Climate Change - Carbon Tax

[dibo]

SMH: Coalition distorts facts in campaign on pollution charge
Lenore Taylor
September 13, 2011

Coalition's climate change 'talking points': PDF

THE Coalition has distributed 34 pages of climate change ''talking points'' to help its federal MPs step up their anti-tax campaign, including several assertions that are untrue or misleading, as debate begins on the controversial carbon pricing bills today.

The speaking notes, labelled ''Coalition in confidence - not for distribution in this form'', declare the next election ''will be a referendum on the carbon tax'' and set out the Coalition's case that the tax will hurt families and businesses and is out of step with international climate action.

But they also assert the government's plan would mean ''$3.5 billion a year in taxpayer dollars is going to pay potentially dodgy and corrupt foreign companies to do things like plant trees in other countries, not in Australia'' when in fact Labor proposes to allow polluting businesses to buy some carbon permits offshore, but does not propose any taxpayer-funded overseas carbon permit purchases.

The Business Council of Australia says that without access to international permits, cutting emissions will be much more expensive for companies and for the nation.

It has urged the Coalition to drop its ban on foreign permits.

After receiving 300 submissions on the draft bills, the government has made only minor technical changes to its 18 bills, which it insists must be passed by Christmas.

Labor is demanding that the lower house debate continue while a three-week select committee inquiry is under way, but the Coalition says debate should wait until the committee has reported.

The Coalition's speaking notes also say job losses are ''the inevitable consequence of the tax'', citing an Access Economics report that showed ''the potential loss of 126,000 regional jobs under an earlier version of Labor's scheme''.

But the report, prepared in May 2009 for the premiers, did not project any regional job ''losses''.

It found a carbon price aiming for a 5 per cent reduction in emissions by 2020 would involve an increase of 1.4 million jobs between 2008 and 2020.

Without any carbon price, it projected an additional 126,000 jobs could be created over the same 12 years.

According to the notes, Labor's economic modelling of the impact of the tax on ''families, pensioners and businesses'' used an estimated price of $20 rather than the actual price of $23 ''so from the very beginning, Julia Gillard's claims about how much the carbon tax will cost have been flawed and deliberately under-estimated''.

But the Treasury modelling to estimate price impacts on families and businesses did use the $23 starting price.

Longer-term modelling of the macro-economic effects of the tax used a $20 price.

The Coalition is preparing tough tactics on the legislation - which appears to have the numbers to pass the Parliament - including denying a parliamentary voting ''pair'' to Labor MPs.

But Labor is equally adamant it will get the bills through, doing a deal with the Greens to ''guillotine'' or cut off debate in the Senate and scheduling another Senate sitting week to ensure sufficient time for a debate.

The Coalition's notes say the proposed household compensation for most low- and middle-income families is ''a con'' and claim the Coalition can reach the same 5 per cent emission reduction target in 2020 with ''no cost to families, no new taxes and no rise in electricity prices''.

LOLOLOLOLOL!

Leaks happen, but this one is deadset hilarious.

 

[Nathan Byrn]

Which part is funny?

 

[nikko]

Dibo cracked a joke?

 

[dibo]

In claiming that there will be a hit to people's cost of living, they ignore the compensation that the carbon price will fund.

The carbon price is a market mechanism - you set the cap and people trade beneath it. If permits are scarce, the price goes up. But the number of permits doesn't change, and if people need more permits they can buy them from overseas. It's important to be part of an international trade in permits because it encourages China, India and the US to go in as well, increasing the depth of the market for permits.

The important thing is that there is a price signal that creates incentive to reduce carbon intensity. It's the market driving the change, so people will move to the lowest cost and most effective options for abatement.

The Coalition's 'direct action' plan, they're going to have a 'picking the winners' approach, where bureaucrats in Canberra take out the darts and hit spots on the map they think will provide abatement and throw money at them. There's no incentive there except to try to win largesse. The determining factor in whether you make money is whether you win a grant, not whether you reduce carbon emissions.

This comes down to the point. They seize on Julia's statement that there are price impacts and say that it's proof that it's designed to hurt families. For f**k's sake, it's designed to create ways you can make money by reducing carbon intensity and making it cost more to emit.

Households are compensated to cover the fact that there are certain activities (e.g. turning on the lights) that you don't have much option about, but businesses will have incentive to change the way they operate to the extent possible.

Simple fact is that the economic effect of the carbon tax is tiny compared to the other things going on in the economy. Anyone crying about a carbon price on steelmakers needs to look at the damage exchange rates have done - going from a long term average of about AUD:USD 1.00:0.70 to a new 'equilibrium of over 1.00:1.00 has a far greater effect.

Anyone complaining about the effect on manufacturing generally has missed the last thirty years where our manufacturers have been smashed as competitor economies industrialise.

Not implementing a carbon tax won't save manufacturing or steelmaking.

And mining impacts are just plain laughable:

Bruce Chapman (via Peter Martin) giving the apocalyptic job loss claims a kicking (my emphasis added):

Monday, June 06, 2011

The impact of the carbon tax will be how small?
For mining, it won't even touch the sides

The impact of the carbon tax on the mining industry will be “trivial” - so small that for practical purposes it will be “invisible,” according to one of Australia’s leading labour market economists.

Professor Bruce Chapman is president of the Economic Society of Australia and director of policy at the Australian National University’s Crawford school of government.

In a report released this morning entitled How many jobs is 23,510 really? he attempts to put into perspective a claim by the Minerals Council that a carbon trading system would cut by around 24,000 people the number than would be employed in the mining industry.

“Something like 370,000 people every month go from not having a job to having a job, and something like 365,000 people every month do the opposite,” he told the Herald.

“That’s the change every month. The Minerals Council has projected its change over a period of ten years.”

“The additional outflow would be 5 people for every 10,000 who would have left in the month anyway. I am happy to call that invisible. I was going to draw of it for the report but I couldn’t - you can’t draw a graph because the effect is too tiny.”

“What it says is the carbon price debate should have nothing to do with job loss figures. The labour market issue should be seen to be irrelevant. It is not interesting, it is not something we should spend any further effort analysing"...

The report prepared for the Australia Institute also challenges the assumption that any mining workers who did lose their jobs would fall into unemployment.

Using data from the household income and labour dynamics survey Professor Chapman finds that in the previous mining boom an enormous 26 per cent of mining industry employees left the industry each year.

“On average around 36 per cent of people employed in mining are inflows, having arrived that year. Around 26 per cent are outflows - they won’t be there the next year,” he said.

“This extraordinary mobility suggests strongly that any supposed job losses would be dwarfed by natural attrition.”

The seven-year longitudinal study finds that workers leaving mining almost always go to other jobs.

“Nobody who left mining after 2001 was unemployed when observed a year later,” the report says. “The vast majority of those leaving mining sector employment were employed in other jobs in all the years following.”

“When you talk about job losses people think about about jobs actually being cut whereas the industry is talking about jobs that would not be created. You also think about people being sacked and going into long-term unemployment and becoming destitute. In the mining industry that is not correct,” Professor Chapman said.

The report says the misuse of big-sounding jobs claims to describe very small effects is widespread.

“As an example the release of the Murray Darling Basin Plan encouraged assessments of direct job in the range of around 3,500 to 12,000. The Climate Institute has claimed that a shift in production towards cleaner energy will result in around 34,000 net new jobs in the Australian power sector by 2030,” the report says. “Obviously the issue relates to both sides of the carbon price debate.”

On Thursday before the Senate economics committee Treasury chief economist David Gruen defended the department’s decision to model the carbon tax assuming no change in the unemployment rate saying over the long term much bigger economic shocks had been shown to make no change to employment rates.

 

[hasbeen]

Did anyone see Dullard on the news yesterday interviewing the pro-carbon lobby in the Kindergarten outside Parliament? "What are you doing little Johnny?" "Building a wind machine!" he enthuses. Best comedy on TV.

 

[dibo]

AFR: How to cook up a carbon tax story
PUBLISHED : 14 Sep 2011 00:01:00

Michaela Whitbourn

Four days after the Gillard government released details of its carbon tax policy on a cold Sunday in July, NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell’s office was presented with an attractive plan.

The national political editor at Sydney’s The Daily Telegraph wanted to run a front-page story on Friday, claiming the tax would drive NSW commuters to switch from public transport to cars.

The Premier’s communications director, Peter Grimshaw, swung into action, say documents produced in state parliament through a request by the Labor Party.

Mr Grimshaw fired off an email at 9.39am on Thursday, July 14 to government staffers including O’Farrell’s policy director and his chief of staff, copied to the Premier.

“The ‘Tele’ is very keen to do a story for tomorrow’s paper on the impact of the carbon tax in relation to Public Transport v Cars, with the theme being there will be an incentive for people to use cars under Gillard’s plan,” he wrote.

“If we have any figures/modelling he thinks he can get a big run on this tomorrow . . . Can we pull together any info/figures asap that would back up this case.”

There was a hitch. The Department of Transport had been working on a note for the Transport Minister that came to a different conclusion.

By 2.18pm, Mr O’Farrell’s policy director Matthew Crocker had seen the note – including some “not so helpful quotes” – which said the tax would have little effect on commuters.

Federal Opposition Leader Tony Abbott’s policy director Mark Roberts was more helpful. He emailed Transport Minister Gladys Berejiklian’s chief of staff and advisers later that day with a “gold mine of attack points!” on the possible effect of the tax on Sydney Ferries.

The Transport Department, in contrast, advised the government the carbon tax would have no “measurable effect” on transport choices. It would increase prices by less than 1 per cent.

At 3.10pm, Mr O’Farrell’s office sent the Telegraph figures it said were NSW Treasury’s first advice on the impact of the carbon tax on public transport fares.

The front-page story on Friday July 15 said the tax would push up fares by up to $150 a year, increasing weekly multi-pass tickets from $57 to $60 a week by 2013 –a 3.5 per cent rise, six times higher than the 0.5 per cent estimated by federal Treasury.

The tax would “increase passenger fares by up to 3.6 per cent,” Mr O’Farrell said in a media release at midday that day.

He feared Sydney commuters would “turn away from public transport”.

Hours earlier, the Transport Department confirmed “the figures quoted do not come from Treasury”. The Department of Premier and Cabinet had used its own table of price rises, which were at the “upper end” of figures it developed with the Transport Department.

“The figures presume that the entire cost of energy . . . increases from the carbon tax would be cost recovered from commuters,” David Jordan, a senior policy officer in the transport department wrote in an email.

Unpublished NSW Treasury modelling finalised in late August, reported by The Australian Financial Review yesterday, showed fares would rise by an average 0.49 per cent in 2012-13, and 0.63 per cent in 2019-20. It would add between 30¢ and 40¢ a week to a multi-pass ticket, or $16 to $21 a year.

A spokesman for the Premier said yesterday the higher figures were based on Transport Department advice if the “full cost” of the carbon tax was passed on to commuters.

The documents show the Transport Department was asked to revise a note to be used in question time.

A departmental liaison officer assigned to Ms Berejiklian’s office, Chelsea Perry, said on July 27: “The gist of the note needs to read that the tax is . . . a bad development for public transport customers.”

Ms Berejiklian said yesterday there was “nothing unusual” about the way in which the note was prepared.

“It’s an undeniable fact that the carbon tax is bad for public transport customers because it means the cost of providing buses, trains and ferries will go up,” she said.

 

[true believer]

on being proactive and being rewarded...

Thorium based power reactors ARE the future, clean, safe, nuclear power with no CO2 output.see basic wiki link.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium

if we grabbed this and ran so, so many issues in regards to carbon tax would be nullified. pretty sad when countries like india and china are leading the way.

no one has made a viable thorium reactor work.the chinese are gunna build 70 giga watts of gen 3 nuclear power
plants .
yes they have become as well the global leaders in renewables producing 11% now.
china will introduce a carbon price in 3 provinces 2012/2013.it already prices carbon at $14 so far

 

[true believer]

i see the future as china and india having a large quanity of nuclear power to past 2050

hot salt solar http://www.alternativeenergyprimer.com/Solar-Power-Tower.html suppling a large quanity of rewables.

high effecy coal fired offset and carbon capture units. http://ukinaustralia.fco.gov.uk/en/about-us/working-with-australia/climate-change/energy-pathways/carbon-capture-storage

 

[midfielder]

TB

Some good stuff in those articles ... the UK carbon capture is very interesting as its seems to mirror what some in Australia believe..

 

[kevrenor]

I believe it passed the lower house, and should beeze through the Senate.

Good, now we can get on with other things (unless Tony Abbott is as obsessed as he seems to be).

For me - I don't get one zac (razoo, or whatever currency you wish) in compensation - though wife gets partial - and I support the move! I do so for the future, both environmental and economic not the present.

 

[true believer]

TB

Some good stuff in those articles ... the UK carbon capture is very interesting as its seems to mirror what some in Australia believe..

seen a few things with this type of scrubbing technology .if the coal industry got off it's lazy fat arse
and spent the money on this kind of tech instead of funding liars and fruit cakes like fred singer,monkton,
McIntyre etc .this sort of tech could be out of the research stage and into practical application stage


http://cleantechnica.com/2008/09/29/scientists-create-device-to-remove-carbon-directly-from-the-air/

http://www.physorg.com/news96732819.html


http://geo-engineering.blogspot.com/2008/10/removing-carbon-from-air-discovery.html

 

[dibo]

For those who are hard of hearing:

CLIMATE CHANGE IS REAL

 

[true believer]

For those who are hard of hearing:

CLIMATE CHANGE IS REAL

nice piece of info for the "true believers" but it's 6 pages .it would be nice if it could be put on a page or two at best ."the lee Iacocca principal" we live in a world smeared by singer,macintyre and co .
"it's all happened before ,medievil warming"

http://www.vaildaily.com/article/20111001/EDITS/110939988/1021&ParentProfile=1065


pictures of before and after glacier pictures are better
keep the fiath

 

[midfielder]

I still hold you can believe in Climate Change but not support a Carbon Tax or the system we are putting in place... It concerns me this one mega idea is going to somehow get all these creative projects off the ground and move and swap around income pay out copmpensation ....maybe its just me but this has never been done well in the past...

I guess this is my main grip... its almost if you don't believe in the Carbon Tax you are don't believe in climate Change...

 

[dibo]

I still hold you can believe in Climate Change but not support a Carbon Tax or the system we are putting in place... It concerns me this one mega idea is going to somehow get all these creative projects off the ground and move and swap around income pay out copmpensation ....maybe its just me but this has never been done well in the past...

I guess this is my main grip... its almost if you don't believe in the Carbon Tax you are don't believe in climate Change...

What's your alternative vision to a carbon price?

 

[true believer]

an emissions trading scheme would have been better.but that required everyone acting in the national interest.
ie tony "he's not true blue" abbott ,barnaby bullshiter ,christine "is she rebeca wilson's sister" millne .
after the next election "i haven't given up hope" it becomes an ets,anyway

 

[dibo]

an emissions trading scheme would have been better.but that required everyone acting in the national interest.
ie tony "he's not true blue" abbott ,barnaby bullshiter ,christine "is she rebeca wilson's sister" millne .
after the next election "i haven't given up hope" it becomes an ets,anyway

it's an ETS from the start. the price is fixed at the start though - after the transition period the prices can move with the market.

it's only a tax in the same sense as your drivers' licence fee or your train ticket is a tax, and it only applies to the 500 biggest polluters.

 

[midfielder]

What's your alternative vision to a carbon price?

Greed ... and money....

As I said before I think the answer [as do most whatever side of the debate you come from] is in someone finding a new fuel or newer and cheaper and cleaner way of doing things...

I would offer massive rewards for proven things that work and tax deductions for those working on new fuels... If someone could work out how to capture carbon from burning caol ... mate give them billions ... but don't pay em to do it just a massive reward when they finish...

Human kind if it has shown me one thing ... people react and do things when their is a big pile of money to be made .....BUT when you start to move things from A to B and we must now give Z who is over 60 Y ... and G because he works in a industry I ... it just becomes a place for people like me to hang out and work out how the system works and then charge clients for my knowledge of how to make the system work best for them..

 

[dibo]

So how do you get people to reduce their emissions?

 

[dibo]

Where does the reward come from? Government or the market?

If from government - funded how?

If from the market - what makes the market want their product?