Australia's new tax on carbon dioxide will not affect the climate, nor lower sea levels, nor increase the polar ice caps, nor save the bilby.
It will, however, increase electricity prices, raise food costs, destroy real jobs, devalue retirement nest-eggs and increase the total tax burden.
It will also employ regiments of public and private drones to compute, report, regulate, audit, challenge and object to endless calculations of carbon footprints and climate subsidies. The rest of us will resist, retire, emigrate or become carbon criminals or carbonspeculators.
There is no doubt that someone, sometime will repeal it. But the costs will increase for every day this tax lives. Especially if it lives a year and the tax rate rises.
Viv Forbes
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.
