Australian PM Rudd proposes to spend $19 million shooting one million wild camels.
A big camel probably weighs about a tonne, so Mr Rudd is going to let a million tonnes of valuable meat rot under the Centralian sun.
Each camel probably has about 190 kg of carbon sequestered in its body. As it rots, this carbon will turn into about 700 kg of carbon dioxide and dissipate into the atmosphere.
If the Australian Senate is silly enough to pass the Wong carbon dioxide Ration-n-Tax Scheme this shootout will thus trigger a huge carbon tax liability.
At a carbon emission price of say $40 per tonne of carbon dioxide, the carbon tax on one million rotting camels would be about $28 million. Add to that the actual cull costs of about $19 million and the carbon tax due on helicopter emissions and other activities and the total costs of the cull is about $50 million.
Hopefully this bill will not be presented the taxpayers, but will be sent to Cull Commander Garrett.
This may convince him to chase up a few old buffalo shooters who could make a tidy profit at no cost to the taxpayer by culling the camels and selling the meat to Taiwan. Or we could sell permits to a few big game hunters. Or sell live camels to the Arabs.
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.
