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Comment by chrysoprace | Hacker News Reader

In Australia the answer is political lobbying, without a doubt.

We had an emissions trading scheme[0] in 2012 meant to help in a transition to clean energy sources that was aggressively lobbied against by Australia's largest polluters and lasted only 2 years before being repealed by the incoming government by labeling it a "tax" that citizens would pay for. This led to a decade of policy stagnation[1] where we could've been transitioning away from fossil fuels.

So while energy density is definitely a factor, political lobbying is absolutely a factor.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_Pollution_Reduction_Sch...

[1] https://www.ft.com/content/0a453f5c-e859-4300-9355-46822c451...

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> by labeling it a "tax" that citizens would pay for.

Are the quotes here implying there wasn't a cost imposed on the public to artificially speed up a transition to green energy? Might as well be honest about it and say it's a "temporary sacrifice for the greater good" or something. Otherwise it's just another form of political spin.

It was an enforcement of paying a (small) portion of the externalities as a result of the use of fossil fuels.

The "tax" was to be paid by the largest polluters, hence their lobbying against it. It wasn't something the citizens had to pay for unless the largest polluters decided to raise their prices as a result of this "tax".

Asking polluters to decrease their profits, as it becomes increasingly obvious that their profits are based on making life worse for the entire planet for the future, I think, is not too grand an ask. "That's how it has always been" is not a reason not to act to improve "how it could be".

Those schemes always seemed to me like a whole lot of lipstick and pretty packaging on something that could just be pitched with more honesty, and without creating a maze of extra corporate accounting costs and loopholes. Just raise a tax to pay for investment in green energy that will eventually compete on price and be self-sustaining, while also providing lots of environmental benefits and potentially increase industrial competition with China.

The only reason a politician would come up with a complex carbon scheme like that is if they knew a tax would be unpopular with the public. Which mostly translates to a lack of good communication or a disregard for the public's intelligence.

> The only reason a politician would come up with a complex carbon scheme like that is if they knew a tax would be unpopular with the public.

And the way the events unfolded show that indeed, a tax would be unpopular with the public.

The government of the day did not and never used the word "tax". They essentially turned pollution into a commodity, which could be traded between companies who wanted to pollute more and rewarded companies who transitioned to clean energy. See the primary Wikipedia article on emissions trading schemes[0] for more information.

The political opposition continuously spun it as a "tax", in an attempt to stir outrage and win the next election, which they succeeded in[1]. The incoming government was and still is largely funded by fossil fuel companies, so they repealed the scheme.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_emission_trading

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Australian_federal_electi...

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