In the wake of Kevin Rudd’s announcement that an Emissions Trading Scheme will replace the existing carbon tax a year earlier than scheduled, Secular Party spokesperson, John Perkins, has stated that the shift to an ETS, either now or in the future, is not good policy.

Dr Perkins is a senior economist specialising in global warming models, and is the President of the Secular Party of Australia.

“Trading schemes are a fashionable way of seeming to do something but actually doing nothing,” he said. “There are two problems. Firstly, the market price may be too low to do anything, as now, or too volatile, so that you don’t have a secure base for long-term investment planning. Secondly, the foreign credits purchased may be for bogus schemes such as promised deforestation reductions which either don’t happen or else would have happened anyway.”

Dr Perkins said that environmental costs have to be paid by the market in some way. “A levy is the best way of doing this,” he said. “A price of at least $30 is needed to produce any shift in production away from coal. Australia’s grand plan is not to reduce emissions but to buy permits from countries like Indonesia. This is unlikely to result in any global benefit.”

Dr Perkins said that wealthier countries such as Australia needed to invest in and develop technologies for the mitigation of climate change, to give developing nations a chance to implement required technologies at a cheaper rate. He said that a carbon levy would encourage such investment, while the ETS concept was a “sham”.

“Of course, all this debate completely ignores Australia’s role as a coal exporter,” he added. “The emissions from Australia’s exported coal dwarf our domestic emissions. What Australia should be doing is seeking cooperation with other exporters to impose a carbon tax on coal exports.”

Dr Perkins concluded that people need to wake up to the fact that the two greatest threats to humankind are religious fundamentalism and anthropogenic global warming. “Given the serious consequences of such threats, we feel most Australians would appreciate a government whose policies were based on reason and evidence, as opposed to those who are more interested in deception in pursuit of the popular vote.”

Jul 15, 2013