"Targeting national consumption of emissions helps promote a global deal. Targeting emissions production does not."

But what it does do is transfer to the government arbitrary and uncheckable powers to interfere in every aspect of your daily life, reward their supporters in industry and punish any person or institution foolish enough to question their policies. It's a win-win situation!

Except for the public, of course.

The government's proposed carbon tax will make us economic losers and environmental hypocrites.
geoff,
"will make us" ? I think there is plenty evidence that we already are.

I think in any sticky situation it's a bit weak to say nothing can be done unless someone else comes to the rescue. Far from being powerless Australia has soft power through popular culture and hard power through resource leverage. In fact we are lagging not leading in carbon mitigation. I think the simple fact is if China and India don't put in a matching effort on carbon mitigation we will have to put a carbon tariff on their products. Ah but our per capita emissions are so much higher then again we don't have such a large population.

If you accept climate change as a troubling reality then it is in our own long term interests to mitigate carbon. We may have to accept some short term pain. Before long it may reveal itself to be a wise move since coal, oil and gas will get expensive anyway. However there is still enough coal left to bring intolerable extreme weather. Better to leave in the ground and learn to live without it. Therefore the line 'it's better to do nothing' is not only weak but short sighted.

The point Geoff Carmody, and others, makes, that any carbon pricing scheme that disadvantages Australian trade-exposed exporters will be counter-productive in terms of global emissions, is so obvious that I wonder whether politicians simply don't understand it. So let me try to help with an example. Australia is a globally successful aluminium producer. To make a kilogram of aluminium from Australia bauxite and Australian energy (mainly electricity) requires some 210 megajoules. That's a lot of energy, but Australia's competitive success in that business means that we are doing at least as well, and generally better, than other producers. And there are good technical reasons for this. So, assuming that the world continues to need aluminium at its present rate of consumption, shutting down Australian production will simply shift it elsewhere and result in higher energy usage, and emissions, elsewhere. So it does absolutely nothing for global emissions, while severely damaging our own prosperity. There is no argument, moral, logical or rational, that could support such an action.

The argument that it is better to do nothing rather than to do something that only gives the appearance of doing something, but in fact achieves nothing and disadvantages Australia in the process.

There are many other mechanisms such as to reduce dependency on coal power in progressive stages while increasing the investment in renewables. There will always be some coal power required given the debate about baseload power and demand (if the population keeps growing).

There are also other methods to do with regulation about filtering, dealing with waste etc that could be implemented which could include impositions on those who export to Australia in terms of responsible manufacture or production. Stop importing food that we can grow here with a low carbon footprint (if one must use that term) and only import food where it is environmentally responsible ie. where producing that same crop in Australia involves more emmissions (greenhousing, heat etc) than the impact of food miles.

There is so much more we could do and instead have opted for a carbon tax which will not necessarily lead to a reduction in emissions especially as there will be supports and subsidies provided to offset costs to both consumers and emitters, and those who can afford the inceased energy bills will just reduce spending in other areas.

There are any number of troubling aspects to this carbon tax - oops, *price* - but a couple of them would be:

This is the Greens' baby all the way: Doleful Bob and the Carping Penguin hovering alongside the Red Ferret, making sure she reads the script they wrote for her. So what does it say for democracy in this country, that a party with a grand total of one lower house member, and who captured at best 13% of the national vote, is able to strong-arm the most far-reaching tax and most aggressive program of social engineering in the history of this nation?

What, in the end, is it going to do? If, as we keep being assured, there will be compensation for consumers, does anyone think is going to happen? 'Big polluters' will be taxed. The tax impost will be passed on as increased prices. The revenue collected will be recycled back to the consumer as compensation for increased prices. And so the cycle will go.

If, as is more likely, the 'compensation' doesn't make the price rises - which is after all what the tax is about: making formerly cheap energy more expensive and thus less attractive to the consumer. Smiley-face totalitarians like the Greens just LOVE using taxes to try and remould society to their utopian visions - consumers will simply end up paying much more for the energy they can't do without.

Oh, but the Greens will say, the revenue will be ploughed into subsidising 'clean energy', bringing prices down. Will it, bollocks. Fossil energy may end up being artificially priced as expensively, but all that will do is simply lead more people into penury as they try and pay their electricity bills.

This whole climate change/carbon tax malarkey is proof positive of (Groucho) Marx's dictum that 'politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies'.