Essay by Eric Worrall
“… However, a sufficiently high carbon tax with steady annual increases would still be the biggest game-changer.”
Climate change: region must follow Singapore’s example and enact carbon tax strategy
A region-wide carbon tax is long overdue to pave the way for a speedy reduction of emissions to protect the environment and accelerate green innovation
Chee Yik-wai
Published: 4:15pm, 11 Jun, 2023Many people in Southeast Asia are feeling the effects of El Nino, as regional governments struggle to cope with unprecedented heatwaves. Electricity bills have shot up for many families trying to beat the heat, for example.
This raises the question of what can be done to tackle the problem. On that front, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) appears to be lagging behind the developed world in the carbon trading market and also in implementing a carbon tax.
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A recent joint investigation by The Guardian, German weekly Die Zeit and the investigative group SourceMaterial has exposed the potential vulnerabilities and ineffectiveness of large-scale carbon trading projects worldwide, many promoted by Verra, the world’s biggest carbon credit provider. It found that investments by Disney, Shell, Gucci and other big corporations into Verra’s carbon credits were largely worthless, and ineffective at stopping rainforest destruction.
It also found evidence of forced evictions of local communities at a forest-based carbon offsetting project funded by Disney and jointly operated by Conservation International in the Peruvian Amazon, leading to Verra CEO David Antonioli’s resignation. This has shaken confidence in the company and the carbon trading industry.
These are the kind of issues an Asean carbon trading market could face. Thus, more collaboration is needed on evaluation standards and rules for exchange to improve pricing mechanisms. However, a sufficiently high carbon tax with steady annual increases would still be the biggest game-changer.
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Chee Yik-wai is a Malaysia-based intercultural specialist and the co-founder of Crowdsukan focusing on sport diplomacy for peace and development
Read more: https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3223505/climate-change-region-must-follow-singapores-example-and-enact-carbon-tax-strategy
I’m horrified. Are carbon taxes going to be a path to normalising human rights abuses and forced evictions? Is it going to become OK for governments and corporations to mistreat vulnerable people, providing that abuse leads to more carbon offsets?
Given renewables are supposed to be cheaper than coal, why not let simple economics drive the transition? That way greens get their emissions reduction without collateral harm to vulnerable people.
Of course, if it turns out claims renewables are cheaper are all a pack of lies, well that would explain the apparent green determination to drive acceptance that human rights abuses are less important than CO2 emissions, and their drive to coerce people to go green with punitive taxes.
Conservation, read shortages, is a good thing to a green. Anything that benefits people is a bad thing, so virtue signaling that hurts people is also a good thing.
Once one realizes how misanthropic the greens are, one can understand their philosophy.
I wonder what the exchange rate will be between carbon and lead.
In Mexico, the choice officials are given is plata o plomo, silver or lead.
The fastest way to stop the rot is to stop funding the UN. This has become a nasty institution that is anti-human. It is an unaccountable group with an annual budget of USD3,400M sucking the life out of the global economy. Its driving ambition is more closely aligned with China’s authoritarian dictatorship than any democratically elected government.
There is no need to address global warming/climate change. There is no climate crisis, CO2 is not the control knob for earth’s climate and earth is not going to reach a tipping point and become overheated. It is as simple as that.
The irony is that burning fossil fuels has no significant effect on climate. As shown on a Top-of-Atmosphere graph of radiation flux vs wavenumber, nearly all of the radiation from the planet is from water vapor. Radiation from WV can make it all the way to space from as low as an altitude of 2 km (the relation between temperature and altitude is shown in the upper right corner of the graph). Radiation from CO2 molecules does not make it to space until the tropopause and above.
Uhmmm, better rethink that a little bit, the red squiggly curve just above the smooth 280 K curve, between wavenumbers of 800 /cm and 1220 /cm is IR making it all the way from the surface to the satellite’s sensor, therefore the sensor sees the ground temperature….. known as the atmospheric window.
If you were at all familiar with my stuff you would know that I am fully aware of the atmospheric window. To be more explicit, the statement should have read: …radiation [energy] from the planet [that gets absorbed by CO2 and all other ghg] is [radiated] from [the planet by] water vapor.
Perhaps it is more clear at https://energyredirect3.blogspot.com
“ Are carbon taxes going to be a path to normalising human rights abuses and forced evictions?”
This is nonsense. There is nothing about carbon taxes there. The alleged abuses arise from scams in the carbon offsets industry.
The answer is to regulate carbon offsets properly, or don’t have them at all. A carbon tax is just a tax.
Nick, the SCMP author thinks offsets are part of a “carbon tax strategy”. It’s in the title of the quoted article.
The “SCMP” author is just a private consultant, writing an opinion article in a newspaper (SCMP). Neither is in a position to “admit” anything. There is nothing about offsets in that title. The author advocates a carbon tax. He thinks implementation of carbon trading (a separate issue) needs improving.
“The author advocates a carbon tax.”
Then he’s a gullible fool that has fallen for the anti-CO2 scam that you are part of.
You know that the whole “carbon” thing is a total scam from the start.
It is no wonder it encourages other scams.
A “carbon” tax is totally unnecessary in any rational thinking society.
People should be PAID for producing CO2 to feed the planet’s plant life.
CO2 and nitrogen fertilisers are what allows the world to feed the world population.
“The answer is to regulate carbon offsets properly.”
No Nick, the real answer is to not start the scam of carbon offsets in the first place !
It is scientific idiocy in every respect.
“The alleged abuses arise from scams in the carbon offsets industry.”
The entire carbon offsets industry is a scam- all of it.
What has “El Nino got to do with “Climate Change™” ???
It is a natural occurring, somewhat erratic facet of the NATURAL climate.
Humans have zero influence on it !
What I can’t figure out is why they are struggling to keep cool due to “El Nino” when we have had a whole bunch of La Nina’s in a row.
“region must follow Singapore’s example and enact carbon tax strategy”
What utter nonsense.
The last thing any rational thinking country should have is a tax on the GAS OF LIFE. !
They should be pushing forward with reliable coal and gas projects so the population has the reliability of energy to cope better with natural climate variability. !
SCMP is an acronym for exactly what?
In case you too were wondering: South China Morning Post
I accept that renewably generated electricity is cheaper than fossil generation – At The Place Where The Generation Happens. In my case, that would be at the top of a pole in the middle of the North Sea – where I can’t use it. Such electricity becomes usable (by me) when it gets to the socket in my kitchen. But the cost of moving such electricity from the North Sea to me makes it more expensive than fossil generation overall. It’s a simple point, but one that renewables enthusiasts refuse to acknowledge.
If renewables were cheaper and better, why all the talk of energy rationing and energy efficiency? You only need that if you are anticipating a shortfall.
I posted this elsewhere on this site but it’s worth posting it again.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/06/11/green-energy-disaster-uk-awful-warning-america/
That is whilst the renewable generator is capable of generating … be it the top of the pole in the North Sea or some plastic panels strung on a roof top … after which you pay for not only the “renewables” generator but also the “fossil fuel” backup generators.
He shudda stuck to “focusing on sport diplomacy for peace and development”.
Overall, around 98% of the free CO2 is in the ocean, around 2% in the atmosphere. This is an equilibrium situation, with CO2 being dissolved where the ocean is colder, and coming out of solution into the atmosphere where the ocean is warmer, and with the CO2 being transported by ocean currents between those places (as well as in the atmosphere). Broadly, Henry’s law pertains, with some modification from ocean chemistry.
Thus we can’t control the amount of CO2 in the air. It depends on the ocean temperatures, and the timescale of the ocean currents that take it from where it’s being dissolved to where it’s released, since cold water is more dense and cold currents pass below warm ones and are not in contact with the atmosphere until they reach the surface.
Also means that we’re heading towards an equilibrium where for human-caused CO2 emissions, around 98% of that will be dissolved in the ocean. I don’t know how long it actually takes to get, say,90% of the way to an actual equilibrium, and given the seasonal changes in ocean temperatures it’s never going to be an actual equilibrium anyway, just passing through the points where absorption and desorption happen to be equal. The Mauna Loa CO2 concentrations show seasonal changes through the year, with the yearly-averaged slope being pretty insensitive to human-produced CO2 so we can’t see either the effect of the Covid-lockdown reductions of emissions or the rise in Chinese coal-fired power stations.
So given that we can’t control CO2 levels, are they a problem if they rise? Looking at the data for the last few thousand years, no – it seems that the changes in temperature are not correlated withCO2 levels, and that every thousand years or so we’ve had a period of warmer temperatures for a few hundred years that were much better times to live. Looks like the only measurable effect of more CO2 is better crops and the more-arid areas able to grow stuff.
This ought to be obvious to anyone who looks at the data without a pre-conceived belief that CO2 (“Carbon”) is bad.
Carbon taxes are thus a very bad idea – it’s taxing life. Governments tax something they want less of, so the governments obviously want less life.
At some point, it’s likely that supplies of Carbon-based fuels will become hard to get, and thus expensive. We’ll need an alternative source of energy. The rate of technology advances is however getting faster, and it’s pretty certain we’ll have something better long before the time we need it in a century or two.
“Carbon taxes are thus a very bad idea”
Governments constantly struggle to dream up new kinds of taxes. They must love the carbon tax idea- it’s one that they can keep growing until its trillions of dollars.
I think that we are already into the trillions with every investment and implementation of the green new deal.
Governments obviously want less life.
“governments obviously want less life”
Now you’re catching on.