IT has become apparent that there is a general lack of understanding in the community about exactly what an emissions tradings scheme (ETS) is. People may understand the sentiment that surrounds it but they don’t really understand how it works and how it will affect them…
If you live on a diet of naturally grown wild berries and lentils, which you scavenge for in your back yard, then you’d also probably be OK. But if you’re associated with the consumption of food, that’s either grown with the use of carbon intensive processes, or if you like to eat beef, mutton or lamb, which involves the emission of methane and is apparently a super form of carbon, then under Mr Rudd’s proposal, you’ll potentially have to pay for the privilege.
Put simply, a single beast, which ends up on our supermarket shelves as steak, roast, mince or sausages, emits about 70 kilograms of methene and according to the Kyoto protocol this has to be multiplied by 21 which means that each beast is responsible for emitting around a tonne and a half of carbon.
Utilising NAB modelling on the price of a carbon permit, a tonne and half of carbon, multiplied by about $50, is equivalent to an additional cost to the farmer of approximately $75 dollars per beast per year.
$75 dollars per beast per year = no beef industry in Australia !
If the consumer wants to eat beef and can afford to pay for it then you will be buying it from a country that doesn’t have an ETS.
The price of beef in Australia will be above the price paid in other countries that don’t have a beef industry which will result in you paying better than $100 dollars for a prime cut roast.
Quite obviously the quality of the Australian standard of living, as reflected in our diet, will be reduced.
When it comes to lamb and mutton, sheep emit around 10 kilograms of methane, so using the same formula; this means around 210 kilograms of carbon per year, per sheep which equates to Australian sheep farmers being slugged about $10 per sheep annually and this will ultimately drive sheep meat out of the market.
So, if you decided to have a lamb roast for dinner this Sunday, which the gentleman in the car giving me a lift today said he was planning to do, then expect to pay almost $100 dollars at the butcher for it.
This is the sort of reality that we as Australians have to understand we’d be signing ourselves up for if Mr Rudd gets his way with his ridiculous Emissions Trading Scheme.
Penny Wong has said publicly that she would not accept the proposition put by Malcolm Turnbull that would exclude agriculture, so lets not play ducks and drakes here, agriculture in Australia is going to suffer massively if Mr Rudd gets his way and the biggest losers in all this will ultimately end up being the consumer as they struggle to pay to fill the family shopping basket each week.
If Mr Rudd’s plan was actually going to make a difference then it would be slightly plausible, but the fact is, it is not. Mr Rudd’s ETS will not result in the planet being cooled and has not even the slightest prospect of doing anything for the global climate.
Mr Rudd’s ETS is merely a gesture, a token. There are all sorts of wonderful gestures we can offer as comfort for the world’s problems, however if imposing a tax on consumers, which Mr Rudd wants to do, is the right way to deal with things, then we may as well impose a tax to bring about world peace.
Mr Rudd keeps coming up with all these peculiar ideas.
Imposing a crippling tax on consumer’s, forcing us to pay massively inflated prices at the supermarket for the food we eat and forcing Australian farmers out of business is implausible, short sighted and dangerous.
Barnaby Joyce
Leader of the Nationals in the Australian Senate
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Don’t think you’re not already paying for it. Assets are valued on their future earnings, and the AGW tax/cost was factored in on Wall Street around mid-2008. The markets are now starting to improve, reflecting discounting of these costs because of the planet’s failure to warm as predicted by GW models. If governments go ahead and fight the last war anyway, the markets will dive again.
This is a mix of misleading statements and special interest pleading, along with the stereotypical cheap shot about ‘wild berries and lentils’.
I appreciate Senator Joyce does not believe in climate change and therefore does not believe any attempt should be made to do anything to avoid it. Hopefully, those who share his view would at least appreciate that those of us who do believe it is a serious risk believe it is a good idea to have a mechanism which uses price signals to encourage people to consume products which are greenhouse intensive.
The ETS/CPRS before the Senate does not include agriculture. But I don’t see any attempt here to argue why agriculture should be permanently exempt and get a free ride, while other industries have wear the cost of their emissions.
Is there something special about economic activity involving agriculture that means it should be treated differently from every other industry? If agriculture is permanently exempted from an ETS, it would just mean extra costs will be put on other industries to make up the deficit (if an ETS is to work)
And if agriculture is included, there is no reason why the consumer should lose out. The consumer only pays more if they choose to buy products which are greenhouse intensive.
If you buy an 8 cylinder car which consumes far more petrol than a 4 cylinder, you can hardly complain when you find your petrol costs are higher. And if you buy greenhouse intensive food, you can hardly be surprised when it costs more than berries or lentils.
Andrew – where there is some logic in “user pays” I’d suggest a number of perverse outcomes are also likely from an ETS in agriculture. (1) beef producers in moderate rainfall zones will plant trees to defray their costs – trees in large numbers will impact significantly on catchment hydrology – reduced water yields – see the current Victorian situation
(2) there will be increased pressure to recognise below ground as well as above ground sinks – if you think all these things through it will create a vast range of tax dodges bigger than any bottom of the harbour scheme.
(3) how do you assess the methane emissions from a cow on good pasture versus poor. What if you supplement the feed? Who keeps the observations?
Want to rort your soil carbon inventory – throw a small amount of fertiliser around your measurement plots (2) always push the soil corer on the middle of a grass tussock not the inter-tussock gap (3) immediately destock the measurement paddock until next inventory time comes around again.
Who keeps track of all the land parcels with carbon covenants on the title that will be bought and sold.
Not to say the soil carbon isn’t a bad thing for soil health – i.e. structure, water holding and cation exchange capacity – but as a formal tradeable carbon sink?
So is an ETS implementable in agriculture? Can it be policed? How easy to rort?
So one of the fairies at the bottom of the garden has stuck his head up above the trench here.
If you had spent much time here Andrew you would know that there’s essentially zero evidence for AGW and exactly zero that human emissions of CO2 will ever be a problem.
That’s why Barnaby Joyce and many others here and elsewhere oppose an ETS which simply panders to your lunatic delusions.
Says Eyrie pers. comm. “zero evidence for AGW …” Grabs your sleeve, mouth foaming, and begs you to believe him. Ho ho ho ho.
Luke,
Now is your chance, provide him with your evidence, Models, correlation, etc probably won’t do it for him. (nor me).
Something repeatable, measurable and observable would be nice 🙂
“The consumer only pays more if they choose to buy products which are greenhouse intensive”
So says the vegetarianist; well bugga that! The ETS and AGW have been about life-style from day one with moralising, pro-AGW inner city elites living the thoroughly unnatural lifestyle of highly refined diet while similtaneously cognitive dissonating the huge social infrastructure which supports their hypocrisies and grotesqueness. With an ETS and full steam ahead to windmills and sun-hats and Flannel’s hot rocks that infrastructure will go down the spout quicker than gore’s bank account is increasing. So tell us Bartlett what do you know about any AGW/greenhouse effect?
And what choice? You can kiss that goodbye with a tax that puts everything out of business and is designed to encourage non-interference with nature and leaving productive land fallow; anyway cows are emission neutral;
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=8238
It looks as though luke will be policing agricultural conformity to the CPRS with that impressive knowledge of potential rorts.
Andrew, with your level of comprehension and intellectual integrity, thank God you and your equally deluded cronies are no longer in pariliament.
We have always had carbon hook up with oxygen on this planet. Might as well have a use for it whether is is driving or raising crops. I can’t see exhaust of CO2 needing to be taxed any more than taxing the intake of air. It seems to be all about social engineering and taxation. The only economic effect I see in taxation is loss of jobs.
Andrew Bartlett, you’re a fool. Piss off!
Thank you all for the measured responses. It is always refreshing to see people make an effort to engage rationally with the substance of an issue rather than engage in feeble and shallow abuse. I am sure Senator Joyce would be pleased to have supporters who show this level of ability in putting together a logical case.
Luke, I think there are specific aspects of agriculture which would need a different approach compared to power generation. This is one of the reasons why it is currently being excluded from the ETS, and why – contrary to Senator Joyce’s assertion – it may never end up part of it. Personally, I think a carbon tax, with scope for rebates for sequestration, would be simpler and fairer. But the basic point still remains that if one industry is permanently exempt from an emission pricing mechanism, it just puts greater weight on all the other industries which aren’t exempt.
Some of your fellow commenters seem to have this odd idea than an ETS is just a blanket tax on everything, but obviously people would have the choice to person products which have a lower or zero ETS cost. This should apply to food as with anything else.
Of course if Cohenite’s quaint notion that livestock are emissions neutral was really true, then he and Senator Joyce have nothing to worry about about, as there would be no ETS or carbon tax levied on it. His notion is, of course, ludicrous, which is why Senator Joyce is so keen to ensure agriculture is permanently excluded from an ETS or other pricing mechanism.
And in response to all the other rationale mature responses from those who disagreed with me, ….. oh that’s right, there weren’t any.
Eyrie, I’ve reading pieces on this blog quite often over the years, and have left comments a number of times over the years. Some of the comments leave a bit to be desired, (although that’s the case on many blogs – including my own) but I didn’t realise it had now become a club where one had to be part of the in-crowd before one was allowed to leave comments. But I seeing you pay no attention to anyone who disagrees with you, it probably doesn’t matter – must be a boring life you have though.
Does anyone know whether the CO2e emissions of any food producing domestic animal is more or less than the pasture it consumed would produce during its lifetime?
One would think that it must be less than the amount of CO2 required to produce the pasture.
If it is around the same amount [or less] can someone tell me why this should be taxed?
After all, pasture and pasture eaters have always been a very large part of the natural scene.
Andrew,
My more recent post ‘What will an ETS do for the Australian environment’ suggests that with an ets we are looking at a future with many fewer cattle and many more trees.
Would you agree with this?
And what effect do you think an ETS will have on the mining industry?
PS Always appreciate your insights – and I remember your advice to me at this blog some years ago on being a vegetarian.
Thank goodness we have Barnaby Joyce talking sense about the CO2 hysteria. Barnaby, you and Steve Fielding together may be about to save the nation in reality as against Kevin and Malcolm who insanely fantasise that they can “save the planet”, but who will wreck the nation if they go ahead with their lunatic schemes.
Evidence on the question of how much man-made CO2 emissions might affect the climate is evidence about a causal linkage. It is not simply evidence about a correlation, but, in addition to correlative evidence, it needs a valid systematic theoretical model of the process of causation. That is to say that, for the establishing of a causal linkage, the methodological requirement is very demanding. The AOGCMs are not valid systematic theoretical models: they are attempts to bypass the need for a valid systematic theoretical model, but they cannot do so because (a) their grid is too coarse and (b) they do not operate with all the necessary ingredient laws of physics, some of which are simply unknown, and others of which are not included in the AOGCMs. An additional difficulty is that the climate process includes factors that show deterministic chaos which increases the computing requirements, perhaps beyond feasible bounds. Thus the AOGCMs are not candidates as evidence for estimation of the size of the causal linkage. Evidence of climate change is not by itself a candidate, because it fails the causal linkage test. Evidence of increasing CO2 levels is not by itself a candidate because the best evidence is that the current increases are not of man-made origin, but come from under-sea volcanoes. The man-made CO2 global warming story is not supported by any evidence. That’s right: not supported by any evidence.
There are so far as I know only two candidates for the status of valid systematic theoretical model in the literature. One is the adiabatic tropospheric model of Sorokhtin and others, the other is Miskolczi’s model. These two models are compatible with one another. They both show the effect of man-made CO2 on the temperature as practically zero. Not just a bit smaller than the IPCC predictions. Yes, practically zero.
Barnaby Joyce is right.
Livestock ghg neutrality is not my idea Andrew; if you read the link you would see that it is from a paper by Dr Tom Quirk; Tom says;
“What is rarely mentioned is that the carbon being counted is not “old carbon” from fossil fuels being added to the atmosphere, it is “contemporary carbon” recycled in the atmosphere. It comes from the atmosphere to plants by way of photosynthesis to animals as feed and so through enteric fermentation and metabolism the carbon goes back in part to the atmosphere. The output is to be assessed but no credit is given to the input!”
Do you care to quibble with that or, like all sactimonious alarmists with your faux choices, only patronise. I bet you don’t even know who Miskolczi or Sorokhtin [in conjunction with Chilingar and Khilyuk] are; and that is the problem; we have lifestyle egotists and green zealots who haven’t done the reading been spoon-fed so-called science from computer modellers and scientific sharpies.
cohers,
Tom Quirk would have as good an idea as anyone on this subject.
But what takes my breath away is that with all these unknowables and unquantifyables, how come we have so many “clever” people who are so certain of the “right” [more likely left] path and would consign us all to oblivion without a twinge of conscience, all the time justifying it with the precautionary principle?
If we have to commit suicide, we can still do it next year. No need to rush.
Yeah, Spangles; too much time on their hands; if I’ve got nothing to do I dig holes and fill them back up; you never know when the practice will come in handy; now I suppose I’ll be banned from doing that because I’m disturbing the damned CO2 bound in the soil.
AB: ‘Some of your fellow commenters seem to have this odd idea than an ETS is just a blanket tax on everything, but obviously people would have the choice to person products which have a lower or zero ETS cost. This should apply to food as with anything else.’
OK, it’s just a tax that takes out a few percent at the margins of the economy. That’s like saying a bombing that took out a mere fifty thousand Sydneysiders, wouldn’t hurt the survivors. We are talking about extinguishing real jobs, livelihoods and futures here.
And don’t give me any of that Mark Arbib jive about green jobs.
How to defeat Labor and the Greens, who promote the “global warming” belief system, which includes the need to move to a low carbon economy and major restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions. (All this is bunkum)
So counter them this way.
We want to continue with a high carbon economy, thank you very much.
High carbon = wealth
Low carbon = poverty
We want proper jobs, not wishy washy nonproductive green jobs.
Lets get some politicians who will stand up and attack Labor and the Greens on their dangerous and stupid belief system. So far we have the Nationals who are doing a good job.
Proper jobs = wealth also Energy = Wealth
Green jobs = poverty Green = Poverty
We need more cheap energy not less.
Promote the Coal and Gas industries for electric power generation.
Stop the useless development of windfarms and expensive “Green Power”
Apparently it’s only those who are concerned about the prospects of climate change who are ‘egoists’ and ‘zealots’. No egotists or zealots here, clearly. No sacntimony here either – just rational and considered discussion.
Jimmock, I don’t pretend that the ETS would have no negative economic impacts. I know politicians like to convey this impression, but politicians of all stripes tend to avoid telling people things they don’t want to hear (including those who argue the opposite case).
But for those who believe that a credible case has been made that there is a significant risk of rapid and major climate change occuring in the near future, it is reasonable to argue that under virtually every scenario, the economic impacts (let alone the human & environmental impacts) of that would be far greater that an ETS will have. A bigger impact on “real jobs, livelihoods and futures.” Real lives in fact.
And I don’t see what’s wrong with genuine green jobs – it is an area of growth both in employment and economic output. A job producing solar panels or capping irrigation channels, etc is just as valid a job as any other. Just because a government might use the term as a marketing excercise doesnt mean that there is no such thing as a green job. There’s plenty of government announcements about all sorts of things that are hollow once you look at the detail – that just means they’re engaging in spin, not that such things don’t exist.
Cohenite, I don’t “quibble” with that assessment – I disagree with it completely. The atmosphere doesn’t distinguish between ‘old carbon’ and ‘contemporary carbon’, and neither should an ETS. But if that assertion was scientifically credible, it wouldn’t really matter what I think. If it could be honestly demonstrated that there is zero net GHG emissions from livestock, then an ETS would have zero impact, so if you’re so confident that you’re right you really shouldn’t have any concern, and you should get on to Senator Joyce and tell him he doesn’t need to worry either.
Jennifer, assuming an ETS is properly structured and that in the future it includes agriculture (which is far from certain), than it should mean fewer livestock. I am not sure whether it will mean lots more trees, although given that the bulk of land clearing is linked to livestock, it would probably mean that anyway, regardless of carbon pricing and measuring.
Assuming a more cohesive carbon pricing occurs internationally (which is also far from certain, but I can’t see how agriculture would get included in an Australian ETS until there is greater international cohesnion on such things), then it would depend on a mixture of factors, especially (a) whether there is a significant shift in global dietry trends, which would mean lower demand for red meat and a higher demand for other food types, and (b) exactly how carbon credits/values for trees ends up being worked out.
I expect it would be a mix of the two, but certainly there’s no chance of even coming close to reaching the greenhouse emissions reduction targets that are being considered around the globe unless there is a levelling off in consumption of products from livestock.
Fewer livestock in Australia would also reduce overall demand on water consumption, but that’s a different matter.
Christopher Game
You comment at 9.46 is the best.
Am I right in assuming that the standard of proof that you are describing is what applies in the medical area already, particularly with the testing the effectiveness of new drugs etc.
One wanders why the same standards dont apply with AGW and the models etc.
Sorry thats dopey, I do know why …if they did apply, AGW wouldnt have any legs at all
Well done Andrew, this comment is, or should be, in the running for the most confused and naive comment of the year;
“Cohenite, I don’t “quibble” with that assessment – I disagree with it completely. The atmosphere doesn’t distinguish between ‘old carbon’ and ‘contemporary carbon’, and neither should an ETS. But if that assertion was scientifically credible, it wouldn’t really matter what I think. If it could be honestly demonstrated that there is zero net GHG emissions from livestock, then an ETS would have zero impact”
First the naivety; do you honestly believe that the ETS or any proposed measure to deal with AGW has scientific merit? And that the ETS won’t affect things [such as CO2 neutral cows] which don’t contribute to AGW, if it existed? The ETS is a tax on energy designed to make the expensive [and unproven] ‘green’ energies commercially viable with the cheap [and proven] and ‘dirty’ fossil fuels; with energy dearer there will be a cascading effect throughout the economy; every aspect of economic activity will be dearer [Frontier Economic modeling for the NSW gov’t showed that a minimalist ETS reducing emissions by 5% referable to 2000 would cost $2 trillion in extra costs by 2050]; there will be no capacity to choose unless you choose to live under a rock.
Secondly, the [scientific] confusion; the issue is not about old or new CO2, it is about additional CO2; plants sequester CO2; the cow eats the plant and the sequestering is now in the cow; the cow has effectively taken CO2 out of the atmosphere; the cow emits the CO2 and CO2 equivalent and puts back what it has [by plant proxy] taken out of the atmosphere. Cows do not contribute any additional CO2 to the atmospheric concentration.
Let me ask you this Andrew; do you think ACO2 is the cause of the increase in CO2 concentration in the atmosphere?
Andrew, may I please ask you –
1.if you think an ETS will have any impact on temperatures?
2. Will an ETS cause economic damage to our economy with a loss of jobs, wealth and living standards?
3. Have you seen the latest report on wind farms and their energy output during June in Australia?…see Terry Mcrann in the herald today for an outline.
I may be biased , but my bias is based on lots of reading, rather than believing politicians and media and the IPCC….and my own conclusion is an ETS will not change temperature and I can t find anybody actually prepared to say that it will! There is no doubt an ETS will force up the price of energy and result in economic damage and job losses, it is naive to think otherwise.
Renewables as currently promoted will lower our living standards by raising energy prices and causing black outs….all without actually lowering co2.
It beggars belief that politicians so desire to be voted into power that they either naively gush nonsense associated with AGW …or openly lie to promote their own green credentials.
Andrew you may not like my morals and ethics, but I suggest they are a damned sight better than most politicians, and the prospect of being forced to become a vegetarian ( because some fool in power wants to thrust their own morals and ethics on me) to be able to afford to eat is not going to satisfy me.
Perhaps if the democrats asked for evidence of the cost/ benefit analysis on an ETS ( they have done one surely!!??), and used this to persuade us, they might actually be able to demonstrate some relevance? Fielding has certainly achieved this, many non religous people will be voting for him simply because he has dared to ask some difficult questions that have been given very poor answers. Answers that infact indicate conclusively that we should be doing nothing yet.
Andrew “we sceptics” can no longer vote liberal, can clearly not vote labour or green…thats a lot of votes going……….
So Andrew, you claim to have spent some time here and yet you still think an ETS is a good idea.
Why? There’s been much evidence presented here that the CO2 caused AGW conjecture is just plain wrong. What would convince you? Do you even have the training and intellectual tools to evaluate the evidence? Many here have training in Earth and/or physical sciences and have expressed their doubts. What makes you so sure people like Lindzen, Plimer and Paltridge are wrong? There isn’t any huge unique warming signal and we know warms periods have occurred before in this interglacial
If you don’t know enough to evaluate the evidence then ask yourself which side is concealing scientific data and methods, uses dodgy statistics to bolster its case and ignores real world data in favour of computer model outputs. Even an arts and social work graduate should be able to figure that one out.
You might also ask yourself why you have this urge to want to tell others how to live their lives.
To A.B.,
Apart from the inevitable flow through inflation on all goods produced in Australia, that this legislation will cause; have you considered the huge increase in the Public Service that will be required to administer this monstrocity?
If this ever becomes law, Canberra will grow hugely while we further strangle country towns and cities.
I would like everyone here of a like mind to join me in emailing Malcolm Turnbull and Tony Abbott demanding they change their position to one of total opposition to this idiology driven legislation.
We are in my opinion looking at the most stupid and damaging legislation ever introduced into the Aus. Parliament.
Pikey.
Pikey, I am with you, it astounds me that, irrespective of ones opinion on cliamte change and the human impact, anybody would be in favour of something that will so obviously damage our economy with no potential impact on the climate!!!
I am stunned by peoples stupidity…and as a teacher i know how unable to think most people are…but surely this isnt to hard for them to understand….an ETS will cost jobs and lower living standards for no gain! duh