LETTERS
The Age
Thursday December 10, 2009
Cap and trade will not save usPAUL Krugman (Comment, 9/12) writes that the sulphur dioxide cap and trade scheme in the US worked, but provides no figures. In 2010, when the scheme ends after 20 years, it's expected it will have reduced sulphur dioxide emissions by 35 per cent.In Germany sulphur dioxide emissions have fallen 90 per cent in 15 years. What did the Germans do differently? They regulated emissions, and companies couldn't buy their way out through offsets or trading permits. Sulphur dioxide is a tiny problem; the scale of the carbon dioxide problem means any cuts through a trading scheme are unlikely €” the cuts we need are huge.Labor and Liberal are arguing over what can lull people into not worrying about climate change. For Labor it is carbon trading, while the Liberals veer between climate denial and saying "we won't act unless everyone else does first".Carbon trading hasn't worked in Europe, it won't work here. We need government to build renewable energy as it once built coal-fired infrastructure. There is no solution to climate change without rapidly changing our energy sources and methods of transportation. Such a transition would also mean jobs for all.Chris Breen, ReservoirDangers on Wall StreetTHE real danger of a cap and trade carbon emissions trading scheme is that it lends itself to the development of a derivatives market which, if not under strict regulatory control, can lead to extreme financial abuse.Wall Street has shown scant regard in the past for regulation and will undoubtedly lobby heavily to ensure a futures market is set up to enable companies to hedge against long-term risk and package carbon-related products to investors worldwide. History tells us that, in all probability, such a system would be controlled by speculators and be subject to a boom and bust cycle. The world cannot afford to take such a risk.Australia should not only reject the concept of cap and trade in favour of a carbon tax, but also argue against any global deregulated derivatives market controlled by US financial interests.Robert Brown, RyeLed off track by economistsPAUL Krugman, and other revered economists and hangers on, are compounding the problem.Economics starts at labour and capital, ignoring the imperative of natural resources management and favouring complexity and spin.An economic system based around a free market, in which the poor and future generations have no bid, is clearly a death sentence for our species.Providing future generations access to natural resources by phasing out fossil fuel use through a phased-in cost on their extraction shall bring about a cleaner atmosphere and stop consequent other environmental destruction.It is a solution not supported by economists because people could understand it in its simplicity, and it widens the free market while making management more probable, and would result in more equitable spread of real wealth.What we have been witnessing in the past century is real economic destruction because of our fatally flawed measurement system. Please let us address the cause and not a symptom: no emissions trading scheme.Rod Fletcher, Brighton
© 2009 The Age
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