Are there particular aspects of the Australian government’s scheme that points to failure?
My own research has been concerned with the general problems facing any emissions trading scheme, not the specifics of Australian government policy design. What I can say on this basis is that the general design principles are far from encouraging. Those include: massive wealth transfers to major polluters, emphasis on protecting large scale exporters because they are also large scale polluters, protection for the transport sector rather than implementing fundamental change, open import of cheap unregulated offsets, and designing an inequitable system which penalises the small firm by making them enter an auction process while giving large polluters free permits. Wouldn’t a carbon tax be similarly open to corporate manipulation? Of course, any regulatory device can be captured by vested interests but some are more susceptible than others and different devices play to the strengths and weaknesses of different groups. An example with respect to emission trading is the fact that corporati
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