Spencer Brown
The Washington Examiner
7/21/2014
…Australia’s tax on emissions was intended to create a disincentive to emitting large amounts of carbon dioxide, but Abbott asserted that the carbon tax was hurting the Australian economy. After successfully getting the regulations repealed, the carbon tax officially ended July 17, retroactive to July 1.
Australia’s Department of the Environment reports that compliance with the carbon tax cost businesses around $85 million per year. The legislation for the carbon tax filled more than 1,000 pages with policies and regulations. Abbott’s government says ending the tax will “lower costs for Australian businesses and ease cost of living pressures for households.”
The repeal will lower the average annual cost of living by about $550 Australian (equal to $381.66 US), lower retail electricity costs by 9 percent and retail gas prices by 7 percent, and reduce liable entities’ compliance costs by nearly $90 million annually ($62.45 million US), per the Department of the Environment. These and other benefits were notably absent when the carbon tax was in place.
Why, then, does the Obama administration want to enact regulations to stem carbon emissions and in doing so stifle the American economy? …
The complete article is at The Washington Examiner.
Related: Australian Carbon-Tax Cut Cripples Cap-And-Traders Across Planet
New paper finds only ~3.75% of atmospheric CO2 is man-made from burning of fossil fuels
Australia’s repeal of its carbon tax last week has gotten other countries thinking about ditching their own carbon dioxide emissions reduction schemes.
On the heels of the Aussie carbon tax defeat, South Korea’s finance minister, Choi Kyung-hwan, called his country’s planned cap-and-trade system “flawed in many ways,” and hinted that he would pressure the government to delay the plan until 2015…
