Australia yesterday axed a divisive carbon tax after years of vexed political debate, handing the business-friendly government a victory, but prompting critics to label the move a “big step backwards.”
The Australian Senate voted 39-32 to scrap the charge, which was imposed by the former Labor government on major polluters from 2012 in a bid to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
It followed days of protracted negotiations with the minor Palmer United Party, which embarrassed the government last week by pulling its crucial support for repeal of the tax at the last minute.
Power-broker Clive Palmer backed the legislation after winning concessions for tougher measures to ensure cuts to electricity and gas prices were passed through to consumers and businesses.
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott went to the polls in September last year with repealing the pollution levy as a central campaign platform, arguing the cost was being passed to consumers, resulting in higher utility bills.
“Scrapping the carbon tax is a foundation of the government’s economic action strategy,” said Abbott, who once said evidence blaming humankind for climate change was “absolute crap.”
“A useless, destructive tax which damaged jobs, which hurt families’ cost of living and which didn’t actually help the environment is finally gone,” he added.
Abbott’s conservative government says dumping the tax would save households A$550 (US$515) a year and strengthen the economy, which is among the world’s worst per capita polluters due to its reliance on coal-fired power and mining exports.
Under the carbon tax, the country’s biggest polluters, including mining, energy and aviation companies, paid for the emissions they produced, giving them an incentive to reduce them.
The current administration favors a “direct action” plan that includes financial incentives for polluters to increase their energy efficiency.
The Climate Action Tracker, an independent monitor of countries’ carbon pledges and actions, has said this method will increase Australia’s emissions by 12 percent in 2020 instead of reducing them by 5 percent from 2000 levels as per its own target.
Michael Raupach, director of the Climate Change Institute at the Australian National University, said repealing the law was “a tragedy, not a triumph.”
“It flies in the face of three giant realities: human-induced climate change, the proper role of government as a defender of the common good, and the emerging quiet energy carbon revolution,” he said.
Labor leader Bill Shorten said Abbott had “embarrassed Australians.”
“Tony Abbott is taking Australia backwards while the rest of the world is moving forward,” he said in a statement.
“All of Australia’s major trading partners are taking serious action on climate change, including in our own region,” he said.
Greens leader Christine Milne joined Labor in expressing outrage, saying abolishing the tax would make Australia a world “pariah.”
“It is a monumental blunder for the nation under a climate-denying prime minister,” she said.
“It will make life worse for future generations and make Australia a global pariah,” she said.
ANGER: A video shared online showed residents in a neighborhood confronting the national security minister, attempting to drag her toward floodwaters Argentina’s port city of Bahia Blanca has been “destroyed” after being pummeled by a year’s worth of rain in a matter of hours, killing 13 and driving hundreds from their homes, authorities said on Saturday. Two young girls — reportedly aged four and one — were missing after possibly being swept away by floodwaters in the wake of Friday’s storm. The deluge left hospital rooms underwater, turned neighborhoods into islands and cut electricity to swaths of the city. Argentine Minister of National Security Patricia Bullrich said Bahia Blanca was “destroyed.” The death toll rose to 13 on Saturday, up from 10 on Friday, authorities
Local officials from Russia’s ruling party have caused controversy by presenting mothers of soldiers killed in Ukraine with gifts of meat grinders, an appliance widely used to describe Russia’s brutal tactics on the front line. The United Russia party in the northern Murmansk region posted photographs on social media showing officials smiling as they visited bereaved mothers with gifts of flowers and boxed meat grinders for International Women’s Day on Saturday, which is widely celebrated in Russia. The post included a message thanking the “dear moms” for their “strength of spirit and the love you put into bringing up your sons.” It
DEBT BREAK: Friedrich Merz has vowed to do ‘whatever it takes’ to free up more money for defense and infrastructure at a time of growing geopolitical uncertainty Germany’s likely next leader Friedrich Merz was set yesterday to defend his unprecedented plans to massively ramp up defense and infrastructure spending in the Bundestag as lawmakers begin debating the proposals. Merz unveiled the plans last week, vowing his center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU)/Christian Social Union (CSU) bloc and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) — in talks to form a coalition after last month’s elections — would quickly push them through before the end of the current legislature. Fraying Europe-US ties under US President Donald Trump have fueled calls for Germany, long dependent on the US security umbrella, to quickly
In front of a secluded temple in southwestern China, Duan Ruru skillfully executes a series of chops and strikes, practicing kung fu techniques she has spent a decade mastering. Chinese martial arts have long been considered a male-dominated sphere, but a cohort of Generation Z women like Duan is challenging that assumption and generating publicity for their particular school of kung fu. “Since I was little, I’ve had a love for martial arts... I thought that girls learning martial arts was super swaggy,” Duan, 23, said. The ancient Emei school where she trains in the mountains of China’s Sichuan Province
RSS