If the Greens cared about the environment, they’d call this scheme “a ghastly waste”.
The “price” of carbon was advertised as $24 (per ton emitted) but real price of reducing emissions by one ton was $5,000. It could only happen when people are playing with other people’s money. That’s the soft left idea of good maths and good business.
That the Labor-Greens boast that this spectacular failure was a success shows the carbon tax was never about the climate, nor about CO2 or the environment. Follow the money. The purpose of the tax was to reward friends and punish competitors. Anyone dependent on Big-Government is a “friend”, and anyone who can stand on their own two feet is a “polluter” or a “denier”.
If the Greens cared about the environment, they’d call this scheme “a ghastly waste”.
The $15 billion price tag is $670 per Australian, or $2,700 per household of four. The real total is much more (when will the government add up the real bill?), because that tally doesn’t include the money wasted on solar panels, windpower, or the whole “Department of Weather Change”. It doesn’t include millions in scientific research money poured down the sinkhole of climate models that don’t model our climate, nor the advertising, promotion and propaganda of all of the above.
A smart conservative government would add up the whole bill, then spend 0.1% (something like $20 million) paying skeptical scientists to audit, and check the evidence trail. They would trumpet their green credentials. This source of the river of gravy starts with the science. People who care about the poor and the planet would want to get that right.
THE carbon tax cost $5,310 for every tonne of emissions abated during its two years of operation, new government analysis shows.
The release of the National Greenhouse Gas Inventory last week shows emissions for the economy, excluding the land sector, fell 1.4 per cent in 2013-14 and 0.8 per cent in 2012-13. When the land sector is included, as is the case under Kyoto accounting, Australia’s emissions fell from 567.1mt in 2012-13 to 563.5mt, a drop of 3.6mt. Between 2011-12 and 2013-14, emissions fell 0.5 per cent or 2.9mt (there was a small rise the previous year).
No one can call this a success. Australian emissions were falling before the carbon tax came in. The big 1.4% fall only came after the figures of the year before were adjusted up. The 0.8% reduction they talk about for the previous 12 months does not exist after the figures were changed, yet they are still citing it. The current count of emissions will most likely be adjusted up itself, and the 1.4% figure is mere noise in the data — in past years the post hoc adjustments have been larger.
Opposition climate change spokesman Mark Butler told the ABC the report proved Labor’s policies were working. “The National Greenhouse Gas Inventory — dropped by the government in the lead-up to Christmas in an effort to bury the report — showed that the emissions count for the overall year of Labor’s climate policies reduced by 1.4 per cent,” he said.
“That compares to a decline in emissions of 0.8 per cent for the previous 12 months, which shows that Labor policies to reduce emissions were working — to say otherwise is laughable.
Shame the Greens hate the environment.
Edit April 2015: First sentence changed to make it clearer and more useful. Was “It takes skill to figure out a scheme where you set the price at $24 for something and end up paying $5,000.”