Tag Archives: carbon

Why shoot elephants?

It’s the most effec­tive way to kill them. Any game-keeper will tell you that. Just as any econ­o­mist will tell you that the most effec­tive way to con­trol obnox­ious behav­iour, like pol­lut­ing the river, or just unde­sir­able behav­iour, like dri­ving your car into the city, is to tax it. Are there alter­na­tives to shoot­ing? Yes, it …

July 14, 2011 – 11:06 am | By pwg | Posted in Policy | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

De Lacy on the Carbon Tax

“Keith De Lacy, chair­man of takeover tar­get Macarthur Coal, said yes­ter­day the absence of a viable alter­na­tive to coal to fuel Asia’s eco­nomic growth would main­tain high prices world­wide and pro­tect min­ers against the lat­est “attack” by the Labor gov­ern­ment on the indus­try.” Extract from The Aus­tralian Read the rest of the inter­view. De Lacy, …

July 13, 2011 – 9:16 am | By pwg | Posted in Resources | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Tax cuts the price of MacArthur Coal

The Prime Min­is­ter is say­ing that today’s Peabody bid for Macarthur Coal demon­strates that the Gillard/Brown “coal tax” has not hurt the prospects of the Aus­tralian coal indus­try. But today’s Finan­cial TImes reveals that the Labor government’s taxes are hav­ing an impact on the value of Aus­tralian resource assets. Peabody has cut its offer price …

July 12, 2011 – 8:14 pm | By pwg | Posted in Resources | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Flying bind

Qantas—the air­line that will soon call Sin­ga­pore home (?)—says con­sumers will foot the entire bill for the un-compensated tax on avi­a­tion fuel. The air­line has a bet­ter chance to off­set the other threat it faces from a Euro­pean air­lines tax. The Euro­pean emis­sions per­mit mar­ket is today offer­ing a tonne of car­bon at a lit­tle more …

July 11, 2011 – 3:54 pm | By pwg | Posted in Resources | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

The “clean energy” hustle

Some aspects of the Prime Minister’s advo­cacy for her coal tax are, at best, mis­lead­ing: a wedge for the much greater costs implied by the Labor/Greens agenda. She says: “Putting a price on car­bon will drive inno­va­tion and invest­ment in clean energy tech­nol­ogy, mov­ing pro­duc­tion towards less pollution-intensive processes.” But that is far from the …

July 11, 2011 – 11:09 am | By pwg | Posted in Policy | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Prices to grow 20 percent faster

Among the slo­gans that the Labor/Greens alliance will pound out over the next few weeks is that their coal tax is “low cost.” They don’t seem to under­stand the mean­ing of the CPI increase revealed by their own mod­els. But worse, as far as I can see they don’t under­stand even basic house­hold bud­get­ing. The …

July 11, 2011 – 9:53 am | By pwg | Posted in Resources | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

When is “reform” not a reform?

No doubt Ms Gillard will assure us, next Sun­day when she announces the coal tax she has agreed with the Greens and two “inde­pen­dents”, that this is a “reform” that will secure a bet­ter eco­nomic future for Aus­tralia. But a “reform” is no reform when… It is not adapted to its pur­pose: The Gillard-Brown coal …

July 6, 2011 – 10:14 am | By pwg | Posted in Policy | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)