Accelerate the World's Transition to Sustainable Energy - to fight Anthropogenic Climate Change, page-624

This would barely raise an eyelid, if Australia had not ditched its carbon tax years ago and thought that as the rest of the world started implementing its own emission reduction schemes, it would get away with this, without suffering any future trade consequences, ...

To now try and argue that, after the EU has for decades invested in emission reductions, that this was merely a scheme whereby the EU could implement "protectionist" carbon border taxes... speaks to the absolute stupidity of our government.

As Tony Wood from the Grattan Institute notes:

Director of Energy at the Grattan Institute Tony Wood said the measures were unlikely to contravene WTO rules.

"It makes perfectly good sense for them to say we don't want competition coming in in those industries from other places that don't have a carbon price in place," he said.

"If they design it properly, it should no way breach World Trade Organisation rules and is perfectly economically sensible."

If the EU, Canada and Japan (and South Korea and the USA?) all start going down this path, it ought to accelerate the transition towards renewable energy... even here in Australia, where various emperors without clothes will no doubt continue to express their disdain for this...

"PROTECTIONISM"?!?