They are calling it “Carbon Sunday”.
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) .
You can download the new climate policy here (PDF).
=============================================================
Carbon tax backlash in national plebiscite hosted by News Ltd websites | Courier Mail
ANGRY Australians have vowed to vote Prime Minister Julia Gillard from office at the next election after the controversial carbon tax announcement.
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.
===============================
My editorial on the carbon tax fraud. I then interview Professor Richard Lindzen, who says Gillard’s tax wouldn’t work, even if man really was warming the globe. Which he doubts.
Carbon Sunday
Andrew Bolt – Sunday, July 10, 11 (11:36 am)
Vent here while venting is still legal.
The Climate Change Committee deal here.
UPDATE
Some initial, quick thoughts:
– $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”.
– The Government is spending $2.7 billion extra over the next financial year alone – before the tax even gets imposed – to buy support throught tax cuts and handouts.
– It’s a magic tax:
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.
===========================================================
Australian Climate Madness Blog:
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.
=============================================================
Gillard’s tax on “carbon pollution”: the facts « JoNova: Science, carbon, climate and tax
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.”
==============================================================
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.
==============================================================
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.
================================================================
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
===============================================================
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.
===============================================================
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.
Dean L
The elephant is not in power.Bob Brown and Gillard are.If she had called an election then the people had a clear choice between hers and Abbott’s policies.
Care to point out where Andrew Bolt is wrong in what he says?
I don’t see any perceptions of Australia in the Bolt piece Anthony quotes.
It is a shame that Abbott feels the need to appease the alarmists,all he had to say was that he’d wait until China and India acted.
Can you in any way challenge the content of the video linked in the head of this thread?
.
Australia is fortunate in having a parliamentary system where a truly bad party can be removed from power fairly fast. Can’t do that in America.
The real question is whether the opposition parties will actually do the opposite after they gain the majority, or will pull the same lie as Gillard. If they lie, tyranny is complete. Nowhere to turn.
Gillard has lied enough. Australia- to the streets and get the banners out. Get Her Out Of Power. Vote Her Away.
It is always said that people get the government that they deserve. Australia does not deserve Gillard.
A word to Ms. Gillard– ignorance is not an excuse for stupidity.
CarbonCarbon Dioxide but it does seem that politicians are confused about this. Does Joolya mean $23 per tonne of Carbon or $23 per tonne of Carbon Dioxide?
DeanL is todays paid Greens troll / idiot. And if your following this stuff today from Julia Foolra you will be aware its like watching the Zepplin go down. we all knew it was a matter of time. the science was all wrong.
It’s not so bad. Though we can no longer afford to burn coal, we still make money selling mountains of coal – much of it gouged from prime agricultural land – to China and other countries. Wonder what they do with it all? Cynics claim they are only buying our coal to burn it. As if! And should that coal catch fire by accident in some Chinese factory, it would be in their atmosphere, not ours…right?
Even if all this talk about Aussie coal being exported for combustion is true, we could have a marvellous new slogan for the national crest: BURN GLOBAL, BUT TAX LOCAL.
DeanL says:
July 10, 2011 at 6:48 am
The difference is, the Coalition wants to introduce a non-market based, voluntary mechanism so that they have a vehicle for opposing the only sensible policy and the one that was their own under Howard and Turnbull until the party was hijacked by the scientific illiterati. This irony is the biggest elephant in the room.
Can you explain what you mean? The first of the above two sentences above makes no literal sense.
I’d like to echo DeanL’s point that Bolt is not an unbiased commentator. You should take him with a grain of salt.
Hardly Carbon Sunday, the carbon tax won’t have nearly the detrimental effect on the country as sensationalist’s like Bolt claim and The Greens will never get to unleash their fanatical anti-democratic principles either. It’s called a compromise, that’s why we have a bicameral parliament with a preferential voting system. Who knows, it might even be a positive outcome. Economies regularly adapt to new markets and its not as if Australians were any more enlightened as a consumer populace before. They have always been driven by corporate advertising and personal gain, like Americans.
The overwhelming issue is something greater than the carbon tax, it is unprincipled politicians who represent apathetic citizens. It remains to be seen if Gillard is toast next election as she just gave the lower & middle classes a short sighted incentive to vote for her again. Can she keep it up?
These topics always bring out the unthinking comments.
Perhaps a more appropriate moniker would be: “Carbon black Sunday”?
Jared says:
July 10, 2011 at 6:33 am
Gov’t should force everyone to build comet shelters. Better safe than sorry.
NO.. Government should pay private companies to built a space fleet to protect us. Just as useless, but it get us some hardware we can use for other things. 🙂
I knew before she was even elected that the Fabian Socialist Gillard had the potential to be very dangerous indeed. I don’t think it matters who Australia elects, the orders for the Carbon Tax are coming from higher up and will be implemented sooner or later. Same is true for any western country. There is no choice anymore, it’s all an illusion.
Gillard’s action reminds me of Goethe’s words: “There is nothing more frightening than ignorance in action.”
IanM
DeanL: “Nice to see you pick a reasonable and unbiased journalist…”
There is no such thing. What you are annoyed about is that Bolt is one of the few journalists in Australia who are not spewing out unbiased state subsidized propaganda by the manure truckful.
99% of the media is pro-AGW and it drives you nuts the other 1% won’t tell you what you want to hear.
I think Andrew Bolt misses the point to describe CO2 merely as ‘plant food’. This description may be suitable for nitrates, phosphates and other fertilisers, but CO2 is much more than that. It is the single gas upon which all life on this earth depends. Every cell in your body contains carbon atoms that have once been part of CO2 molecules in the atmosphere. And so does every cell of every thing that has ever lived. We are all carbon-based life-forms.
The difference between animals and plants is, by definition, that plants can make their own food, whereas animals cannot and have to eat plants or other animals to survive. Plants make their food by a process called photosynthesis, in which CO2 is converted to organic compounds in the presence of sunlight (thanks to chlorophyll in the leaves of plants). All living organisms ultimately depend on this process.
Organic chemistry is defined as the study of chemicals which contain Carbon; it is the stuff of life! To describe CO2 as merely ‘plant food’ is to decry it, but to describe it as a pollutant is barking mad. It reminds me of a Star Trek episode in which a robot went around destroying planets in order to cleanse them of what it called ‘biological infestations’.
In pursuing this Global Warming hysteria we have come to a point where words lose their meaning
Yes, it’s such a pity to have people leading and representing our country whom we would be ashamed to be seen with in public, even if they were members of our own family, for fear that they might open their mouths..
mosomoso says ‘Though we can no longer afford to burn coal, we still make money selling mountains of coal – much of it gouged from prime agricultural land – to China and other countries. Wonder what they do with it all?’
Surely it all goes to landfill – everything else imported by China does!
Meanwhile, could I just say how pleased we are in the UK to hear about the Wizard new scheme in Oz: you remember what they say – ‘Misery loves company!’
The majority of Australians probably are pissed most of the time, and they might even be angry too. 😉
Julia is the repetition machine, spits out the same lines over and over or should I say the same lies over and over so maybe idiots will eventually believe – we need to introduce truth and reinforcement – NO Carbon Dioxide Tax even if the labour getup goon squad tries to drown our protests. Add your voice and make your vote count.
No mention, of course, of any economic fallout from this tax. As if increasing costs will have no impact on sales, hiring etc. What’s it going to cost to determine who should get a “carbon rebate” and who shouldn’t? How many jobs will be lost? How many of those big polluters will go out of business, or just pick up stakes and leave? Don’t worry about any of these things because we’ll have nice green jobs waiting for you, you might have to work two to pay for energy but look on the bright side, it’ll be .0002 degrees cooler by 2020.
You wouldn’t mind so much if the Bean Sprout and Nutsy Brigade argued the toss with grownups but it’s their kiddy fiddling ways that get the hackles up-
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/national/australian-kids-are-living-in-climate-of-fear/story-e6freuzr-1226091001997
Well I take it the Australian government does not watch the news that says the English speaking world has rejected the ways of the left, America is kicking democrats out of office at record rates, Canada andGreat Britain both elect new conservative governments. And now they choose to piss off everyone in the country.
All of thay is still ignoring their scientific ignorance but one example of overt stupidity is enough for one post.
There has been a literal flood of articles in the Aussie MSM this w/e about the carbon tax. Its rather funny as the tax is short AU$4.2bil after compensation is factored in. Who foots the shortfall Gillard, the “rich”?
Labor and the Greens are gone come next election. Sadly, damage will be done! Buh by SS Aus…soon to feel that sinking feeling, and there are some who believe Aus is unsinkable. Well I think Gillard believes that too.
Go! Australia Go!
While the country taxes itself to death, it can continue exporting $50 billion worth of coal per year. Now that is a coherent green policy!