Orano warns of financial problems at Niger uranium plant
The West African nation increasingly seeks new partners, such as Russia, in its mining sector.
Australia Labor Party pushed the carbon tax through the lower house of Parliament on Wednesday in a close vote of 74 to 72.
Protestors in the public gallery shouted and tried to disrupt the proceedings.
Opposition Leader Tony Abbott of the centre-right Liberal Party of Australia accused Prime Minister Julia Gillard of lying to the Australian people during last year’s election, an election which Gillard narrowly won.
“Today this Parliament has witnessed the unseemly spectacle of a government cheering itself for breaking its own election promise,” said Abbot, according to an account of the proceedings in The Age.
Starting in July next year, the carbon tax will fall on about 500 of Australia’s largest emitters of carbon gases. In 2015 the tax will be phased out and a market-based trading system will replace the tax.
Chairman of the Australian Coal Association, John Pegler, said the impact of the carbon tax will be felt throughout the economy and the coal industry.
“Our view has not changed. While we acknowledge the vote today, the majority of Australians do not support the current design of the carbon tax. The carbon tax will undermine the competitiveness of Australian coal mines with no reduction in the amount of global greenhouse gas emissions from coal mining.
“This is because no other country in the world includes coal mining (or fugitive) emissions in their carbon tax or emission trading schemes. Their inclusion in the current legislation is a major flaw.”
3 Comments
Dan Oancea
This is bad news for the Australian mining industry. The fact is that the MAJORITY of Australians DO NOT support this law. Paying for coal mining (fugitive) emissions is hilarious.
Do they know that a potent greenhouse gas is methane and cattle produce more greenhouse gases than cars (by passing gases, duh)? They should regulate cows not the mining industry.
“A cow does on overage release between 70 and 120 kg of Methane per year. Methane is a greenhouse gas like carbon dioxide (CO2). But the negative effect on the climate of Methane is 23 times higher than the effect of CO2. Therefore the release of about 100 kg Methane per year for each cow is equivalent to about 2’300 kg CO2 per year.
Let’s compare this value of 2’300 kg CO2: The same amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) is generated by burning 1’000 liters of petrol. With a car using 8 liters of petrol per 100 km, you could drive 12’500 km per year (7’800 miles per year).
World-wide, there are about 1.5 billion cows and bulls. All ruminants (animals which regurgitates food and re-chews it) on the world emit about two billion metric tons of CO2-equivalents per year. In addition, clearing of tropical forests and rain forests to get more grazing land and farm land is responsible for an extra 2.8 billion metric tons of CO2 emission per year! ”
http://timeforchange.org/are-cows-cause-of-global-warming-meat-methane-CO2
Not to mention that global warming is a naturally occurring phenomenon – learn the history of Earth (i.e. see what really happened by opening a geology book) & stop playing with computers and generating models. By the way in the 80s the same scientists expected to see the onset of a new ice age…
Jan
A Very Sad Day for Australians and in the bigger picture, let’s see which country’s Govt jumps on the bandwagon next for introducing their carbon tax – doesn’t matter it will do nothing to change the carbon emissions! Unfortunately the Greens are really running the country by default now and Julia has had a win – she hasn’t had many. The promises made pre-election are always just empty words – why haven’t we all learnt by now. What a hoax across the board. Only way to see if anything can be salvaged is to remove the Labor party from power now but then what??? They’re all as bad as each other.
jamesont
I see that not all the fool politicians are in Canada….