Carbon price costs greater than benefits

Overshadowed by news of the tragic Japan earthquake is this from Australian National University Crawford School of Economics professor Jeff Bennett:

"The Prime Minister said we've got to do something or else we're going to be left behind - it's important to realise that first of all, very few countries around the world are doing much about this [pricing carbon]," he said.

"And secondly, even if everybody did something about, if all nations in the world did what Australia's doing, still the impact on greenhouse gases in the atmosphere would be so small, [it would] not have any real or meaningful impact on the pattern of climate across the planet.

"What that means is that the Australian economy is going to have this quite substantial cost imposed on it, with very little to show by way of benefit."

Nah, let's raise the price of everything and see how that works out.