Tim Flannery, a famous Australian environmentalist was recently interviewed by a number of Canadian media outlets, including the CBC and CPAC. I found his appearance most bizarre. 

His home country of Australia is one of roughly a dozen nations worldwide that have (1) higher per capita GHGs than Canada and (2) have exhibited a higher rate of GHG growth since 1990 than Canada. I found it bizarre to see his disapproval of Canada aired on CBC, yesterday, given the performance of his home nation. 

Including GHGs from deforestation, Aussie’s annual emissions increased 82% between 1990 and 2007, compared to 46.7% for Canada. Per capita GHGs totaled 39.80 tons of CO2 emissions per person in Australia, compared to 24.06 for Canada.

In August, the Australian Senate rejected a cap and trade bill, but an amended, less aggressive version of the bill will be represented to the Senate for a new vote and will likely pass 1st and 2nd reading in November. But even the August version of the Aussie cap and trade bill fails to reduce per capita Aussie emissions down to current Canadian per capita emission levels by 2020.

I think climate change is a real risk and actively advocate for GHG regulations. But I also oppose "cap and trade"—which is just a fancy name for quota-based supply management. As in our other supply-managed markets—dairy, turkey, chicken, municipal taxis, etc.—the only thing that happens when we introduce a quota-type market management tool is that big corporations with deep pockets take all. A quota supply inevitable becomes concentrated in the hands of a small number of cash rich market participants, innovation rates slow down and economic returns to persons and entities that actually make things shrink, as the rents that used to accrue to production are eaten up by quota lease costs.

What Flannery failed to acknowledge is that the problem with Kyoto/Copenhagen and his message is that they have sacrificed the goal for the means. They are not focused on practical measures to cut GHG emissions. They are focused on building an inefficient quota-based global market control mechanism that will not result in GHG reductions. While most of the public do not understand this, they intuitively get that the facile GHG management proposals do not make sense.

"Put a price on carbon", "trade carbon" and "tax carbon" are not functional GHG mitigation plans. They are, at best, slogans.