Thanks. I'll try to sort out some links with him.

Emissions trading scheme key: Howard

http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/Emissions-trading-scheme-key-Howard/2007/05/09/1178390351547.html

The centrepiece of the federal government's plan to tackle global warming will be an economy-friendly emissions trading scheme, Prime Minister John Howard says.

He said he was awaiting a report on May 31 from the task group he assembled to propose an emissions trading scheme.

"This is the key to a long-term strategy to address climate change," he told the Seven Network on Wednesday.

"Everybody agrees that you have to have some price on carbon to effectively deal with the emissions problem.

"And the best way of delivering a price on carbon is through a market mechanism, namely an emissions trading system.

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Qld power price hike not needed: Vaile

http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/Qld-power-price-hike-not-needed-Vaile/2007/05/09/1178390373800.html

Deputy Prime Minister Mark Vaile has weighed into the debate over a 10 per cent rise in electricity costs for Queenslanders, saying it is not justified.

Queensland Energy Minister Geoff Wilson on Tuesday announced the Queensland Competition Authority (QCA) had recommended a 10 per cent increase in the electricity tariff from July 1.

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Tax changes to boost forest plantations

http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/Tax-changes-to-boost-forest-plantations/2007/05/10/1178390434782.html

Tax changes should encourage more forestry plantations in Australia, the government says.

Under the new arrangements, investors will receive 100 per cent tax deductions for both initial and ongoing investments in managed forestry schemes.

However new rules require that the trees must be planted in Australia within 18 months.

Under the old system, concessions were available for investment in overseas plantations.

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Look to Australia for energy efficiency

http://www.smh.com.au/news/Business/Look-to-Australia-for-energy-efficiency/2007/05/14/1178995051214.html

Businesses are being urged to look across the Tasman for a lesson in energy conservation and environmental initiatives.

A survey published in the Grant Thornton International Business Report ranked New Zealand 25th out of 32 economies in terms of action taken to prepare for ever-increasing energy prices globally and the need to conserve energy.

Grant Thornton New Zealand spokesman Peter Sherwin said a clear message from the survey was that unless environmental factors such as energy costs became issues that significantly affected a company's profitability, there was no incentive for a company to take action and reduce its impact on the environment.

One country bucking the trend was Australia, where businesses were undertaking more energy and environmental initiatives than New Zealand, Mr Sherwin said.

That was despite Australia having the lowest ranking of all 32 countries in terms of expectations that energy costs would have a major effect on cost pressures during the next 12 months.

New Zealand could take a leaf out of the Australian book and benefit, he said.

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Plastic bag levies 'an unjustified tax'

Levies on plastic supermarket bags are an unjustified tax, the Australian National Retailers Association says.

A survey commissioned by the association found only three per cent of people threw away plastic supermarket bags.

Some 93 per cent of survey respondents reused or recycled the plastic bags - more than half of those as garbage bin liners.

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Aviation body urges climate surcharge

http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/Aviation-body-urges-climate-surcharge/2007/05/23/1179601441256.html

A $30 greenhouse gas levy should be imposed on all domestic flights and aviation should be included in any emissions trading scheme if Australia is to rein in its climate change pollution, a report says.

The report by think tank the Australia Institute said airlines were a threat to climate because of the increasing amounts of greenhouse gas pollution generated by a growing travel market, Fairfax newspapers reported.

The industry is growing so quickly it could account for half Australia's total emissions by 2050, said the report's authors, Andrew Macintosh and Christian Dowie.

But because non-carbon dioxide greenhouse gases and greenhouse gases generated by international travel are not included in the greenhouse gas inventory, airline pollution could wipe out the effects of cuts in emissions in other sectors, they said.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-carbontax28may28,1,502798.story?ctrack=1&cset=true

A carbon tax is the best, cheapest and most efficient way to combat cataclysmic climate change.

In 1995, the federal government launched a cap-and-trade program for sulfur dioxide, the main ingredient in acid rain. The goal was to reduce emissions to half their 1980 levels by 2010, and the program is expected to reach it or fall just short. It has become a model worldwide, leading signatories to the Kyoto Protocol to pursue an international cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gases.

And yet for all its benefits, cap-and-trade still isn't the most effective or efficient approach. That distinction goes to Method No. 3: a carbon tax. While cap-and-trade creates opportunities for cheating, leads to unpredictable fluctuations in energy prices and does nothing to offset high power costs for consumers, carbon taxes can be structured to sidestep all those problems while providing a more reliable market incentive to produce clean-energy technology.

To understand the drawbacks of cap-and-trade, one has to look not only at the successful U.S. acid rain program but the failed European Emissions Trading Scheme, the first phase of which started in January 2005. European Union members each developed emissions goals, then passed out credits to polluters. Yet for a variety of reasons, the initial cap was set so high that the polluters fell under it without making any reductions at all. The Europeans are working to improve the scheme in the next phase, but their chances of success aren't good.

One reason is the power of lobbyists. In Europe, as in the U.S., special interests have a way of warping the political process so that, for example, a corporation generous with its campaign contributions might win an excessive number of credits. It's also very easy in many European countries to cheat; because there aren't strong agencies to monitor and verify emissions, companies or utilities can pretend they're cleaner than they are.

Cap-and-trade would also have a nasty effect on consumers' power bills. Say there's a very hot summer week in California. Utilities would have to shovel more coal to produce more juice, causing their emissions to rise sharply. To offset the carbon, they would have to buy more credits, and the heavy demand would cause credit prices to skyrocket. The utilities would then pass those costs on to their customers, meaning that power bills might vary sharply from one month to the next.

That kind of price volatility, which has been endemic to both the American and European cap-and-trade systems, doesn't just hurt consumers. It actually discourages innovation, because in times when power demand is low, power costs are low, and there is little incentive to come up with cleaner technologies. Entrepreneurs and venture capitalists prefer stable prices so they can calculate whether they can make enough money by building a solar-powered mousetrap to make up for the cost of producing it.

Carbon taxes avoid all that. A carbon tax simply imposes a tax for polluting based on the amount emitted, thus encouraging polluters to clean up and entrepreneurs to come up with alternatives. The tax is constant and predictable. It doesn't require the creation of a new energy trading market, and it can be collected by existing state and federal agencies. It's straightforward and much harder to manipulate by special interests than the politicized process of allocating carbon credits.

And it could be structured to be far less harmful to power consumers. While all the added costs under cap-and-trade go to companies, utilities and traders, the added costs under a carbon tax would go to the government — which could use the revenues to offset other taxes. So while consumers would pay more for energy, they might pay less income tax, or some other tax. That could greatly cushion the overall economic effect.

There is a growing consensus among economists around the world that a carbon tax is the best way to combat global warming, and there are prominent backers across the political spectrum, from N. Gregory Mankiw, former chairman of the Bush administration's Council on Economic Advisors, and former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan to former Vice President Al Gore and Sierra Club head Carl Pope. Yet the political consensus is going in a very different direction. European leaders are pushing hard for the United States and other countries to join their failed carbon-trading scheme, and there are no fewer than five bills before Congress that would impose a federal cap-and-trade system. On the other side, there is just one lonely bill in the House, from Rep. Pete Stark (D-Fremont), to impose a carbon tax, and it's not expected to go far.

The obvious reason is that, for voters, taxes are radioactive, while carbon trading sounds like something that just affects utilities and big corporations. The many green politicians stumping for cap-and-trade seldom point out that such a system would result in higher and less predictable power bills. Ironically, even though a carbon tax could cost voters less, cap-and-trade is being sold as the more consumer-friendly approach.

Did you see the documentary/propaganda program  ''crude'' the other week?

they were talking about what will happen to the seas if the earth gets too warm. apparently the earth has suffered extreme global warming before, caused by volcanoes.
algae builds up in the seas, stagnates and most sea life dies. From this oil is created.

This is interesting. The Australian put the exact opposite spin on the new climate report to the SMH article just above, claiming it backs Howard's 'cautious' approach. Also, the report recommends a tax of $20 per tonne on CO2 as an interim measure, to help businesses 'prepare' for a trading scheme. This is odd given Howards insistance that taxes are bad for the economy, and that he set up and choreographed the whole report. The article, on the front page of today's Australian, is titled "Climate panel back's PM's caution". It can be found via google, but the link goes to another article. I couldn't see it on the Australian's website any more.

On the front page of 'features,' note the identification of this issue as an election winner:

Howard warming to task

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21829885-601,00.html

The Government's response to climate change could prove an antidote to poisonous polls

JOHN Howard took out some climate change insurance last December after the public mood on global warming shifted on the back of a series of natural and man-made events.

It was complete political theatre. Chaired by Peter Shergold, the head of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, the task group was ordered to report on the nature and design of a workable global emissions trading system which Australia would join.

The cuteness of this review process has meant the Government has been working on its policy response to the report in virtual parallel to its preparation. In the current bleak political climate for the Government, climate change is assuming monumental political importance.

Howard is also likely to distinguish himself from Labor by sharing the burden of a future emissions trading scheme as widely as possible across the economy, including power stations, industrial processes, waste, transport and even possibly agriculture.

Power stations produce about half Australia's greenhouse gas emissions. It is relatively easy to measure the scale of their greenhouse emissions and therefore include them in a trading scheme. It's much harder to do this for emissions from other key sectors such as agriculture and land use changes that make up almost a quarter of national greenhouse emissions. It's also tricky to accurately measure emissions from transport, industrial processes and waste.

Where there is less scope for policy distinction is in the complex detail of how a scheme will operate. The task group and Labor states are likely to follow a similar line, to auction half the number of emission permits while the other half will be allocated across key sectors of the economy, particularly trade-exposed, emission-intense sectors such as aluminium, steel and cement.

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Brisbane City Council unveils budget

http://www.smh.com.au/news/Business/Brisbane-City-Council-unveils-budget/2007/06/13/1181414349786.html

Australia's largest local government authority, Brisbane City Council, has handed down a record $2.33 billion budget designed to tackle the drought, public transport, chronic traffic congestion and climate change.

Average rate bills for owner-occupiers are poised to jump about $40 a year from July, primarily due to increased water charges as the region grapples with a looming water crisis.

Water charges have increased about 24 per cent on average, but Mr Newman said that under the new scale if each resident stuck to the 140 litre a day water consumption target their water charges would not balloon.

"The prices we have set in this budget are intended to send a message to the hip pocket of people who waste water, while ensuring those who do the right thing are not unduly burdened."

Mr Newman pledged to help drought-proof the city through pouring $240 million into water and wastewater projects, including finding new water sources, fixing leaking mains and providing subsidies for water tanks and pool blankets.

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Warning on power bill subsidies

http://www.news.com.au/business/story/0,23636,21906868-462,00.html

ANY compensation for the higher price of energy caused by emissions trading must not take the form of subsidies on power bills, the nation's most senior bureaucrat warned yesterday.

The secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Peter Shergold, chair of the Task Group on Emissions Trading, said subsidising power bills would defeat the purpose of changing consumers' behaviour.

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Polluters to face higher emissions fees

http://www.smh.com.au/news/breaking-news/polluters-to-face-higher-emissions-fees/2007/06/27/1182623918072.html

Sydney's biggest air polluters will face tougher fines from December, when the NSW government will double the annual fees that apply for toxic emissions.

Assisting Climate Change Minister Verity Firth says at least 60 companies produce volatile organic chemicals (VOCs) and nitrous oxide (NOx) which add to the city's layer of harmful smog.

"The government's decision to double the annual fee on NOx and VOCs emissions will provide a new, significant economic incentive to improve industry's environmental performances," News Limited newspapers quoted Ms Firth as saying.

Polluting companies can avoid the fee increase if they enter into binding commitments to reduce their emission outputs within four years.

From the US government, via rff.org (Resources for the Future):

http://www.rff.org/Documents/RFF-IB-02-33.pdf
http://www.rff.org/ -> Core Knowledge -> Energy, electricity and climate change -> Market based policy -> Issues briefs -> Are Tradable Emissions Permits a Good Idea?

But recent research suggests there can be a strong case on both economic and distributional grounds for using emissions taxes or auctioned emissions permits rather than programs in which permits are given out free or grandfathered to firms. One issue has to do with how environmental policies can exacerbate distortions in labor markets created by the broader tax system. A recent study by Parry et al. (1999) suggests the economic costs to the United States of meeting it's carbon emissions target under the original Kyoto Protocol would more than double when the costs of reduced employment were taken into account. In contrast, much of the extra social cost could be offset by emissions taxes and auctioned permits if revenue from these policies were used to reduce taxes.

Furthermore, a study by the Congressional Budget Office (2000) suggests that if grandfathered permits were used to reduce carbon emissions, low-income households might be worse-off by several hundred dollars per year while wealthy households could be better-off by around $1,500 per year. Grandfathered permits create windfall gains for shareholders, who are concentrated in high-income groups, because such policies hand out a valuable asset (sellable permits) to firms for free. There is no windfall gain to wealthy households under auctioned permits or emissions taxes; instead, the government obtains revenues that can be recycled in tax reductions that benefit everyone or disproportionately favor the poor.

Policymakers are currently debating proposals to implement nationwide tradable permit programs for nitrogen oxide and mercury, and to strengthen the existing allowance trading program for sulfur dioxide. Indeed, because of its prominence in proposals that deal with climate change, the tradable permits approach pioneered by the United States is now receiving a great deal of attention throughout the world as a possible tool for managing greenhouse gas emissions. The rest of this article discusses in more detail why policymakers should think twice before agreeing to give away allowances for free rather than selling them.

Tradable permits also raise firms’ production costs and reduce economic activity. If a polluting firm increases production, it must either buy permits to cover the extra emissions or forgo sales of its own permits to other firms; either way, there is a financial penalty for producing polluting output. Consequently, grandfathered permits have adverse effects on employment in the same way that emissions taxes do, but permits forgo the potential benefit from revenue recycling. This has two important policy implications.

First, in terms of economic efficiency, society is better-off under emissions taxes or auctioned permits than under freely allocated permits, so long as revenues are recycled in other tax reductions. Tax economists have estimated that for each dollar of revenue used to reduce income taxes, there will be a gain in economic efficiency of approximately $.20 to $.50. Lower income taxes increase employment and also reduce distortions in the pattern of expenditure between ordinary spending and tax-favored spending, such as owner-occupied housing and employer-provided medical insurance. In the carbon example above, the United States might be better-off to the tune of $20 billion to $45 billion per year if a carbon tax or auctioned permits were used rather than grandfathered permits.

Second, the economic costs of grandfathered permits can be substantially higher than previously thought. According to Parry et al. (1999), the cost to the United States of meeting the initial Kyoto target by a system of grandfathered permits imposed on fossil fuel producers rises from roughly $25 billion per year to approximately $55 billion (in current dollars) when the permits’ effect on compounding tax distortions is included.

In fact, taking account of fiscal interactions might compromise the ability of grandfathered permits to generate overall net benefits for society.

for a shorter version see:
Issues in Science and Technology, 2002
http://issues.org/19.1/p_parry.htm

http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.eg.17.110192.001505

values:
http://www.earthcharterinaction.org/assets/pdf/charter/charter_eng.pdf

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Another carbon trading failure - it fizzled out as soon as the easy targets were achieved:

It's not easy being green, workers learn

http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/Its-not-easy-being-green-workers-learn/2007/09/13/1189276876354.html

Workers from a carbon trading company are appealing to the NSW government to save them from unemployment caused by the state's failed carbon trading scheme.

The Greenhouse Gas Abatement Scheme (GGAS) is on the verge of collapse, with up to 1,000 workers in the carbon trading industry soon to be unemployed.

NSW Premier Morris Iemma admitted on Wednesday that GGAS was untenable, with credits for carbon emission reductions trading at only half the average price since GGAS started in 2001.

No, not that i would mind paying a tax. But i am confidant it would not be beneficial at all.