Some say carbon tax and high prices will stop consumption and pollution.
Others prefer to have a per-person national consumption limit, tradeable on the exchange.
Some ask how do high prices and taxes stop pollution when we export huge quantities of polluting coal overseas?
Others say we could cut our consumption by being careful but we don’t switch of power .
Some say high petrol prices have not cut petrol consumption.
What do you want Government to do? Join the campaign on Voterland.

Voterland>> Some say carbon tax and high prices will stop consumption and pollution.<<

Yes, and unemployment will do the same

Well I will join you here voterland if not on your site.
Carbon pricing, and it will come as a shock to some, is to drive change not tax us more.
That cost is a needed one.
To contain man made climate change.
And it WILL be execpted practice in most of the world in the next two decades.
But may not be enough to stop some very bad effects of CC.

Hey Belly, I see you have jumped onto the band wagon and carry on with the NOW politically correct term of "CC",...climate change eh.

Only a few years ago the acolytes called it GLOBAL WARMING, remember that. But that term magically disappeared and morphed into CLIMATE CHANGE when the numbers in the global warming "model" was proved and admitted to be a deception of manipulated numbers by climate scientists looking for money.

In the past few years we have had constant rain which has filled our Warragamba dam to near capacity. Floods that saw the end of water restrictions for Brizzy and the Gold Coast, and the farmers looking forward to a decent crop this year, if the rain does not cut the yield before harvest.

Yesterday Canberra had an overnight minimum of 1 degree seven days into summer, and it was nippy in Sydney as well.

The fraud that is the Garnaut Climate Change Review—Update 2011 released a series of papers in February and March 2011 addressing developments across a range of areas including:

•climate change science and impacts,
•international mitigation progress,
•carbon pricing,
•land,
•innovation, and
•the electricity sector.

Yet the good fraudster Garnaut is happy to live next to a waterway that will see his property inundated with a meter of water anytime now. I understand his neighbours are watching out for a "for sale" sign on his property, but no sign yet.....

Do you agree that ocean temperatures are rising.
I don't see where the difference is Global warming or Climate change.
Deny as much as you like, all i know is we have to change our ways, or we will be in big bother.
More intense weather patterns, It's hard to say nothing is changing.

Of course the temperature is rising !
It has being doing that since early 1700s since a period called the
Maunder Minimum ended.
They used to have a festival on the Thames river every year when it
was frozen over until the Maunder Minimum ended.

The sea level has risen a very small amount going by the tide mark at
Port Arthur, certainly less than computer projections.

What is certain is that the government is in panic mode as they forced
some of the electricity price rises with the co2 tax so as to alter
our behaviour, then compensated us for the increase, and now they
want to install smart meters so that we will pay less for our power
when the meters will increase the power bills anyway !

Does anyone really believe that installing smart meters will save us
momey when the purpose of the meter is to charge us more when we use
the most power ?

I mean really ! Or is this just another Julia lie ?

Hi Belly, I agree on the concept of the carbon tax though useage limits would be fairer, like rationing - tradeable on an exchange. How the tax stops pollution when Aus is exporting massive amounts of coal to be burned overseas is beyond my understanding. Given that governments change, my bet is that like road tax and fuel tax it will eventually become just consolidated revenue and used nothing to do with pollution. The reason power prices are up is, in NSW, that last year the government drew out all revenue and capital profits as dividends - $1.6 billion. They left all the debt that had been accumulated building up those assets sold, in the power companies for us consumers to service and repay. No decent company directors pay out 100% of profits. Usually it would be 5%. Electricity sales have simply become a tax, just like petrol prices. High pertol prices have not reduced petrol consumption. Governments should go back to subsidising solar and wind power and legislate for it on every roof in Aus by 2020. What do you think?

Belly: "Carbon pricing, and it will come as a shock to some, is to drive change not tax us more. That cost is a needed one. To contain man made climate change."

No one has been able to table empirical scientific evidence that anthropogenic CO2 emissions have caused climate change. So, unless you want to penalise everyone by raising electricity prices, what is the point of imposing carbon dioxide taxes?

The carbon tax is simply a permit to pollute.

Had the actual polluters been hit with a tax, that's us by the way, we WOULD HAVE reduced our consumption and who knows, power prices may have come down as reduced demands may have caused competition from the generators, who may well have discounted to maintain or increase market share.

With the current system, the generators get taxed, then simply pass it on.

Yet another failure of this incompitent government.

Meanwhile they are searching high and wide for any way to fudge a surplus, although I think they are actually looking for the best excuse to do a back flip on that promise as well.

So we come full circle.
So many threads so many words, we even have a thread right now,active, about climate change.
Sonofgloin, well you may think as you wish, unless it hurts.
I rather thought of others in saying some would be supprised.
But if the head cover fits, and you feel warm and comfortable in it,it is yours.
Not going to fall for the warmist, junk.
I know man is having an effect, and see evidence of it every day.
Higher electricity? 10% any claim of higher is self deceit.
How much has Petrol gone up vs electricity in the past ten years?

What are the impacts of that higher fuel price.
What effect has the extreme by percentage rises in tax on smokes and beer had.
Recent wine flask rises?
Transport fares as a result of point one?
Child care?
Interest rates fall, has that countered the carbon tax?

579

Firstly, I am not a climate change sceptic, however, I do believe that money is behind all this global warming/climate change propaganda.

You say, More intense weather patterns, It's hard to say nothing is changing.

But how then do we explain the ice age, as man had no influence on that.

Now while I admit there is a problem, in my opinion, the answer is not in massively reducing outputs, but rather, in finding ways to deal with the problem, because reductions will mean loss of jobs.

Now as for the carbon tax, now there's a laugh.

It was designed to force power generators to shut down, yet, once the numbers were crunched and they realize they could simply pass the tax on as it is little more than a permit to pollute, whammo, up go power prices.

I still say the users should pay the tax, not the generator, as the only reason they generate ( profits aside) is to feed the demands of the user as once a business is called upon to collect, or administer a tax, the costs of doing so are often added to the end price the consumer pays.

Now I say user pays, as firstly, the tax could have been smaller, as there were less accounting and profit making hands to pass through and, it would have persuaded many to reduce there usage, hence, reducing generation outputs, and ultimately, reducing emissions.

So now we have Julia, running around like a headless chook, trying to find ways to reduce power prices, prices that she influenced in the first place.

In fact, labor are fast becoming exposed for there inabillities, as they seek to plug the holes for the likes of power price reductions, NDI scheme, education, health and there fast crumbling ambitious quest for a bogus surplus.

At least we are heading into an election year.

Butch . You are sounding like SM or arjay. The biggest installer of solar and wind here are the power generators. Then again ours have been privatized for several years. They know the writing is on the wall.
An outcome with the states yesterday was unanimous except for QLD.
This will not hold anything up.
Your loss of jobs has been happening since jobs were invented. Our unemployment is now 5.2%
The carbon tax is doing what it is supposed to. The use of coal is being squeezed off, as more and more renewables come on line.
It's the lack of ice is the problem these days, with rising ocean temperatures, we are in for more ferocious storms.

579, I do believe in climate change, I believe it is cyclical with the sun being the governing factor. I also agree with Rehctub, that money is the driving force behind the “man made” climate change scenario.

There are many anomalies in historic weather patterns such as the Middle Ages ice age or prolonged droughts such as the one that quite possibly drove the Mayans and Africans out of previously habitable lands and that occurred long before the industrial revolution.

579 please consider this scenario. Modern day environmental consciousness comes from the cultural revolution of the 1960’s. The perceived enemy was big business, the polluters. Corporations were lobbied to clean up their manufacturing and disposal processes, but that adds cost to the end product and diminishes sales volume and net profit.

The Green movement was hijacked by the “money” and they then set the agenda. The agenda was to shift the “responsibility” to the end user, us. We are responsible for pollution because we consume, big business is free to pollute and the spotlight on them to clean up their act is diminished. The ultimate illustration of this is the Carbon Tax. I does not stop pollution and it has little effect o consumer usage.

You gotta know who your enemy is, most greenies do not, their enemy drives their agenda.

Either Julia Gillard is confused or I am.
The introduction of smart meters will mean that at the highest time
of demand, ie while the evening meal is being cooked on a hot or cold
day the charging rate will here be 25 cents per kwh.
It is not a moveable activity, certainly not till before 2PM or after
10 PM where the off peak charge is 10 cents per kwh for hot water heating.

So how is knowing what the charges are help you to avoid the peak times ?
How will knowing these charges help you avoid them ?

Is Julia stupid or is it me ?
Does the Lodge cook prepare out of peak times ?

It is intended to have smart meters capable of controlling your
appliances. There are already engineering standards in place to
enable the application of systems.
It has been mainly held up because the industry has wanted to use
systems that cause very significant radio interference to communicate
with the appliances. The opposition by the Dept of Communications
and radio amateurs to broadband over power line has stopped it in Australia.
There are alternative techniques but the industry has wanted to take the easy way out.

Bazz Smart meters are smart because they know what day it is, Weekends are all off peak so to are public holidays. You have been had for years because of that.
My smart meter is four years old. Smart meters are designed to be altered and read from an office somewhere.
The smart meter is programmed remotely for your situation. Depends if you have powered hot water or not, or medical equipment.
SOG Cyclical maybe, it just happens to be at an all time high reading for CO2. Ocean temperature is Gaining and releasing more CO2 than ever.
It's hard not to blame CO2 as it is well known to be a green house gas.

The meter is not all that smart, it is the system that it is connected
to where the smarts are installed.
The plan is for each appliance to have a subnet tcp/ip address and have
power on/off controls or other functions if required.

The idea being that they do not have to shed all the load in a
particular area. They can turn off your air conditioner for say an hour
and leave someone elses running, then swap you around.

It is all to do with Julia Gillards campaign to remove the gold from
our electricity system. I am pretty sure she does not understand it,
someone has just dreamt up this gold plated network phrase and told
her that it is costing us the earth.
In Melbourne I believe they have been using the phone network to
communicate to the meters, but other areas are not sure on how to
make the connection. Those that I know of in Sydney are not connected
to a network.
They only appear to be associated with solar cell systems.

Solar power offers great power but deprives coal miners of jobs and profits, government of huge taxes, so government has a clever scheme in NSW at least to kill it. One might expect power users who feed some power back into the grid from rooftop solar cells to be charged for their net power use. Not so. They are charged about 25c for each kilowatt consumed and paid about 6c for each kilowatt fed in. The 6c is the wholesale price power companies pay for power. If they charge people retail they should pay them retail. If they charge them wholesale they should pay them wholesale. This is just plain cheating by politicians, bureaucrats and power company executives. But get the profit margin. Many businesses would think themselves very lucky to earn between 33% and 50% Gross Margin on sale of goods or services - maximum mark up of 100%. The power companies are earning a Gross Margin of over 75%, a mark up of 300%. Let's cut it down. Let's make it an election issue. This is not about saving the environment (we still export the same amount of coal for someone to burn and pollute the atmosphere)it is about dragging big profits and big taxes out of ordinary voters. Time to look at those marginal and swing electorates and see if we can get some politicians who care about the people.