Twenty-five years ago, on this day, December 22nd, 1999 the economics editor for the Fin, Alan Mitchell, came out with some truth bombs.
It is unfortunate that political considerations probably mean market-based policies will never play their full role, because the Productivity Commission was right.
Instead of mucking around with regulation and “education and awareness”, or fiddling at the edges with immigration, we should be slapping on a carbon tax.
Notwithstanding the claims of the Australian Industry Group, just jacking up the price of generating greenhouse gases is exactly what we should be doing.
Mitchell, A. 1999. Migrants, Kyoto don’t gel. The Australian Financial Review, December 22, p.16.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 369ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the Australian Institute then run by Clive Hamilton had weighed in on the question of Australia setting very high ambition net immigration targets as potentially a bad thing. There’s been an historical quandary over this for environmentalists. Because if they oppose lots of immigration, they can be accused of being racist and selfish. And if they point out that the main boosters for a big Australia are businesses who want to depress wages and at the same time, increase the market for their products they can be accused of being Marxists, or conspiracy theorists. So they’re in a bit of a cleft stick.
What we learn – Anyway, what’s interesting here is that the Financial Review’s economics editor pointed out that business was bullshit on this and that a carbon tax was precisely the sort of thing be required if you were going to deal with climate change
Twenty-five years ago, today, the sin was talking a certain amount of sense on the climate issue.
What happened next? Mitchell is now at the Sydney Morning Herald.
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:
December 22, 1759 – “What have ye done?”
December 22, 1975 – “Scientist Warns of Great Floods if Earth’s Heat Rises” (surely “when”?)