OK, when the market crashes time and time again, as it will continue to do as crops fail, and the price of carbon goes through the floor again, how does an ETS scheme actually enable us to reach our objective of transferring to renewable technology and decarbonising the economy? How can an Emissions Trading Scheme survive under a violently fluctuating market environment?

Just remind me of that.

I agree with Hansen on this. I don't recall having taken any other position.

Ultimately, we're going to have to chuck a lot of money at this problem far too late, and probably go broke as a result.

Actually we do still want carbon emissions. Just fewer of them. If we didn't want it it would be simple - ban it.

muso wrote on Dec 18^th, 2009 at 8:30am:


Thats just it. We can't get rid of carbon emissions because we have to produce them in order to have a industry to cater for the needs of the Australian population. And as you said, population needs to be regulated. Australia is too over populated. We have too many people. Our population has grown by over 4 million in the last 11 years. The massive population growth and the drought has put strains on our national water supplies and on our natural resources. We now have a housing crisis because of the rapid growth in the national population growth. Up to one thousand people a week at moving to Queensland. It is predicted in the next couple of generations that the population of south east Queensland will explode. The state governments are struggling to deal with the massive rise in population. In spite of all these things, the Federal Government is insisting on importing up to five hundred thousand foreigners a year into Australia. There are people in the Labor Party who are calling for an end to all immigration restrictions or a relaxation of restrictions. The Labor Party can not be trusted with immigration or the running of the Australia economy. The national population must be decreased to 1998 levels in order to better deal with the water shortages and with the strains on our infrastructure. It would also help with carbon emission reductions. If we are serious about saving and preserving the environment of our country, then we should reduce our population. Also, a population reduction would also reduce pressure on the housing market that would result in a massive decrease in the cost of housing.

The Federal Government can achieve population reduction in a number of ways. First, the government could reintroduce the Immigration Restriction Act that would seriously limit the number of foreigners who come to Australia. Secondly, the government the should withdraw from the 1955 convention on the accepting of refugees. There are other things that the government can do but I won't look into them.

In general, the world is very over population. There are over six billion people in the world. It is predicted that the population of the world will hit 10 billion by mid this century. We already have over a billion people who live in poverty and are facing mass starvation. Frankly, we should allow Darwinism to take it's course and let the billion people, who are virtually all Asians or Africans, die. Mankind should be reduced by two or three billion. Virtually the population reductions should take place in poor countries in Africa and Asia. They can't support most of their people so they should investigate some kind of large wide spread culling of their populations.

Soren wrote on Dec 17^th, 2009 at 5:55pm:


The speculators market would have to run in parallel then.
Even if the carbon price falls through the floor as part of the bust in a boom and bust cycle there will still be a limit on emissions available.  So no more can be traded anyway and someone somewhere will have to reduce their emissions.

People speculate on the stock market, there is no ultimate limit to what can be done on the stockmarket.

There is a limit in the cap and trade scheme.  The only way I see speculating occurring is as if it acted as a separate market about what the price of carbon is doing.