Economist Harry Clarke went to a meeting recently that was looking at carbon pricing, and made many interesting observations about the forthcoming Labor scheme.
One point about Tony Abbott's direct action plan which I had not heard raised before was this:
Birmingham claimed that because those direct actions were to be monitored on the basis of effectiveness and cost that the Liberal approach was market-related but missed totally the core point about the informational efficiency of prices in a setting where you want to change the behaviour of millions of agents. Certainly an army of bureaucrats will be needed to implement the Liberal policy which ironically seeks to make cuts in the climate-related bureaucracy.Harry Clarke is satisfied generally with the the Labor scheme is " a remarkably successful first attempt by government to come to grips with the issue of climate change." He acknowledges it is not perfect, but in such a complicated and difficult area, I think he would say that that is hardly a surprise.
Harry used to visit and argue with the relentless and (frequently) ill-informed commentary at Catallaxy on climate change and carbon pricing. He appears to have given up out of frustration, and who can blame him.
I am pleased to see that the government is planning on getting its carbon scheme legislation introduced into Parliament as early as next week. The army of ill informed people who have been sucked in by the completely ill informed and/or dishonest right wing media figures such as Andrew Bolt, Alan Jones, Michael Smith and Jonova are going to tire of their campaign when the legislation goes through, and the Gillard will at least be able to point to one difficult issue in a decisive way, at last.
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