[LINK] Australian Carbon Emission Strategy

[Tom Worthington]

The Australian Government today released its "Clean Energy Future" 
strategy, including an initial carbon price of $23 per Tonne. The price 
will increase by 2.3% per year for three years, after which a trading 
scheme with a market price will be introduced. The carbon price will 
only be levied on very large carbon emitters, with numerous exemptions 
and compensation for industry sectors and individuals: 
<http://www.cleanenergyfuture.gov.au/>.

The government has adopted a strategy to emphasize the compensation 
package for individuals and assistance to business, while limiting the 
carbon tax to the minimum possible range of industry at the lowest 
feasible price. The small number of organizations which will need to 
register for the scheme (about 500) will limit the cost and complexity 
of administering the scheme and also limit the political opposition. 
Most voters will be overcompensated and the industry assistance schemes 
give numerous opportunities for positive government publicity. Assuming 
that the minority government can stay in office long enough to bring the 
scheme into operation, it should be successful, both in political and 
environmental terms.

The Australian Government has gone to considerable lengths to provide 
detailed, clearly prepared on-line information about the new strategy. 
Unfortunately the home page fails validation with 11 HTML errors. The 
page also rated 0 out of 100, on the W3C mobileOK Checker and failed an 
automated accessibility test. While these problems will not prevent most 
people accessing the information and could be easily corrected, this 
does not indicate the level of attention to detail needed for a policy 
on which the future of the nation depends.

More in my blog at: 
<http://blog.tomw.net.au/2011/07/australian-government-carbon-emmissions.html>.


-- 
Tom Worthington FACS CP HLM, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia  http://www.tomw.net.au
Adjunct Senior Lecturer, School of Computer Science, The
Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/
Visiting Scientist, CSIRO ICT Centre: http://bit.ly/csiro_ict_canberra