Wednesday, August 20, 2014

RET worries

I see that IPA aligned economists are getting all aroused at the prospect that, having lost out on the fake and hysterical free speech crisis they tried to whip up because Andrew Bolt wouldn't apologise for mistakes made in a column, they may have an Abbott government "win" on the Renewable Energy Target.   (The rumour being that key figures in the government are wanting to have it killed off entirely.)  Julie Novak, for example:



From what I can make out, the economics of electricity production in this large country are rather complicated, and in an ideal world, all countries would price carbon with consistency and at realistic levels to wean the planet off burning carbon, and all electricity production, retail and transmission would work the same across our own country, and you genuinely could have a situation where you let energy companies work it out for themselves without the need for the additional spur of a government mandated RET.

However, given the world (and Australia) is not so simple, the RET is one element of a multi-pronged approach to energy, and letting it stay does not represent an economic problem of any significance.   Removing it now that it has been in place for so long is actually a lot more trouble than it is even theoretically worth. 

And one thing is clear - given that the free marketeer economists aligned with the IPA have no problem at all with it actively promoting pubic and political disbelief that there is even a problem to address regarding climate change, their opinion on the merit of the RET is not worth a pinch of poop. 

Julie Novak is, of course, completely and ludicrously wrong in this morning's tweet, in response to a rare column in The Australian supporting the RET:



Get real, Julie.  


4 comments:

nottrampis said...

IPA economist is a contradiction in terms.
Funny how Sinclair claims to believe in free speech but does not practice it at Catallaxy!!
to be fair RET without a carbon tax or as we had an ETS does not make a lot of sense as externalities are not fully priced in as costs.

Anonymous said...

Homer you were banned from catallaxy for stupidity. Don't Iive in a world of spite.

nottrampis said...

No Catallaxy is a world of stupidity and hypocrisy and let us never forget lies!

Steve said...

It's amusing when JC turns up here because he can't drag the Catallaxians out of talking about the Muzzie dis-as-ter, women's problems, or gay marriage.

PS: of course it's stupid of anyone in the Army to let an Army owned club have topless barmaids for entertainment. The Army is, quite frankly, the service most likely to inept bozos in it, and at a time treatment of women in the services has been a hot issue (like, for the last decade) it was a ridiculous form of entertainment to allow.