Carbon Tax? Yes, we need that!

I hope you enjoyed my terrible rhyming title.
Okay, I always say that I'm going to write all this stuff in my blog and that I'll update more. But I never do. I'M SORRY FOR LYING.

Anyway, I do have lots of things to blog about and I thought while I had the idea I would actually do it instead of just thinking to myself "Hey, I should write a blog about that..." and then never doing it. Lol. 


So this week sometime, we received our Carbon Price booklet.. thing. Geography was one of my favourite subjects at school and in year 11 and 12 we studied Climate Change and Global Warming, so I'm really interested in sustainability and climate change and everything like that so I thought, hey! I'll write a blog about it! - For my non-Australian readers in case you didn't know, Australia has just introduced Carbon Tax to reduce our carbon emissions.
Now, I am a big supporter of Carbon Tax (or pricing or whatever you want to call it.) I mean, if Global Warming isn't real, then who actually cares? We'll still be improving our future and the environment and being more sustainable. 


I've heard a lot of people complaining about how the carbon tax is a horrible idea and "We don't need more tax, I don't have enough money." etc.
You know, I've never really understood people being so against tax anyway. I mean, think of it this way; if you don't pay tax, then the government has no money to do anything. If we never paid tax ever then there would be no roads, no hospitals, no schools. Tax money is what pays for things. It's like saying "Why do I have to pay for this car? I don't have enough money, I just want a car." - That's a bad example, but it's kind of late so I'm a little tired. 


Anyway, I've heard a lot of people complaining about the carbon tax and it baffled me to realise that so many people didn't actually know what the carbon tax was. They just heard the dreaded word "Tax" and freaked the hell out. Settle down everyone, educate yourself on the matter before you have a rage at the government for "taking all your money." 


Australia is the biggest generator of pollution per person of all first world countries. That's right guys. We are throwing more gross out there than The United States, India and China. While it isn't the only cause, it is mostly because we have such terrible sources of electricity generation. That being the burning of coal. Not only that but we are a large exporter of coal and petrol.

There have been many international conferences to try and reach an agreement on reducing carbon emissions and set targets for individual countries to meet. Now I don't mean to be harsh, but Australia has done less than their fair share of reducing. In fact, in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, targets were set for each country to reduce their emissions between 2008 and 2012. The United States agreed to a 7% reduction. European Nations; Germany, the UK and Portugal agreed to a 8% reduction and Japan agreed to a 6% reduction.
Australia negotiated a 7% increase. Our argument was that we export a lot of coal and we're clearing land and stuff. I mean, not to say we were the only country to not negotiate a decrease but really, Australia? Really? Those are horrible excuses.
Japan agreed to a decrease in emissions even though they need to increase their carbon emissions to allow for their population growth.


Australia has now agreed to try and reduce our carbon emissions by 5% compared to 2000 levels by 2020. While that's still not that much, it's a start and I don't know about you but I'm proud we're finally at least trying to do something about being more sustainable as a nation. 


Of course there's always the easy to go to argument that changing our energy to more sustainable kinds will cause a loss of employment. No. No it won't. Employment will simply shift to a different area. Someone has to work at the new places. The real "problem" is that oil companies and any other holders of high carbon emitting energy sources, would lose money changing to more sustainable energy - even more so if they did not change. Yes, heaven forbid we should take money away from those big companies because they're too cheap to change... 


A price on carbon is the most environmentally effective and the cheapest way to cut pollution. That's not just me saying that, that's economists, those guys that know stuff about money and economy and such. I've heard people say that they don't have the money to pay carbon tax. Well, whatayaknow the government thought of that too! It has been mentioned on many occasions and yet somehow heaps of people don't know. The price on carbon isn't just being added on to everything else, it is replacing some other taxing and whatayaknow, it's also being used to do something with! No way!
For example;

• The carbon tax will not affect small businesses, it is only for 'big polluter' companies. 
• The profit from the carbon tax will be used to assist low income  households with the cost of living by at least 20% more than the expected impact of carbon pricing.
• Households will also receive assistance though tax cuts and payment increases.
• 7.5 Million people with an annual income of under $80,000 will receive a tax cut.
• There will be pension increases for well.. pensioners.

There's more. But basically, the government isn't just going "Oh heyyy, we're going to start putting a price on carbon. Oh, that cost you money? Oh well! =D" So I'm not sure where everybody is getting that from. 

Not to mention they are also promoting the use of more sustainable and renewable energy sources.

With carbon pricing Australia's carbon emissions will reduce by 160 million tonnes per year. The equivalent of taking 45 million cars of the road.
We still need to do more, but this is better than going along with our eyes closed and our hands over our ears. 

So basically, as far as I am concerned this is a step forward in the right direction for us as a nation. It's easy for everyone to just freak out and accuse the government of taking all our money or whatever but really it's not even a little bit like that.
If you're still not convinced, think of it this way. We are making a little sacrifice so that the generations of the future can be better off. Why should we care about the future generations? Well.. do you want to have kids? If you don't, well I don't and I still care so you just go sit over there in the 'I don't care' corner. If you do, do you want your kids to live in a future were energy is sustainable and they are all together better off or do you want them to live in a future were oil prices are so high they can't afford to drive car and there's no renewable energy? I'm going to assume it's the first one. If it's the latter, YOU ARE A HORRIBLE PERSON.

Are you still with me? Cause I'm done now. I mean, I could ramble on about this forever, but I think I've basically made my point.

I hope you enjoyed my entry and I will try and post another one soon!

Until then, have a lovely day.. night.. afternoon... or whatever else in between. :)