Letter of the Week: Aussie emissions uproar

It is interesting to see the uproar in Australia that their Prime Minister has caused over her determination to bring in a carbon tax. It is the sort of uproar we should be hearing here, as the two main political parties seem determined that we too are going to have a carbon tax in the form of the Emissions Trading Scheme.
To think that man is able to influence the overall carbon levels and ultimately the weather is ridiculous. We are to be taxed into submission to produce less carbon, but considering the volcano in Iceland in just four days negated every single effort we have made to control CO2 emissions for the last five years, or when you realise that there are around 200 active volcanoes on the planet spewing out megatons of CO2 every day, the futility of such a tax is obvious.
The year-long eruption of Mt Pinatubo in 1991 put more CO2 into the atmosphere than man had ever done up to that time.
It's the time to speak up before the government saddles us with another pointless tax.
There are plenty of other ways we can look after our planet by cleaning up our act with things like water and ground pollution, but trying to control CO2 emissions is something we cannot even begin to influence.
Harvey Rickard, Tauranga