The latest UN Climate Change report, which you can read at http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,510937,00.html, outlines one of the most horrific and pathologically idiotic approaches to deal with carbon dioxide emissions.  It consists of essentially ruining the economies of developed nations (which aren’t doing so well lately if you haven’t heard) to pursue a policy of punishing industry through taxes and regulation.

Now this may be great news for countries like China and India, because they can absorb even more of the world’s industry that flees Australia, the UK and the US.  People also seem to forget that China is the largest contributor to CO2 emissions in the world, outdoing the US, yet it is exempt from the Kyoto treaty… and China’s projected increases in CO2 emissions will dwarf Australia’s own projected reductions as stated in the Kyoto treaty!

Why then should Australia punish it’s industry (the little that remains), go into debt, increase the tax and regulatory burden if the net effect will be negligible?  Well the answer is pretty simple: it’s a political thing.  Politicians now ‘get it’ that climate change is a pretty important issue among their constituents, so they need to look like their doing something.  The proposals that they unveil, like this totalitarian UN climate report, are like a cartoon mousetrap… a little bit of cheese to lure their victim, they start to nibble and SNAP… welcome to Big Brother.  We’re going to tell you how productive you can be, how much CO2 you can emit, how much you can exhale, what you can consume… remember, it’s all for the planet.

Ok, so apart from my ideological opposition to these idiotic proposals there’s a much more relevant point to be made here: they won’t work.  If China’s CO2 emissions continue on their projected rate it will make any reduction, on the part of other countries, useless to say the least.  Ultimately reducing carbon emissions is treating the symptoms and not the disease.  We’re still operating under the Industrial Revolution’s mentality for generating energy: heat coal/oil, boil water and turn a turbine to generate electricity (even nuclear power heats fuel rods to do the same).  If you want to reduce carbon dioxide emissions you need to make them irrelevant.  Basically we need a new means of generating electricity that is more efficient than traditional means (no not wind or solar, they suck aren’t there yet).

My solution:

1)  Scrap all the restrictions on industry for CO2 emissions

2) Give major tax incentives to industries that improve their energy efficiency

3) The ‘E’ prize – the major industrialized nations all chip into a global pool of money, prize money in the order of billions, for the first group to develop an energy source that cheap, clean, efficient and more effective than what’s on the market.  Provide funding for research groups who’s stated goal is to win the E prize.

Human beings are more productive when they work under incentive, not fear and intimidation.  If we really believe that, then our policies need to reflect that.  We need to dispel the notion that we can tax and regulate our way out of an energy crisis that dates back hundreds of years to the industrial revolution.  Deal with that and you’ll solve your climate change problems.