Australia’s government has proposed a carbon tax on its biggest industrial polluters, arguing yesterday that the country cannot afford to lag behind other nations in reducing its greenhouse gas emissions.
The proposal to introduce a tax from July 1 next year has the support of the key Greens party and independent legislators, but faces a battle in the Senate, where opposition lawmakers argue polluters should remain free to emit carbon gas.
The most contentious details — such as the what to charge per tonne of carbon and how much compensation to provide hard hit industries and householders as they make the transition — have yet to be decided.
“I do not believe that Australia needs to lead the world on climate change, but I also don’t believe that we can afford to be left behind,” Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard told reporters in announcing the plan.
MANAGING CHANGE
“I’m determined to price carbon because history teaches us that the countries and the economies who prosper at times of historic change are those who get in and shape and manage the change,” she said, citing the industrial and information technology revolutions as examples.
The EU, several US states, Norway and New Zealand already make polluters pay for carbon emissions.
Australia’s agricultural industry — a major polluter through methane emitted by sheep and cattle — would be exempt from the tax because of the difficulties in measuring that pollution.
The carbon tax would be levied for between three to five years until Australia adopted an emissions permit trading scheme.
Under that scheme, polluters would buy and sell permits to emit a tonne of carbon with the permit price set by market forces. The government would curb the amount of carbon gas that Australia produces by limiting the number of permits available on the market.
REJECTED
Gillard’s Labor Party government, under her predecessor, former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd, attempted to introduce such a trading scheme, but the legislation was twice rejected by the Senate in 2009.
Gillard had promised not to introduce a carbon tax before elections last year because she preferred the emissions trading concept.
However, the new plan is a compromise with the environmentally focused Greens and independent lawmakers whose support give Labor a narrow majority in the House of Representatives.
Australia is one of the world’s worst greenhouse gas polluters per capita largely because of its heavy energy reliance on coal, its largest export.
The government has pledged to cut Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2020 to at least by 5 percent below 2000 levels.
However, a government report released this month projects a 24 percent increase in Australian greenhouse gas emissions on 2000 levels by 2020.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of
A prominent Christian leader has allegedly been stabbed at the altar during a Mass yesterday in southwest Sydney. Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel was saying Mass at Christ The Good Shepherd Church in Wakeley just after 7pm when a man approached him at the altar and allegedly stabbed toward his head multiple times. A live stream of the Mass shows the congregation swarm forward toward Emmanuel before it was cut off. The church leader gained prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic, amassing a large online following, Officers attached to Fairfield City police area command attended a location on Welcome Street, Wakeley following reports a number