Jonno wrote:

snip
There are plenty of real pollution problems to worry about. It's hard to
imagine that Australia's contribution to carbon dioxide in the world's
atmosphere is one of the more pressing ones. And it's also hard to believe
that a new tax on everything is the only way to blow that pesky hair away.
ETS is now being debated in Federal Parliament - is it too late for
reality to prevail?.

I'm quite confused about the ETS - I had a 1KW solar installation put on my roof in April, mainly to try to
lower my ever-increasing electricity bill but also because of niggling worries about my carbon footprint (the
jargon trips all-too-easily off my tongue); got the government's $8,000 rebate (thanks Kevin) and then, out of
the blue, got another $800+ for carbon credits or somesuch. I'm not quite in my dotage, so I reckon if the
installer had told me about that, I would have remembered. My qualifications are in History, not Science -
which speaks a language I don't - but it seems to me that if I cut my carbon footprint down and, by doing so,
through carbon credits enable someone else to continue ad hoc, all I am doing is maintaining the status quo.
I'd also like to know what profit the purchaser of my carbon credits made by selling them on to a power
station or whatever. It seems that once again, fat profits are being made by the middleman - and if you can
prove me wrong, I'll be happy.

--
Anne Chambers
South Australia
totally out of her depth

anne dot chambers at bigpond dot com