Emissions trading schemes proposed for the western world will guarantee another global financial crisis for tourism, transport and world trade.
All carbon control schemes have at their core two essential features aimed at reducing man’s production of the harmless gas, carbon dioxide. Firstly, increasingly severe rationing of carbon dioxide (CO2) releases. And secondly, taxes on all permitted emissions and punitive taxes on any excess. They are all Ration-and-Tax Schemes and they will all enforce arbitrary reductions by 2020.
But not one car, truck, bus, train, plane or ship can move without producing CO2. There is no possibility that this will change significantly before the doomsday year of 2020, just a decade away. Therefore neither Australia nor New Zealand can cut CO2 emissions by 2020 without slowly strangling all those industries that rely on moving people or goods.
Our politicians should be asked, individually, what food, mineral products and travel they propose doing without in order to meet the 2020 cuts specified in their Ration-and-Tax Schemes.
Australia and New Zealand comprise four lonely islands in the vast southern oceans which stretch from Africa to South America
However, world population, political power and finance are concentrated far away in the Northern Hemisphere.
Apart from a few stock horses used by drovers, the occasional sailing yacht, some suburban bicycles and some hydro power that moves trains, our transport fleets rely totally on petrol, diesel, gas and coal. There are no solar powered aeroplanes or sail powered ocean liners - all produce CO2.
Neither country can import tourists, get mineral and food products to their cities or export goods to world markets without producing CO2.
Already France has introduced travel rationing using a carbon tax and the UK Institute for Public Policy says that “the government may need to introduce carbon rationing to cut pollution from everyday activities such as filling up the car, using electricity and flying abroad for holidays”. A UK government committee even proposes that airline taxes should be raised progressively to “a level that would put people off flying”.
Our politicians should be asked what effect these measures and our local Ration-N-Tax Schemes will have on the South Pacific tourist industries.
And why are Australian politicians rushing to construct transport infrastructure for trucks, trains, planes and ships if all of these industries are going to be subject to mandatory rationing and taxes – no additional infrastructure or jobs are needed for a world in which tourism, transport and trade are doomed to contract.
It is a sad indictment of business, media, opposition parties and union leaders in Australia and New Zealand that so few are asking these vital questions.
The Ration-N-Tax Schemes will have zero beneficial effects but, they will cause crippling contraction and job losses in our backbone industries.
This is the real global warming crisis.
Viv Forbes, Chairman, The Carbon Sense Coalition, has spent his life working in exploration, mining, farming, infrastructure, financial analysis and political commentary. He has worked for government departments, private companies and now works as a private contractor and farmer.
Viv has also been a guest writer for the Asian Wall Street Journal, Business Queensland and mining newspapers. He was awarded the “Australian Adam Smith Award for Services to the Free Society” in 1988, and has written widely on political, technical and economic subjects.
