ETS - Australian Public being asked to fund the technology to mitigate the risks to Coal Export

Has anyone worked out yet who benefits from an emissions trading scheme? Why is the Australian Government of both sides of the house embracing it? The player with the most to lose in a world environment where carbon emission intensity is an issue is the coal export industry. Still wondering why there is unanimous support?

Then consider the proposed make up of the ETS. We are looking at emitters of carbon dioxide having to buy a permit to emit. Mostly this means coal fired power stations. The cost of this will be passed onto consumers in one way or another. Please do not confuse the electricity generation sector with the coal export sector. There is a real possibility that there will be major bankruptcies in the electricity generation sector in a poorly implemented ETS caused by re-evaluation of current asset values.

The revenue generated from these permits (according to Garnaut) will be put into transition support for 1) exporting industries 2) the public and 3) emission reduction technologies. What they are talking about is a massive pool of funds that will extensively be used to 'clean' up coal. The development of this technology is fundamental to maintaining coal exports for the next 100 years if the carbon emission equals climate change paradigm persists. If it doesn't, and Andrew Bolt and Piers are right and this all turns out to be a hoax, then coal will have effectively blocked introduction of options such as nuclear.

All this might be completely ok if the greenhosue thing is real and we need to reduce carbon emissions and we like the considerable economic benefits to Australia from exporting coal. However, given that the coal export sector is doing pretty nicely at the moment, so WHY is the private consumer and businesses like manufacturers that are already doing it pretty tough being asked to foot the bill for this?

Getting the public to fund the mitigation of your risk and feel good about themselves for fighting climate change at the same time is a nice strategy if you can get away with it.