This post is disingenuous. It's a disgrace the Labor shadow Minister would write such distorted and misleading information 0 and especially given he is an economist.

The Labor-Greens carbon tax and ETS, if allowed to continue as legislated to 2050, would reduce Australia's GDP by $1,345 billion in total (2011 AUD, not discounted). There would be no benefits for that enormous waste unless the world participates and the Labor Green scheme is integrated in the global scheme. But the global scheme will not happen. It is naive in the extreme to believe the world will embrace such a scheme that would have so many losers. There is virtually no chance of it happening. So, no benefits would be delivered for the cost of setting back our economy by $1,345 billion (for background see Submission 2 to the Senate Committee hearing into repeal of the carbon tax legislation: http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Environment_and_Communications/Clean_Energy_Legislation/Submissions).

Furthermore, 2 'real' jobs (i.e. unsubsidised jobs) are lost for every 'Green' job created by the subsidies and market distortions caused by the Labor-Green carbon restraint polices.

It's a disgrace that Labor politicians, especially those in the shadow ministry and who we should be able to trust given he was previously an academic economist and lecturer at ANU, should be writing such disingenuous and irresponsible articles.

Labor should be working for the good of the country, not for their own political advantage.

has Sydney run out of water yet? Give it away Leigh. You are flogging a dead horse or better still dead religion. By all means make donations to Flannery's new scare organisation but stop trying to suck the public purse for such nonsense. Enough tax payey money has lined the pockets of scaremongers and ideologist. Give to the poor by all means but stop expecting tax payers to fund this stupid religion.

As the sea level rises and all those expensive houses on the foreshore start to go under, as the fresh drinking water is unobtainable unless you pay a fortune for de-sal water,
as the food prices get so high that you cannot feed yourself and the kids,
as the storm damage to your Mac- castle mounts up and the insurance says "no way no pay", as the price of everything including health care gets too expensive to pay, think of all those rich buggers on a salary of millions who are off to their gated community in New Zealand and wonder if you did the right thing.
Is the economy really better than the environment?

Peter, you are right. The author should be prosecuted for misleading and deceptive conduct for writing this article.

Andrew is right of course.

How on earth is a decent Muslim Jihadists going to cover his costs of going to the middle east, if we won't give him, & his families, [yes families, he's probably got a few], the disability pension.

Don't you horrible old fashioned Ozzies realise how expensive it is firing all that led in the air, & about the place?

Opps, I didn't notice you'd got climate change in there too. Sorry Andrew, that blows it. You are only allowed one con job at a time. Go & stand in the corner for 10 minutes, then come back with just one bit of bull dust.

Let me see so generating power without generating pollution, and with a zero fuel cost is going to mean the end of civilization? Beam me up Scotty There s no intelligent life down here.

Andrew Leigh said "Australia's now-defunct emissions trading scheme"

We never had a carbon trading scheme, only a carbon tax.

Andrew also forgot to include all those that lost their jobs because of all the industries that closed to give them the emissions savings.

Andrew, you have short changed Maurice Newman. He calls the climate change assertion a fraud. Hoax is too benign a description of a fraud like anthropogenic climate change. You are a persistent fraud supporter, Andrew, ignoring the science which shows that human emissions have such a trivial effect that it is not measurable, so is not be scientifically noticed.
The assertions in your article are dishonest, as is any support for the fraud of AGW.

Taking a broad view, I think it is unfortunate that the potential of AGW has not been seen more clearly as a prime 'opportunity' to innovate in the very, very-long-term global interest.

Certainly 'Climate' is complex; and perhaps many resources have been misdirected, or potentially wasted, in attempts to isolate a magical formula by which to predict or preempt climate manifestations.
Time to bail, or to take a punt on the economic, environmental, human and biosphere potentials?

In a quite separate set of articles on this forum, Don Aitkin addresses the question "How can we usefully make judgements about science?"
On economic or 'scientific' potentials, Don appears to favour the study of 'gravitational waves' as potentially more productive (or at least interesting) than the study (or consideration) of global 'climate'.
Such 'waves', 'string theory', and the 'tricky movement' of electrons may explain microchips, space-time, or 'The Law of Everything', but I'm not sure how they will address the elimination of poverty or disease or conflict, let alone the feeding of the seething masses in the next millennium.

Andrew Leigh has identified practical benefits arising from the carbon tax, and appears to favour an ETS. I do not support the latter - paying someone else to cover our butt; and I see the fault of the carbon tax scheme (and possibly the RET) being in not preventing emitters from simply passing the cost on to consumers.

In the broad, oil and gas are finite, land and fertilisers are finite, and biodiversity is arguably 'on the brink'.
Continuing growth will eventually require multi-layer, solar and optic-fibre-supported mass hydroponics, and probably nuclear power, and most certainly total 'recycling' of garbage and of human, animal and agricultural waste.
When to act? When the last barrel of oil or megalitre of gas is harvested? Or, while the 'opportunity' is still within easy grasp?