..if you are wondering how the hell a carbon tax works? I know I was. My vague impression was that it is basically a tax designed to make fossil-fuel-based utilities more expensive for everyone - that's the company producing the utilities right down to the lowliest consumer. My understanding was that this greater expense is designed to force people into using more environmentally-friendly power sources by essentially beating them where it hurts most: the wallet.
But I didn't feel I should get on here and start ranting without better information, so I went to our good friends at Google and found out. The unfortunate thing is , it appears the hazy summation outlined above is entirely correct. Behold:
"So in order to reduce the fees, utilities, business and individuals attempt to use less energy derived from fossil fuels. An individual might switch to public transportation and replace incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs). A business might increase energy efficiency by installing new appliances or updating heating and cooling systems. A utility company might use wet scrubbers, low NOx-burners or gasification to reduce their emissions."
The lack of realism in this is mind-boggling. It's like saying that if you start poking a person for standing in a particular spot, they'll just go somewhere else, i.e. a place where poking will not occur. It doesn't account for the other alternative - the person angrily turns around and asks why the fuck you're poking them. Or in other words, bilking people out of money for using one type of power does not necessarily mean they will migrate to other (and I must point out again, still grossly inefficient) type of power. It might just mean that they shoulder the cost, and vote in the first person who promises to repeal the tax - in Australia's case, Tony Abbott.
Another problem, one that many, many people have already pointed out since Julia Gillard did yet another astonishing backflip (remember the 'it's more likely I'll play for the Western Bulldogs than be PM' comment?) and said she was "putting a price on carbon", is that pushing on the price up on one thing pushes the price up on everything else. What I'm getting is that it's hard not to see this tax affecting people's ability to afford the solar panels and whatever else that the carbon tax claims to be encouraging. Even a small-scale system costs thousands of dollars, even with rebates, and even with the compensation Gillard and co will no doubt shell out. And though things like home solar panels do eventually pay for themselves, it's by no means a short-term investment, and if people can't afford the initial outlay, they're not going to take up the option.
Thirdly, that compensation for low and middle-income earners Gillard's promising, the one I briefly mentioned above, isn't that actually going to render the tax useless? I mean, if the point of the tax is to make eco-energy sources the more cost-effective option, to increase the money going out of households and businesses in order to get them to find solutions that will lessen that flow, surely any compensatory benefit or exemption removes the punitive element of the tax. If the amount of money people have with which to buy food and other essentials remains roughly static, or slightly down, or even significantly down but not far enough to create serious issue, they're not going to feel pressured enough to switch to a green power option.
And also, since when can people on minimum wage afford the aforementioned thousands to install solar panels? Or to pay the extra one to five dollars a week to receive green power from electricity suppliers like Origin? I don't doubt that some middle-income earners could and would afford the above, and so would some low-income earners, but there are also people living hand to mouth who will be thinking about where the next meal is coming from, and then providing more comforts for their families, and then many, many other things before they have the luxury of green power. Because like it or not, effective, environmentally-friendly options in terms of power and other utilities are largely the province of the people with the money for them.
Of course, there are things in the quote above, like public transportation and switching to fluorescents. On the latter point, most people have already made that switch - unlike solar, fluorescents are both cheap and more commonly to be found in the supermarket. Also, though there are of course environmental and energy conservation benefits to doing cutting out incandescents, it's not a particularly significant saving, at least not in the context of more significant reducers of carbon usage.
As for PT, well that comes down to what's affordable, and what's convenient. Though public transport is affordable for most people, it is only in inner city areas that living entirely without a car is practical. It is possible in the outer suburbs, of course -but if you think you can get your groceries home on a hot day without meat defrosting and milk turning when it can take up to an hour to do a trip that takes only 15 minutes by car. That may be a slight exaggeration, but the point is, a complete move to public transport is not really feasible for the suburban person, and the farther out you get, the less workable it becomes.
And there is two other major problems with public transport in the context of a carbon tax, and in the context of Melbourne itself. Most buses run on diesel, (there are some ethanol ones) and though that fuel releases less carbon than petrol, it is still a fossil fuel. And trams and trains? Well, they're electric, and as most of us know, the bulk of this state's electricity comes from fossil fuel. So though public transport is probably reducing fossil fuel consumption, it's not actually the super green option it's touted as - the carbon continues. The second problem is of course that as as carbon emitters, public transport operators will also be liable for the carbon tax, thus pushing up that cost. In other words, when it comes to PT, the carbon tax will leave people between a rock and a hard place when it comes to trying avoid its effects.
And there's one more I was wondering about - if you price a gas in the air, what happens to the money? Well, it goes to the government - who (sarcasm alert) is just so incredibly efficient at managing the country's money that we can only assume they'll be able to buy us all a solid gold trophy of Climate Change Awesomeness in a couple of years. You know, once solar and wind power have suddenly stopped being problematic for mass consumption, and China decides it wants to buy those off us instead of cheap-burning coal.
In short, this tax is ridiculous. It's just acres and acres of stick for one mouldy carrot. Yes, cleaner sources of power are a good idea, or they will be when it can reliably supply as much power as fossil-fuel-based power, but beating money out of the populace until they do as they're told smacks of the nanny state mentality that Julia Gillard is increasingly using to govern this nation. She (and other proponents of this thing - yes, I'm looking at you, Bob Brown and Christina Milne) is basically to saying to the Australian people, "Be green, or give us your money". And that means that whatever your political and environmental leanings, it can't be denied that a carbon tax legislates against what ought to be a choice, not something mandated and forced upon people by government. It's really easy to say, "But some people will never go green if we don't do this" or "we need action now", but should that really be coming at the cost of people having their own opinions, making their own decisions? What price the planet if our government treats us like children?
