Australia's 'evil' carbon tax

Australia will soon join a host of other nations and get Prime Minister Julia Gillard's carbon tax implemented - even after all the (hysterical) opposition to it. Now I'm not an advocate of new taxes generally (why not just raise the levels for super high income earners?), but I have been astounded about the degree of outrage about this tax. It is a tax which will be imposed on only the top polluting companies in Australia, around 500 of them. Yet most public discussion seems to have taken place with the presumption that it will be a tax on every individual in the population.

Sure prices of the goods and services of the newly-taxed top-polluting companies will increase as they pass on the cost of the tax, but then why not just buy the products of their competitors who are not as polluting and thus offer cheaper products?

Isn't that the point? To get us to buy from non-polluters or users of cleaner energy so that if the high polluters want to stay in business they will have to begin to use cleaner energy too?

Regarding products such as electricity, which will increase in price, the government is compensating households with tax cuts, in some cases with the cut being greater than any additional cost incurred for the household. Why are people upset about this? Even if we did have to pay more, if the true cost of something is more than we are accustomed to paying, then someone has to pay the real cost. At present, that someone will be our grandchildren and their children. Is that really what we want to leave them and have them remember us by?

Then of course there's transport and fuel and the steel industry etc, but if companies in those industries are high polluters then maybe they need to find new and more efficient ways of doing things? Isn't that also the point of this tax? Will our competitive advantage be so compromised by this tax that it will lead to large-scale unemployment as has been argued or is it that deep down we know that most of the affected industries are reliant on demand from China, and China's growth is slowing and so that demand will decrease soon anyway? When we're feeling vulnerable about something big, it is tempting and easier to blame something not so big.

Sure I'd be upset if I were a high-polluting company executive - but we all have to change our ways sometime. Without the carbon tax, at some point some other market disrupter will appear anyway, even if it's only a new competitor. Over time, whole industries disappear and new ones emerge. We can't keep everything as it is - imagine what the world would still be like if we had been able to do so! Change happens all the time in business (in life!), and isn't that why these huge organisations have so many managers, to direct and guide change? Isn't that what 'change managers' are for?

To begin to take care of our environment is a pretty good reason to make some changes I think.