The cherished self-image of Australians as tough, rangy,
boundary-riders resistant to authority, government and
brain-washing has taken a dive with rallies to support, of all
things, a new tax on carbon emissions.
Not just any new tax, but a tax introduced with a lie, one
which will impact directly on the country’s manufacturing industry,
fuel costs and standards of living for no detectable benefit. My
U.S. history is a little weak, but I don’t believe rallies have
ever been held in the U.S. in support of a new tax, least of all a
highly regressive one which will have a crushing effect on
international competitiveness and domestic employment, and whose
only reason is a more-than-questionable belief in man-made global
warming.
At least, so far, the pro-tax rallies are not very big,
and those attending (with predictably pretentious names like
the Australian Youth Climate Coalition) are not remarkable for
the high quality of their intellectual debate. (And just what is
this worldwide thing lefties have against baths,
anyway?)
The left-of-center Gillard Labor Government, firmly
controlled by the far-left Greens who hold the balance of power,
was elected with the repeated promise that no such tax would be
introduced.
To illustrate just how mad it is, it is proposed that
Australian coal-fired power stations will be taxed, but coal
shipped from Australia to power stations in China will not be —
make sense of that if you can. This is probably the first time in
history, anywhere, that a tax has been imposed where stopping
industrial development is not seen as a possible unfortunate
side-effect, but as its express and central purpose.
There are several points to be considered:
There is no evidence of significant global warming, the
reason given for the tax, and indeed some evidence of global
cooling. Further, there is no evidence that human activity has any
appreciable effect one way or the other.
The tax is aimed at reducing carbon dioxide emissions
(though carbon dioxide and carbon are continually confused in the
debate). Carbon dioxide is not only present in the atmosphere in
small quantities anyway, but is vitally important for the survival
of life on Earth. Plants breathe it as animals breathe oxygen and
it is pumped onto plants to help them grow.
The amount of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere
by all human activity is extremely small — most of it comes from
volcanoes — and of that the amount emitted by Australian industry
is infinitesimal. The nations with big carbon dioxide emissions,
such as China and, increasingly India, as well as the
long-established major industrial economies, are not contemplating
any such tax.
The government first denied there would be such a tax at
all. It then claimed that the tax will act as a disincentive to
emit carbon dioxide. It now claims — make sense of this if you
can! — that it will compensate industry for the disincentive it
has created! The compensation will, of course, come from the
taxpayers, who will already be hit by across-the-board increases in
the standard of living and by the consequent decline in Australia’s
international competitiveness, not only in manufactured goods but
in agricultural products and all manner of exports.
In attempting to justify the tax, Prime Minister Julia
Gillard comes out with near-gibberish about re-writing shopping
lists or something:
“In the consumer end, where there will be some price
impacts, people will be standing there in the supermarket with the
household assistance in their hand. As a result of pricing carbon
pollution, some products will be relatively more expensive.
Products that have less embedded carbon pollution will be
relatively cheaper. Now, people can go in and keep on buying the
same old products, or they can respond to those price signals, buy
the things that are relatively cheaper with less carbon pollution
in them and send a signal back to business ‘you know what,
consumers like to buy things with less carbon pollution in them’,
and businesses will respond to that price signal, too.”
This, as commentator
Tim Blair put it, sounds half patronizing and half Soviet
Union. The Prime Minister was then asked:
“[A]ssuming that that all works, there’s then the issue of
what will all this actually achieve? If the argument that
Australia’s emissions are only about 1.5 per cent of global
emissions, and the 2020 aim is to reduce our emissions by 5 per
cent. Now I’m not sure what 5 per cent of 1.5 per cent is, but I’m
sure it’s not a lot. What’s the point of this whole thing? That’s
what a lot of people are asking.”
She replied, quite falsely:
“Well, the point of this whole thing is to say to ourselves the
truth, which is we are big emitters of carbon pollution by world
standards. Per capita, per head of population, we are the biggest
emitters of carbon pollution in the developed world.”
As with all such matters, the first question to be asked is: who
benefits? The answer is obvious; Government bureaucrats who will
have careers created policing the new tax and flying to endless
international conferences, plus the Greens who, in addition to
being able to pander to their own fanaticisms, are looking forward
to a chance to prove it is they who really run Australia. There are
already hate-campaigns being stirred up against opponents of the
tax as “deniers” who allegedly want to see Australia converted into
a flooded wasteland.
The government and the Greens along with their Ovine
supporters do not, however, seem to be having it all its own way.
Popular demonstrations against the proposed tax are springing up
and in them it is possible to see the beginnings of an Australian
Tea Party.
