Monday, 6 June 2011

Voters want election on carbon tax - Part 2

Posted to Adelaide Now (6/6/2011) on 6/6/2011 at 11:50 PM
Commenting on "Voters want election on carbon tax as poll finds a majority expect to be worse off"

http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/voters-wants-election-on-carbon-tax-as-poll-finds-a-majority-expect-to-be-worse-off/story-e6frea6u-1226069714958

The carbon (dioxide) emission per capita of Australia is and will always be much greater than China and India because of our small pollution. To explain this, let us look at a household of 1 and another of 5. Both need only a refrigerator to keep food fresh or a washing machine to wash clothing. The household of 5 uses the same amount of electricity for the appliances and therefore "polluting" the planet with the same amount of greenhouse gas. Now, a hall with 1 occupant or 100 occupants requires the same number of lights to be turned on for a performance; and an electrified train carrying 1 passenger or 500 passengers consumes about the same amount electricity to commute between Melbourne and Sydney.

There are times when no consumers are involved and yet the waste has to be shared by the population. A lot of power is lost in transmitting electricity from the power stations to hundreds of kilometres of nothingness before populated towns or cities. A lot of energy is required to get rid of the sewer travelling great length of pipes to filtration plant. When we talk about power and energy, we really mean electricity which operates the equipment to make these things happen.

These examples explain the concept of economy of scale and illustrate the principle of fixed and variable costs. So long if we continue to live in a cocoon and not to increase our population, Australia will always be more expensive to live in and the greenhouse gas emission will be a lot higher than more populated countries. Population of USA is about 13.7 times of Australia's, and China is 59 times of Australia's.

I hope those people argue about our excessive greenhouse emission per capita will have a better understanding and hopefully conduct more meaning debate in the future.