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> 7.5 million
TREES PLANTED
since 1997
Summary
The CPRS aims to create a market mechanism that reflects the costs of greenhouse gas ("carbon") emissions from significant sources. Scheme coverage will make approximately 1,000 parties liable for 70% of Australia?s emissions footprint. In response, parties can either a) transfer the additional cost of carbon now reflected in their production to their customers, (and ultimately the community) or b) change the way their operations access energy or improve the energy efficiency of their operations to lower carbon sources thereby reducing their liabilities under the scheme. The market mechanism relies on an informed market, operating rationally and in a timely manner to deliver reductions in greenhouse gases to meet Australia?s international greenhouse emission targets.
History has shown that market mechanisms are usually imperfect with many forces working hard to retain the status quo. Solely relying on market mechanisms is unlikely to drive the significant reductions in greenhouse emissions demanded by current scientific evidence if targets are not sufficiently steep. Against this, the target needs to ensure that the well being of the community is not put in peril due to the lack of competitiveness of our industries. The CPRS should merely be part of a suite of complimentary government policies that remove perverse incentives to generate greenhouse emissions. These perverse incentives include allowing logging old growth forest, existing Fringe Benefits Tax laws that create incentives for driving greater distances and poor planning and building standards. The scheme should be robust enough to stand up to international and domestic scrutiny and should demonstrate leadership to developing countries.
The issues discussed in the Greenfleet submission bring focus on aspects of the scheme as proposed that weaken the likely effectiveness of the CPRS in generating meaningful reductions in carbon emissions required to reduce the impacts of climate change to "acceptable? levels. Furthermore, there are some aspects of the proposal that will discredit the scheme when compared to international standards and send a poor message to developing countries about the value of their rapidly diminishing existing forest resources.
Download the entire submission here (287KB)