Investors.com posted an article yesterday about Australia’s move to end its carbon tax.
The article reports:
Australia’s carbon tax has been in effect since 2012, when Labor Party Prime Minister Julia Gillard was in office.
But it’s come apart under Liberal Party Prime Minister Tony Abbott.
Both of the country’s legislative bodies voted last week to repeal, a promise Abbott campaigned on.
Needless to say, environmental groups are very upset about the repeal. The article states that taxing carbon dioxide emissions is pointless and harmful to the economy.
The article reminds us:
A University of New England study found that under a $23 per-ton carbon tax, “Australia’s real GDP may decline by 0.68%, consumer prices may rise by 0.75% and the price of electricity may increase by about 26%.”
These costs might have value if cutting CO2 emissions actually achieved anything. But it wouldn’t.
Let’s get this straight one more time. Carbon dioxide is a naturally occurring trace gas. Humans exhale it, plants breathe it.
It is not toxic, nor is it a pollutant, unless its atmospheric concentrations reach so high — 40,000 parts per million rather than the 400 parts per million now found in our air — that it crowds out the oxygen humans need to breathe.
Yes, CO2 is a greenhouse gas and, according to speculation, higher concentrations will cause a greenhouse effect that will warm the planet. But reality has not cooperated with the computer models that have predicted the heating of the planet.
Why are the environmentalists so willing to collapse the economies of free-world countries for science that is unproven?
