Australian treasurer Wayne Swan admitted yesterday that the government does not know which companies would be covered under the ETS.
In an answer to a question on notice by Acting Opposition Leader Warren Truss, the Government reveals it does not know which 1000 companies they are.
The Rudd governments proposed ETS is a direct attack on the nations prosperity built initially on Agriculture and in recent times on resource mining. Our proposed Emissions Trading Scheme is vastly different to anything currently in place in Europe.
- Under the white paper approach, about 70 per cent of permits will be auctioned. No comparable scheme anywhere in the world has auctioned more than 2 or 3 per cent of its permits.
- Between 2010 and 2014, the carbon costs faced by an average Australian company will be 18 times higher than those of a counterpart in the European Union.
- Australian companies classified as EITE will be required to buy between 10 and 40 per cent of their permits from July 1, 2010.
- Their European counterparts will not be required to spend a single euro on their permits before 2020. Not one single euro.
- in Europe, coalminers face no present or future carbon costs because methane – the greenhouse gas generated during the mining of coal – is not even covered by the EU ETS.
- Nearly 90 per cent of Australia’s minerals exports will be subject to the full impact of all of their permit costs.
All of this will of course make our mineral and coal mining industries uncompetitive in world markets and hence is a direct attack on our nations prosperity akin to ’self mutilation’.
Those who believe that this burden won’t harm the competitiveness of our most important export sector also believe in the tooth fairy, monkey fishing and that Elvis Presley is living in a caravan in Tumut.
“If Australia disappeared off the face of the earth, our carbon footprint would be replaced by one country, China, within three weeks,” Mr Pearson said.
This no doubt will make James Hansen happy. In an open letter Hansen has called on incoming US President Barack Obama to implement exactly the policy Australia is planning.
Hansen suggests that the tax be levied “at the well-head or port of entry” from where it “will then appropriately affect all products and activities that use fossil fuels.”
And Hansen is straightforward in what the consequences of that will be:
This tax will have “near-term, mid-term, and long-term” effects on “lifestyle choices,” Hansen acknowledges.
So while we scale back our export industries to meet Hansen’s objectives:
Britain is poised to expand its coal mining industry …. 14 companies have applied to dig nearly 60 million tonnes of coal from 58 new or enlarged opencast mines. At least six coal-fired power stations are planned. If all the applications are approved, the fastest expansion of UK coal mining in 40 years could see southern Scotland and Northumberland become two of the most heavily mined regions in Europe.
In a historical rural perspective:
In the period from, say, 1910 until the 1960s, Australia’s prosperity was based primarily on the exports of wool, wheat and meat. We used to ride on the sheep’s back.
We now ride on the dump trucks and conveyor belts which take the coal to the power stations and, of course, to the ships queuing up at the coal loaders.
If after WWII it had been seriously argued that every year, every third merino sheep should be shot, because the sheep were despoiling the environment, the protagonist would have been regarded as a lunatic.
The idiocy of a decarbonisation policy at home which is equivalent (in 1940s terms) to destroying the merino flocks, and at the same time (to come back to the 2000’s), exporting coal to the power stations of China, and India should be apparent.
The ETS is a direct tax driven attack on the prosperity of all Australian’s, but particularly rural & regional Australians. The impacts will be two fold and disasterous for Australian rural & regional communities whose survival and prosperity is reliant on farming and mining.
The emissions trading scheme will render 100’s if not thousands of Australian rural and regional communities to small towns reliant on government welfare with no income, jobs and crumbling infrastructure, not dissimilar to the many dysfunctional remote Aboriginal communities that exist in Australia today.
(thanks to Agmate Jeff)
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