Climate Change
Climate change is one of the largest challenges facing our society. One of my favourite sites is: Arguments from Global Warming Skeptics. If you are skeptical of climate science, I suggest you check it out. If you are not skeptical, I suggest you also check it out, if for no other reason than to know the counter arguments to a few of the common things that skeptics say. I am in favour of being skeptical of things and not just accepting things on blind faith. Unfortunately I think what many so called climate change skeptics do is to pick one or more arguments against climate change and then accept them without being skeptical about these arguments.
Yes, scientific conclusions can be wrong, just like the outcome of a legal trial. You have to weigh up all the evidence. Right now the evidence for human caused global warming is very strong. Even if the probability of it being right was only 95% (and it is probably quite a bit higher), we would still be wise to act. The cost if we act when we did not need to is small. The cost of not acting when we did need to is enormous.
Carbon emissions are an example of an externality. Emissions made by someone, or some company are paid for by others. Where as most other forms of pollution are more local externalities, carbon emissions are global. The appropriate response to externalities is to eliminate them, usually by a tax that represents the cost of that externality. This is made hard by the lack of any effective way to have a global tax. The following are changes that I'd like to see in Australia in order to reduce our emissions:
- Put a reasonable cost on carbon. Personally, I'd prefer a carbon tax, but a cap-and-trade system is at least better than nothing. The number of permits issued needs to be set appropriately and compensation if it needs to be given should be given to low-income earners, not to large polluters.
- Increase funding for research into alternatives. We need to work with the solutions that we've got now, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't also be working hard on solutions for later.
- Eliminate perverse tax incentives to pollute. In particular, the structure of salary-sacrificed vehicles that actually encourages people to drive more because it ends up cheaper. Apparently people have been known to put their car up on blocks and run them in order to save tax.
- Eliminate stamp duty on homes. Having to pay stamp duty when you move homes creates a disincentive for people to move closer to their new job, thus increasing the need for them to use polluting transport options such as cars. It would need to be offset by an increase in a tax somewhere else, such as increased GST, income tax, or best of all carbon tax.
- Increased spending on cycling facilities.
- Increased spending on public transport.