The money merchants are licking their chops at the prospect of an international carbon trading market.
IT’S nearly a month since the basic parameters of the various offsets to the carbon dioxide tax for various income levels were unveiled.
As reported here a fortnight ahead of that announcement (‘Winners and big losers when CO2 tax hits’, June 30) the pivotal cut-off income level is $80,000.
That splits Australians between those to receive offsets to cover the new tax and those to carry the added burden of a largely Greens-driven impost.
I say largely because sizeable numbers of Labor MPs and Liberal ones (Malcolm Turnbull isn’t Robinson Crusoe) have been hankering for such a tax for years.
On July 1 2012, they’ll finally get it.
What comes thereafter is easy to fathom.
The direction of CO2 taxing (set by Wall Street) will be ever upwards. Expect constant rises in rates alongside new energy imposts due to the government buckling to Greens coaxing for the $23/tonne rate to head towards $100.
Don’t take seriously the ballyhoo that the Emissions Trading Scheme, to begin in 2015, means ‘the market’ will set the rate.
That scheme hinges around a certain number of emissions certificates being issued annually.
And, as retired Sydney law academic David Flint, said: “This is not a real market but an artificial construct concocted by bureaucrats and academics to be rorted by merchant bankers.”
The fewer certificates issued the more each will cost, so the higher the CO2 tax, the more we’ll pay for electricity, gas, and eventually liquid fuels.
Like it or not, the Howard-led Liberals and Gillard-led Laborites have buckled over the past 15 years to the Greens hoax campaigning that CO2 concentrations of 380 parts per million in the atmosphere means mother earth will heat up.
State Scene deliberately highlights John Howard because it was he who not only laid the basis for CO2 taxing, and actually went into the 2007 election promising it.
And, during the previous decade, he’d inflicted upon Australians (with the connivance of state Labor and Liberal governments) a range of other Greens imposts on energy usage that have been steadily boosting electricity charges.
The first was the so-called Renewable Energy Targets Scheme, which paved the way for unviable, unreliable, and inefficient windmill and roof top panel electricity.
He followed that disastrous move by creating the costly Australian Greenhouse Office, now the Department of Climate Change, Canberra’s propaganda arm to promote the CO2 global heating hoax.
Then came the Greenhouse Office-sponsored National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act, which requires companies to report their CO2 emissions.
That’s why Prime Minister Julia Gillard so easily found 500 so-called ‘big polluters’ to slug a further $8.5 billion in taxes.
As one report said: “The tax itself is collected by polluters, but is felt by households through higher cost of living.”
Thanks John Howard, with friends like you who needs socialists?
The Liberal Party’s ousting of Howard favourite Malcolm Turnbull – a former Goldman Sachs merchant banker and one time environment minister – was thus too little too late.
Mr Howard had already put everything for the introduction of the tax in place.
Because he always feared the Greens, Mr Howard buckled to their demands every time, instead of launching a comprehensive scientific inquiry to expose the CO2 global heating hoax.
Unfortunately he’s not, and never will be, a Vaclav Klaus, who, as president of the Czech Republic, constantly warns Northern Hemisphere politicians and voters that the hard-leftist Greens seek ever-greater controls over people’s lives and the economy with scaremongering campaigns against CO2, an essential plant life nutrient.
But there’s worse news to come.
One of State Scene’s windows into the future, learned Perth blogger James Fairbairn, has brought to my attention a revealing Wall Street Journal (October 21 2009) column, “Cap and Trade Could be a Boon to New York”, by Kirsten E Gillibrand.
‘Cap and trade’ is American terminology for what Ms Gillard and her Greens pals call ‘emissions trading’.
Who is Kirsten E Gillibrand?
Log into Wikipedia where you’ll find she’s been a high-powered New York, (where else?) lawyer who took over US Secretary of State’s Hillary Clinton’s New York Senate seat.
Clearly junior Senator Gillibrand has a keen interest in ensuring New York’s Wall Street and its various dollar-oriented appendages – big-charging law firms, merchant bankers, stock brokers, credit assessing agencies, and global financial services providers – all prosper.
Since her candid 736-word column cannot be fully reproduced, I’ve selected some telling paragraphs.
“Over the past year, the economic crisis has devastated the financial services industry that fuelled New York’s boom years,” Ms Gillibrand begins.
“The ripple effect from Wall Street is still being felt, as unemployment has risen to 10.3 per cent in New York City.
“In this turmoil, it may seem hard to imagine a financial market poised to deliver significant growth.
“However, a rising number of investors and financiers see one in the trading and reduction of carbon [dioxide].
“According to financial experts, carbon [dioxide] permits could quickly become the world’s largest commodities market, growing to as much as $3 trillion by 2020 from just over $100 billion today.
“With thousands of firms and energy producers buying and selling permits to emit carbon, transaction fees for exchanges and clearing alone could top nearly half a billion dollars.
“With thousands of firms and energy producers buying and selling permits to emit carbon, transaction fees for exchanges and clearing alone could top nearly half a billion dollars.”
I wonder how Messrs Howard and Turnbull, and Ms Gillard, feel about those lines.
State Scene finds them ominous in light of the impact of Wall Street having sparked the so-called global financial crisis.
Senator Gillibrand continued: “An infrastructure is already beginning to form, as entities like the New York Stock Exchange, JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, and the new Green Exchange are developing carbon trading platforms or expanding their environmental trading desks.
“There are nearly 100 funds already focused on green investments.”
I bet there are, or were, late in 2009. And I bet they licked their chops and felt their wallets when reading Australia was just 48 months away from having an ETS market.
Here’s her closing paragraphs: “Lastly, it is essential to the long-term success of climate-change legislation and the ultimate benefit for New York that the market for carbon-emissions permits is internationally integrated.
“We should encourage the use of international offsets, such as reforestation projects in South America, which will drive investments in the most efficient reductions and allow firms in the US to capitalise on their innovative practices across the globe.
“New York and the US have a lot to gain from our efforts to combat climate change, and a lot to lose if we fail.”
Ponder that.
Imagine it; a multi-trillion dollar, thousands of times over, computer-driven trade in legislatively instituted pieces of paper called ‘carbon certificates’ escalating on an ever-expanding money-go-round.
Until one day someone twigs; just as someone twigged before Lehman Brothers and Enron went down the you-know-what.
Thanks Ms Gillard, Senator Bob Brown and Mr Howard.
