Australian Financial Review
Tuesday 6/2/2007 Page: 63
When it comes to the environment and carbon trading, politicians are simply doing what they have always done by saying one thing and doing another. Carbon taxes and trading emissions are effective tools because they get to the heart of the problem, namely CO2 emission, they do away with the messy requirements of government intervention, and minimise the chances for corruption. Or so you would think.
The problem is that all of the weak, half-hearted ad hoc measures that have gone before the scheme are still in place, and any time the prospect of a carbon trading scheme gets in the way of polluting businesses, they just ask for an exemption and they get it. BlueScope Steel does not have to worry about the possibility of carbon taxes or carbon trading at its $1 billion Port Kembla steel plant, because the NSW government gave it exemptions for both. The same goes for Alcoa's smelter expansions in Victoria. So, because large developments with lots of potential jobs manage to win, smaller developments and the environment, and the rest of us, all lose.
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