Senator Wong has been off touting her ETS to the Chinese, and was rewarded with a meeting with Chinese Vice-Premier Li Keqiang. Well good for her. No doubt the Chinese want Australia to embark upon Wong’s competitiveness destroying ETS, to the benefit of Chinese exporters:
The 45-minute meeting, held in the communist leadership’s Zhongnan Hai compound in Beijing, focused on the $US45 trillion ($50 trillion) overhaul of the world economy to counter rising global temperatures.
That $45 trillion figure looks vaguely familiar. Maybe because a similar figure is referenced by a group of economists dealing with the economics of climate change, Bjorn Lomborg:
The centre convened an expert panel of five of the world’s leading economists, including three Nobel Prize winners, to consider all of the new research and identify the best – and worst – options.
The panel found that expensive, global carbon taxes would be the worst option. This finding was based on a groundbreaking research paper that showed that even a highly efficient global CO2 tax aimed at fulfilling the ambitious goal of keeping temperature increases below 2C would reduce annual world GDP by a staggering 12.9per cent, or $US40 trillion ($43.7trillion), in 2100. The total cost would be 50 times that of the avoided climate damage. And if politicians choose less-efficient, less-co-ordinated cap-and-trade policies, the costs could escalate a further 10 to 100 times.
So Wong’s ‘cure’ is worse than the supposed disease, and given the way Rudd has administered other government programmes like Bankwatch, Grocerywatch, private retirement accounts, illegal immigration, etc…expect Treasury to have underestimated the cost to the economy. Is it any wonder that recent polls have shown Australians getting cold feet about the whole issue, from the WSJ:
….the public still isn’t ready to pass a law that would fetter growth by acting as a tax on virtually all human activity, from running an air conditioner to driving a car. That’s why Australia’s attitude toward global warming is cooling, and fast.
It also makes one wonder how blind Turnbull has been in following the climate change dogma. It is partially a result of his marginal seat and that he probably spends too much time listening to ABC Breakfast Radio.