ASTONISHINGLY, the PM, the Cabinet and members of the Canberra Press Gallery don't know the difference between carbon and carbon dioxide.

There are two great lies told about the need to "put a price on carbon". Lies which I can't recall a single member of the gallery ever confronting the liars with -- far less the prime liar herself.

And it'll be a cold day in hell before you see a critical commentary from any of the supposed leading lights of the gallery such as Fairfax's Michelle Grattan or Peter Hartcher applying a critical analysis to the claims.

Now these two lies are in addition to Julia Gillard's "there will be no carbon tax" lie. They precede it and will be told again and again after it.

The first is that "climate change policies" are aimed at "carbon pollution". No they are not; they are aimed at reducing emissions of carbon dioxide.

There is neither the need to abbreviate carbon dioxide to carbon; and the exercise of abbreviation renders it inaccurate. A bald-faced, quite deliberate lie.

For if carbon dioxide can be called "carbon pollution", in this or any other universe, in this or any other reality, well then rain has to be called "hydrogen pollution".

The reason the term is used by Gillard is an exercise of quite deliberate despicable dishonesty. It is the modern political form of those subliminal advertisements that are banned.

To suggest that it is about stopping dirty bits of grit -- the very real carbon pollution of yesterday's coal-burning home fires which gave London its sooty smog and killed thousands every year.

The real carbon pollution which no longer exists in modern developed economies, mostly precisely because of clean coal-fired power stations. And which does exist -- and kills -- in developing and third-world countries, denied centralised power generation.

The great sick irony is that to the extent we do cut our emissions of CO2, it will merely relocate those emissions in developing countries where they will be accompanied by bits of grit. Most notably and significantly: China.

Indeed, those supposedly virtuous Europeans might have cut their CO2 emissions they produce in Europe. But their consumption of CO2 emissions has increased by 44 per cent since 1990. It's just they are now being emitted in China.

Every time Gillard or Climate Change Minister Greg Combet mouths the term "carbon pollution", a competent journalist would ask questions like:

Do you understand that you are referring to what you are breathing out? Please explain how this is pollution? How are you going to stop personally polluting? Why don't you use the accurate term carbon dioxide?

The second great lie is that so-called "de-carbonising our economy" as a consequence of "putting a price on carbon" is the 21st century equivalent of the tariff reforms of the 1980s.

In fact it is the exact opposite: it is the equivalent of imposing tariffs on the Australian economy. This is true whether or not the rest of the world follows. It's just that much worse if we do it solo.

This lie has been peddled not just by the government but also by Treasury. Be afraid, be really afraid that we have a Treasury which is that incompetent.

Cutting tariffs and other forms of protection removed artificial costs that were imposed on both producers and consumers. It enabled them to buy especially goods but also services at the lowest competitive price.

The carbon tax or an ETS (emissions trading scheme) does the exact opposite. It imposes a totally artificial additional cost, in its case, on everything consumers and business buy.

It forces us to pay -- totally artificially -- higher prices for energy than we could otherwise, like right now, pay for it.

You'd think this would be obvious to even the most junior reporter in Canberra. But even the most senior, such as Grattan, are apparently oblivious to the obvious.

Again, I've never seen a Canberra commentator respond to the PM or the treasurer or the treasury secretary spouting this nonsense with a simple comparison.

Tariff cuts reduced the price of things. The carbon tax/ETS will increase the prices.

All to utterly no point. We ain't going to get so-called alternative energy. Treasury can assume a million can-openers. It doesn't and won't exist in any meaningful form.

And our pain will make zero difference to any climate outcome. Welcome to Julia and Wayne's world. Their policy pollution is your pain.

Originally published as Carbon not the same thing as CO2