{"id":185399,"date":"2011-07-10T20:18:00","date_gmt":"2011-07-11T01:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2011\/07\/10\/australia-intends-to-institute-a-carbon-tax\/"},"modified":"2011-07-10T20:18:00","modified_gmt":"2011-07-11T01:18:00","slug":"australia-intends-to-institute-a-carbon-tax","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2011\/07\/10\/australia-intends-to-institute-a-carbon-tax\/","title":{"rendered":"Australia Intends to Institute a Carbon Tax"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Well, this is a good policy, at least until 2015, when <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/world-asia-pacific-14096750\">they turn the whole idea over to the Vampire Squid<sup>*<\/sup> and its ilk<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"color: blue;\"><p>The Australian government has unveiled plans to impose a tax on carbon emissions for the worst polluters.<\/p>\n<p>Prime Minister Julia Gillard said carbon dioxide emissions would be taxed at A$23 ($25; \u00a315) per tonne from 2012.<\/p>\n<p>The country&#8217;s biggest economic reform in a generation will cover some 500 companies. <b><span style=\"font-variant: small-caps;\">In 2015, a market-based trading scheme will be introduced.<\/span><\/b> <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(<i>emphasis mine<\/i>)<\/p>\n<p>Once the market based trading scheme is implemented, we can expect to see the investment banks come up with all sorts of opaque trading schemes (Carbon Default Swaps anyone?) that will serve primarily as a means to extract fees and other rents from the process, and then we will see another orgy of fraud and speculation bring the market down.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, this won&#8217;t happen immediately, particularly since there would be floor and ceiling prices for the first few years, but it <b>will<\/b> happen, and money that is extracted from the public will go to private speculators rather than the public good.<\/p>\n<p><sup>*<\/sup><span style=\"font-size: 78%;\">Alas, I cannot claim credit for  the bon mot describing Goldman Sachs as a, &#8220;great vampire squid wrapped  around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into  anything that smells like money.&#8221;  This was coined by the great Matt  Taibbi, in his article on the <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 78%; text-decoration: line-through;\">massive criminal conspiracy<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 78%;\"> investment firm, <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/politics\/story\/28816321\/the_great_american_bubble_machine\"><span style=\"font-size: 78%; font-style: italic;\">The Great American Bubble Machine<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-size: 78%;\">.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Well, this is a good policy, at least until 2015, when they turn the whole idea over to the Vampire Squid* and its ilk: The Australian government has unveiled plans to impose a tax on carbon emissions for the worst polluters. Prime Minister Julia Gillard said carbon dioxide emissions would be taxed at A$23 ($25; &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1112,1135,1079,983],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-185399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-australia-and-new-zealand","category-energy","category-environment","category-taxes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185399"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185399\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}