What Will We Leave Our Children? How the Washington Post summed up our Carbon Circus..... When Australian Labor candidate Julia Gillard ran for prime minister in 2010, she was explicit about the carbon tax: No. Not under her watch. Except that Gillard didnt have enough of a coalition in Parliament to win. So she made a deal with the Green Party, including an agreement on proceeding with a carbon tax. With support from the Greens she won, and suddenly Gillard was advocating the tax. In 2012, it became real. Even before it was enacted, Gillards opponents were using the tax to bash her. It was successful in its goals: greenhouse gas emissions dropped and carbon emitters had robust government subsidies to prevent their taking a significant hit. (One assessment of the repeal labels electricity producers as losers because theyd lose those subsidies.) But prices for gasoline and electricity went up. Which was enough of a short-term economic hit to easily outweigh the long-term, hazy threat of climate change in national politics. Read more: washingtonpost/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/07/19/australias-decision-to-dump-its-carbon-tax-reveals-more-about-politics-than-the-environment/
Posted on: Mon, 21 Jul 2014 10:34:21 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015