Emissions Trading Scheme Forum – Home page

[This Quadrant Online ETS Forum is available in pdf here…]

The Most Important Vote Since Federation

The government’s emissions trading legislation is to be considered again by the Senate on 13 August. The vote that Senators deliver then, and again later should the bill be defeated and resubmitted, is the biggest decision that they will make in their political careers. For the passage or not of this bill will determine the fate of the Australian economy, and the standard of living of average Australians, for decades to come.

The matter is, or should be, one of simple cost:benefit analysis, though you would never know that from the hysterical nonsense that is propagated about global warming by green propaganda organisations and their media sycophants – with ABC, SBS and the Fairfax press leading the charge.

Depending upon the level of carbon dioxide taxation imposed at the start of an emissions trading scheme, the handed-down direct cost to an Australian family of four will be about an extra $1,000-3,000 per year. These costs will also engender additional indirect costs, and will rise rapidly as the carbon dioxide levy is successively increased in subsequent years.

What then is the benefit? Because carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, if less is emitted (which is unlikely: the experience of early mover countries like Norway being that emissions have continued to increase despite a tax of $20-30/tonne of carbon dioxide) then some future warming will be averted.

How much? No-one knows accurately because it depends upon the details of the computer model that is used. But estimates are that if Australia reduces its emissions significantly, then about 0.0001 deg. C of warming might be averted by 2100 – that is an unmeasurable one ten-thousandth of one degree in one hundred years.

In other words, the introduction of emissions trading in Australia will have no measurable effect on future climate at all. You might as well stand under the shower and tear up billion dollar notes for all the good that emissions trading legislation will do.

This issue is now of such public importance that Quadrant Online has invited a group of respected and well qualified Australian commentators to share with you their views about it. Their essays are linked below, and I commend them for reading.

Having absorbed the various messages of these commentators – who cover topics across the spectrum of the science, economics, sociology and politics of global warming and emissions trading – you will probably come to the same conclusion as I have. Which is that the grotesquely named “Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme”, aka carbon dioxide taxation, will cause major economic and sociological damage to Australian society for absolutely no environmental benefit in return.

That agreed, Senators from all political parties are surely duty bound to reject this futile and ill-conceived legislation; for future generations are depending upon them to do so.

Quadrant Online ETS Forum participants:

James Allan – A tax would be better

David Archibald – It’s the sun, silly

Bob Carter – ETS are immoral

Ian Castles – Global targets won’t work

Sinclair Davidson – Green jobs subtract value

Terry Dwyer – Domestic solar power is a con

David Evans – Economic stupicide

Ray Evans – Get ready for power cuts

Viv Forbes – Agriculture is a carbon zero sum game

John Hyde – The “Save Our Seats” strategy

John Izzard – Roll on climate rationalists