China is making significant environmental efforts. As the leading carbon polluting economy around the world, the country intends to impose a carbon tax in an effort to decrease greenhouse emissions. That’s great but it should not lead us to believe that the whole world is going green. In Australia, the government has been pleased about the carbon tax – anticipated to be put into practice within the next three years – given that it is working on its own climate change policies and shows that internationally, countries are working hard to decrease greenhouse emissions.
China has been working on different ways of working with cleaner energy sources but it remains uncertain as to exactly how this is going to work and what effect it will have on the country’s emissions or those throughout the world. At last month’s UN Climate Chance Conference held in Durban, SA, the mega economies of the world decided to come up with a legally-binding treaty within the next three years on this matter. Yet the conference was still unable to commit to drastically reducing emissions throughout the world.
Australia’s Concerns Vis-à-vis China
Australia remains concerned though about China’s green efforts. Since the starting price of the increase to China’s plan to price carbon is $1.55, this is just a tiny fraction of Australia’s starting price of $23 per tonne. Thus is causing the Minerals Council of Australia to think that it could hurt the competitiveness of Australian businesses. This might suggest that Australia is a bit too ahead of the game on global green acidity which ultimately puts its economy in a more vulnerable position. Time will tell.