Carbon scheme unworkable: economist | theage.com.au

GEOFF Carmody is running hard. As the former joint-head and co-founder of Access Economics, he was known as Australia's leading private sector economist. These days he is in anything but retirement.

"I have never had my email working so hard in my life," he says as he goes through his 30-page paper on the economics of climate change. "I have sent this everywhere. There's no consultancy budget. I'm doing this because I care about good public policy."

What he is doing is saying very loudly that Australia's emissions trading "emperors" have no clothes. He is preparing an alternative to the schemes proposed by Professor Ross Garnaut and the Government in its green paper.

"What we've got won't work. It'll either be symbolic or cost jobs."