http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/mi/1/1.htm

emissions trading serves to pass the costs of whatever small effort is made to fix climate change on to workers. The Greens’ amendments are no different: auctioning all the permits still means workers end up paying higher prices for basic goods and services, and still means the CPRS is a highly regressive tax.

Instead, we need to demand that the rich pay to fix climate change. This means rejecting market-based solutions outright – not offering our qualified support.

I’m in total agreement John Passant and endorse the Greens’ proposals. Strange that the Australian community fails to acknowledge that the Environmental Protection Act was legislated over 40 years ago and is a miserable failure.

The Act has not been regulated in the interests of the environment, occupational or public health. The Act has been manipulated, corrupted and abused by successive governments and senior bureaucrats in our Departments of Environment – all sycophants to the big polluters who continue on rampage.

Conditions of Licence for polluters are few which makes a mockery out of the Act “to provide an authority for the prevention, control and abatement of pollution and environmental harm, for the conservation, preservation, protection, enhancement and management of the environment and……”

Regulation by “persuasion” has rendered Australia one of the largest polluters per capita on the planet and the big polluters rejoice. “Good corporate citizens’” rhetoric on environmental responsibility rings hollow when one peruses the National Pollutant Inventory to find that hazardous emissions have increased.

Departments of Environment are overwhelmingly held responsible for most of the environmental catastrophes this decade. The lead poisoning of Esperance, the Hazardous Waste chemical fire in WA where the underground plume has invaded the Helena River, a major tributary to the Swan. The dumping of tonnes of mercury on the community of Kalgoorlie etc etc.

Rivers are on life support – a result of industrial pollution. Communities are being forced to take class actions against polluting corporations because the regulatory departments remain the rent boys to industry. Many of the rent boys have jumped camp and are now on the payroll of the grim reapers.

Hazardous waste emissions have no respect for climate – whether the planet warms or cools, these hazards are silently and methodically destroying our eco-systems and biodiversity. Industry is slaying thousands of native animals in pursuit of the dollar and the denialist machine is vociferous and winning. I say, place them under house arrest and let *them* eat cake too!