‘Why the hell did we ever drop it?’: Labor should push for new carbon tax, ex-Treasury head says
Australia has no hope of curbing emissions without ‘world’s best carbon policy’, Ken Henry tells National Press Club
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I'm fairly ignorant about carbon taxes. How do they work roughly?
the government charges carbon emitters for their emissions - this is done in multiple ways, but the gist is big polluters (power generation, industrial, etc) are charged at the source and things like petrol is charged at the pump
as part of taxes, or whatever other means, the revenues from that tax is evenly distributed back to the population
this makes the cost of carbon-heavy products more expensive, making carbon neutral products cheaper relative to them
it also means that if you live a carbon neutral life, you’ll end up paying no tax, and just getting a nice payout to offset the slight extra you paid for eg green energy
carbon trading schemes are different
it’s all very elegant imo, but the language is bad (nobody likes new taxes) and the govt didn’t do a good job at marketing the chunk of cash they were giving everyone
Well, making necessities more expensive is difficult to sell no matter how it’s packaged. Like it or not, oil is used in everything from transporting food, to growing food, to medicine and supplements, to commuting for work, to home insulation and building, to iPhones and computers. Making those things more expensive, no matter the righteousness of the intention, hurts especially the working classes and the poor. Targeted subsidies to compensate them for their loss is impossible to fairly calibrate, and usually results in even greater political turmoil.
Carbon taxes can work if the country is wealthy and can afford the productivity loss (and the citizens are willing to give up that economic progress and wealth). Given the relatively small size of Australia, and the tiny reduction in global CO2 output relative to the exponentially higher output of China alone, I think most Australians believe the very small ecological benefits are vastly outweighed by the social and economic costs. Such a tax is political suicide right now. Making the cost of housing and transport and food more expensive given current geopolitical events would be highly irresponsible.
Well, making necessities more expensive is difficult to sell no matter how it’s packaged
well that’s kinda the point: in the wash, it didn’t… you paid a bit more and got that money back at tax time… any carbon tax you pay gets evenly distributed across the population, so if your carbon footprint is less than 50% of the counties, you make money
considering the carbon emitted by the top 10%, this is basically wealth redistribution and it helps tackle carbon
This is why various necessaries were given offsets with the previous carbon tax. Problems like that can be worked around.
Let's call it a Carbon Tariff, they're so hot right now.