Australia plans to tax emissions
SYDNEY - Australia announced plans on Sunday to tax carbon pollution at A$23 ($24.74) per ton to help battle climate change, as it moved toward creating the region's biggest emissions trading scheme.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard said there would be a fixed price on carbon pollution, blamed for global warming, from next year before an emissions trading scheme was introduced in 2015.
"We have had a long debate about climate change in this country," Gillard said in a rare televised address to the nation.
"Most Australians now agree our climate is changing, this is caused by carbon pollution, this has harmful effects on our environment and on the economy - and the government should act."
"But we've now had the debate, 2011 is the year we decide that as a nation we want a clean energy future. Now is the time to move from words to deeds."
Under the scheme to begin on July 1, 2012, about 500 of Australia's top polluters will pay a fixed price, starting at A$23 per ton, for their carbon dioxide emissions for the first three years.
The mechanism would then shift into an emissions trading scheme, with a floating price set by the market. The government will set a floor price and an upper limit for at least the first three years to avoid price shocks.
"Obviously China and India are doing things of all kinds on a very large scale ... so there's certainly very serious action there; but in terms of a broad-based and systematic carbon price, this is really one of the biggest moves we've seen," Professor John Quiggin from the University of Queensland's school of economics said.
Gillard said the reform would create economic incentives for the biggest polluters to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases.
At the same time, the government will establish a $10 billion Clean Energy Finance Corporation to fund innovative projects in renewable energy and the coal industry will receive some $1.3 billion to protect jobs and compensate for the tax over five years.
Much of the revenue raised from the tax in the first three years will provide for higher family payments, pension boosts and income tax cuts to offset the increased cost of living as businesses factor the carbon price into the cost of their goods and services.
The mining sector also criticized the plan, with Rio Tinto warning the tax would "inevitably hinder investment and jobs growth in Australia without reducing global carbon emissions".
Environmental organizations were broadly supportive of the tax.
Agence France-Presse
(China Daily 07/11/2011 page12)
