Quote:
Originally Posted by Arragonis
Well the "trend" didn't continue. And hasn't.
So if it wasn't a "prediction" why did gov.com.au invest $m in building them, and then mothballing them because the rain came back.  |
Because if they hadn't built the desal. plants (or at least made some provision for water) and there had not been rain, there would have been cities running out of water.
It is precisely this sort of infrastructure project that is required due to the effects of global warming, but is not included in the cost of the fuels without a price on emitting.
Quote:
|
Australia managed to avoid the GFC pretty much altogether before they had a climate tax. The tax was way too high at $25 especially as nobody followed them and nobody wanted to. It was (and remains) unclear where any "Carbon Tax" would go.
|
Yes, it was higher than the trading price in the EU market at the time. It was intended that the "tax" morph into integration with the EU emissions trading market at a later date (2015?). The expected price was anticipated to be close to the $25/ton when that occurred.
The Australian government may have got the price wrong (we'll see if the EU recovers enough economically or they reduce the number of permits enough to push the price back up to near that level).
The "tax" "revenue" was, in part returned to individual taxpayers in the form of tax cuts, in part used to compensate some trade exposed emitters (who still had an incentive to reduce emissions but would be no worse off if they didn't) and in part made available to finance renewable energy/emission reduction projects.