The Melbourne Age reports:
Labor has agreed to a keystone Coalition demand that agriculture be excluded permanently from the carbon pollution reduction scheme, raising hopes that Government legislation will pass through Parliament before the Copenhagen climate summit in December.
And the Australian reports Kevin Rudd:
. . . confirmed the government had agreed with the Coalition to exclude agriculture from its proposed emissions trading scheme, to be debated in Parliament this week.
This is one of the reasons that an ETS won’t be imposed on farming in New Zealand when it’s first introduced.
If our ETS isn’t in step with Australia’s we’ll be exporting production across the Tasman, making no reduction in global emissions and depressing the economy in the process.
November 16, 2009 at 8:47 am
That is just foisting your debt on future generations, HP, and if I do nothing else with the rest of my life, I reckon I’ll write the history of this period – with a serious look at the ‘Not I, said the Little Red Hen’ brigade.
Is it so hard to just front up and say ” OK, I made a mess in making a profit, obviously I’m liable for the cost of that?
That would be the mature response, blameshift (and arguing that we are a miniscule contributor is blameshifting) must always be seen as an immature response.
Just remember that ‘economies’ are a man-made expedient construct, and matter not a whit in terms of the real world.
Fiat currencies had to pop permanently when the scam of fractional reserve – backed leveraged borrowings, met the constraints of leveraged resource supply.
Don’t bargain on its continuance.
November 16, 2009 at 10:00 am
Why do you choose Australia to ‘keep in step’ with? Why not China?
Your argument is just trying to wiggle out from doing something
November 16, 2009 at 10:08 am
Rimu – our primary produce doesn’t compete directly with China’s as it does with Australia’s.
“Your argument is just trying to wiggle out from doing something”
You hit of the problem with an ETS – it’s about just doing something, not about doing something which makes a positive difference.
November 16, 2009 at 11:49 am
Every single one of our industries has a foreign competitor somewhere. If we choose to subsise farmers, why don’t we just go the whole hog and subsidise everything?
November 16, 2009 at 11:51 am
“You hit of the problem with an ETS – it’s about just doing something, not about doing something which makes a positive difference.”
Yeah, carbon trading has some real problems. I’m definitly with you on that. What other options are on the table?
November 16, 2009 at 12:15 pm
“What other options are on the table?”
Science based research ought to be but every dollar spent on the politics of cliamte change and ETS is a dollar less for science.
November 16, 2009 at 12:22 pm
Doesn’t a price on carbon provided an incentive to engage in research that reduces emissions?
November 16, 2009 at 12:25 pm
Not so. You have to understand the beast to deal with it.
We aere too late for research now, folk like you wasted the window, and that is the majority, as the re-election comment points out.
If the majority are selfish – vote for their hip pockets before their offsprings’ wellbeing – them NO system will be put up, which will work.
So why worry about which one?
The best option on the table, is to aim for proper sustainability. That requires a measure for every chemistry (as with fishing quota) and a cap limit to be set. You err on the side of caution, and if you find it so, you can ease up a bit.
350.org are right on the money. Open-ended linear charges, underwritten by the taxpayer, are as big a rort as fractional reserve banking.
It may simply be that we have run out of time to be a mature society, and face up to ‘we-a culpa’.
November 17, 2009 at 12:01 am
The World needs food.Peasant economies are not going to produce enough.Isee the wankers dont want proper research or listen toany alternate views,Wishart and others,One world govt anyone? Led by socialists in UN.J.R.M.