“Carbon Sunday” – The madness in Australia over the Carbon Tax

This is a collection of links and excerpts regarding PM Julia Gillard’s speech announcing the tax. In a nutshell, from what I can see, the majority of Australians are pissed, and she’s toast, partly because she lied about it before taking office, partly due to the fact it is being implemented as a deficit from the get-go. Oh and then there’s the fact that it won’t make a bit of difference to the temperature, and will be nullified by China.

Apparently, the way it is structured, it looks “Almost bordering on a bribe” (-Andrew Bolt, see his interview with Lindzen below) .

Scores of voters rejected the plan soon after details of the $24.5 billion package to tackle climate change were revealed, with more than 80 per cent who voted in a national online poll saying Australia shouldn’t have a carbon tax.

…
“They’re calling it ‘Carbon Sunday’ but I like to refer to today as ‘Suicide Sunday’ for a PM and three independents,” one reader wrote.
…
Just eight per cent of voters said they were confident it wouldn’t affect their hip pocket.

An anti-carbon tax group said its website crashed after being overwhelmed with people trying to sign up to a campaign rejecting the tax.

The organisers of the site, no-carbon-tax.org, said the site crashed because of the “sheer numbers of people signing up.”

In the Queensland polls hosted by couriermail.com.au, about 7000 readers voted on four questions, with about 90 per cent believing we should not have a carbon tax, over 60 per cent saying climate change was a myth, and 75 per cent saying they were now more likely to vote for the Coalition.

Carbon Sunday

Andrew Bolt – Sunday, July 10, 11 (11:36 am)

- $4.3 billion over four years is going to be spent above what the tax raises to buy off the public with tax cuts and handouts. That’s one wild way to sell a tax, spending more than it raises.

- the compensation must soon run out if the Government doesn’t want to broke. The deal says that after three years, companies can buy offsets overseas for up to half their emissions. This means that costs here will rise, but the revenue to compensate for these rises is sent overseas.

- The Government claims this package will reduce emissions by 160 millions tonnes by 2020. But the immediate tax and spending levels cannot do that. This target can be achieved only with a dramatic raising of the tax. No figure is given for how much of our emissions will be cut by the tax as it.

- The Government refuses to nominate employment effects on the specific industries involved.

- No figure is given for what effect this will have on the world’s temperature.

- Julia Gillard cites in her support Margaret Thatcher, who indeed did warn in 1988 that we should worry about global warming. What Gillard fails to add was that by 2002, Thatcher had developed second thoughts about the alarmists, writing that global warming “provides a marvelous excuse for worldwide, supra-national socialism”.

Cost increases: <a title=”Households to see average cost increases of $9.90 a week. However, they will also receive assistance of $10.10 a week on average.Households to see average cost increases of $9.90 a week. However, they will also receive assistance of $10.10 a week on average.

- Gillard announces also she’ll buy out a 2000 Megawatt power station over the next decade at a price not revealed. That’s billions to actually reduce our power supplies, not increase them.

Just to put all this nonsense in perspective, the policy is due to reduce Australia’s emissions by 160 million tonnes of CO2 by 2020. Sounds impressive right? Well, China’s emissions rose in just one year by 750 million tonnes, nearly five times Australia’s planned reduction by 2020 – in just one year. Climate Madness.

Forestalling all of the 0.24 C° global warming predicted by 2020 would demand almost $60,000 from every man, woman and child on the planet.

Many Australians to be better off under tax deal: Gillard | The Australian

According to a recent Newspoll, just 30 per cent of people support the tax.

“The presumption in the Newspoll that the majority of Australians don’t want action on climate change will change,” Senator Brown told reporters in Brisbane yesterday.

Ms Gillard warned the government would not be cowed by opposition to the tax and accused the Coalition of “lies and distortion” and “attacks on our economists and scientists.

“After all that, I simply say to our opponents: is that the best you can do,” she said.

“Because if you think that’s enough to knock us off course, you’ve got another think coming.”

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Climate change: Gillard or Abbott | thetelegraph.com.au

[Piers Akerman] The carbon dioxide tax has nothing to do with the environment and everything to do with raising an extra $11 billion in revenue.

The tax is not a reform, it is economic suicide.

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READ the full text of Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s address to the nation following the carbon tax plan:

I WANT to talk to you tonight about why the Government is putting a price on carbon and what this means for you.

The decisions I announced today mean:

AROUND five hundred big polluters will pay for every tonne of carbon pollution they put into our atmosphere.

BY 2020 this will cut carbon pollution by 160 million tonnes a year.

AND because some businesses will put prices up, there will be tax cuts, increased pensions and increased family payments.

We have had a long debate about climate change in this country.

Most Australians now agree our climate is changing, this is caused by carbon pollution, this has harmful effects on our environment and on the economy – and the Government should act.

Economists and experts agree that the best way is to make polluters pay by putting a price on carbon.

The first Australian Government to announce a plan for a carbon price was John Howard’s back in 2007.

A lot has happened since then; the debate has been difficult and divisive.

And no government – no political party or leader – can claim to have got everything right during this time.

But we have now had the debate, 2011 is the year we decide that as a nation we want a clean energy future.

Now is the time to move from words to deeds.

That’s why I announced today how Australia’s carbon price will work.

From 1 July next year, big polluters will pay $23 for every tonne of carbon they put into our atmosphere.

They now know how much they will pay unless they cut their pollution.

And they can start planning to cut pollution now.

By 2020 our carbon price will take 160 million tonnes of pollution out of the atmosphere every year.

That’s the equivalent of taking forty five million cars off the road.

Some of the cost paid by big polluters will be passed through to the prices of the goods you buy.

The price impact will be modest but I know family budgets are always tight.

So I have decided most of the money raised from the carbon price will be used to fund tax cuts, pension increases and higher family payments.

These will be permanent, matching the carbon price over time.

Not everyone will be financially better off – there is no money tree. The budget has to add up. But I want people who need help most to get the help they need.

That’s why 9 in 10 households will get a combination of tax cuts and payment increases.

For almost six million households this will fully meet your average extra costs.

And of these, four million Australian households – including every older Australian who relies solely on the pension – will get a “buffer” for your budget, with the extra payments being 20 per cent higher than your average extra costs.

When you have some time, you should have a look at the cleanenergyfuture.gov.au website.

It’ll help you find out what you’re entitled to.

And it will link you to ideas for how to cut power bills and cut pollution without cutting back on life’s essentials.

I also understand that there is nothing more important to families than having a job.

So I have decided we will take special measures to support jobs and keep Australia competitive internationally. And some of the money paid by polluters will also fund billions of dollars of investments in clean technologies like solar, wind and geothermal.

All up, the carbon price will support $100 billion worth of investment in renewables in the next forty years.

Putting a price on carbon is a big change for our country.

I know we can do it together.

Our economy is the envy of the world.

We have world-leading renewable technology, a coal industry determined to cut pollution among the world’s richest reserves of natural gas.

And we are a confident, creative people.

I see a great clean energy future for our great country.

I know we can get there together.

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Now look at the polling from the Herald Sun:

You can weigh in here

Finally, keep your eye on the prize.

h/t to Tom Nelson for collecting many of these

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UPDATE: Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. points out the absurdity of a basic claim.

Australia has released its much awaited carbon tax proposal (here in PDF). I am just now browsing through it. This analogy in the document strikes me as particularly unfortunate:

The Government has committed to reduce carbon pollution by 5 per cent from 2000 levels by 2020 irrespective of what other countries do, and by up to 15 or 25 per cent depending on the scale of global action.

Meeting the 5 per cent target will require abatement of at least 159 Mt CO2-e, or 23 per cent, in 2020 (Figure 2.4).1 This is equivalent to taking over 45 million cars off the road by 2020.

Why do I say an unfortunate analogy?

Well, Australia has only about 12 million cars (and 16 million total vehicles), so using a reduction of 45 million cars “off the road” to illustrate the unilateral emissions reduction goal simply illustrates the impossibility of the task.

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This new policy was of such national importance that Gillard had to pre-empt regular TV programming on Sunday to announce it….and they couldn’t even get the basic math right.

Our guns weren't rounded up.

I find it hard to understand why so many Americans believe that nonsense.

There are over a million legally held firearms in private hands in Australia. The exact number is not entirely clear.

Just about any law abiding citizen can own firearms if they choose to.

I own a semi-automatic military grade rifle. I own a couple of handguns. I also own a number of .22 rifles. I do this entirely legally under Australian law. I have never handed any of my firearms over to the government. I've never had to.

Australia does have some bloody stupid gun laws, and some restrictions - like universal registration and universal licencing, limits on magazine sizes, etc, etc - that I would rather we didn't have. But we didn't make a whimper when our guns were rounded up because our guns were never rounded up.

In terms of this carbon tax, I don't know what we can do about it really. The Labor/Green/Independent alliance have the numbers in both Houses of Parliament to get it through. If Labor hadn't promised they'd never introduce a carbon tax, they wouldn't have been elected, but they did make that promise and enough people believed them that they managed to get elected, and now they are, without compunction breaking that promise.

If an election were held today, they'd be out of office. Unfortunately, unless something changes, there won't be an election until 2013.

Labor lied. The Prime Minister lied. But they have the numbers.

I've got a lot more respect for the Greens than I do for Labor at the moment. They at least went to the polls saying this is what they wanted to do.

Labor are lying scum, backed up by Independents who have been bribed into supporting them, and the Greens who were at least honest about what they wanted.

88% of Australians voted for candidates who opposed a Carbon Tax at the last election - but we've got them because that remaining 12% were enough to get 1 Green elected in a hung Parliament. That's the bottom line.

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