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OT - new carbon tax 28-Feb-2011 At 9:30:07 PM Paulie

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it's a stop gap before moving towards a cap and trade scheme, similar to how the government/water authorities manage our water supplies.

For those that don't understand environmental accounting there is a cap put on the amount of water to be used / CO2 to be released, then the cap is devolved into credits e.g., 1,000 tonnes of CO2 might = 1,000 credits = $10,000 per credit (or similar).

It works at a domestic level in Oz (something international is required to take care of the BHPs of this world) simply because those who use more water / put out more emissions, buy credits off those who don't use as much water / pollute as much; therefore reducing the economic viability of conducting the activity that's using up all the company's money i.e., the activity that's causing the company to buy more credits.

In the end, we're only animals doing what animals do - using resources - and as stupid animals (we think we're smart but really, we're still stupid apes) we'll keep using resources (which by the way we conduct the activities to free / capture these resources are doing detriment of the environment) until we reach our carrying capacity (K) which will result in mass starvation, famine, disease etc and a huge reduction in our global poplation to less than K, thus freeing up resources for those still alive.

Like it or not, that's simply the way the world works, we're not immune to the forces of population dynamics any more than a population of fusiliers on the GBR. No amount of taxing / carbon offsetting / debating / electing different political parties will ever change this simple ecological fact.

We don't, and never have managed the environment, it's far too big, interrelated and simply far too complex for us stupid humans to even think we can do such a thing - the simple and inevitable (perhaps sad?) fact is that we're all part of a massive collapse that we may or may not see in our life time...lemmings one might say, running towards a cliff...enjoy life while you can kids, coz in the next 100 years life on earth aint gonna look so pretty.