Extract from “Your Future in Your Hands” by John McRobert
Total tax reform : the easytax way to prosperity and job creation
Available from the Australian Parliament House Library
Date: 01/01/1998 – Collection: Library – ID: library/lcatalog/10142409
Before environmentalists become too carried away with the foolish notion of a carbon tax, the article ‘Waiting for the big volcano’ in the August 1997 edition of Geographical places this concept in reasonable perspective. Pinatubo in 1991 caused global cooling of up to 1 degrees Celsius. Eruptions 100 times more powerful than Mt. Pinatubo are possible to lower temperatures up to 15 degrees Celsius. When the big one goes up, our silos must be full, and our technology must be better than today to minimise the proverbial fallout. Another tax on technology is the last thing we need. While the proposed carbon tax collectors harass industry with puny emission sniff meters, they could pause to reflect on the march of mankind towards a better and safer world in spite of stupid albeit well meaning tax laws.
The first blast furnaces used as much as 8 tons of coal or coke to make one ton of pig iron. In 1828, a Scot (who else) developed a system which economised on fuel—5 tons per ton of iron. Today’s usage is closer to half a ton of coke to 1 ton of iron. All done without a carbon tax. When hay burners once used for transport were replaced by gas guzzlers, solid dropping pollutants were replaced by low density pollution in a gaseous form—and always the latest models emitted cleaner exhaust and gave more kilometres per litre. More new cars would be on the roads to replace obsolete versions if sales taxes and tariffs weren’t so high. The cars of tomorrow will be fuelled by hydrogen, and the ash of hydrogen is H2O. The exhaust will be water vapour, but that’s another greenhouse gas. Will they tax that too?
If those who really care about the environment applied their minds, they would realise that fewer taxes, not more, are the answer. A tax system based on ‘profit’, and which allows large write-offs on obsolete equipment, which taxes to its knees investment in high-technology low-polluting equipment, which limits the availability of venture capital with the stifling capital gains tax, is the source of much of the unsightly and unnecessary pollution in the world today. A non-punitive tax system could clean up our act in more ways than one.
When unleaded petrol was introduced, the writer observed a well intentioned fellow pour it into an old car designed for leaded petrol and roar off down the road pouring smoke from his exhaust, happy in the knowledge it was lead free. Carbon tax is the smoke screen of today, and its proponents indicate the same blinkered vision as the happy chappie with lead in his foot and his head in the clouds.
