Australians, Look What You’ve Done
Look, I don’t want to bore everyone with political commentary but today, the day the Australian Government voted to repeal Australia’s emissions trading scheme (the so-called “carbon tax”), I just have to say something. But I’ll keep it short.
The point of putting a price on carbon emissions is to send what the economists call a “price signal” to the market. A price signal is intended to change consumer behaviour – in this case by nudging buyers of goods and services in the direction of suppliers who have low carbon emissions and therefore lower prices. By that means, it encourages businesses to change their behaviour too, moving out of old, polluting technologies and practices into new, cleaner ones.
The ETS in Australia (which was due to start next year after being a simple emissions tax until then) has been extremely effective as a price signal and has reduced emissions in this country.
The Australian Government likes price signals. In fact, it introduced a few in its latest budget. The $7-per-visit co-payment (tax) on seeing a doctor or accessing other medical services, for example, is a price signal explicitly designed to encourage (poor) people not to see the doctor so often. The Australian Government wants (poor) people to have lower levels of healthcare and are keen to encourage them in that direction by charging a levy on each use of it.
So we must not be hoodwinked by the Government’s rhetoric. The reason why they want to remove the “carbon tax” isn’t because they want to save people money, it’s because they don’t think reducing carbon emissions is important. It is also because they want to remove a price signal that is successfully driving customers away from old, polluting industries. It is a move to support those industries at the expense of the climate. Those industries are more important to the Australian Government than the many benefits that flow from reducing carbon emissions.
Removing the price on carbon emissions is not a move to help the economy, or to grow jobs, or to improve the lives of Australians in any way whatsoever – leaving the price on carbon is how that is done. It is simply designed to stop benefiting new, clean industries at the expense of old, polluting ones. It is designed to put the brakes on a movement towards a clean economy and to stick with a dirty one.
Why? Because Australia is a major coal and gas exporter and the Australian Government and the Australian people (who voted for it) are so limited in their vision that they cannot imagine any other way of this country keeping its First World status without the income from those industries.
OK. That’s enough.
