farmdoc's blog post number 99

I readily accept climate change (or more accurately, positive radiative forcing) is the biggest problem our planet faces – now and in coming decades and probably centuries. It must be solved. And the longer the solution is delayed, the harsher it will need to be. Greenhouse gas production must reduce – drastically, expeditiously, equitably, and globally. But there isn’t currently – and realistically there’s unlikely to be in future – any international activity beyond collating national governments’ efforts and their results. Australia under Rudd quickly ratified the Kyoto protocol. Well big bloody whoopy do! Now what? A carbon pollution reduction scheme seems the go. Beginning in 2010 or so, carbon credits will be issued and traded. But the main carbon generating activity – methane from livestock – is slated for exemption; the coal-burning electricity generating corporations will be mollycoddled, petrol excise tax will be cut initially, and trees won’t count as carbon fixers unless planted in or after 1990. These political distortions signify a reprehensible subjugation of the environment by politics. Similarly I resent an environmental problem being reduced to a monetary transactional process. In Australia alone, annual carbon transactions will total billions of dollars. Governments will profiteer because GST will apply. And some private citizens will become hugely wealthy from it. What’ll they spend their money on, I wonder: SUVs? Jet skis? Cabin cruisers? Private planes?