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Dec 03, 2009 12:50 am |
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re: re: 35 Inconvenient Truths > Australia's Parliament defeats global warming bill |
John Stephen Veitch
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In Australia the Liberals are united by one idea. They are against any NEW TAXES. Carbon Taxes are new taxes. Cap and trade is a "disguised tax" so that's out too.
Not surprisingly Australian conservative politicians want lower taxes.
I've just been watching the YouTube video "Climate Chains" and it minces the truth, and I just stopped watching about half way through. Marlo Lewis Jr. says "There are three things you need to know about Cap and Trade, it's a tax, it's a tax, it's a tax.
I'm much more at home talking economics than science. PRICES. Real prices are the secret to "free markets". If the government price setting or artificial price setting arrangements like monopoly pricing or cartel pricing, is eliminated from the market by free trade in free markets, economic incentives will promote more efficient use of existing resources.
This is the economic reason for eliminating ALL trade tariffs, and ALL subsidies to trade and industry. Sadly, it's a basic economic lesson the USA and the European Union don't want to learn. (Subsidies to agriculture being a particular problem.)
New Zealand VERY FOOLISHLY eliminated all subsidies and virtually all tariffs about 30 years ago now. Boy oh boy, it was painful, we LOST 20 years of economic growth compared with Australia, where they decided to be USA light, rather than NZ 100% pure.
We did transform the country. All those NZ sheep you expect from old photos are largely gone. The economy has been transformed. The lesson here is that real economic forces (prices and competition) are VERY POWERFUL but they still take time to do their magic.
EVERYWHERE there are people who want the PAIN of that pressure to go away. Business is the most powerful lobby asking for an easy ride with guaranteed markets and guaranteed profits. For at least 20 years the standard answer in NZ was "NO, go away". (Slightly less so today.)
We have a "global warming problem" for two basic reasons. One is destruction of world soils and forests, by long standing human misuse of the land. Two is the pollution that is the by-product of industrial production, and the use of modern machinery and tools.
In both cases, the PRICE of the destructive action, soil erosion or CO2 emissions as two examples are not borne by the people who caused the problem. The cost to the community or to the environment is missing from the PRICE of the activity.
This is what they sometimes call market failure, when I was learning economics, we called it the "externality problem". The classic story is the "Tragedy of the Common" which you all know. In the USA the real story is often misunderstood. It's not that everything must be in private ownership to be protected. If things (land, waterways, oceans, fresh air) are in common ownership, without proper rules and regulation, destruction of the resource is certain, since abuse of the resource carries no penalty for the user.
Sometimes externality problems can be fixed by regulations, sometimes by changes in ownership structures, sometimes by creating fees or taxes.
I recognise that Cap and Trade has control problems, but if that could be made to work WITHOUT a lot of political hand outs that take way the PAIN, they will be enormously effective in a very short time. When people have acid on their tail it's amazing what they can achieve. So that's where I'd like the world to go.
Carbon Taxes, are a blunter, more crude instrument. If the price of coal is too cheap, so that the move to renewable energy sources is slower than desired, a CO2 tax would be one way to fix that.
Since the AIR is a common resource, common to the whole world, it's a prime example of an unregulated common. Not quite perhaps because there will be local regulation about smoke stacks for instance. Mostly, that regulation says "build a high chimney" so the pollution doesn't fall on our town. Or build it "over there" so the prevailing wind takes if "away". We are now finding our that there is no place called "away" that isn't in the end right back in your back yard.
So let's grow up and get real. There is a problem with the common we call the global atmosphere. We need worldwide regulation to solve that problem. Use of the atmosphere as a sink for all our emissions cannot be FREE, there must be both regulation on emissions and prices on the more undesirable emissions. Those regulations and prices should ideally be common across the world. No exceptions and no excuses.
In the real world it won't be like that. In 1994 there was a world environmental conference. An 800 page document called "Agenda 21" was published, where the problems we are now facing were identified and pledges were made to "Save the Planet". 15 years later, not much has happened, so I guess Copenhagen 2009 will be another step towards doing more of nothing at all. That will please some readers here.
You won't be alive to see the world population plunge from 8 billion to 3 billion inside 10 years, but I'm sure that's where we are heading.
John Stephen Veitch; The Network Ambassador Open Future Limited - http://www.openfuture.co.nz/ Innovation Network - http://veech-network.ryze.com/ Building an Open Future - http://openfuture-network.ryze.com/Private Reply to John Stephen Veitch (new win) |
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