IN HARD TIMES, published in 1853, Charles Dickens wrote about industrialists who complained that “[t]hey were ruined, when they were required to send labouring children to school; they were ruined, when inspectors were appointed to look into their works; they were ruined, when such inspectors considered it doubtful whether they were quite justified in chopping people up with their machinery; they were utterly undone, when it was hinted that perhaps they need not always make quite so much smoke.” But even though the industrialists threatened to “pitch [their] property into the Atlantic,” wrote Dickens, they turned out to be “so patriotic after all” that they “had been kind enough to take mighty good care of it.”

Over 150 years later, no one is suggesting that child labour or workplace safety laws should be rolled back. But as the carbon-pricing debate heats up again in Australia, we are again hearing claims that if the Australian government puts a price on carbon pollution, Australian industry will become uncompetitive and production will shift…