En Passant

Not only did we not save $200 a year as Abbott promised but energy prices have doubled since the Coalition scrapped the carbon tax; now, dropping subsidies for renewables is the latest thought bubble from the Nationals. John Passant reports in Independent Australia. Comments on the IA site please.  

In 2010 Beyond Zero Emissions outlined a $370 bn plan to move Australia to a completely renewable energy society over ten years. A 1% net wealth tax on the top 10 percent of wealth owners in Australia nets $60 bn a year to pay for that. Abolishing the super concessions and negative gearing or the top 10% of income earners, and abolishing the CGT concession which overwhelmingly benefits the top 10%, brings in an extra $25 bn easy. Bingo – the Budget deficit is fixed and actually addressing climate change can begin.

Tony Abbott has concocted a climate change ‘direct-action’ plan that should appeal to every denier. Like Labor’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme it pretends to do something while refusing to attack the big polluters. Abbott’s ‘plan’ doesn’t stop CO2 emissions; it encourages them. According to Government figures (suspect, but likely to have some truth in them), Abbott’s scheme will […]

Subsidies for individual solar panel electricity generation are a dumb idea. High feed in tariffs actually impose a burden on poor and working class electricity users and benefit those well enough off to pay $23,000 or thereabouts for solar panels on their roofs.  In addition the Rudd Labor Government’s former rebate scheme reimbursed the solar panel owners up to $8000 […]

To save the planet from global warming requires removing profit as the driving force of production, the driving force of a humanity on the road to the environmental abyss.

Labor is going to re-introduce the recently Senate rejected Emissions Trading Scheme Bill in February. What is going on? Let me hazard a guess. After the Liberal Party on Tuesday replaced Malcolm Turnbull with Tony Abbott, the Senate yesterday rejected the Labor-Turnbull Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.   Then it rejected the original Labor ETS, the one without the extra […]

That’s the bind for the Liberals. How do they win back the support of the ruling class as a class? Certainly voting against the ETS won’t do that.

The debacle over Australia’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme – billions of dollars of our money for the big polluters –  and the looming failure that will be Copenhagen show that we shouldn’t leave the resolution of the crisis to the political class who in the end represent the interests of the profiteers and their system. […]

The cost of adhering to the dictates of capitalism may be life on this planet.

Imagine how a militant radical campaign for green jobs could ignite society and actually have a chance of winning. Put your faith in us, Greens, not Rudd.