In a move to both bolster her public image and to soothe environmentalists, Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard has backed a proposal to institute a surcharge on companies that emit pollutants into the air; specifically those that include carbon, which in Australia, and most other industrialized countries, generally means coal-fired electricity producing plants.
What Imposing a Tax on Carbon Emissions is Meant to Do
According to the Sydney Morning Herald Ms. Gillard has repeatedly spoken out against the unfairness of allowing companies to spew pollutants into the air without penalty, thus giving them little to no reason to look for ways to reduce such emissions. A tax, she has said that is based on the amount of pollutants emitted would provide an incentive for such companies to begin finding ways to reduce the amounts of carbon they send into the atmosphere, making life better for everyone else.
The Downside to Imposing a Tax on Carbon Emissions
Critics of the new tax point out that any new tax increase imposed will only be passed on to consumers, resulting in higher electric bills, a suggestion the Prime Minister disputes noting that the electric utilities in Australia have been raking in profits for years. She suggests that any rate hike increases be reviewed by government agencies, and if they are found to be unwarranted, that the power companies be fined. She also scoffs at the suggestion that the carbon tax will have little impact on overall greenhouse-gas emissions, reminding such nay-sayers that if other countries will follow her lead, greenhouse-gas emissions could be cut drastically over the next few years.
Carbon Emission Tax Issues
In the same article it's pointed out how most other industrialized nations have been pondering ways to apply pressure to electric utilities to get them to figure out ways to reduce their carbon emissions, even as other companies are studying different ways to produce electricity. And while many other countries have resorted to building atomic energy facilities, Australia has not, due to public pressure against it.
In any case, the way it works is simple, a monitoring device is installed in the smoke stacks at a power plant, and it measures the amount of carbon being released into the atmosphere. A simple formula is then used to calculate the tax bill, generally based on a certain number of dollars per ton. For Australian utilities that will mean Aus$23 starting next summer.
Other countries, such as the United States, have favored tax breaks for utilities that cut emissions, rather than penalizing them for not improving. But since the time frame for either approach has not been around long enough to see which works better, it's still not known.
Sources
- "Australia begins selling pollution tax" PhysOrg.com viewed July 12, 2011
- "A clean start" smh.com.au viewed July 12, 2011
Bob Yirka - Bob Yirka has written thousands of online articles and backs them up with a BS in Computer Science/MS in Information Systems Management.
