This week the Prime Minister entered full marketing mode.
The topic of Scott Morrison was climate change and his plan to reach net-zero.
On Wednesday, he tried to raise some slogans at the Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
Among them he tested marketing:
Capitalism can, ‘government doesn’t’
Nobody passed a law or introduced a tax or passed a resolution in the United Nations that caused the world to develop a COVID vaccine, nobody passed a law to move the world digital, Google and Cochlear was not invented in a UN workshop or summit
Australia has already reduced our emissions by more than 20%, now, our emissions are going down, not up, they are down more than 20%
He said a bunch of other stuff, but those are my top three.
He would like to compare his approach with some United Kingdom and American environmentalists, who want to restrict exactly what people can buy or do. Ideas like a mandatory “meatless Monday” and a ban on advertising for SUVs really have no place in Australia or even the UK.
Read more: Economists back carbon price, say net-zero cost benefits
Nor tell people where to drive, although the Prime Minister assured us that he will not tell people “where to drive or where they cannot drive”.
Economists also do not like such views. The whole idea behind Pricing on Carbon (whether through a carbon tax or a system of tradable permits) is to respect people’s preferences, while ensuring that their decisions take into account the costs they face. They impose on others.
Innovations often come from government
His second claim was that innovations (things like Covid vaccine, Google search and digitization) are not spread by governments.
While it is true that “Google and the cochlear were not invented in a United Nations workshop or summit”, to suggest that governments played no role is to deliberately ignore history.
The miraculous Moderna mRNA vaccine was developed… examines notes… in partnership with the US National Institutes of Health. Moderna received about US$10 billion in taxpayer funding.
Much of the work on the cochlear ear implant was done at the government-funded University of Melbourne; The Internet revolution grew out of the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the US Department of Defense; And Google’s search algorithm was developed by full-funded graduate students at Stanford University, whose endowments are tax-free.
Too often, emissions reductions come from the government
Morrison insisted on Wednesday that Australia had reduced emissions by 20%.
It’s only natural to ask what brought it about. Much of this was a reduction in land clearing, which is counted as a reduction in emissions under the rules. Land clearing is controlled by the government.
Much of the rest happened over the course of two years, the carbon price in Australia, as this chart shows.
Australian emissions excluding land use, land use change and forestry
Climate Council, Department of Industry
The claimed 20% reduction is too much for laws and ridicules the prime minister.
All prime ministers are politicians, so it’s no surprise that they fabricate narratives. But it’s amazing to collide with reality so fast.
When it comes to “technology not taxing”, the truth is that there are often taxes that drive the development and rise of technologies.
Read more: Top economists call for measures to speed up the switch to electric cars
Importantly, the taxes do not specify the particular technologies that will emerge.
Perhaps that’s why the country’s summit body for after-tax capitalists – Australia’s Business Council – has asked the government to subject more businesses to Australia’s current little-known (weak) price on carbon.
If we want to reach net-zero, we need less marketing and more markets. Now that’s a slogan.
This article is republished from – The Conversation – Read the – original article.
