From: g87
Sent: Thursday, August 30, 2012 10:57 AM
To: the australian
Subject: Hot air trading beats Tulip fraud!
Hot air trading beats Tulip fraud!
Commendations are due to your brilliant environment writer Graham Lloyd for his A Plus article Going for broke. The Australian 30/8.
Our incipient Carbon Trading scam plainly beats the Tulip bulb sham of 1690 and the Albanian pyramid / Ponzi scheme of 1997.
It seems even those involved in policing it all admit that ''Given the recent experience with corruption, EU negotiators have highlighted the difficulty in policing an open global scheme.''
And worse: this asinine government is unaware that it is plainly our planned involvement with the corrupt European Carbon Trading system that is keeping a floor under the ever - sinking price!
Never mind the lack of a commodity: exactly what are you supposed to deliver to fulfil obligations? Hot air?
Never mind even the lesser – known disasters they glibly create – like farmers being encouraged to grow trees and not cash crops!
There are so many more; yet these twirps gayly contemplate that the sky has not [yet] fallen in!
Lloyd writes:
''Carbon prices on the European exchange have been erratic, if not chaotic. Huge spikes in prices have come crashing back to earth in the wake of the global financial crisis and revelations of corruption and the involvement of organised crime.''
This Labor government feels no obligation to answer the hundreds of questions rational people need to ask.
1997 rebellion in Albania - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Geoff Seidner
13 Alston Grove East St Kilda 3183
03 9525 9299
03 9525 9290
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- The Australian
- August 30, 2012
By linking directly with Europe, Australia has positioned itself squarely with the group that has led the global politics for action.
For critics, Australia has signed a two-way deal to access a scheme that has been dogged by controversy, corruption and unpredictability in the name of providing certainty and price stability, when neither can be assured.
It has either pulled off a diplomatic coup or risked leaving the world's highest per capita carbon emitter -- Australia -- vulnerable to the dictates of bureaucrats from half a world away.
By agreeing to link carbon markets, the government has signalled its willingness to sign up to a second commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol when it expires at the end of the year.
This is at odds with Japan and Canada, which have withdrawn from Kyoto and are refusing to sign up for a second period.
Australia has made it clear it believed, in the absence of a legally binding global agreement, the future would rely on regional and bilateral agreements.
The Durban conference last November reached an 11th-hour agreement to negotiate a new framework that included the world's biggest carbon emitters, China, the US and India.
Under the agreement, the framework for a global deal is to be finalised by 2015 with the deal to take effect by 2020. But while there is agreement that the inclusion of China, India and the US was crucial to success on cutting emissions, divisions about the responsibilities of developed and developing economies remain.
Expectations were low for talks that got under way in Bangkok yesterday to set the ground rules for the first round of talks including heads of government scheduled for Doha at the end of the year.
The Australian Climate Commission's deputy director, Erwin Jackson, says it was always going to be a difficult year for global climate change negotiations after Durban. "It is a case of taking one step forward, half back," he says.
But he adds that Climate Commission analysis shows if Australia does not commit to a second Kyoto period this year -- before the global deal is done -- it would make all further discussions about linking with the European carbon trading scheme more difficult.
The key elements of the agreement announced by Climate Change Minister Greg Combet this week are for Australia to scrap its floor price of $15 a tonne from 2015 and instead link our carbon trading scheme directly to the European carbon market.
This means companies will be able to buy carbon permits directly from the European carbon market to cover obligations in Australia.
Complex discussions have begun for a two-way link from 2018, which would allow European companies to buy permits on the Australian market.
The latest agreement to link Australia with the European carbon trading scheme has been sold as having something for everyone.
Those who want tough action on emissions claim joining the world's biggest scheme is a demonstration of good faith.
The deal also may also open a new stream of income for farmers under the carbon farming initiative if European companies are allowed to invest. Business groups have applauded the scrapping of Australia's $15 a tonne floor price to prevent Australia locking in a system that was more expensive than elsewhere in the world.
The assumption has been the deal will lower the carbon price for business.
But the risk for all sides in the carbon tax debate has always been in popping the champagne corks too early.
Carbon prices on the European exchange have been erratic, if not chaotic. Huge spikes in prices have come crashing back to earth in the wake of the global financial crisis and revelations of corruption and the involvement of organised crime.
The price of emissions permits tripled in the first six months after they were introduced before collapsing by half in a one-week period in 2006, and falling to zero across the next 12 months. Most recently the price has bounced along below $10, compared with Australia's starting price of $23.
A police report in 2009 estimated 90 per cent of carbon permits traded in some European countries were fraudulent.
Theft aside, the main problem facing the EU market is the over-allocation of carbon permits.
According to the European Commission, the surplus up to 2020 will be equivalent to 2.4 billion tonnes of CO2. A slowdown in economic activity is largely to blame. Allowing Australian companies to enter the market will provide additional demand to soak up the oversupply.
But there are dangers for Australian companies hoping entry to the European market will guarantee lower prices in the future.
History may show that Australia agreed to join the European scheme at the bottom of the market. There is an incentive for companies to buy EU permits cheaply now to surrender against their carbon obligations in 2015. But where prices will be in 2015 is far from certain. The deal also opens a new level of exchange rate risk should the Australian dollar fall from its present high level.
As the EU prepares to enter its third round of carbon permit auctions and allocations next year there is growing pressure on European regulators to take decisive action to boost prices.
A review of the emissions trading scheme by the European Commission later this year is expected to recommend sweeping structural changes.
It is therefore possible that a linkage with Europe will increase, not reduce, the cost to Australian businesses.
Greens leader Christine Milne is highlighting forecasts of a European carbon price of $50 a tonne compared with today's market of less than $10. And lobby groups, including in Australia, are urging the EU to act to get it there.
Sustainable Business Australia, which describes itself as the nation's peak body for the low carbon and environmental goods and services sector, says Australia's decision to join the EU market would provide further incentive to act.
"It would encourage the EU to examine measures such as withholding carbon permits from auction to bolster their flagging price," SBA chief executive Andrew Petersen says.
Alongside concerns about the environmental need to cut global carbon emissions there is no shortage of self-interest at work.
Green-tech companies in Australia and across Europe are concerned that carbon price levels are too low to drive large-scale low-carbon investment.
Having decoupled compensation payments from the actual carbon price, the federal government also has a vested interest in the European carbon price rising.
The Climate Institute's Jackson says it is likelier that prices in Europe will be pushed higher. "That is where the debate is in Europe -- what can be done to increase prices," he says.
New demand from Australia for permits could help in the short term. "Australian companies will probably look to pull out 60 million to 200 million tonnes from the European scheme at a difficult time," Jackson says. He adds that the Greens' estimate of $50 a tonne for carbon "reflects where it has been in the past".
"Our forecast is for $30 a tonne by 2020."
Such price uncertainty undermines the government's core carbon tax pitch of business certainty.
That's something Tony Abbott has been quick to exploit. "If the EU price goes up, our economy is devastated," the Opposition Leader said yesterday. "If it goes down our budget is devastated."
Speaking at a clean technology research facility where carbon dioxide is used to grow algae for bio-diesel or feedstock, Abbott says the federal government is looking in the wrong direction. "Europe is not the rest of the world," he says.
"The US, India, China, Canada, Africa, our trading partners are not introducing a carbon tax.
He questions "this idea we secure our economic future by tying to Europe when Europe is going backwards and Asia is going forwards".
Combet has been keen to highlight the fact China is considering a limited carbon tax and trial cap-and-trade system.
Lobby groups say the creation of a fungible Asian carbon market is an important next step.
"Progressive Australian business will be looking to the opportunities that will emerge with the creation of a new inter-linked international carbon market imposing a unified carbon price on key markets in Europe, China, South Korea, Japan, New Zealand and California, all of which could be in place by 2020," the SBA's Petersen says.
Given the slow pace of negotiations within the UN framework, a system of bilateral or regional carbon trading agreements is certainly likelier than a global deal for a single market.
But linking with some countries, particularly China, will not be easy.
Negotiations between Australia and the EU may yet demonstrate exactly how tough they will be.
The ability of European companies to access the Australian carbon market from 2018 will depend on the successful agreement on a range of key policy issues.
These include measurement, reporting and verification arrangements: the types, quantities and other relevant aspects of third-party units that can be accepted into either scheme.
Included will be the role of land-based domestic offsets; trade-exposed industries; and comparable market oversight.
Given the recent experience with corruption, EU negotiators have highlighted the difficulty in policing an open global scheme.
And Frank Jotzo, director of the Centre for Climate Economics and Policy at the Australian National University, told Britain's The Guardian newspaper that linking with the EU trading scheme was not without risk for Australia.
"From an Australian point of view, the EU is in quite some economic turmoil and it is somewhat difficult to judge what policy changes may be around the corner," he says.
Australia has agreed to be a junior partner in a deal in which the linked Australian-EU scheme is likely to be much more strongly influenced by decisions in Brussels and Berlin, than in Canberra.
As a country with massive coal exports, energy-intensive industry and the world's highest per capita carbon dioxide emissions, Australia could find itself very vulnerable to harsh dictates from half a world away if negotiations are not handled well.
Source: The Australian
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Editorial
Swings and roundabouts in EU carbon price link
- The Australian
- August 30, 2012
The price had been languishing below $10 on Tuesday when the announcement by Climate Change Minister Greg Combet triggered a flurry on the European market, taking the price to a two-month high of $10.25 before settling again around $9.70. So this begs the question of why, for the next three years, we have burdened our companies with a carbon price that is more than double - or over recent months three times - the price imposed on our trading partners in the EU. This is not to say the decision wasn't a step forward for Julia Gillard as she grapples with the political and economic difficulties inherent in her carbon tax package. The Australian had previously called for the elimination of the floor price and welcomed Tuesday's announcement. But while we have consistently supported a market mechanism as the cheapest and most efficient way to reduce carbon emissions, we have steadfastly argued that Australia should not get too far ahead of the rest of the world. To this end, delaying the emissions reduction scheme would have been wise, especially in the wake of the global financial crisis. But given the scheme is in place, the sooner we shift to a market price without a floor - rather than a fixed-price tax - the better. The reason the Prime Minister won't contemplate this move any sooner than 2015 is because the intervening budgets have already factored in and allocated the money raised by what is now exposed as an exorbitantly high $23 a tonne carbon tax.
So Australia has put itself at the vanguard, ahead of its trading partners in North Asia and North America, by moving to an economy-wide carbon price. When it comes to Europe we have placed ourselves ahead by at least double the price, for now. What we can say for certain about the abolition of the floor price is wholly good but limited to this - we are now guaranteed that as of 2015 our domestic industries will not suffer a carbon price disadvantage compared to the countries of the EU. Where they will stand in comparison to their competitors in China, India and the US is mere speculation but most observers would concede those countries are unlikely to have imposed a broad carbon price by then.
If that is the economic reality, the political benefits of this for Ms Gillard are more difficult to quantify. Certainly she has alleviated a concern of business, so their worst-case scenario after 2015 is to pay no more than Europe. While it can be argued this backflip raises more doubts about competence, perhaps it also signifies to the wider electorate that Ms Gillard is prepared to listen and modify her policies. And when the attack comes about the government moving Australia too far ahead of the rest of the world, Ms Gillard can point to our future carbon price synchronisation with Europe. Then again, this does not seem to be the most opportune time in history to hitch your economic and political wagon to the labouring behemoth that is the EU.
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Lining up with Europe carries inherent risks
- The Australian
- August 30, 2012
The backflip came with pike and twist in lining us up in anything to do with the sickly European economy.
The exorbitant price was set in the first place because the federal government thought it was a good idea at the time to create stability.
Now that the floor price has been dumped, it is becoming more and more apparent that the carbon tax is an albatross of increasing heaviness around every Australian taxpayer's neck.
John Bell, Lyneham, ACT
HOW did we know the federal government would get the carbon tax wrong? Everything it touches turns to (using Julia Gillard's word) crap. And hooking us up to the sinking ship that is the EU must be the craziest, most irresponsible decision since Kevin Rudd lost his nerve and abandoned the greatest moral issue of our time.
I don't need to list the backflips, bad policies and abysmal implementation over the years because it's common knowledge. But I'd like to know how they formulate their policies. Those multi-million dollars the government spends on consultants is a complete waste of our taxes.
Don Stallman, East Brisbane, Qld
IN the lead-up to the introduction of the carbon tax, there was no mention of its effect on the climate but the implication was that Australia was a big emitter of carbon dioxide on a global basis because we have a high per capita generation of the gas.
However, since we have a small population, adding up this per capita generation produces less than 1.5 per cent of the global emissions of CO2. Also, our predicted expanding population was never factored in.
Meanwhile, I have not seen any comments by climatologists as to the effect of the tax on climate change. I believe that we should improve the efficiency of power generation in line with other industrial nations but not make our industries non-competitive by having a carbon tax way above that of our trading partners, knowing it will have no measurable effect on the global climate.
John Morris, Avoca Beach, NSW
FORMER Queensland Labor treasurer Keith de Lacy was right to label the carbon tax an exercise in collective insanity. The federal government's backflip on a carbon floor price simply confirms that opinion, as does the malfeasance in science that supposedly required an emissions trading scheme in the first place. There remains no valid proof that carbon dioxide causes dangerous global warming, and it remains a fact that temperature reductions due to emissions trading will be measurable in thousandths of a degree, if at all.
Just to rub in the absurdity of it all, Germany opened a new coal-fired power station this month to partly replace its lost nuclear-power generating capacity.
G. M. Derrick, Sherwood, Qld
IN February, extreme weather in eastern Europe froze the Danube. If that is repeated the European carbon price would decline significantly. It could even go to zero.
From 2015, Australia's carbon price will be linked to European carbon markets. This will link this revenue source to the weather and the economy of Europe. Is this sensible?
Brent Walker, Killcare, NSW
AS the world learned in 2007, where there are markets, there are market manipulators. Many are selfish and shortsighted, and we cannot expect market setters in Europe to care much how their schemes affect me and every other Australian. Seemingly our trusting federal government does.
Paul Kunino Lynch, Elizabeth Bay, NSW
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Carbon floor price had to go to protect our economy
- The Australian
- August 29, 2012
Now, whatever price Australian companies pay after 2015, it will not be massively out of kilter with international markets - as is the case now, with the fixed $23 tax more than double the European price. In dealings with at least one major trading bloc, the EU, our industries will not be exposed to any discernible disadvantage.
For Julia Gillard, given the government's defence of the floor price over the past year, this dramatic backflip will have some political cost. A week ago Climate Change Minister Greg Combet told Sky News, "we've legislated the floor price ... we're committed to arrangements we've legislated". Finance Minister Penny Wong warned about the financial risks of abolishing the floor price when she appeared on Australian Agenda in February. "You'd have to be very careful that that didn't have a very negative effect on the budget," she said, "because if you move to a floating price, obviously household compensation quite rightly is fixed, there's obviously budgetary risks there." Despite these political and budgetary difficulties, the government has done the right thing.
Just seven weeks ago The Australian called for a rational debate about "the potential economic benefits of moving to a cap-and-trade system sooner rather than later, without a floor price". We argued there was no need to force our companies to pay "a price that is so much higher than that imposed by other nations". The Prime Minister has come to similar conclusions. Ms Gillard and Mr Combet have shown admirable flexibility in adjusting their scheme, rather than rigidly sticking to a flawed model. To the extent independent MPs, including Rob Oakeshott, have helped to force the change, they should be commended.
This compromise was foreshadowed in our pages last month in an exclusive report by Sid Maher. Since then the government has won crucial agreement from the Greens, in perhaps their first sign of compromise since joining a formal alliance with Labor. Greens leader Christine Milne is convinced the Europeans will ensure their carbon price rises so that by 2015 it will be at least $15, meaning the floor price would have been redundant any way. Treasury modelling agrees, predicting $29. Yet the current weakness of the European price suggests some risk of a lower price. Either way, Australian businesses will now be insulated from disadvantage against international carbon prices.
Given the household compensation that is already locked in to the forward estimates it would appear impossible to move to a market price any earlier, so Ms Gillard seems to have adopted as much remedial action as is possible at this time. No doubt she will be hoping these changes help to bed down the scheme, ease the concerns of industry, and increase any resistance to the idea of a Coalition government coming in to undo all of this work.
