Sunset looms for Global Warming Industry

Warn investors and promoters relying on subsidies, market mandates, tax benefits, ethanol subsidies, carbon credits, renewable energy targets or research grants

Viv Forbes

Global Warming-Energy-Environment | April 28, 2010

The Ration-N-Tax Scheme is on ice but Australian Governments are still wasting billions of dollars creating an artificial global warming industry. As an example, the Australian government is spending $800 million per year on climate change research and probably more on carbon geo-sequestration. And every state has its own bloated climate change and energy bureaucracies.

There is no doubt that some enlightened or distressed future government will have the distasteful job of taking the well chewed subsidy bones off this greedy and unstainable industry dog. There is no evidence that man is causing global warming, no evidence that the natural warming we have experienced is dangerous or even unusual, and no chance that politicians can control the climate. It is thus essential that every piece of global warming legislation is subjected to an annual cost-benefit analysis and a sunset clause which triggers repeal within five years, or sooner once it becomes obvious to all that man made global warming is not a problem. Such a cautionary clause is needed to warn investors and promoters relying on subsidies, market mandates, tax benefits, ethanol subsidies, carbon credits, renewable energy targets or research grants that unsustainable industries are high risk and can only create sub-prime assets. As we have seen with the government roof insulation disaster, it is easier to inflate an artificial industry balloon than it is to let it down gradually.

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Viv Forbes——Bio and Archives

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.