Environmental Regulations Killing Oz Economy

Environmental Regulations Killing Oz Economy

RUSH: Speaking of all this, this is from Oz, Australia, the Australian newspaper: "Major Australian greenhouse gas emitters believe that emissions-trading costs of about $65 a tonne of carbon are inevitable, forcing household electricity bills to rise by almost 100 per cent." So how are the poor going to pay for heat when it doubles in the aim of saving the planet? "The new director of the Australian Industry Greenhouse Network (AIGN), Mike Hitchens, told The Australian business should look to evolving carbon markets in Europe to estimate the future cost of emissions trading.

'We all need to understand that linking to other emissions-trading schemes outside of Australia is inevitable, whether done formally or informally,' Mr Hitchens said. 'That means that it's the world price of permits we need to incorporate into analysis about the impacts on the Australian economy, not simply the implications of setting our own targets. The price of emissions in Australia will very likely be set in Europe. Australia is a price taker for commodities in all other global markets, and we will be a price taker in this global market as well.' The European Commission has estimated a future price of about $65 per tonne of carbon, with European banks predicting a price of between $60 and $80."

I first heard about these back in the early nineties, and when I first heard about them, I started laughing myself silly, and I got a warning e-mail from my good friend Professor Hazlett, who I've referenced several times on this program. He said, "Look, Rush, trading pollution credits," they're now called carbon credits, "trading pollution credits makes all kinds of sense." Let's say you have company A, you got pollution levels that the EPA or the government or some other wonderful, lovely agency sets, and company A is way above those limits, but company B out there is way below those limits. So company A can buy the credits, the remaining pollution not being created by company B, and that will allow them to continue to pollute above the levels, as long as company B stays below them. And that's what this whole carbon trading offset scheme is. You know, it's what Algore does. Algore hasn't reduced his carbon footprint at all in his giant mansion down there in Nashville. What does he do? He invests in a company he owns. So he takes money out of one pocket and puts it in another. What do they do? They plant trees. They say they plant the trees. The trees are supposed to soak up all this extra carbon. They produce the oxygen, which people have said just compounds the problem. But anyway, it's a total scheme.

So now what's happening here in Australia is that the cost of these carbon credits or pollution credits being set on the world market, not on the market circumstances in Australia. For these people in Australia to continue to produce the power they need to satisfy the population, they're going to have to go buy some carbon credits somewhere in Europe at whatever the price is, $65 a ton, which means the power companies in Australia are going to add what they have to buy in Europe, permission to pollute, and they're going to add it to the bills. So in the process of supposedly reducing the carbon footprint of the world, the customer is going to have their electricity bills doubled. Do you see the scheme here? "Well, but, Rush, the whole point here is to get people to use less." Don't give me that. Countries like Australia and us, conservation is a wonderful thing, but it's not the answer, and it's not growth.