Letter to the editor
Richard Treadgold | July 10, 2011Carbon Tax Mk IV flimsy, cancerous
To the Editor
Climate Conversation
10th July 2011
Carbon Tax Mark 4 is flimsy but dangerous.
Because of public opposition to a new tax on everything, the tax has been gutted. The PM hopes to buy public support by giving exemptions to almost everyone and offering widespread bribes to voters. It is now feeble and ineffective.
But the Green-Gillard coalition is desperate and such people cannot be trusted. They will say or promise anything in order to get this new tax introduced.
Once on the law books, the exemptions will be whittled away, the tax rate will increase and the tax bribes will disappear. It is a stealthy cancer in the gut of the Australian economy.
The cost of electricity, food, fuel and travel will increase, but few people will recognise the root cause. Politicians will blame “Woolworths, power suppliers and Big Oil” for the pain.
This new stealth tax is the thin edge of the wedge.
It will have no effect on the climate, but is a fiscal weapon too dangerous to be left in the hands of green extremists.
Letting Bob Brown loose with the vast powers of a carbon tax is like leaving the grandkids alone in the hayshed with a box of matches.
“Abolish the Stealth Tax” will be the next election slogan.
Viv Forbes
First Kyoto forests, now Kyoto people. As a forest absorbs and partially respires carbon dioxide on a daily basis, so do people. Over time, the increase in tree volume builds up a store of carbon in the structure of the tree. So too do many people, with NZ, Aus and US seemingly leading the charge. One way of doing our bit to reduce carbon pollution /sarc
Nick Smith has been muttering about “integration” of NZ and Aus ETS systems (assuming that the Aus Carbon Tax eventually morphs into an ETS as planned).
At that point, we can kiss goodbye to our freedoms, just as the member states of the EU have.
Australian Climate madness has a good one on this
“Julia in Wonderland”
http://www.australianclimatemadness.com/2011/07/terry-mccrann-julia-in-wonderland/
It’s all explained here by the ABC
http://www.abc.net.au/news/events/climate-change/carbon-pricing-explained.htm
Note the arrow pointing back to the household showing the “compensation” for the carbon tax. (According to my link above, this is actually around the same as the tax)
Then, the other arrow magically shows the same household “changing behaviour” and “moving to low emissions products”
Whose behaviour has changed since the introduction of the NZ ETS? Anyone? Don’t all shout at once…
Surely there’s an external “forcing” missing from the diagram?
Chris “buff” Huhne has an article in the Grauniad, and guess what? Comments are open..
Here’s a few samples:
Huhne by name. Hoon by nature.
The Knight of the Living Deadocrats
Mr Huhne,
Were you high on hallucinogenic drugs when you devised this so called policy?
etc etc
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/nuclearpower/8630832/Energy-prices-without-reform-well-all-be-in-the-dark.html
The Brit-in-the-street is just awakening to the vicious plundering of his or her income by the friendly ‘Greenest government ever’ forcing a huge rise in the cost of energy. My view of my English cousins is that they are incredibly slow to revolt and have an equally incredible ability to put up with appalling living conditions as they did during the WWII Blitz and still come up smiling, but there are historical precedents of the Brit populace deciding ‘enough is enough’ and kicking the bucket over the windmill very thoroughly. The most recent examples of this were the Poll Tax Riots where the populace decided that Maggie Thatcher’s Poll Tax was a very definite non-runner. The wide-awake Brits now knows that their government’s energy policy has ensured a very rapid rise in the numbers suffering fuel poverty; a significant number of Brits now have to choose between eating adequately and being adequately warm. I suspect Huhne and his colleagues will discover very soon a tipping-point is approaching rapidly and that their mad affair with windmills solar panels will cost them dearly. Sadly, the Brit populace has little political choice as the three main parties share their mad faith in ‘low-carbon energy’, and revolt appears to be the sole political alternative.
Huhne and his fellow Greenists seem to have drawn and cocked their pistols and are very carefully aiming at their own feet.