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The Forum > Article Comments > Will Australia's emissions policy encourage global action? > Comments

Will Australia's emissions policy encourage global action? : Comments

By Geoff Carmody, published 16/11/2011

Any ETS will be a market for paper shuffling, speculation, price volatility and little global emissions abatement.

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"developed countries to accept much tougher emissions targets than developing countries."

Unfortunately "toughness" of emissions targets is a highly ambiguous concept.

Would a target of N tonnes CO2 per head per year, applied to all countries, be an equally "tough" target?

Or would a target of N% reduction from current emission levels, applied to all countries, be an equally "tough" target?

Those would be two _enormously_ different target regimes.

Or does "toughness" refer to the difficulty a country would have in complying with a target?

This is an important issue since one of the many reasons trotted out in some quarters for doing nothing about CO2 emissions is that developing nations also need to be included in any deal. Whereas in fact the emissions of those developing nations are far less, per head, than even the lowest targets proposed for this country.
Posted by jeremy, Wednesday, 16 November 2011 9:31:39 AM
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Those who want to reduce emissions are going to have to face the fact that Geoff is right. There is no major push to reduce emissions. However, activists often refuse to believe this obvious fact, pointing to say the European ETS or the American state schemes, and insisting that these partial, incomplete schemes add up to something globally.

You will be told that China has a price on carbon when it doesn't - certainly not in the sense we would understand it; or that India has a carbon tax, which it doesn't. It has a nominal per-tonne tax on coal, and so on.

As matters stand, delegates meeting at Durban will be lucky to hammer out a successor to Kyoto, which in itself was of limited use at best.

As for the international trade in these emissions certificates which Geoff discusses, a point to note is that this trade has immense, only partially-solved problems of assurance (does the project actually exist and does it do what the proponents say it does), and additionality (would the project have gone ahead anyway).
Posted by Curmudgeon, Wednesday, 16 November 2011 10:05:34 AM
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Of course it will encourage global action.

It will encourage much mirth, even belly laughter in many regions.

Those who export to Oz, or compete against us, will be staggering under the combined load of their increased profits, while being out of breath from laughing.

It does seem that stupidity, & wishful thinking abound in Oz today.
Posted by Hasbeen, Wednesday, 16 November 2011 11:34:10 AM
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I think Australia may end up calling the shots. We have the most uranium, may overtake Qatar as the biggest LNG exporter and more coal export terminals than any other country. Not even the threat of damage to the Great Barrier Reef stops us building new coal ports. When fossil fuel prices increase as they will anyway with or without carbon tax Australia can become the swing supplier. For example we could ask fossil fuel customers to pay carbon tax on a voluntary basis with refunds for green projects. If they don't like it see how they go elsewhere and don't bother asking for any uranium.
Posted by Taswegian, Wednesday, 16 November 2011 11:57:18 AM
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Taswegian, have you ever been to the Barrier Reef?

If so, how much of its 1500 nautical mile extent have you been to?

Do you realise how big it is?

Do you realise how far off shore it is?

Do you realise how little damage one ship, or even a hundred, trying to commit suicide, could do to the reef?

I really do get annoyed when some greenie, with some damn fool agenda [present company not included], talks about the damage to the reef done by one ship, as if it's significant. They'd never get away with it with decent press or an informed community.

The little bit, in just one complex out from the Whitsundays, that I used to take tourists to consists of 75 nautical miles of reef, with the largest enclosed lagoon being 7,500 acres.

That is just one of a dozen in the same area.

If you are right about our intending export of all this carbon based fuel, why should we be taxing ourselves, in a contrived effort to reduce CO2 emissions?

Then that fool woman wonders why we don't trust her.
Posted by Hasbeen, Wednesday, 16 November 2011 2:42:53 PM
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The carbon tax has succeeded in its only real objective, to buy the support of the Greens and prop up this shambolical excuse for a government for another year or so. One way or another the Green influence will be gone by 2014 or so and we can get back to rationally navigating our way through a world full of crumbling economies without shooting ourselves in both feet first.
Posted by Jon J, Wednesday, 16 November 2011 6:05:17 PM
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