When will you people do a bit of research on your beloved renewable energy? If you would only do a bit with an open mind you would know that there is no such thing.

There is hydro, but we can't even get that right. When we get it working we throw out half the capacity in the name of environmental flows. Then our topography on the mainland does not give much scope for much more hydro anyway.

If you really want to reduce CO2 emissions, although there is no sound reason for doing that, your only chance, in the near future is gas or nuclear, there is nothing else now, & won't be for decades.

It is a pity that global warming is not a fact. Every couple of degrees hotter would open up huge tracts of the northern hemisphere land mass for agriculture.

The only people on earth to be throwing their lot to wind are the poms, despite the fact that at the peak of their very cold last winter, their entire wind investment would not have lit a single village. Have you ever noticed that it is coldest when the skies are clear, & the atmosphere still & windless?

With the planet now rapidly cooling we had better hope that we can get hold of some of that coal to heat our homes. We won't be able to afford electric heating, even if the power is on, & the greenies would not like to see us burning wood again, to warm our homes.

In years to come in Oz, absolutely folly will be known as "doing a Gillard", long after few remember who the dill was.

<< The 5% reduction over 2000 figures is based on buying $bns from other countries in "carbon credits" >>

Yes Shadow Minister, it would appear that the goal of a 5% reduction on 2000 levels is disingenuous. There really is no way that it will happen.

In fact I fear that the carbon tax will actually work in reverse. Given the big discrepancy between the revenue created by the tax and the much larger compensation package, the difference is going to increase economic expansion, which will be achieved via expansion in mining, not least with coal, increases in exports to China, making us more dependent on that country, and the maintenance of high immigration to provide skilled workers and consequently an ever rapidly increasing number of energy users and CO2 emitters in this country.

The motivation here is all wrong. This carbon tax should have been part of a sustainability strategy, not simply a climate-change mitigation strategy.

The damn silly Greens should have driven this. They should have made sure that the achievement of a sustainable society was the primary focus of Gillard’s package.

We should have been told that the development of renewable energy sources and the winding back of fossil fuel usage is of paramount importance for much more than just climate change reasons.

We need to do this to prepare for peak oil, which could have devastating effects on our economic and social fabric in the very near future, due to rising prices long before actual shortages of supply.

And we need to stop bad growth (expansionism) and foster only the good fraction of growth, which is achieved via technological advancement, better efficiencies in resource usage, and alternative renewable energy sources.

This sort of stuff would resonate with the Australian populace a lot more than climate change if it was well-presented. And it would be much more acceptable to big business too.

This would be all about our society and our lives and the threats to them in the very near future, rather than about our tiny and rather ethereal part in the global fight against climate change, in which we would still only play a minuscule part even if we were highly successful in reducing emissions.

A golden opportunity has been missed here.

Ludwig, I agree. As I've argued here:
http://thecomensality.com/avasay/hewsonasia/feed
A tax on burning fossil fuels is absolutely inevitable. The question is how best to spend that tax. So Far the discussion has been dominated by bean counters with no imagination whatsoever.
If they were fair dinkum about reducing pollution, there steps we could take that wouldn't cost anything at all, like interest free loans to make houses and businesses more energy efficient. sales tax incentives for manufacturers to produce innovative new energy saving products.
The only way pensioners and low income earners can 'do their bit' is by buying more energy efficient appliances they can't afford, or simply by going without.
Must we put up with little old ladies dying of pneumonia for the sake of the environment?

heard our pm today..talking about cutting polution
[is this anything like cutting a ffffarrrt?]
did she really mean poo/loo=tion?

indeed does she even hold
the art contained in a fart

funny how it sounds like it is.FFF ahhh[hard t]
phhh-f-art

anyhow here spin isnt cutting it
[going by the faces at qanda..last night]

so were back to the ph-art..words
that mimic what they are

are we seeing the real juliar yet?
has she gone again?

thing is it was or it wasnt..the 'real juliar'

your too clever by half juliar
using your kiddie voice..not your hard art hard t voice

i say phart because we call the nice word phlat-u-lance
or may be a flat u lance..[in b flat?]..

anyhow its going over
like a lead ballooon
smelling so bad it vacates a room
is falling phlat
whatever that means

pull the lead out red
many good people got faith in you..[we dont get why]

but your as flat as flatulance..
[avoid the use of the word cutting
your giving new meanings to the same old words

all i heard was the same old thing
on so many different venues
phew..peeuw..

who cut their poll*=lootion in here

ps nz has half price permits
ie a lower setr price..plus comparitivly lower exchange rates

seems we will be buying their permits

wasnt raising the tax threshold a clever use of spin
yes we raised the level at which you pay tax
but increased the tax you pay..AT THE LOWER LEVEL..by 3 %

high earners in affect got a tax cut
your too clever by half juliar
many are beginning to notice

so slick
it sounds like a wet ph-art

Grim, how can you expect to be taken seriously, when you throw out bland, unsupported statements like, "A tax on burning fossil fuels is absolutely inevitable."

Would you please qualify why you believe this. Is it that you believe that governments need the income to pay the the burgening number of bureaucrats? Perhaps it's the cost of the soon to hit superannuation of said bureaucrats as they retire?

Perhaps it's some misguided idea that the CO2 produced has some effect on our climate. What ever it is, your post is not much use without this clarification.