The Shame of Environmental Politics and Big Business
The Shame of Environmental Politics and Big Business
This morning I read a great piece in The Age newspaper, that comes out of Melbourne, Australia.
It was written by Alan Gray, editor of Earth Garden magazine and Green Power Today (available from Earth Garden Books). He put his case against the recently announced Carbon and Emissions Trading scheme (called the Australian Carbon Trust), and I was so impressed with it I thought it was well worth providing you with the link to the article, so you could read it for yourself. The reason I like it is that he provides us with a simple, real life example of what some people are doing and what the potential impact of this proposal will in relation to his example.
Here are a couple of quotes from the article to whet your appetite and the link to the full piece is provided below.
The new Australian Carbon Trust announced by Rudd on Monday is a bureaucratic Band-Aid made to look like the Government is dealing with this issue. The trust is a poor response to this problem because it would force households or businesses to pay twice: once when they make the carbon reductions, and again when donating to the trust.
Contrast this with large polluters who won’t even pay once because of their massive “compensation payments”, or corporate welfare.
I really don’t think there are very many thinking people out there who believe for one minute that “band-aid” solutions are what is required in response to the looming impacts of climate change, but here is the government of an educated, politically active, western country attempting to hoodwink their populations by delivering a policy that is, frankly, absolute rubbish! Grrrr, I don’t usually get so irritated but this morning they really found where my goat was tied up! 
Here is another quote from the article which appeared in The Age:
As the draft legislation stands, none of the contributions made to date by householders by paying for GreenPower will count towards reducing Australia’s carbon cap. All these existing voluntary reductions will simply ease the pressure on big polluters — they will have to cut less because we have all cut more. Stinks like a tip full of methane, if you ask me. And experts, like Richard Denniss of the Australia Institute, predict that the GreenPower scheme will die overnight if the legislation is not amended. Why should householders reward the shareholders of giant electricity companies by making the cuts the companies should make?
Talk about pulling the rug out from under the feet of people who are voluntarily (and in large numbers) choosing to make choices that will benefit themselves, the whole of the community and the environment. Shame on you Prime Minister, Shame on you.
http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/the-little-green-car-that-pays-for-itself-20090507-awk6.html?page=-1#
