By Marianna Posar
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last year you have probably heard of the carbon tax. If not, it basically means that people must pay for their carbon omissions. The carbon tax starts on 1 July 2012.
Why you ask? To battle climate change of course! If you don’t believe in global warming, you’re not going to be happy, and if you do, well you’re probably still not going to be happy.
Right now Australia produces 500 million tonnes of carbon pollution each year and stands as one of the top polluters in the world. To not make a change would not only come at great cost to our natural environment (think extreme weather) but also the way we live. By introducing such a tax big pollutants must pay $23 per tonne until 2015 when the price will be fixed by the market.
Some of the more savvy businesses will work out that they will have to pollute less in order to pay less. Inevitably others will try to put the extra cost on consumers.
As a young Australian still living with my parents and to my knowledge not the owner of a company that emits more than 25,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide I’m fairly confident the impact of this tax on me will be minimal. For families, this extra tax will be met with financial assistance as well as a cash bonus and pension increases to accommodate for increases in goods and services.
The carbon tax is and will continue to be a topic of much debate in Australia and across the globe. As an individual I really don’t feel like the carbon tax is going to be the reason I can’t afford tickets to Coldplay, although maybe it’s time the government started thinking of new ways to combat global warming. A ban on hairdryers perhaps? Just think, we could simultaneously save the planet AND women’s hair from unsightly heat damage. Just a thought…
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