By Celsias Team
Posted on Sept. 15, 2011. Listed in:
Australia's long awaited, much debated and deeply divisive carbon tax has been introduced to the Australian Parliament. The tax applies to Australia's 500 most polluting companies and aims to cut carbon emissions by 5% of 2000 levels by 2020. A modest enough proposal for the one of the heaviest polluters per capita in the world you'd think ? For a country that has lived through drought, fires and floods and is paying a high price both economically and in social terms for the highly visible climate change , that's fair enough you'd reckon.
As one of the biggest polluters per head of population on the planet and the driest inhabited continent, surely they would want to do their bit . They just came from the Pacific Forum after all where Pacific Island Kiribas and Tovalu are at the vanguard of climate change destruction in that their whole nations potentially become uninhabitable.
But man, are they divided on this issue and does this ever get their blood boiling ! Conservatives who have questioned whether climate change is even real have said , in the same script as the American right, that it will mean economic disaster and cause massive job losses.
Julia Gillard has been in the hot seat and the price on carbon has burned a number of prominent politicians as well. Her popularity has plummeted and her grip on power is tenuous. The Greens have stuck with her to try to drive this through. This is brave politics seldom seen.
The vote on the tax is now scheduled for October 12th .Its called the Clean Energy Bill and has all sorts of interesting aspects to it .It looks like it will make it at this stage,with Labor, the Greens and three independents, but we know that three weeks is a very long time in Australian carbon politics.
"It's time to deliver the action on climate change we need," Ms Gillard told the House of Representatives
"To act on climate change. To cut carbon pollution."
History, she said would judge supporters of the tax to be in the right.
"Today we move from words to deeds. This parliament is going to get this done."
Good luck Julia - we wish you well .
