Australia’s PM Julia Gillard has just passed a carbon tax tax on its producers after promising pre-election she wouldn’t. New Zealand’s PM John Key introduced an Emissions Trading Scam after promising pre-election he wouldn’t do so until everybody else did. And they haven’t.
“Never let a good crisis go to waste.” That’s all the thinking that’s really going on here: i.e., never let the chance of a new revenue stream go to waste.
4 comments:
I have to say that I disagree to put it mildly.
"The Inevitable Fossil Fuel Decline
Let’s explore what happens as we try to compensate for an energy decline with an alternative resource having modest EROEI. On the upslope of our fossil fuel bonanza, we saw a characteristic annual growth rate of around 3% per year. The asymmetric Seneca Effect notwithstanding, a logistic evolution of the resource would result in a symmetric rate of contraction on the downslope: 3% per year. I borrow a graphic from the post on the meaning of “sustainable” to illustrate the rationale for expecting an era of decline for a one-time finite resource."
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/8526
I don't even need to quote climate change or government regulation. The practical reality is that whether we like it or not alternatives to the current business as usual energy mix must be found. Do you want to be left holding the gas can as fuel prices rise to stratospheric levels?
Here is another lesson.
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/8268
Conservatives are meant to be pragmatic. How can I support a conservative party which fails to acknowledge reality?
If even the present level of economic development cannot be sustained because fossil fuels are finite then it doesn't matter what you think of climate change. The ends are the same even if the means are different.
All the best, please take the time to read the information provided because it will be very enlightening.
Full disclosure my name is Richard Watts and I was sent here from an alert from the Green Party. I don't want to be adversarial so I am trying to build a bridge on mutual understanding.
Richard you miss the point. Its not what a Govt does that is the argument, its having a Govt THINK they know the answers!
The loss of easy oil will be dealt with by the free market, if it is ever allowed to run. The cost increses in fuel (worth 13c/L in the Middle East, the REAL cost of petrol without taxes) will spur new developments in energy. All you have to do is sit back and let people do it. The Rossi-Focardi reactor is one example immediately.
NZ's growth does not depend on a carbon tax or global warming, it depends on the people it contains and the way they are restrained by Govt. Think of that as Kiwis leave by the planeload every week, and your non-English-speaking New Immigrants are welcomed by the Labour Party.
Richard has a good point that the future will not be like the past. It's also fair enough that the government protect the commons which cannot be left to the free market to protect.
Richard's point is Peak Oil. While he's right that there is a one-off supply of oil, tars, peat, coal, methane, shale, there is so much of it that 7 billion people can have lots of fossil fuel energy for another hundred years without worrying.
There are two far more important points than Peak Oil. They are Peak People and Peak Technology.
Peak People, contrary to the Malthusian Club of Rome fears and the horrors of African demographic disaster, is a done deal in Japan and some other countries. China will be at Peak People within a decade or so.
My estimate is that Peak People will occur in 2037. In most places it will be by choice, and in some by Malthusian maelstrom [same as always in genocidal conflict]. In some it might be by sars, H5N1 or HxNy.
Peak Technology is not even in the crystal ball. "The singularity" is more like what we have with no upper bound even theoretically evident. We have barely touched DNA. Even the fundamental laws of physics on which everything is founded changed barely a century ago to include the special and general theories of relativity.
Cars are still driven by large primates with their blundering brains. When autonomous Google cars roam the streets, costs will plummet, safety zoom, speeds accelerate, fuel efficiency go through the roof, comfort improve and people will be able to cerf Cyberspace and yak on the phone without being badgered by police.
While that technology develops, Len Brown is wanting to go back to the 19th century and build more railways - which ignore the fact that there is an [almost] infinite array of destination/departure combinations and that even a simplistic simpleton can see that a railway line can go between only a minuscule number of them. Other movement modes have to be used to get to and from the trains. And you can't just pop a lot of large parcels in the boot of your train.
The Flynn Effect is due to natural selection and nutrition. Women do eugenics on a grand scale and universally women select intelligence, humour and cognitive competencies in their lists of desirable DNA in potential fathers for their children. Eugenics is unfashionable but women are still wildly enthusiastic for it [much to the disappointment of many male suitors].
But women can't avoid concealed DNA such as haemachromotosis by looking at a bloke. 23andMe and Complete Genomics can help them. Genetic selection is just around the corner. Genetic engineering [take out the bung genes and put in some good ones and "crank up the intelligence too please". Who among us would have wanted their mother to choose less intelligence for them?
part 2... got lost... oh well...
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