Sunday, April 17, 2011

Australian Federal Labor Party...Moving forward? At what cost?

There are speculative figures of a $20 per tonne tax for emitting CO2 pollution.

The Australian Government's Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities (super-mega department) gives the following figures for emmissions from the tail pipe for different fuel types:

CO2 Tailpipe Emissions/Litre of Fuel Consumed

Fuel Type CO2 Emissions

Petrol 2.3 kg
LPG         1.6 kg
Diesel 2.7 kg


Based on these figures, a vehicle running on 'petrol' would have to use, roughly, 435 litres of 'petrol' to generate 1 tonne of CO2 pollution...which, where transportation is included in the carbon tax policy, would result in paying $20 to the Australian Government (yay bills!)

The Australia Labor Government have been criticized for repeating slogans, the most fitting one to illustrate my message is the constant use of saying that their party will 'Move forward' or 'Move Australia Forward' and other variants.

Considering $20 could buy someone just under 13.5L of petrol if it were to cost $1.50 per litre, that would be enough fuel to get most cars to travel at least 100km. Instead that money might yet be taken from you by force and given to someone else for God knows what purpose! *cough* they're giving it to the "low to middle income working families *cough cough*

By taking that $20 away from motorists the Government is effectively slowing them down and making them fall short of their destination...hardly "moving forward" right?

The numbers don't look too bad when you consider before you are forced to pay the $20 carbon tax you would have to have spent  $652.50 on fuel, again at $1.50/L prices...HOWEVER at a fuel economy of 9L/100km this would generate 20.7kg of CO2...or allow for 48 100km trips (at 9L/100km economy) before you created the 1 tonne of CO2/earnt yourself a $20 debt.


Take this into account, supermarket Oranges here come from the USA and are exempt from General Sales Tax (GST) of 10%. Where fuel is included in the Carbon Tax produce like this will have to be transported over hundreds of kilometres to some remote areas (It's a BIG COUNTRY, AUSTRALIA).

Going into logistics of this, as you can probably tell already, is a massive task. Proposing this tax without having asked these same questions and come up with workable answers was a mammoth mistake...and it's showing on the polls.

There remains so many unanswered questions about this whole issue that those trying to make sense of it simply can't.

8 comments:

  1. Sorry, but in general I think the CO2 tax is garbage. Just another money grab by governments. CO2 is what plants breath. and if there is so much of it why are the plants not growing bigger and producing more? huh? I don't understand that science. To think humans can actually change the climate by burning fossile fules. bah. in the 70's it was global cooling.... now it's warming. humans don't know anything!

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  2. CO2 tax is really silly, its not like its going to change anything when you have giants like China and India not doing anything.

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  3. things should change.. everybody says that, but if they do we will all starve. what it the answer?

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  4. Might as well tax them if they are going to omitting it.

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  5. have to agree with Fugazi, true

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  6. just another way to exploit the poor...

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  7. This carbon immesions thing is outta hand. a3

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