Why International Emissions Trading is just another form of Economic Insanity

Let’s consider Australia’s fossil fuel based emissions as water flowing into a large bucket. The emissions currently flow in at 2 litres per minute. The flow rate is increasing each year due to population growth, and emissions per capita have remained relatively stable in recent years. If there was no population growth emissions would still grow, but at a constant rate rather than an accelerating rate. Even if emissions per capita reduced, they will never completely disappear. Therefore population must stop growing if the rate of emissions is to be stabilised. Reduction measures will contribute to reducing annual emissions, in the medium to long term. But even if this is achievable, by the time it has occurred there will also be a need to extract carbon from the atmosphere using additional technological innovation. Population and total emissions grow far faster than emissions reduction technologies are developing. Therefore population must be stabilised, both globally and in each country, to help buy the time required for technological change. Don't be misled by recent talk of slowing of emissions growth. These are temporary "blips" in the rate of growth caused by such factors as low energy light bulbs, PV Solar, the collapse of the manufacturing industry and plantation forest growth. There is a hole in the bucket. This hole is analogous to all forms of emissions reduction measures. Water is currently flowing out of the bucket through the hole at 1 litre per minute. Before long the bucket will overflow as it is filling at net rate of 1 litre per minute. This signifies the climate change "tipping point" that has wide scientific acceptance as something that must be avoided. But imagine if population doubles. The emissions reduction measures would have to triple to 3 litres per minute just to keep net emissions growth at 1 litre per minute. Population growth is clearly a big challenge for emissions management. The economic concept of international trading of carbon credits is inherently absurd. Sustainability starts at the micro level and grows from there. A sustainable square kilometre of the planet is one in which a balance of biodiversity and emissions exists. Then comes the region, the state, the country and the entire planet. If you cannot sustain the pieces, the whole will be unsustainable. International carbon trading is an economic concept where money can be used to deny responsibility for sustainable development. Economists have always promoted unsustainable development and this is yet another form of their pro-growth, money driven mania. Let’s imagine that we have a separate bucket in each country. Each country must work to ensure that its own bucket does not overflow. After all, each country must be a responsible member of the global community. The sum of the parts is the whole; right? Paying for the right to allow your own bucket to overflow is insane, because every country on earth currently has a rapidly filling bucket. So which country can possibly afford to sell credits to any other country? This concept must have been conceived by economists. No scientist could develop such a scheme using scientific logic. It is quite clear that the Carbon Tax Debate orchestrated by the ABC over many years has been about Australia’s contribution to global anthropogenic climate change. Australia is a developed-world leader in extreme population growth, yet the ABC promotes reliance on scientific advice about global warming and simultaneously ignores scientific advice about population growth. The ABC has treated this entire debate by incoherently ignoring the water flowing into the bucket at a faster rate each year, and talking only about how to make a hole in the bucket that has no hope of draining the water quickly enough in the short to medium term. All the numbers are quantified and publicly available to the ABC. The ABC stands in contempt of logic and the public interest. The ABC has ignored population growth's contribution to accelerating emissions growth, and every other unsustainable environmental impact, in its public policy debate on Emissions Management. The ABC regards population growth as inevitable, despite the control government has over mass migration. Mass migration has caused roughly 60% of total population growth in Australia over the last decade. Running an economy based on extreme population growth won't work in the medium to long term, in Australia or anywhere else; particularly in Australia which has one of the highest per capita emissions on earth. If you don't believe any of the above try reading this: http://fpif.org/world-banks-waste-energy/