The gnattering (sic) Nabobs of negativity (enlisted in the cause of the politics of positivity of course) are at it again – manufacturing reasons to bash Tony Abbott. They must be desperate.
Yesterday Abbott said that an ETS “[Is] a so-called market in the non-delivery of an invisible substance to no one“. Not his best line, and definitely not as clever as some of those I’ve enlisted above, but vaguely amusing.
And what’s more not one part of it is untrue. The ETS is an exercise in futility, the market for trading in permits is rigged, it is an invisible substance, and the contracts don’t end in physical delivery and what’s more don’t generally end in a reduction in global CO2.
Indeed, expressed this way, the comment draws attention to the fact that many of the people involved in so-called carbon markets are actually shonks, and that a leading light in the early stages of the market was Enron, and that was the major reason it went broke.
It was just such a derivatives market that plunged the world’s banking system into chaos and led to the GFC.
Yet we’ve had Penny Wong fronting the cameras to ridicule Abbott.
I’m not sure whether she thought of the issue herself, or picked it up from Twitter where the issue first started to trend.
And now it’s everywhere, with wiseacres even pronouncing that CO2 isn’t invisible, including someone called Dr Darren Saunders who produced a photo of dry ice to prove that CO2 isn’t invisible or weightless which the Greens saw fit to retweet.
They must be desperate to discredit Abbott to carry on with this nonsense.
So I’m quietly pleased that it will have the alternative effect. Australian politics has been dominated by this sort of bullying for too long.
Away from the echo chamber of Twitter, where all the twits apparently gather, the punter in the public bar, or the punteress picking the kids up from daycare, will nod their heads and say “He must be onto something if all these smarty pants are piling into him like that.”
And so he is. Run RAbbot run.
Australian politics is much poorer if the audience is so dumb they can’t appreciate the humour in a verbal flourish. A case of “no turn unstoned”.
I agree that current ETS’s are little more than rorts that makes a few proponents seriously rich.
In fact an international scheme will reap those that see themselves as future carbon trading brokers, around 140 billions per, in sit down or paper shuffling money!?
That money comes on top of the price we will pay for carbon.
I’ve read some estimates which conclude that an effective $20.00 per ton price, would require a charge of around $63.00 a ton?
Not only do we need to pay the charges imposed by brokers, we will also need to pay a veritable army of NEW bureaucrats to police the system.
A $6-10.00 price can hardly be covering brokerage costs and the bureaucrats charged with policing the current schemes.
Policing made doubly difficult or plain impossible, by linking into an international market and all the shonks that will also create?
I mean, all we need do to assure ourselves of just that outcome, is look at how the globalisation has allow tax cheats to cheat on a hitherto unknown scale!
In fact, I seen some estimates which conclude that cheating could be costing our own economy in excess of 100 billion per?
If we must put a price on carbon, then let it be a cap and tax scheme.
The proposed cap can be the same as would apply under any comparable ETS!
And the lowering of that cap can proceed at the same rate as any comparable ETS!
However, only emission above the cap needs to be taxed! And we don’t need a veritable army of brand new billionaire brokers, to make that alternative the reality!
And we may need to do something with those bureaucrats, made entirely redundant by badly needed and long overdue genuine tax reform and massive simplification.
A carbon tax in that case, could be far more punitive and therefore vastly more effective; inasmuch as, only those refusing to adapt and adopt new technology, i.e., cheaper than coal thorium power and or local supply paradigms, will be punished!?
Ditto those states, and or, their political masters, that simply refuse to make that happen!
Many can make a case for moving to new self sufficiency schemes on commercial grounds alone, regardless of whether we do or don’t don’t have any form of carbon pricing!
I have purchased a much more fuel efficient four cylinder motor vehicle and am installing solar panels to compliment a dozen trees growing in my yard.
We can now buy these quite markedly improved solar power systems on affordable terms, that are usually cheaper as ongoing outlays than the current power bills?
Sure feed in tariffs have gone down; but, energy prices can only ever rise with peak oil?
In fact, we don’t seem to be seriously looking for genuine alternatives, or even lower carbon producing self sufficiency?
Both of which if part of any intentional agreement, would seriously force down energy prices. But particularly those that are killing energy importing, energy dependant economies!
Alan B. Goulding.
Comment by Alan B. Goulding — July 16, 2013 @ 10:30 am