Australia
Australia is like Iceland, it has an energy wealth in it’s territory. It is easy to defend, so it can give the finger to international financial interests. It has to respect China, and as China is planning to take the coal rather than pay for it in the near future, it is wise to move to renewables quickly. It can, it’s a damn sunny place and has all the stuff one needs to pave it with solar power plants. So here goes..
"The nation’s future needs to be a clean energy future. We’ve opted for the cheapest way of cutting carbon pollution," said Gillard,
as she kicked off a nationwide campaign to sell the tax, opposed by most Australians. (bron)
Opposed because of campaigns by the coal companies obviously. Of course this hits airlines and mining companies, as well as banks. All financials are oil dependend, so predictably they gave a threatening signal by dropping. Still Australia has a lot to make good on..
"The scheme, likely to be passed by parliament this year, aims to cut emissions by 5 percent off 2000 levels by 2020"
Big fucking deal. the untold billions of TerraWatt the sun will beam down to that continent will largely remain untapped while people are kept struggling for water and energy. Banks are ready to create problems :
"When it comes to refinancing these facilities, which occurs every few years, the banks will take a very hard view on this.
These black coal facilities may struggle if that refinancing is not available to them."
Well, maybe the banks will force them to shut down quickly, but that doesn’t make any sense, because bank fees and revenues depend on energy being available cheaply. How much profit can a bank skim if society grinds to a halt? Of course the government is already being preped to go into debt because the fals reluctance of the banks:
"The government plans to set up loan guarantees for electricity generators, to help the industry refinance loans of between A$9 billion and A$10 billion over the next five years."
Banks can stuff themselves with the money. The only good thing out of that is that the government will own the generators, so this is a nationalization scheme. We should try that in Europe.