance packages to ensure no-one gets hurt while looking like they're doing something to Joe Public. Hiking electricity bills through a "new tax" is likely to get a lot more press than halving the GST and making everything else a bit cheaper for example. I think plusnq expressed the typical skepticism of the Australian voter well in this thread already regarding "new taxes".
The arguments against a carbon tax are therefore purely political - support for an ETS comes from the school of thought that gave you:
"We must do something! This is something! Therefore we must do this!
Might change my sig...
A carbon tax will result in winners and losers just like anything else. The conventional electricity generation industry is massively opposed because 40% of our greenhouse emissions comes from electricity generation, which means 40% of any carbon tax revenue would be coming from your electricity bill.
Fine by me but there are lots of people in our society who like to use electricity as a form of social security through large subsidies to households. My view is that's what a social security system is for... without a decent price signal to reduce electricity consumption who is going to bother?A carbon tax would fundamentally change the way we generate electricity for example with a shift from coal to gas fuels (at least on the east coast!). All the coal mining and power companies are squealing "sovereign risk" conveniently forgetting that this has been on the cards for at least the last fifteen years or so!
Seems that the electricity industry thinks it should be immune from any risk...The fact remains that if Australia wants to reduce its emissions then the most inefficient brown coal power stations have to shut down and new modern, efficient combined cycle gas plant take their place. If that doesn't happen (among other things) it will all be smoke and mirrors...
So the ETS is a way the politicians can placate all the special interest groups through its myriad of exemptions and assistance packages to ensure no-one gets hurt while looking like they're doing something to Joe Public. Hiking electricity bills through a "new tax" is likely to get a lot more press than halving the GST and making everything else a bit cheaper for example. I think plusnq expressed the typical skepticism of the Australian voter well in this thread already regarding "new taxes".
The arguments against a carbon tax are therefore purely political - support for an ETS comes from the school of thought that gave you:
"We must do something! This is something! Therefore we must do this!
Might change my sig...
