My main reason for posting that link can be explained by this analogy.
You have a party on Saturday night with 20 guests. You buy 2 cartons of beer, two bottles of wine, a few cans of coke and a bag of chips.
Now that you're at the party, the ultimate outcome should be pretty clear. ALL the alcohol, soft drink and chips will be consumed with the only question being by whom. Every beer you don't drink, every chip you don't eat, will simply be drunk or eaten by someone else instead because available supply is less than demand.
Regardless of individual views on peak oil, I think most would agree that we're not likely to ramp up production sufficiently to enable China and India to consume oil at Western rates. Even if the oil exists, we're just not likely to actually ramp up production to that extent - there's too many wars, too many practical and economic issues etc.
So the oil supply is fixed and, according to that article which does seem very plausible looking at the actual ramp up in production in China, coal is going to suffer similar constraints in the not too distant future.
For both oil and coal, the limit is going to be how fast we can get the stuff out of the ground, not how much we actually want to burn. That being so, any debate about CO2 emissions is a debate about
where and
for what purpose the coal and oil is burnt. We're going to burn all we can, all that's left to be decided is who burns it (Australia? China? US? etc) and for what purpose (cars? electricity? aircraft? etc).
Now, in terms of the climate this makes no difference whatsoever. The only practical effect is who burns the fuel, and whether it's for cruising the streets or sitting at home watching Simpsons re-runs. If CO2 is going to cook the planet then it's going to happen either way.
If your aim is to reduce CO2 emissions then restricting
production seems the only rational approach given that
consumption seems set to equal all that we are physically able to produce. We're just not going to be in a situation where production is reduced on account of there having been a reduction in consumption. The other way around seems a far more likely reality.
A carbon tax on consumption in individual countries is pointless in the extreme - it does not in any way reduce the production of fossil fuels and their overall consumption globally. It may well influence who uses the fuel and for what purpose, but it does zero to benefit the climate (assuming you accept that CO2 does cause global warming - I'm not arguing that point either way right now).