GW: carbon tax v trading
If something needs to be done about greenhouse gases in Australia*, then the best approach is a carbon tax with revenue used to remove or decrease other taxes.
The goal of climate change policy should not be to reduce energy use, but to switch energy production from carbon-intensive energy (primarily dirty coal) to alternative energy sources (clean coal, nuclear, solar, wind etc). This could be achieved by “picking winners” (ie subsidising specific energy alternatives) and the government has already spent over $2 billion researching energy from pig waste, using biomass waste from sugar mills, cloud seeding for more hydropower, improved solar energy, exploring clean coal and many other alternatives. This is the exact wrong way to go about public policy at it required politicians and bureaucrats to make decisions about the future of the energy industry.
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