I have one question.
How is taxing business a better way of reducing carbon dioxide than say, planting trees?
It's not. It's purely a financial decisions.
Taxing business = revenue for govermenent directly from carbon tax and then increased tax from individuals who are going to be paying more for a product when the business passes on the cost. Very clever.
Planting trees = no revenue for goverment.
I agree that we should be looking to cut down emissions but not because of stupid climate change, but purely because I think need to cut down polution.
I think we would all benefit if the air we breath was simply cleaner. Plus we eat fish from the sea etc so we should try to avoid those fish absorbing pollution from the water they live in and then us eating it.
In regards to climate change, I agree it's happening, the climate is constantly changing as it has for millions of years. There have been 5 ice ages in the history of the planet. So safe to say the planet has gone through a cooling stage which caused them and then warming stage which ended them. This is a process that takes thousands and thousands of years. People today are running around waving their hands in the air panicing over comperative data that has been gathered over what, 100 years? Pfft. Somewhat melodramatic isn't it?
So what it temperatures rise 1 degree in 50 years... in 500 they may drop 10. It's all about cycles, everything in nature is and so it the earths CO2 levels, temp, etc... see below.
Also, people are saying that climate change is bad because it's causing extintion, rising sea levels, etc.
Mightly big assumption that right now the world is at it's peak of perfection in species and geographical features. Maybe the species that are going to because extinct will allow other species to become superior and evolve more.
Survival of the fittest, isn't that what nature is about?
And I'm fairly confident the whales and dolphins will be pretty pumped it sea levels rise destroying man made areas. They will have more space to swim in and the population to build.
Plus at the moment industry and power generation methods are dirty and cause polution, but thing about how far technology has come in the last 50 years. In another 50 fossil fuels will be just that, fossils and industry will have developed technology to cut down their impact in regards to pollution and environmental effect.