Carbon price - EU: $8 and falling, Australia: $23 and rising

Just think beyond the square for a moment and consider if there are alternatives to going green besides a forced carbon tax.

The carbon tax is not being introduced to create a sustainable income and to set up more sustainable green energy plants - otherwise the troll queen would have advocated that 100% of the tax would be dedicated to green energy projects. Now why hasn't she said that?

Why has the troll queen NOT committed 100% of the carbon tax to green projects?

The carbon tax will be used to help pay off the debt Labor borrowed and is still borrowing. They are borrowing $4billion dollars a year just to give it away to strangers, but never say how giving this money away will HELP Australia or Australians.

 

I would say your friend has a very very poor grasp of business. (Actually - I would say you are simply making things up - but I'll try to humour you).

The impact of the ETS is insignficant in comparison to the rise in value of the $AUD. If your "friend" does not understand this - he is a moron.

So - your "friend" is not moving because of the impending ETS. He is moving because an economic advantage is being provided at his destination.

It appears your argument is nonsense.

 

Mate,
there are two ways to conquer the problem. Either with a tax, or with direct action. I would prefer direct action, but a tax is fine to.
However, under Abbott there will be no tax and no direct action, meaning we are falling back into medieval times.....
That is the tragedy of things, you vote for Libs and we end up some hundred years back, and become the laughing stock for others....
We could really make an impact on the southern hemisphere with the energy we could create, but what are we aiming at? Follow the Yanks..........

 

Affirmative public action is always better than an institutionalised tax.

I agree that that this election will be a race to the bottom and not the top, and in retrospect of this, that’s why we the people need to start rectifying these sorts of situations so they never happen again. Yes; the Liberal Party policies are suspect at best, and Abbott is not going to win this election on policies and hard work; he is simply going to win the election on Labor’s mistakes, and that’s something I don’t like. I will be voting informal at this election, because either candidate Gillard or Abbott is worth a cracker in my book and neither one deserves to be PM or has the intellect or ability to be PM of this country.

Have you ever wondered why Gillard/Greens committed revenue directly raised from the carbon tax to the UN?

Have you ever wondered why Gillard/Greens did not commit 100% of the carbon tax revenue to sustainable projects?

If Gillard/Green were fair dinkum about this carbon tax then they would not have been giving it away to the UN and they would have committed 100% of the revenue raised by it back into sustainable green projects - and you know it also.

This is why I know this troll queen is using the carbon tax as a method to help pay back the $billions Labor borrowed and are still borrowing to keep Australia’s head above the GFC that’s still happening.

Australia has enough solar heat in the middle of this country to create enough energy for all our cities and towns just using solar alone. Places like Alice Springs should be 100% solar efficient.

 

I see now, the hobbles won`t affect the horse`s performance. pmsl

 

The kind of infrastructure required to build a solar plant in "Alice Springs" to power our major cities would be absolutely enormous, quite a stupid suggestion.

The question is not a "tax" or "direct action". It's an ETS, a tax, or "direct action". And where does "direct action" gets the money from? Yes... taxes. But unlike a carbon tax or an ETS, that money will be collected from everyone REGARDLESS OF HOW MUCH ENERGY YOU USE. Because that makes perfect sense!

The ETS is NOT going to do anything to pay down govt debt. It will in fact COST MONEY. It's depressing that people don't know these extremely basic facts about a very important legislative package. I mean it was all over the news for god's sake.

Holy crap, carbon pricing is NOT A CARBON TAX. The point of it isn't to raise government revenue! There is an initial revenue intake, or in this case an extended 3 year period, and that's it. About half of the revenue is going to compensation to help people and business with the transition to an ETS. And the other half is going into "direct action".

The governments "direct action" with carbon pricing is about 14 billion dollars, the Opposition is apparently going to spend what... 5 billion? They're targeting "soil carbon" which they think is going to cost $8-10 per tonne of carbon. It's highly experimental and no one is confident it's going to work. Even if it does work and doesn't cost more than they expect, it's a ONE TIME DEAL. You can do it about once every hundred years or so, it is not a solution to anything.

Direct action has a couple of good things in it, but it's simply NOT going to achieve the emissions targets that have been set and the projected costs are seriously dubious. Hiring 15,000 public servants as a "green army" is just about the stupidest thing I've ever heard and I don't know how the opposition reconciles that with their "small government" mantra.

 

Hi Ziggy,
so instead of being against everything, tell us in short what your ideas are to conquer todays problems?
If we can reduce green house gases, that is good, isn't it?
Now whether we achieve it with a carbon tax or a direct action plan or a mix of those or other means, I am open for a better future, and if not for myself, then for my children and grandchildren.
Too much time has passed, and we still don't want to change our attitudes...
And by the way, why not have a big solar panel field anywhere in our outback, Alice or else? Yes it will cost money, and yes it requires additional grids, but others can do it, so should we...
Reg.

 

We certainly should be seeing our dry arid areas as a valuable resource for the future

The Zero Carbon Australia Stationary Energy Plan has a fully costed proposal of how Australia could have carbon free electricity in 10 years:

http://zerocarbonplan.org/

 

I'm all for solar power plants, but you don't build one as far as you possibly can away from all major cities.

Look at the proposed power grid for 100% renewable energy from bugs' link.

Building a solar plant in alice springs to power sydney and melbourne would be like building a power plant in Turkey to power London.

The ETS is a very good policy and we now have targets of an 80% cut in emissions by 2050. Given how carbon heavy our economy is, and the vested interests involved, I think that's the best policy we were ever gonna get.

 

Yeah lets just shut down everything and return to the middle ages FFS its the only way your going to acieve 80% by 2050.

Fossil fuels provide everything that you are surrounded with just look around your room and tell me what doesn't come from fossil fuels.

I'll help you take away the wood and the concrete and almost everything else is from fossil fuels.

Now if we are going to get rid of fossil fuels kiss it all good bye.

Because at the moment we have nothing that can replace the space fossil fuels occupy in our lives.

Ever thought about it that way.

 

Rubbish.

We are perfectly capable of producing electricity without burning coal.

There is no reason that by 2050 we could not have all electricity generation from 100% renewable sources. By 2050 we're projected to have a world population of about 9 billion and a rapidly growing middle class. Moving away from fossil fuels is a necessity.

Plastics are another problem, especially the question of waste, but there are options for bioplastics.

Fossil fuels are a very valuable and finite resource and we cannot squander the profits from the industry just because it's cheap and easy now. We must reinvest heavily in new energy technologies and phase out outdated coal power.

 

The Europeans discussing their dessertec solar dream in Northern Africa are talking 8 to 10% loss in energy to cover that distance.
So what if we lose also 10%? That measns, there are still 90% of clean energy arriving in our coastal cities...

 

Can you please explain to me, why you would run a cable from Alice springs to every major Australian city, instead of just building smaller regional plants to major population centres? It's not like a choice between building a solar field in miserable dreary England where the sun never shines, and building it in Northern Africa. This is a choice between desert and desert.

The distance from say Morocco to Spain, is nothing even comparable to the Distance from Alice Springs to Perth, Sydney or Melbourne. Plus they have the population densities to justify such a cost and significant existing infrastructure to work with.

Strategically building ONE power plant to power most of the country has got to be a big mistake too.

 

If you live in a politically stable country a big solar field could work out, especially for us.
A solar field in Northern Africa, which would feed Europe as a whole, would see one powerline running through the Mediterranean Sea and another one, using the land to transport energy (via Turkey) is easily the distance we are facing from Alice to Mel or Perth or else.
It might be cheaper for us to build local ones, closer by, but you will have many people who will claim that their dog cannot sleep anymore or their cats are urinating on their carpets. You know what I mean, the ones who would like to stay 100 years behind and who are against everything new.
We got plenty of them on this forum...
The question not only would be, which alternative is cheaper to set up, but also cheaper to run and which one provides a better alternative for the future.
Remember, the Germans are now slowing down in their attempts to run all of their eletricity needs by 2022 from renewables, because they cannot feed big pikes of electricity from solar in their existing power grid.
So running all our needs through one big grid, produced in Alice(eg.), could have positiv side affects with the 3 hous difference between East and West.
The panels might also stay cleaner with no salt buildup.
Additional energy could be sold to our neighbours, all we need to do is looking at it in a positive way, and not winding the clock back by reevaluating atomic power again...
Some interesting facts here:

http://www.sunenergysite.eu/en/top250pv.php

Cheers

 

Hasn`t anyone here given any thought to the infrastructure to population ratio in Australia?

Christ, how can people wonder why we drink?

 

I still don't see the point of laying out that much cable when you don't need to and from a security point of view I really can't imagine that it's a good idea. Frankly I would think the more decentralised energy production the better.

And yes, the Northern African plan will supply power to more than 1 billion people, as opposed to 22 million.