Twenty-nine years ago, on this day, February 7th, 1995, the lobby group for big business successfully fought off a carbon tax.
Canberra — The Business Council of Australia yesterday attacked the Federal Government’s proposed carbon tax, saying that it could jeopardise more than 47,000 jobs and $43 billion in production in the nation’s export energy industries.
Drawing on a report released by the Australian Bureau of Agriculture and Resource Economics yesterday, the council said a carbon tax, at any level, would result in lost jobs, production and exports.
The executive director of the council, Mr Paul Barratt, said any carbon tax would have a serious impact on Australia’s oil and gas, coal, metal products, petrochemicals, pulp and paper and cement industries.
Thomas, C. 1995. Business Council Hits Plan For Carbon Tax. The Age, 7 February, p.50.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 361ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that there was a fierce battle going on over a proposal for a carbon tax at federal level in Australia, and the Business Council of Australia and the Australian Mining Industry Council, (who made the tie-in official as the AIGN later) were at the forefront of a campaign to stop it. And one of the ways – not the only one, but one of the ways – was to say that the “sky would fall” economically speaking.
And what you do is you get some economic modelling by so-called independent experts who set their parameters in such a way that the sky will fall, you then turn that into a report, write a press release. You give it to some tame journalists, who then get it put up on the front page of a newspaper. Then get questions asked in Parliament. It gets picked up on television and the “common sense” that action on climate change will cost a fortune is just that little bit further embedded.
And they have been playing this game for a very long time. They’re very good at it and the reason they keep playing it is it’s usually a winning tactic for them.
What happened next. The carbon tax was defeated in February of 1995 before the BCA and its chums had to pull up the really big guns. Policy advocate interest shifted to emissions trading schemes. One was finally introduced in 2012, only to be abolished two years later. Australia deserves everything it gets.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
Also on this day:
Feb 7, 1861- 161 years ago, a scientist identifies carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas
February 7, 1979 – Met Office boss bullshits about his carbon dioxide stance