THERE is a view going around Canberra that the Government's planned emissions trading scheme will put a floor as well as a cap on emissions, and that once a target is chosen, emissions will not be able to fall below that floor.
This view would be correct if:
...the number of permits in circulation could never fall, then the Australia Institute view would be correct: if a business or individual were to reduce their emissions then the demand for permits would be lower than it otherwise would be, and commensurate number of permits would be freed up in the system for useelsewhere.
Hence the conclusion follows that there would be nothing that any individual or business could do to reduce aggregate emissions.
However, once the price cap is removed:
there is always another option for citizens who are concerned about climate change: the "buy and hoard" method of emissions reductions.
By purchasing and hoarding permits environmentalists could prevent that emission allocation being used - therefore reducing total emissions.
Of course they would have to fund their own radical beliefs and since most greenies are watermelons (green on the outside and red in the middle) Robinson rightly concludes that:
They would rather compel the community as a whole to bear all the costs than to reduce their own lobbying output. The last thing they want to do is to go out into the market and try to persuade business to reduce emissions by paying them to do so, even though that is the logical and most straightforward way of reducing emissions under an ETS.
No comments:
Post a Comment