Emissions trading and lobby groups

Associate Professor Richard Denniss of the Crawford School at The Australian National University has been studying the likely effectiveness of the New Zealand Government’s Emissions Trading Scheme for his paper The NZ Emissions Trading Scheme – why is it so bad and can Australia’s be any better?

“Given the recent consternation in Australia over very small reductions in the price of petrol, it is difficult to see how we are going to have a sensible debate about an effective Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) in Australia,” he said.

“The worst thing Australia could do would be to follow New Zealand down the path of incurring all the costs of an ETS, while missing out on all the economic and environmental benefits. He stated that New Zealand has gone for the worst of both worlds, but hopefully Australia can do better.”

He says that Australian policy makers need to look across the Tasman to learn a number of valuable lessons before the introduction of any national Emissions Trading Scheme, to ensure the New Zealand experience is not repeated here. It is to be hoped that powerful industry groups are not allowed to insulated themselves from the emissions trading.

Technorati Tags: emissions trading, lobby groups, emissions trading scheme, ETS, Australia, New Zealand

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 25th, 2008 at 6:28 am and is filed under Global Warming, Climate Change & Energy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.