carbon tax? has the world gone mad.

[seventyseven]

We've done this before but a summary:
We agree:
- Climate change exists and represents a threat.
- that the current tax achieves little/nothing.

Problems with your argument (and the arguments of economics in general):
- You suppose to know all possible outcomes based on a simplified classroom version of game theory modelling. let's not get into the "anything is possible" debate. it's possible we get clean nuclear energy tomorrow too. we simply need to look at the current facts for the, let's say likely outcomes. but, for the record my uni has had several postdocs pulling in multiple millions in consultancy work doing full/large scale economic modelling. i'm sure they'd tell the students (undergrads, honors, phd's, whatever) if the simplified models were fundamentally inaccurate or flawed. the phd's almost never introduce any model or theory without then letting us know what goes on in the real world. undergrads do an entire unit just on game theory.
- You make unfounded assumptions regarding cost/benefits - e.g. the only costs of your hypothetical oil spill worth evaluating are economical, they will be measurable and quantifiable - which is simply not the case. i'd argue that they can't be quantified. i have a serious problem with market intervention in general for that exact reason, but seeing as we're trying to quantify carbon that whole argument needs to be taken up.
- By doing the above you present hypotheses as absolutes, conveniently supporting your conclusions. (as in - the outcomes of a model are hypotheses until empirically supported) this is something we simply disagree on. this is mathematics - which can be proven a priori. BUT. i'd like to cover this with real-world evidence below.
- Your argument for non action is based on a logical fallacy http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/two-wrongs-make-a-right.html. how on earth am i saying two wrongs make a right? i'm saying one right won't correct the other wrong when someone has the motivation to just keep polluting their brains out no matter what we do so it's a waste of time to do so.

i'd like to cover the following two statements together:

We Disagree:
- Australia's role as the largest exporter of coal (28% of global production) is irrelevant and we have no control over supply and demand. I believe the opposite.

- By doing the above you present hypotheses as absolutes, conveniently supporting your conclusions. (as in - the outcomes of a model are hypotheses until empirically supported)

that last paragraph: let's say we do pump up the price of coal with a per unit tax. so what?

they're either A: going to get it from somewhere else or B: considering how much is reliant upon coal power, simply pass those prices on to the consumers of the power. who then pass it on to the consumers of their products, and so on and so forth.

from what i've heard the much more likely outcome is A. there are a lot of rumblings about all sorts of shady and many downright illegal dealings between china & various african states or warlords.

to quote a conversation i was having,

"I was chatting to my GF's boss (he's Chinese) about this, and he had some interesting views on this (my GF works for a Chinese mining company in Malaysia, and previously a Korean steel company). He said there is a massive push by the Chinese to break the back of the current Australian/Brazilian duopoly. He has mines in Malaysia, China and Indonesia, and has looked at Africa and Australia. He said Africa is going to be hard to mine due to instability of governments and general corruption/violence/crime. The thing in favor of the Chinese in Africa is the fact that they haven't fucked with Africa like the western world has. I've worked in Malaysia and have had to "grease" the wheels once or twice myself.

I'd see the biggest issues revolving around bribing the correct people at the correct time. You'd be spending half your life bribing the correct officials/military commanders/tribes

The Chinese will and do use an enemy of my enemy is my friend. It was actually one of the first things I discussed with my GF's boss. He said that only goes so far though. Many people just see the Chinese as the new westerner who was too slow to get in first. It is actually quite fascinating, but scary at the same time There is HUGE amounts of resources, and once tin pot generals find out about the $$$ invloved, then some of these African countries will suffer even more turmoil!"

now when you consider how much of a clusterfuck a lot of africa is (and the chinese are obviously aware of it and the problems it poses), i initially thought this might lead to a lot of PMC presence and so forth which would make up at least some of the savings of cheaper labor in africa. but then i stopped thinking nice legitimate businessman and started thinking asshole. this lead me to coming up with all sorts of "enemy of my enemy is my friend" dealings and many many more dodgy as hell/downright illegal dealings with it. in fact the chinese could even try and use local africans (even if they're rebel groups) as security. such an arrangement would obviously be of mutual benefit. i'm sure this is something that johnny can cover infinitely better than i can (as all my knowledge about china is pretty much purely economic, he has IR knowledge/knowledge of its history from what i can tell) but we don't need to go too much into this. all i can say is there does appear to be (albeit circumstantial) evidence of this stuff occurring already.

what we can do is simply google "china africa mines" and see what we come up with.

http://www.chinaafricarealstory.com/2010/10/more-transparent-chinese-mining-deal-in.html

of particular note is this one for how in depth it goes http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,484603,00.html

then we've got an exploration permit granted by authorities that just weeks before performed a coup against their government, i mean gee, what do you think went on before that happened? chinese gave them money to buy some guns perhaps? http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Africa/2010/0329/China-mining-company-causes-unrest-in-Niger

and even the ones with governments are doing some seriously dodgy shit http://www.voanews.com/english/news...ers-at-Zambia-Mine-Go-on-Trial-111195009.html


it's happening. i know a guy that does it day to day which i've quoted above and there's many news articles showing the aftermath. there's your real world examples backing up the model. of particular note is that they're doing this even before the carbon tax is brought in, so the private sector may fuck itself enough before the government adds its bit. or the carbon tax will result in them just upping the ante in africa. maybe the africans will pay the price with lives instead of us with money.

the conspiracy theorist in me is wondering how long before the mining companies start doing the same thing the chinese are.

 

[MasterOfReality]

That's pretty much where I'm at too. I'm hoping someone with Arete's experience can shine some light on what the benefits of this carbon tax will bring to the environment, given the large offsets by way of rebates and other concessions.
Effectively what I'd really appreciate someone explaining is - Does this tax still do anything functional in reducing our carbon footprint in it's current form?
What I'm worried about hearing is "it's better than nothing, but ----"

Yeah me as well, I'm simply not qualified in this field to make even an educated guess on the argument that rages around climate science.

Its probably my training as an engineer that makes me want to see very clearly what the benefits will be - not some sort of wishy washy conclusions that are based on numerical models that are very liable to 'calibration', and the emotive grandstanding that surrounds this issue.

I think we need to step back a bit, take stock of the situation and address the issue with practicality as the main focus. I noticed Canada's version of the ETS/Carbon Tax is dead in the water, and they have a commodities based economy like ours. Maybe they realised its too much pain for neglible gain?

 

[seventyseven]

Then again, why implement a carbon tax at all with a risk to the economy when China is forging full steam ahead with power plants that would undo any carbon emission reductions in a split second.

In its current form, I'm still convinced its a socialist wealth redistribution exercise dressed up as a warm and fuzzy environmental initiative.

this statement covers the entire conclusion perfectly. as i mentioned before, it's the perfect revenue tax labor can sell to the greens as an environmental one. the greens couldn't be making labor's job of bribing their support any easier or beneficial to labor if they tried.

environmentally, it will change NOTHING.

 

[Cypher]

Here is how I see it working in the personal experiences of most people - business will probably be a bit different

Say you get $500 per week after tax.

The Carbon tax is implemented and those industries who are levied the carbon tax and pass those costs onto consumers.

Holy good night! My electricity bill went up. Ouchies. To the tune of around $800 extra per year! (that includes all the associated costs for the carbon tax - not just electricity, but it is the idea that counts at $26 per tonne of CO2)

BUT...(if we get what Prof Garnaut is suggesting) the the tax breaks change. If you are a low income earner (in this scheme) you get an extra $2,000 per year - or around $38 extra a week. (Yes there are calculating flaws but you get the idea)

Overall the low income earners are now better off by $1,200 under a carbon tax scheme.

The great thing with this is that people don't see the link between the extra weekly pay and the electricity bill (that is most people wont save that extra $38 per week to pay for their bigger bill). The will just see a big electricity bill and do what they can to reduce it, by either reducing consumption or finding alternatives to coal fired electricity.

This is also the danger - trying to convince people to take on something that, over all, will make them better off - but is all just a little abstract when you are looking at a significant rise in your bills.

This will cause consternation initially (when people forget to save for the bill) until it all sorts it self out. But we all got used to GST. BAS on the other hand...

That extra $38 is put back into the economy (although saving is coming back in fashion, so hopefully some people will do this as well). The economy gets a boost, and we ween ourselves of carbon.

There will need to be a bit of support around the implementation

 

[TonyG]

Only the GST is a user pays model, so everyone pays it. I think what most of us are suggesting is that for this to be an effective deterrent to using products that cause Climatic Change you need to also make this a user pays model too. What we have now is just a redistribution of wealth model, and considering the changes put in by our good friend Donald Duck in the last budget, I would have thought we've already ticked that box.

 

[Cypher]

It is interesting to see how people react to the whole carbon tax debate.

People who follow the liberal ideology (not the liberal party although they are supposed to be liberalists) don't like to have major government intervention in the economic market place - and the carbon tax will be major intervention.

Economists don't like tax churn - where government takes money from one part of the economy and then puts it right back in another part - it is a lot of work for no real net gain. Like moving a box from the front of the truck to the back of the truck - you've not really done much. And the carbon tax is tax churn at it's finest.

Some economists do like incentives though - but they are very tricky to pull off effectively - there is a risk that it all goes bottom up. Like incentivising teachers - all of a sudden you get teachers cheating on their student's exams so they can pocket the bonus. Its much easier than putting in the hard yards. This did happen in the States by the way.

Environmentalists are environmentalists.

It all boils down to: do you think that this is something that needs all the intervention. Could we reduce greenhouse gases all on our own with no government intervention?

Personally I don't think so

And stop demonising China. Yeah, they are bad in some ways - but in others they have done way, way more than Australia has in terms of environmental outcomes

 

[scblack]

And stop demonising China. Yeah, they are bad in some ways - but in others they have done way, way more than Australia has in terms of environmental outcomes

Hahaha - what have they done?

 

[Arete]

let's not get into the "anything is possible" debate. it's possible we get clean nuclear energy tomorrow too. we simply need to look at the current facts for the, let's say likely outcomes. but, for the record my uni has had several postdocs pulling in multiple millions in consultancy work doing full/large scale economic modelling. i'm sure they'd tell the students (undergrads, honors, phd's, whatever) if the simplified models were fundamentally inaccurate or flawed. the phd's almost never introduce any model or theory without then letting us know what goes on in the real world. undergrads do an entire unit just on game theory.

I’m not attacking modeling per se. If you had developed a parameter rich Dirichlet Process Prior/Bayesian parameter framework or other model representative of the test situation's complexity, and run it objectively weighted multiple times I’d say you’d have generated a robust hypothesis. But you used a simplified classroom model, subjectively weighted the parameters and decided the outcome with zero testing. If you are going to take a model based approach to prediction, you generally don’t make up the assumptions as you go along – that just serves to dress up speculation as fact.

Generally, in my field a modelling approach goes as follows:
Generate model to predict a certain evolutionary scenario given genetic data.
Simulate genetic data under the given scenario.
Form a priori acceptance values for adequate model performance.
Run the model numerous times using simulated data (I recently ran a species inference model 5 times, for 100 million generations per run as a test - 5 days using 40 processors on a supercomputer)
Use the probability of the model choosing the right scenario as a measure of the model's efficacy.
Fine tune model, repeat until model meets required performance criteria.
NOW the model is ready for testing empirical data - which will be replicated a similar number of times.
Unfortunately I don't get paid seven figures for it, however.

Stating that given X, model Y predicts Z, therefore X will result in Z is speculation, not conclusion.

i'd argue that they can't be quantified. i have a serious problem with market intervention in general for that exact reason, but seeing as we're trying to quantify carbon that whole argument needs to be taken up.

To go back to your previous statement, we should only ameliorate environmental degradation when the costs outweigh the benefits, but now you state that the costs cannot be measured? That’s a self contradiction that leads to a position of non-action being a subjective value judgment.

this is something we simply disagree on. this is mathematics - which can be proven a priori. BUT. i'd like to cover this with real-world evidence below.

Below – you generate hypotheses, then use hearsay and speculation as evidence to form/support your own subjective conclusions. I appreciate your ability and right to have opinions on the matter, but presenting subjectively connected, speculative evidence as fact and absolutes is disingenuous.

how on earth am i saying two wrongs make a right? i'm saying one right won't correct the other wrong when someone has the motivation to just keep polluting their brains out no matter what we do so it's a waste of time to do so.

Read closer.
“Two Wrongs Make a Right is a fallacy in which a person "justifies" an action against a person by asserting that the person would do the same thing to him/her, when the action is not necessary to prevent B from doing X to A. This fallacy has the following pattern of "reasoning":
1. It is claimed that person B would do X to person A.
2. It is acceptable for person A to do X to person B (when A's doing X to B is not necessary to prevent B from doing X to A).
This sort of "reasoning" is fallacious because an action that is wrong is wrong even if another person would also do it.”

 

[seventyseven]

It all boils down to: do you think that this is something that needs all the intervention. Could we reduce greenhouse gases all on our own with no government intervention?no it doesn't boil down to that at all. i've spent the best part of a couple thousand words explaining why. did you even read my post?

Personally I don't think so

And stop demonising China. Yeah, they are bad in some ways - but in others they have done way, way more than Australia has in terms of environmental outcomes

i'm not demonising china. they consume a hell of a lot of coal and chuck out a hell of a lot of carbon. they're pretty big bad guys when it comes to this.

and the past is completely irrelevant.

 

[Arete]

I'm hoping someone with Arete's experience can shine some light on what the benefits of this carbon tax will bring to the environment, given the large offsets by way of rebates and other concessions.
Effectively what I'd really appreciate someone explaining is - Does this tax still do anything functional in reducing our carbon footprint in it's current form?

I'm skeptical as to whether the tax in the current form will do anything at all.

The issue is complex. There's a lag time between CO2 release and the impact of it's thermal inertia on temperature, and also a complex network of positive feedback related to climate fluctuations. Even if you could tell climate scientists exactly how much of a CO2 reduction the tax will create, there would not be a straightforward answer as to how much of an ameliorating effect it would have. HOWEVER due to aforementioned positive feedback systems, a small reduction sooner is more effective than a large reduction later.

So basically, even if the government could give us an exact figure that the carbon tax would reduce emissions by, there's no guarantee it would have a significant change on the process. Business as usual WILL result in a change in climate which is VERY LIKEY to have significant adverse effects on humans and biota in general. Reducing emissions MIGHT reduce the severity, and is more likely to do so if it is implemented sooner rather than later. And that's about as certain as the answers get.

 

[Drizz]

Hahaha - what have they done?

Didn't the founder of Suntech return to China to develop his solar patent because he can't find funding while doing his PHD in Aus?

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/saturdayextra/stories/2008/2169588.htm

 

[Mattydv]

Didn't the founder of Suntech return to China to develop his solar patent because he can't find funding while doing his PHD in Aus?

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/saturdayextra/stories/2008/2169588.htm

There's 3 people in Australia worth more than 3 billion dollars?

 

[TonyG]

I'm skeptical as to whether the tax in the current form will do anything at all.

The issue is complex. There's a lag time between CO2 release and the impact of it's thermal inertia on temperature, and also a complex network of positive feedback related to climate fluctuations. Even if you could tell climate scientists exactly how much of a CO2 reduction the tax will create, there would not be a straightforward answer as to how much of an ameliorating effect it would have. HOWEVER due to aforementioned positive feedback systems, a small reduction sooner is more effective than a large reduction later.

So basically, even if the government could give us an exact figure that the carbon tax would reduce emissions by, there's no guarantee it would have a significant change on the process. Business as usual WILL result in a change in climate which is VERY LIKEY to have significant adverse effects on humans and biota in general. Reducing emissions MIGHT reduce the severity, and is more likely to do so if it is implemented sooner rather than later. And that's about as certain as the answers get.

thanks Arete, appreciate your insight. I guess MOR hit it on the head, we need to step back find out exactly what we are trying to acheive and get the experts to implement it. Both from a scientific and economic point of view.

 

[seventyseven]

I’m not attacking modeling per se. If you had developed a parameter rich Dirichlet Process Prior/Bayesian parameter framework or other model representative of the test situation's complexity, and run it objectively weighted multiple times I’d say you’d have generated a robust hypothesis. But you used a simplified classroom model, subjectively weighted the parameters and decided the outcome with zero testing. If you are going to take a model based approach to prediction, you generally don’t make up the assumptions as you go along – that just serves to dress up speculation as fact.

Generally, in my field a modelling approach goes as follows:
Generate model to predict a certain evolutionary scenario given genetic data.
Simulate genetic data under the given scenario.
Form a priori acceptance values for adequate model performance.
Run the model numerous times using simulated data (I recently ran a species inference model 5 times, for 100 million generations per run as a test - 5 days using 40 processors on a supercomputer)
Use the probability of the model choosing the right scenario as a measure of the model's efficacy.
Fine tune model, repeat until model meets required performance criteria.
NOW the model is ready for testing empirical data - which will be replicated a similar number of times.
Unfortunately I don't get paid seven figures for it, however.

Stating that given X, model Y predicts Z, therefore X will result in Z is speculation, not conclusion.

so what was your point of that huge rant, are you saying that i'm wrong or i'm using the wrong method and just coincidentally right? because all you're attacking is the method, not the conclusion. even if the method is different or what you might call "unscientific", right is right. is the more complicated version a surer right? absolutely. but that's not the point here. obviously your "acceptable level of sureness" level is lower than mine, but that's not the point here either.

and speculation or conclusion doesn't matter, right is right. some people are what you might call very good speculators. would you like some evidence of that?

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=peter+schiff+was+right&aq=f

To go back to your previous statement, we should only ameliorate environmental degradation when the costs outweigh the benefits, but now you state that the costs cannot be measured? That’s a self contradiction that leads to a position of non-action being a subjective value judgment.

don't try and twist my words. that's not a contradiction at all. the first statement stands for itself. the second one relates to it in that it's explaining why the first action cannot be performed.

nice try.

Below – you generate hypotheses, then use hearsay and speculation as evidence to form/support your own subjective conclusions. I appreciate your ability and right to have opinions on the matter, but presenting subjectively connected, speculative evidence as fact and absolutes is disingenuous.

i'd like you to expand on this. be at least a little specific. considering i posted you a whole stack of "THIS IS ACTUALLY HAPPENING" regarding china trying to find alternative sources of coal, and showed why this won't result in anything other than the taxes being passed on to the consumer i'm a little stumped as to what you're talking about.

Read closer.
“Two Wrongs Make a Right is a fallacy in which a person "justifies" an action against a person by asserting that the person would do the same thing to him/her, when the action is not necessary to prevent B from doing X to A. This fallacy has the following pattern of "reasoning":
1. It is claimed that person B would do X to person A.
2. It is acceptable for person A to do X to person B (when A's doing X to B is not necessary to prevent B from doing X to A).
This sort of "reasoning" is fallacious because an action that is wrong is wrong even if another person would also do it.”

sigh. once again missing the point.

ok. you harp on about models here, and you've just used one that isn't representative of the situation yourself.

for starters, you're saying that polluting is the wrong thing to do no matter what. my entire point right from the beginning has been that is BULLSHIT. it's not a matter of "is our action wrong or right". it's a question of "will doing the environmentally right thing actually change anything?". the answer, is no.

if your adversary (doesn't matter who) IS just polluting away doing the wrong thing (considering no matter what we do they have motivation to do this it's a pretty fair assumption. their previous behavior certainly suggests they don't give a flying fuck about polluting the air and it's not likely they're going to start shutting down the coal stations anytime soon. in short, it's pretty obvious they don't care for pollution.), then us not doing so is both going to send us (relatively speaking) broke, and leave us with loads of filthy air in the atmosphere anyways.

my argument then is in fact that it would be wrong NOT to pollute our brains out if they're doing it as well. if it's going to change NOTHING by doing the "wrong" thing then we might as well have a good time with the money we can earn from doing so. not to do so would be economically irresponsible.

essentially, what i'm saying is that whether the action is right or wrong is entirely dependent upon what our adversary does because that will determine whether the "environmentally right" action actually makes anything better or not. i don't know how much plainer i can put this. it's not the right action when it merely results in the possible outcomes being the same (neutral) and/or worse, it's simply an exercise in futility.

i'll be damned if i'm going to go broke in an exercise of futility, and that's exactly what this is.




question: do you think that i am wrong in my conclusions or that the way i've come to them is wrong, i.e i'm right but not for the reasons i think? be specific for each one.

 

[PINT of Stella. mate!]

Seventyseven. Without referring to cut and paste jobs or lengthy tedious rants complete with graphs (surely the quickest way to turn a reader off a post outside of an embedded clip of 2 girls 1 cup) can I just point out that your argument for non-action due to the presence of larger polluters is complete bullshit?

Haven't you ever heard the phrase 'leading by example'?

Slavery used to be the big thing back in the day and it helped build more than a few empires yet a handful of enlightened European countries decided to outlaw it despite it's popularity amongst rivals. Did that make much 'economic' sense at the time? Possibly? Probably not. Either way it soon filtered down the chain until ALL world countries had outlawed it.

The same can be said for commercial fishing quotas - does the presence of unscrupulous foreign fishing fleets mean that the rest of us should ignore quotas and just fish away till the oceans are as barren as Gary Glitter's friends list on Facebook?

We could probably add giving women the vote, banning tobacco advertising, establishing free/subsidised health care and the recent cries for an end to live animal exports to Indonesia to that list (amongst countless other progressive measures from throughout history)

Hell, I'll even go all Godwin on your arse and compare your policy of inaction to that of the French in WW2. On one hand you had Charles De Gaulle, who escaped into exile and kept trying to forment resistance to the Nazis throughout the War despite the impossible odds. On the other hand you had Marshall Petain and the whole Vichy government who went straight in for appeasement and inaction.
Guess which one has an airport named after him?

Every major cultural or lifestyle change has to start somewhere and if we don't want to be at the pointy end of any major environmental initiatives we should immediately stop considering ourselves as a first-world country!

 

[TonyG]

Seventyseven. Without referring to cut and paste jobs or lengthy tedious rants complete with graphs (surely the quickest way to turn a reader off a post outside of an embedded clip of 2 girls 1 cup) can I just point out that your argument for non-action due to the presence of larger polluters is complete bullshit?

Haven't you ever heard the phrase 'leading by example'?

Slavery used to be the big thing back in the day and it helped build more than a few empires yet a handful of enlightened European countries decided to outlaw it despite it's popularity amongst rivals. Did that make much 'economic' sense at the time? Possibly? Probably not. Either way it soon filtered down the chain until ALL world countries had outlawed it.

The same can be said for commercial fishing quotas - does the presence of unscrupulous foreign fishing fleets mean that the rest of us should ignore quotas and just fish away till the oceans are as barren as Gary Glitter's friends list on Facebook?

We could probably add giving women the vote, banning tobacco advertising, establishing free/subsidised health care and the recent cries for an end to live animal exports to Indonesia to that list (amongst countless other progressive measures from throughout history)

Hell, I'll even go all Godwin on your arse and compare your policy of inaction to that of the French in WW2. On one hand you had Charles De Gaulle, who escaped into exile and kept trying to forment resistance to the Nazis throughout the War despite the impossible odds. On the other hand you had Marshall Petain and the whole Vichy government who went straight in for appeasement and inaction.
Guess which one has an airport named after him?

Every major cultural or lifestyle change has to start somewhere and if we don't want to be at the pointy end of any major environmental initiatives we should immediately stop considering ourselves as a first-world country!

All very good points but I think you cheated yoruself and your readers by leaving a graph out!

 

[Oliver.]

It seems to me that these are the biggest advantages of a carbon tax system (as has probably already been pointed out):

• Increased incentive for individuals to reduce consumption based on higher cost of consuming carbon-footprint-heavy products/services
• Increased incentive for industry to reduce the amount of carbon emitted to produce products/services, thereby giving themselves a competitive advantage over other competitors*
• Putting a price on environmental resources, finally

*This is, in my opinion, going to be one of the best outcomes. If company A invests in technology to reduce the carbon footprint of producing a product, and company B does not, then company A gains a competitive advantage over company B. It has a reduced tax burden, which it can then pass on to consumers in the form of cheaper goods. Initially, this saving will be absorbed by the cost in investing in the technology, but over time the gain will begin to give company A an advantage.

It gives incentive for companies to innovate to become more focused on sustainable methods of producing goods and services.

There is a famous paper by Christopher Stone called "Should Trees Have Standing?" that looks at the issue of pricing the environment, it is definitely worth a read, and at least a mention here.

One of the biggest issues with our global economy is the unbalanced distribution of natural resources that aren't valued properly (or sometimes, valued at all).

A carbon tax is step one to putting a price on the environment. Despite its flaws, it's a great concept. The biggest issue will be how it is implemented, and whether or not the additional tax collected is reallocated in a meaningful way.

 

[scblack]

Increased incentive for industry to reduce the amount of carbon emitted to produce products/services, thereby giving themselves a competitive advantage over other competitors*


*This is, in my opinion, going to be one of the best outcomes. If company A invests in technology to reduce the carbon footprint of producing a product, and company B does not, then company A gains a competitive advantage over company B. It has a reduced tax burden, which it can then pass on to consumers in the form of cheaper goods. Initially, this saving will be absorbed by the cost in investing in the technology, but over time the gain will begin to give company A an advantage.

This is ONLY a possibility against other Australian competitors. Unfortunately competitors are GLOBAL, not just aussie.

So a tax on carbon is giving ALL Australian businesses a competitive DISadvantage.

There is NO good outcome here.

 

[John U]

This is ONLY a possibility against other Australian competitors. Unfortunately competitors are GLOBAL, not just aussie.

So a tax on carbon is giving ALL Australian businesses a competitive DISadvantage.

There is NO good outcome here.

Unless we all decide to buy Australian made when we can

 

[Oliver.]

This is ONLY a possibility against other Australian competitors. Unfortunately competitors are GLOBAL, not just aussie.

So a tax on carbon is giving ALL Australian businesses a competitive DISadvantage.

There is NO good outcome here.

This is very true. To be honest I haven't really looked into the finer points of the carbon tax scheme.
Is there a possibility that this tax will be levied on import goods that have a high carbon footprint, or is it simply applicable to Australian industries only?