http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080408.wclimatebeer0408/BNStory/International/home

OH. MY. GOD.

Won't somebody, for ****'s sake, think about the children!? Won't somebody think about the children!!!

My question is: How does taxing Carbon emissions actually do anything to decrease the emission of carbon?

The whole carbon credit trading thing is bollocks. Dirty companies buy credits off clean companies so that they can still emitt the same levels of carbon, and then pass on the cost to the consumer.

Who wins? Not the planet and not the consumer.. The only real winners are the clean companies, but at the end of the day, that's just more profit to them, from us. It doesn't actually help the planet at all.

Oh, and there are the guys who trade in carbon credits - brokers... they win too - take a small slice of the pie everytime it changes hands...

Where do carbon credits come from? They're invented by an organisation. If I take them a 100 Tonne block of carbon, will they give me some credits?

Carbon trading worjks by setting a cap that is generally lower than the maximum current discharge (eg: Kyoto uses the 1990 CO2 emissions).

Large companies can buy credits but there needs to be credits available and that is where the work gets done.

Typically in regulated industries 20% of the cost of cleaning up emissions will take care of 80% of the emissions but the other 80% of money will be needed to do the last 20%. If the large companies can use that 80% of funds to clean up someone elses 80% that us a better outcome. Of course this is using the assumption that large coal companies are currently regulated to be at that 80% reduction level which I highly doubt.

Yeah,

If we really want to reduce carbon emissions, the best carbon trading scheme in the world isn't going to make a lick of difference. The only thing that will work is a huge economic depression where nobody has any money to buy anything. So no more cars on the road, no more factories making junk. You can't afford the power bill so the lights get turned off.

Plenty of people will be pissed off and many will die but it will reduce our emissions. Thats the way Russia met it Kyoto targets, through a massive contraction of their economy from Soviet times.

Whether this contraction would reduce global warming. Well thats another question which no one has the answer for. Perhaps we would go into an ice age which would make global warming a fairly tale to tell children before they go to sleep.

Down at the windsurfing carpark a few weeks back I saw a new 4wd which had a sticker on it which said something like "This vehicle has balanced emissions."

I wondered what that meant but when I looked, it had an exhaust pipe on both sides, so I spose that's what it means.

only one way to stop us screwing the environment and that is to stop fken breeding!!!!!!!!!!!!! [}:)], who wants three to four kids anyhow, for mother natures sake get a hobby!