Carbon Tax law passes in Australia.
The perceived problem that environmentalists, politicians and the UN want you to believe is that there is an unacceptable level of Pollution, Green House Gasses (GHG) and CO2 in our atmosphere causing the earth to have a fever a.k.a global warming.
What is a carbon tax? A carbon tax is an indirect tax—a tax on a transaction—as opposed to a direct tax, which taxes income. A carbon tax is also called a price instrument, since it sets a price for carbon dioxide emissions. In economic theory, pollution is considered a negative externality, a negative effect on a party not directly involved in a transaction, which results in a market failure. To confront parties with the issue, the economist Arthur Pigou proposed taxing the goods (in this case fossil fuels) which were the source of the negative externality (carbon dioxide) so as to accurately reflect the cost of the goods’ production to society, thereby internalizing the costs associated with the goods’ production. A tax on a negative externality is called a Pigovian tax, and should equal the marginal damage costs.
What is Carbon? Carbon is present in every fossil fuel (coal, petroleum, and natural gas) and is released as carbon dioxide (CO2) when they are burnt. Carbon is present in all living things (plants, human, and animal) and most non-living things (earth, ocean, rock, iron, etc). Carbon dioxide is released from many things such as human beings and animals exhaling, volcanic eruptions both above ground and under water (the earth exhaling), from burning materials as mentioned above (burning fossil fuels, burning crop fields, forest fires, burning gasoline and aviation fuel, etc).
There are several allotropes of carbon of which the best known are graphite, diamond, and amorphous carbon. Carbon is the 15th most abundant element in the Earth’s crust, and the fourth most abundant element in the universe by mass after hydrogen, helium, and oxygen. It is present in all known life forms, and in the human body carbon is the second most abundant element by mass (about 18.5%) after oxygen. This abundance, together with the unique diversity of organic compounds and their unusual polymer-forming ability at the temperatures commonly encountered on Earth, make this element the chemical basis of all known life.
Problematic Impact: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a scientific intergovernmental body tasked with reviewing and assessing the most recent scientific, technical and socio-economic information produced worldwide relevant to the understanding of climate change. It provides the world with a clear scientific view on the current state of climate change and its potential environmental and socio-economic consequences, notably the risk of climate change caused by human activity. However, the IPCC does not carry out its own original research, nor does it do the work of monitoring climate or related phenomena itself. A main activity of the IPCC is publishing special reports on topics relevant to the implementation of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). National science academies and the Assessment Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have pointed out the potential impacts of human-induced climate change.
Large-scale deforestation started with the arrival of Europeans to the Amazon region in the 1500s. From the start of colonization, Brazil was seen as a country that was rich in natural resources (such as Brazilwood) that could be shipped to Europe. As other resources were discovered (including gold, silver, diamonds) the use of Brazil as a natural-resource provider expanded. The loss of trees (deforestation) causes nearly a 20 percent increase of global greenhouse gas emissions, the equivalent of the world’s entire transport sector. Currently more than 6000 acres an hour of rain forest is cleared from around our equator.
The rain forests at the equator are mother nature’s huge air filtration system. The heavy minerals and pollution in our atmosphere, including that created by volcanic eruptions above ground and below sea-level, are filtered at the equator through the rain forests. When you start removing the filter, conditions become catastrophic.
What does all this mean? Carbon is a naturally occurring element. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is required by all vegetation world wide to live, breathe and exist (exhaling life giving oxygen). CO2 is released into the atmosphere but not evenly as there are lower levels of CO2 at the north and south poles, while much higher levels exist gradually as you head toward the equator where the highest levels exist. As you approach the equator from either pole you reach first a temperate zone then a tropical zone. The North Temperate Zone is between the Arctic Circle and the Tropic of Cancer. The South Temperate Zone is between the Tropic of Capricorn and the Antarctic Circle. The Tropic Cancer and Capricorn make up the Tropical zone, with the equator being the center.
All of the world’s tropical wet and rain forest regions exist in the tropical zone as well as 70% of the world’s arid regions. The vegetation that thrives at our equator (mainly rain forests), do so because of the moisture and abundant amount of CO2. This happens to be where the earth’s vast majority of oxygen originates as this vegetation exhales, while the temperate zones pick up the rest of the burden. All living things with lungs or gills inhale oxygen and exhale CO2, while all other living things exhale oxygen and inhale CO2.
The Kyoto Protocol is a protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC or FCCC), aimed at fighting global warming. The UNFCCC is an international environmental treaty with the goal of achieving the “stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.”
Why would anyone fight global warming or cooling when it is a natural cycle of the planet? Where did mankind find the authority to “stabilize” the earths atmosphere and prevent it from changing? There are only 110 years of recorded weather history in the world, where the rest of history’s weather is based on experiments and incomplete data collection about our past beyond 110 years.
There isn’t a single study or factual report to show exactly how much CO2 is consumed by all the vegetation in the world, at the equator, or in a rain forest in any country to show or prove that natures filter system can’t keep up.
CO2 is NOT a pollutant, it is the life giving gas that vegetation needs to inhale in order to live. Oxygen is a product of all vegetation that is the life giving gas that all life with lungs and gills inhale in order to live.
Problem/Solution:
The perceived problem is that there is an unacceptable level of Pollution, Green House Gasses (GHG) and CO2 which causes global warming.
The solution that the UN and countries that ratify the Kyoto protocol believe to be the best, is to tax the top companies that burn the carbons which produces carbon dioxide (life giving gas for vegetation). This will somehow force those companies to stop or reduce the amount of carbons they burn. The truth of the matter is, the tax will change nothing for those big bad companies because they will just pass the tax burden on to the consumer who will pay a small increase in the products and services they purchase from those big bad companies, i.e. a few cents more for gas/petrol per gallon/litre. The Australian government has the audacity to tell its citizens that 9 out of 10 households will receive compensation from the government to offset this extra cost. What the hell? Who are the 1 out of 10? Where is that list? How did the Australian government come up with an exact figure showing how much of a price increase will be made by all 500 companies to their products and services (to offset this new tax), in order to send an exact amount of compensation monies to 9 out of every 10 houses on your street? What’s next, an “air tax” where the top 500 companies that produce oxygen (I’m assuming tree farms, plant farms, algae farms, and others that produce oxygen exhaling plants) are taxed and oxygen will be called a pollutant like CO2?
Now for my solution: Throw away the carbon tax idea all together. Taxation is the Australian governments solution to everything just like the Democrats in the US. My idea is far superior to taxation. Stop cutting down the rain forests, replant what has been cut down, increase the size of rain forests.
PLANT MORE TREES!
If you increase the size of natures filter, then you increase its capacity to do the job of filtering. God forbid we increase the number of plants that produce oxygen. No one has to stop building, or stop industrial growth, just plant an equivalent (or more) number of trees and plants that can inhale all of the carbon dioxide produced by said growth. Here is another shocker, certain varieties of bamboo inhale 5 times more CO2 than trees.
PLANT MORE BAMBOO!
My idea doesn’t involve taxing anyone which means no burden will be passed on to the consumer. In fact if the governments of the world wanted to give a “credit” to companies for doing something good, then give them a tax break or tax credit for planting trees and plants that are equal to or greater than the amount of CO2 said company produces. Plants and trees tend to grow (requiring more CO2 and producing more oxygen) and reproduce. I know, huge shock right?
Now a little about me. I am not an environmentalist, or a tree hugger, or looking for a hand out from the government, or a hippie, or a representative of a special interest group. I am an ordinary, common sense, average person who believes that taxation is not the answer to everything.
There are other groups that have this same belief such as Avoided Deforestation Partners, or ADP, and the global conservation process REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation).
