Posted by spoonman Thursday 21 February, 2008 05:41 PM
Do we want a 31 billion dollar tax cut? Or should we use that money to fix CO2 emissions?
Does anyone else think it's a little weird for so many to be claiming that deep CO2 emissions cuts will wreck the economy, when Kevin Rudd has promised us $31 billion in income tax cuts over the next 4 years?
That's despite a plea this week from the respected former Governor of the Reserve Bank, Bernie Fraser, for Rudd to dump the tax cuts policy on the basis that pumping that much extra cash into the economy will just fuel our runaway inflation and further force interest rates up.
He's right.
Plenty of economists have made the same call. Rudd refuses to listen, obviously not wanting a political backlash.
The Reserve Bank also made an extraordinary pitch this week for all of us to stop buying so much stuff in an attempt to slow inflation.
Yes, inflation is a problem.
Yet, on the release of an interim report this week from Professor Ross Garnaut on the impact of climate change on our economy, the economy seems to be the dominant issue in most minds - not the warnings from the world's most respected scientists that climate change is accelerating much faster than previous climate models suggested.
The actual hard data is now supporting the scientists and we have little time to act.
There will be a cost to try to slow or halt climate change, but the cost of doing nothing will be huge over time and the Garnaut Report suggests the planned 60% emissions cuts by 2050 might not be enough to do the trick.
So surely, in big picture terms, spending the inflationary $31 billion tax cuts cash on climate change issues over the next 4 years makes more sense.
$31 billion is a huge amount of money and could not only offset some of the cost to the economy as we reduce our existing CO2 emissions, but be used to kick-start an enormous push to develop more extensive renewable energy sources as our demand for energy doubles over the next few decades.
As Ross Garnaut rightly says, Australia will cop the effects of climate change far harder and sooner than other countries.
Would you prefer to see Kevin Rudd's $31 billion in tax cut cash spent on climate change programs?
To me it's a no-brainer.
Over to you.......
