A new alliance between Al Gore and Clive Palmer is likely to result in the repeal of the carbon tax, but the big winner is probably the global warming industry, not the ordinary Australian. Indeed if you think your electricity bill is about to plummet, you've been mislead.
Much of the increase in the price of electricity over recent years can be attributed to the mandatory Renewable Energy Target (RET): a government legislated requirement on electricity retailers to source a specific proportion of total electricity sales from renewable energy sources including wind and solar, with the extraordinary costs paid by all electricity users.
Al Gore appears to have convinced Clive Palmer, to support the repeal of the carbon tax on condition that the RET is consolidated. Earlier today Dennis Jensen spoke in the Australian parliament about some of the lucrative deals that Gore has done over the years:
Indeed Dr Jensen's speech provides some historical context, while Jo Nova explains what the conditions Palmer has placed on repeal of the carbon tax will mean longer term for Australia:
It seems now that Palmer’s amendments to repealing the carbon tax do not include an Emissions Trading Scheme … but keeping the $10b Clean Energy Finance Corporation is a win for Gore, and so is keeping the RET (Renewable Energy Target) and the Climate Change Authority — it’s another government funded advertising unit for the carbon scare campaign. The more patrons who are dependent on the carbon-subsidies, the more pro-carbon lobbyists there are. And they lobby like their livelihood depends on it — because they have nothing if the government policies don’t prop up their pretend free market.
As Ross Garnaut, a long-time proponent of climate alarmism and phony markets, commented today:
We're in a better position than when we were facing abolition of carbon pricing, major tampering with the Renewable Energy Target, abolition of the Climate Change Authority, abolition of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation.
It may not be the ideal way of doing things, but Mr Palmer's support for keeping existing arrangements will have important effects.
Oh for goodness sake, youse climate delusionals are just that. Delusional. Why not back away and admit the evidence does not support your argument and just give up?
Gosh Alan!!...you make it all sound so easy!...like it's just too good to be true..where do I sign up!?.....who do I send the dosh to?...when can i connect to the grid?.....I'm excited!!
Senator John Madigan will definitely vote out Labor's stupid co2 tax. I must admit I was a bit worried for about 24 hours. But Xenophon and Muir are still on the fence.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/tax_axe_safe_john_madigan_denies_hed_vote_against_the_carbon_tax_repeal/
Palmer scraps a tax that costs him $6 million a year and the useful idiots help and cheer. Including Al:
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/how_did_palmer_fool_so_many_journalists_while_saving_himself_a_motza/
When they hate Abbott this much, they can't think straight.
Well somebody has to feed the chooks.
That said, there is simply no case that can be made for an ETS, aside from the very visible financial one.
Should we allow this emperor's new clothes madness, to become the flavor of the month, then there are around 140 billions PA, is waiting in the wings, for global traders in intangibles, to collect from the unwary.
As the most commonly traded commodity, absolutely, positively, the best we've ever seen, carbon will with the passage of time, become increasingly traded, and therefore, increasingly valuable!
Consequently, the reported alleged rorts and rip offs, will become increasingly common, but just as virtually invisible, or hard to detect or monitor.
The only motive for a billionaire, is surely profit, and for what, shuffling paper?
I could do that Clive Baby, and I'd only need a million a month, after tax! Chicken feed!
I believe we need to completely rethink this, and then come back to the idea of just putting a price on carbon, with a tax.
The tax could be a million dollars a ton, but only if it were accompanied by a compulsory cap!
The cap could be current emission; meaning, no one in their right mind would ever need to pay this tax; albeit, it would still be big enough and loom large enough, to progressively moderate behavior, as the cap was very progressively lowered over very reasonable time.
A steel maker, i.e., could halve their emission, just by using the locally invented direct reduction process, and then halve it again, by building a thorium power plant adjacent to the mill. The old pig iron mills would have to go!
Or be left to the Chinese, who, even with slave wages, could no longer compete!
Then reduce carbon again, supplanting waste rubber and plastics, for the coal/carbon required, in what remains a heat assisted chemical process, that more accurately describes steel making!
And aluminum, nickle, titanium and other smelting, would be similarly able to virtually halve their emission, by placing a thorium reactor or reactors, very adjacent to their smelting operations.
And even less expensive than Hydro power!
Look mum, no expensive transmission lines!
Aluminum .i.e., is just congealed electricity.
And the most compelling reason, for the producer, would be the virtual halving of energy costs, as the first and most cogent business case reason for converting to thorium power.
The second, would be an ability to permanently contain these costs, making almost any smelting venture more and more viable, right here, with the passage of time.
We have huge reserves of thorium! Enough we're told, to power the world, for 700 years!
State and federal Governments,needs to come to the party, by legislating, to allow private operators, to build their own modest thorium reactors, say, at a max of 50 MW, with a caveat, that they must be buried at a minimum of a 100 feet deep, and in solid bedrock!
I suspect, there'd be something of a "gold rush" for thorium/rare earth deposits!
And nobody could say, we had squibbed on placing a real price on carbon; given, ours would be a million dollars a ton!
And if anyone complained, but no Australian pays this tax!
We could always say, yes I know, chuckle, chuckle, giggle, chortle, aren't we the clever ones!
Alan B. Goulding.
Hi Toby,
You summed it up to perfection.
Hi Debbie,
So did you.
Hi sp,
In NSW the County Councils did just that MRCC had the cheapest domestic power in Oz Murrumbidgee County , the cheapest industrial power.
It was reliable and in MRCC's case there was a major retail arm, which helped with costs.
Then the robbers in Sydney, fixed it, took the reserves, and prepared it for sale, by artificially creating big profits. Deja vu Telstra.
We will get a ridiculously expensive 'service'. A few overpaid ignorant politicians get to strut the big business stage, The ACCC will obediently tell us how we are better off . Then, because some US corporation grabs the majority shareholding, the TPP will forbid us from EVER fixing it.
I, for one am starting to lean toward the people who believe that something more than elections may be needed to fix it.
The five minute ruling on Tas forests and the ruling that if NZ suspended import of (possibly) diseased US pork, it would be an illegal trade barrier,
( thereby stopping Oz from even applying), show how far we already are down the drain.
It looks like the CEFC will be directed away from funding the useless wind energy fraud.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/save_our_scenery_rescuing_landscape_from_palmers_ban/