funkisland expatriates

Where did you say you were from?

As much as we felt slighted when the US Marine Corps color guard flew the Canadian Flag upside down in Atlanta in the 92 World Series, at least they got the anthem right.

In other, completely unrelated news, the Australian task force has proposed a carbon trading scheme. It has no reduction targets. There is no cost associated with emitting, just a permit. The permits can be traded. The environment critic (and one time leader of the band Midnight Oil) has proposed that there be a real tax on carbon emissions. Here is my take: in a traded permit scheme, there would end up being a monetary value associated with emitting, just not the way the government designed it. There would be money changing hands when permits get traded. And corporations would simply take the deterrent cost of emitting more than the permitted amount into consideration and make decisions based on that. I think what we need to do is go through the pain of putting a price on emissions now, because once that link is established, we can deter emissions by changing the price. Changing the price would be a lot easier than establishing the link in the first place.

posted by bitz @ 6:42 AM