This works out to $1 for every 33 litres of water per year. We currently pay about $1 for every 1000 litres from the tap, which would put the payback period at 30 years (note: that's assuming zero interest - in reality it would never pay for itself in a commercial sense). Maybe they pay a lot more in Melbourne, maybe not, but I'm sure someone isn't paying their way. There are probably farmers using the same water for far less than $1/1000L.

Vic steel factory to save drinking water

http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/Vic-steel-factory-to-save-drinking-water/2007/05/15/1178995124812.html

More than $21 million is to be spent on providing recycled water for a major Victorian manufacturing plant, which will save 660 million litres of drinking water every year.

BlueScope Steel is injecting $8 million into the project and utility South East Water will contribute $9.4 million to upgrade its treatment plant to produce "Class A" recycled water.

A 13km pipeline will also be built to pump the recycled water from the Somers treatment plant to BlueScope's factory at Hastings on the Mornington Peninsula.

Victoria's acting Premier John Thwaites announced that the government would provide a further $4.1 million.

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This one comes out to $1 for every 45L/year ($1billion/45GL pa)

WA to build new desalination plant

http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/WA-to-build-new-desalination-plant/2007/05/15/1178995141102.html

Western Australia has shelved controversial plans to tap a south-west aquifer to supply Perth's water in favour of building a second seawater desalination plant.

Premier Alan Carpenter said the state's wind-powered desalination plant at Kwinana had shown that large quantities of water from an unlimited ocean supply could be provided using a clean and green process.

The new plant will cost $640 million and is expected to provide at least 45 gigalitres of water a year into the integrated water supply system by the end of 2011, with potential to increase to 100 gigalitres.

It will cost an additional $315 million to integrate it into the water supply system.

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Wealthier suburbs using the most water

http://news.smh.com.au/wealthier-suburbs-using-the-most-water/20080110-1l86.html

Wealthier suburbs use more water than those less well-heeled areas of greater Sydney, according to the latest figures from Sydney Water.

The annual report card on local government water savings, released by Water Utilities Minister Nathan Rees, showed that on average, households across Sydney, the Illawarra and the Blue Mountains have cut their annual water use by an average of 75,000 litres since 2002-03.

Residents of Kiama used the least water in 2006-07 with an average consumption of just 162,000 litres per household, followed by Leichhardt (165,000 litres) and the Blue Mountains (171,000 litres).

The biggest water users were in the more well-to-do Sydney suburbs.

The highest water using area was Woollahra (306,000 litres) followed by Mosman (283,000 litres) and Hunters Hill (282,000 litres).

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Tax breaks fuel car use, cause pollution

http://news.smh.com.au/tax-breaks-fuel-car-use-cause-pollution/20080130-1ozh.html

Tax benefits on company cars is encouraging environmentally-damaging car use, an environmental group says.

Treasury tax expenditure figures have projected that by 2009-10 more than $2 billion per year will be spent subsidising the use of company cars.

This is nearly twice as much as was previously predicted, the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) said.

Tax concessions for the private use of company cars actually increased the kilometres drivers clocked up and contributed to increased greenhouse-gas pollution and urban traffic congestion, the ACF said.

And it's not just cars owners who are benefiting from tax breaks.

For the 2008-09 year, the estimated value of tax incentives for use of aviation fuel has gone up from $830 million to $900 million and the value of tax incentives for the production of condensate by petroleum and gas companies has gone from $250 million to $320 million.

"These tax breaks are economically senseless, reward environmentally destructive behaviour and increase taxes that the rest of us have to pay," ACF strategies director Charles Berger said.

"There are much better uses for $2 billion than to hand it out to affluent corporate executives as an incentive to buy cars and drive them as much as possible to get the maximum tax benefit."

He says the new Rudd government should dismantle this "fiscally irresponsibly, environmentally destructive" fringe benefits tax break for company cars in its first budget.

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Support for user-pays water trading

http://news.smh.com.au/support-for-userpays-water-trading/20080305-1x0e.html

A leading water expert has backed a high-level call for all Australians to pay market rates for water.

Professor Peter Cullen, from the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists, said such a move would mean water restrictions would be used only as a last resort.

"We don't ... ration petrol," Prof Cullen told ABC Radio.

Prof Cullen's comments came after Treasury Secretary Ken Henry proposed a national user-pays water trading system, in which water use would be controlled by price instead of restrictions.

From what I can tell, the Kyoto protocal only governs trade in emissions permits between governments, so it would be easier for us to impliment a local emissions tax rather than a local ETS.

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

It was adopted on 11 December 1997 by the 3rd Conference of the Parties, which was meeting in Kyoto, and it entered into force on 16 February 2005. As of May 2008, 182 parties have ratified the protocol.[1] Of these, 36 developed cg countries (plus the EU as a party in its own right) are required to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to the levels specified for each of them in the treaty (representing over 61.6% of emissions from Annex I countries),[1][2] with three more countries intending to participate.[

Any Annex I country that fails to meet its Kyoto obligation will be penalized by having to submit 1.3 emission allowances in a second commitment period for every ton of greenhouse gas emissions they exceed their cap in the first commitment period (i.e., 2008-2012).
As of January 2008, and running through 2012, Annex I countries have to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by a collective average of 5% below their 1990 levels (for many countries, such as the EU member states, this corresponds to some 15% below their expected greenhouse gas emissions in 2008). While the average emissions reduction is 5%, national limitations range from an 8% average reduction across the European Union to a 10% emissions increase for Iceland; but, since the EU's member states each have individual obligations,[5] much larger increases (up to 27%) are allowed for some of the less developed EU countries (see below #Increase in greenhouse gas emission since 1990). [2] Reduction limitations expire in 2013.
Kyoto includes "flexible mechanisms" which allow Annex I economies to meet their greenhouse gas emission limitation by purchasing GHG emission reductions from elsewhere. These can be bought either from financial exchanges, from projects which reduce emissions in non-Annex I economies under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), from other Annex 1 countries under the JI, or from Annex I countries with excess allowances. Only CDM Executive Board-accredited Certified Emission Reductions (CER) can be bought and sold in this manner. Under the aegis of the UN, Kyoto established this Bonn-based Clean Development Mechanism Executive Board to assess and approve projects ("CDM Projects") in Non-Annex I economies prior to awarding CERs. (A similar scheme called "Joint Implementation" or "JI" applies in transitional economies mainly covering the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe).

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The fixed-price annual emissions permits are effectively an emissions tax.

Brendan Nelson shifts on emissions

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,24001992-2702,00.html?from=public_rss

BRENDAN Nelson is considering major changes to the Coalition's stance on emissions trading, paving the way for a showdown with his leadership rival Malcolm Turnbull later this month and a sharpened attack on the Rudd Government.

In an article in The Australian today, the Opposition Leader reveals that the Coalition may abandon its support for a "cap and trade" emissions trading system, saying there are "multiple models out there that should be debated".

It is understood that Dr Nelson is considering the hybrid emissions trading system advocated by Reserve Bank board member Warwick McKibbin, which combines the sale of fixed-price annual emissions permits with long-term permits that can be traded.

Thanks liko, I'll be sure to table that at the next strawman convention.

GREEN TAX SHIFT

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,26219911-5014047,00.html

WHEN the world was edging towards its first, imperfect treaty on climate change in the mid-1990s, the US put a proposal on the table that has set the framework for the debate on carbon reduction. Uncomfortable about taxing carbon dioxide emissions, the Clinton administration suggested letting market forces do the work through a scheme of tradeable permits now known as cap and trade.

Ironically, the US has never ratified the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012, but its successor, which will be negotiated in Copenhagen in December, while not mandating cap and trade, will be highly skewed in its favour.

This is because the 37 developed countries that have set targets under the Kyoto Protocol for the quantity of greenhouse gases they can emit are already committed to trading in emissions permits. Companies within those countries have a vested interest in perpetuating the status quo.

Yet among economists and business leaders there is unease about cap and trade, a system that has already created a derivatives markets of the kind that brought the global financial system close to collapse. A scheme that looked like a stroke of genius in the 90s is falling out of fashion.

"We'll have a financial crisis in emissions at some point," Kenneth Rogoff tells Focus. "There'll be derivatives and all these unemployed investment bankers will then go work on carbon trading and come up with ... products which will lead to a crisis."

The professor of public policy and economics at Harvard and former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund claims he isn't alone in this view. "You'll find few economists who disagree," Rogoff says.

Indeed, the economists who addressed a global editors forum in Copenhagen last weekend were unanimous in their view that a cap and trade system was unlikely to reduce emissions, would be open to rent-seeking and, in many countries, corruption.

Nobel laureate and Columbia University economics professor Joseph Stiglitz told the forum the global financial crisis had reshaped the concerns of economists.

"We've seen the corruption and crony capitalism that has been evident in the advanced industrialised countries ... It makes you very worried," he said. "What we realised now is the allocation of emissions permits is a market that is a couple of trillion dollars a year. So we're giving away, allocating that amount of money, and that just attracts the worst kind of behaviour that you can imagine."

Former president of Mexico Ernesto Zedillo, who is professor of international economics at Yale University and director of the Yale Centre for the Study of Globalisation, told the forum trading in permits in developing countries would lead not just to businesses lobbying to get free permits, which amounted to receiving a lot of money, but to outright corruption.

Stiglitz also said emissions trading would not do the one thing that was needed to drive change towards a low-carbon economy: set a stable price for carbon that would make it viable for companies to invest in low-carbon power plants and infrastructure. So, despite all the money spent trading in permits, which would add to the cost of everything from petrol to beer, there would still not be the certainty business needed to drive investment.

"Once you have emissions trading, permits will become an asset class and can go from anywhere between 30 and 200 (dollars); they'll be very unstable. Then ... we'll demand a stable price so that we'll be back in this never-never land we've been in."

Economists at the forum favoured a carbon tax which, as Stiglitz said, had the virtue of being easy to implement.

The main difference between a carbon tax and emissions trading is that a tax gives certainty about the price of carbon whereas emissions trading gives certainty about the quantity of carbon dioxide being emitted.

Economists argue that while fluctuations in carbon emissions don't matter greatly to the environment as long as they decrease in the long term, fluctuations in the carbon price can cause economic disruption and make it more difficult to undertake the investment required to make the transition to a low-carbon economy.

Business representatives told the forum they would prefer a carbon tax because it would be less volatile than a price set by emissions trading with its possible speculation activity.

Ditlev Engel, chief executive of Vestas Energy, the world's leading supplier of wind power with a 20 per cent market share, said business wanted government "to tell us what the price is for carbon and then leave us alone to get on with it and not keep changing the price because this is very capital-intensive investment".

Jeremy Bentham, vice-president for Shell global business environment, agreed. "Companies like ours want to be unleashed to be able to apply technology growth to improve the quality of life of our customers and earn a reasonable return." Zedillo said there were many businesses that claimed to prefer cap and trade - if they didn't have to pay for permits.

So if a carbon tax is so much better, why are governments pressing ahead with emissions trading at Copenhagen?

I agree that taxes, by whatever name, are part of the tools that are available to influence & change various aspects of the economy.

That said, taxes are only part of the equation and there are other factors which can & should be used, as are appropriate. For example, both the carrot & the stick have their rightfull applications, depending on the situation.

However, taxes are not be able to "fix everything"!

In the instance of Energy, a rising population (at least for some time yet), makes a Global reduction in demand extraordinarily difficult.

Whilst a very likely decline in Supply of the major Energy source (Oil), will put stresses into the Global economy, I do not believe that any amount of stick (additional taxes) or carrot (tax concessions) will be able to solve this dilemma of rising demand & falling Supply.

However, REAL GLOBAL & LOCAL POLITICAL LEADERSHIP, may be able to convince the Public & Business of the necessity for change!

Problem is, I don't see any Politician/s capable or willing to try real leadership?

freediver wrote on Jul 10^th, 2010 at 10:23am:


I can not believe you dismiss the impact of Oil, in such a manner!

As already demonstrated, by the following chart, Oil provides nearly 40% of our Energy needs, but most importantly, it provides a large % of our mobile capacity, it literally is the motor that moves the Global Economy, along with Population growth.

I did write about these issues, at length.



We have already had one run in with the perception that Oil was Peaking, when the price of Oil then raced from $20 P/barrel, to nearly $150 P/B, in the space of 6 years and that plus a few other factors, tipped the world into recession.

If Oil has indeed Peaked, as I suspect it has and that becomes apparent in the near future, then I guarantee everyone, including you, will sit up and take notice of the knock on effects.

Quote:


What do you think is going to happen, as the Global Population continues to expand for another 20-30 years, increasing that thing called Demand, when at the same time our largest Energy source (Oil - 40%), starts to decline at around 4-8% each year?

Try this, as Demand outstrips supply, the same thing will happen, with Oil racing thru the roof and the Global Economy collapsing again!

Those other Energy sources that would be tried, as a replacement for Oil would take 10-30 years to be implimented, IF those in power wanted a transition, but I am not convinced that they do!

Quote:


Whilst I agree that taxes may be a useful tool to some extent, in some countries, the problem is on a Global level it is difficult to see any impact on Global GHG's, due to the massive increase in GHG's by other countries, such as China & India.

freediver wrote on Jul 10^th, 2010 at 8:53pm:


Not everyone looks at things in the same manner!

I suggest that neither China or India, in particular, are interested in taxing GHG's into submission, they are interested in obtaining what we, the USA and others already have, which could partly explain why China is building a Coal fired power station each week.

freediver wrote on Jul 11^th, 2010 at 9:54am:


Yes, I am aware that both China & India are also seeking some other alternatives, but the sheer scope of the Coal power stations & industrialisation in the case of China, means that GHG's are very likely to continue to rise, thus invoking further climate tipping points.

Saving a shift equivalent to a 9.9 quake, in human nature, the Chinese, Indians & others (some 4 Billion) will press for what OZ, the USA & Europe already have and hang the consequences.

And, whilst we can not blame them for that desire, you know what will happen to essential resources and regrettably in the push for more, we will all finish with less, much less!

So, are living standards equivalent to OZ & the USA, possible for another 4 Billion people & reducing GHG's possible, the answer is firmly NO!

Not because I don't want a Hollywood ending and perhaps not even that it may be possible, but because 200,000 years of human nature, says it just won't happen, because too many of us wanting it all for ourselves!!!