Letters to the Editor and other People Speak
FROM-Australian
Climate questions
OUR new Climate Commissioner, Tim Flannery, says that his role is to provide accurate information to the public about climate change.
(Letters, 15/2).
Perhaps he might start by answering the two most critical questions that taxpayers have in mind.
The first is how many degrees of warming will be averted by a cut in Australian CO2 emissions of, say, 20 per cent by 2020. Second, what extra costs, including all flow-through costs, will be imposed on an average family by the taxation strategy that is aimed at producing such a cut. Available estimates indicate that the answers to these questions are: (i) less than one one-thousandth of a degree Celsius by 2020; and (ii) more than $2000 per family of four per year.
Australian battlers, on whom the extra costs will impinge the most, are unlikely to view this as a good public policy option, and if Flannery has more policy-favourable figures in mind, then now might be a good time to share them with us.
Bob Carter, Townsville, Qld
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