 | Government to Reopen South Australian Refinery? | TOD: Australia/New Zealand | The Bullroarer - Wednesday 30 January 2008 |  |
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Not sure I agree with a uniform personal allowance world wide. Some countries may be overpopulated, mismanaged or not have access to fossil fuels and complementary resources. Is Australia obliged to send coal to Bangladesh so per capita emissions even out? Or achieve the same result taking on millions of immigrants? The EU is having this problem right now setting a coal quota for Poland. An increase gives them no incentive to move to renewables later on.
Maybe a standard emissions allowance could be a long term goal of much less populous world with weaker borders. Many other rules will have to be changed eg personal water allowance, who can have kids or own a car.
The whole concept of quotas is vexed with problems which will likely prove impossible to solve to everyone's satisfaction.
I continue to believe that universal carbon taxes are the way to go - with WTO rules punishing countries which don't cooperate.
Who wants to bet on when (or if) the next round of Kyoto will be successfully concluded ?
As for rules about water allowances or number of kids - please tell me you aren't serious. Please.
Perhaps not a quota, but maybe no subsidies/tax cuts for babies!
Yes - get rid of the "baby bonus" etc - thats fine.
IIRC our birth rate is under replacement rate anyway, so if you wanted to stabilise Australia's population, the easy way to do it is to cut immigration back to the appropriate level.
And if you want to stabilise the world's population, you'd fund efforts in the developing world to improve women's education, give them access to contraception and to become economically independent - which are the most effective ways of achieving a manageable birth rate.
I've always thought that there was something strange about promoting "Australian Babies" instead of upping the immigration intake if the objective was population growth...
The other measures you mention are known to produce (or are at least correlated with)lower birth rates... and these measure are sadly resisted for that very reason, by those with other agendas/ideas.
Why would we send them coal?
We burn lots of shit, so we pay the fine. They don't burn much, so they get to draw on the funds and build renewable energy and stuff like that.
Don't be deliberately obtuse, it makes me feel like I'm talking to seppos.