Whichever it is, a tax or cap it has to be comprehensive and not riddled with loopholes and perverse subsidies to major polluters. The Australian ETS is about as full of holes as you can get and will achieve nothing other than another squad of bureaucrats to administer it and continual pressure from vested interests to further erode the already worthless scheme.

Theoretically a tax would indeed be simpler to implement that an ETS but would leave the cap up to the market to determine at any level of tax. An ETS on the other hand would set the cap but leave the price of the permits ie the tax up to the market to determine.

im still not getting que warrento..[by what right]

can anyone point out in the constitution..where govt has the right to create this..''credit'.. for carbon..[that its giving to big buisness?]

this credit that is convertable..into a new compulsory tax on everything we buy and sell...[that seemingly will create a new beurocracy..but also a new form of money

[to witt a carbon credit..[or is it a carbon tax]..anyhow we are going to have the debate for this new transaction tax...but by what right is govt creating a carbon credit/a floating value credit that has a market rate but no legitimate reason of being[its not constitutionally legal]to tax carbon[they can tax citisenry/buisness but reveal your authoprity to tax carbon

..its not money yet its credit

clearly..govt is going beyond its brief..its allowed to regulate buisness...but where is its right to give carnon/credit to corperations...the right to issue future tax carbon-credits,..the whole SCEME is twilight zone...

im looking forward to the debate..[to find out by what right]...yes climate change is beyond debate [but succes or failure of this tax, will be if the climate cools..[or if the climate stops changing?

will there be a sunset clause[does the credit become a refund if we begin cooling..or will it then become a warming tax, is this tax to make climate change or prevent us getting any real change..[more [ever more cash /credit]to big buisness from our taxes

who gets our carbon credits[we pay it to shopkeepers..[and they send it where?...these credits come from who..[the treasury..[the fed?..the mint..[what underpins these credits?...who holds the security underpinning the credit..[are we the asset?..

are we creditor..[or debitor..or the security..[or the cash cow..[who is govt representing...who benefits..who is accountable for the truth or faulsity of the facts underpinning this new tax..[is there a point where the tax dies..[or is this new tax forever].,que warrento

ok its name is carbon polution rediction SCEME

My problem with “punish the polluter”, “polluter pays” and similar emotional thinking is that leads naturally to the “put a price on carbon” approach as the first solution we think of when we want to reduce emissions. Even worse, it encourages us to stop looking for a better approach as soon as we convince ourselves that this emotionally satisfying approach will work well enough to do the job. The problem is that, even though increasing prices will change behaviour, there are often far more cost effective ways of reducing emissions. For example, the following UK review indicated that a 10% increase in the price of fuel would give a drop in fuel consumption of 2.5% within a year rising to 6% in the longer term as the effect of changing car buying patterns took effect.
http://www2.cege.ucl.ac.uk/cts/tsu/papers/transprev243.pdf As a rough approximation, a 10% increase in Australian fuel price would add $3billion to the country's annual fuel bill for these piddiling gains. By contrast, if we left fuel price unchanged and used regulations to drive down the average fuel consumption of new cars we could achieve a reduction of over 50% by simply changing the mix of current models being sold. (Current average for cars is 11.5 l/100km)

In a similar vein, price increases will be a lot lower if price and sales guarantees are used to drive investment in clean technologies. By contrast, ETS and carbon taxes depend on driving the price of the dirty alternative above the full price of the clean alternative to get investment started.

The artificial price increases and supply resrictions that are a feature of ETS should be seen as a last resort, not the answer of choice.

Off topic

rpg

I have explained elsewhere. Which part of the following statement do you not understand?

"You are confusing me with somebody else – I don’t have a web site."

Let me try and make it simple for you, in point form:

1. I am limited by word/post limits on OLO.

2. I am not limited by word/post limits at Barry Brook's site

http://bravenewclimate.com/

Now, go to bed and sleep on it.

Q&A .. got it, I clearly misunderstood, thanks for clarifying.

No, have to be up for a web conference with colleagues in USA.