Carbon Credits

Australians want to help improve the world in which they live. Most would therefore rightly assume that if they pay a Carbon Tax this will at least clean up emissions in Australia.

Certainly this is the impression given by the Government’s Carbon Tax ad campaign and from the debate as the Parliament this week votes on the legislation. But nothing could be further from the truth.

Australia’s emissions will go up, not down, under the Carbon Tax. And on top of the $105 billion the tax is to raise between now and 2020, Treasury’s own modelling shows that we will also have to spend an additional $3.5bn each year on foreign carbon credits.

Continue reading "Counterpunch: we need real incentives, not another tax" »

The shock defeat of the Brumby state government last weekend has unleashed the usual muttering within the ALP about how to shore-up a crumbling base.

Already, some Labor MPs - let’s call them the GOM or “grumpy old men’’ - reckon they have it pegged. Too much focus on the inner-city elites at the expense of the majority, the ordinary folk in middle and outer-suburbs. That’s their message: Labor should concern itself exclusively with bread and butter issues such as relieving cost of living pressures for ``ordinary’’ families. Nothing else.

Analytically speaking, this ‘government-out-of-touch’ critique is a soft target. Self evidently, if you lose, you were not in tune with voters. But it is rarely that simple and ignores the fact that in this instance that Labor was asking for another four years to add to its existing eleven in office. History shows this is almost always a bridge too far.

Continue reading "The big headaches are just starting for Julia" »

I am fortunate to work in an industry whose whole raison d’être is saving the world.  Saving the world used to be the job of clusters of environmental NGOs. 

But, and I’m going to be frank here, apart from some spectacular tactical victories and some incredible work by groups like Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd, at their very heart such organisations simply can’t direct the necessary levels of finance that saving the world needs. 

Charitable organisations simply don’t have the ability to restructure the world’s economy, affect the baseline drivers of deforestation, or roll out millions of wind-farms and solar panels in the short time needed.  Saving the world has become an industry.  And some people either can’t accept that, can’t understand it, or can’t find a way to adapt to fit into this new world order.

Continue reading "Media’s carbon confusion is grist for the lumber mill" »