Quote:
Originally Posted by marki
I wonder how the mob would react to a choice between a carbon tax designed to fleece the masses without impacting the large CO2 producers and getting wasted on flying Krudd and friends to world climate conventions or a levy to start changing over to renewable power sources? Sadly that is not an option we are being given.
Mark
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I never said I agree with a carbon tax, like the one proposed. But the thing is, as it stands, the mob is caught between a rock and a hard place. Either pay this tax to salve the minds and pockets of the big corporations, or, pay to have the technology installed to generate clean(ish) power and pay through the nose for it. In any case, you know who will benefit from this the most...the big corporations. Big energy especially. Their government flunkies will also benefit from the crumbs they happen to give them as well. It's like I said, people will only put up with this sort of affair for so long, unless they're apathetic and stupid.
What would you do, or more to the point, what do you think most people would do if their power bill went up by 50%, or 100, 200, 300%, in order to pay for all of this?? Regardless of its environmental credentials or how kind it was to nature, they'd riot. Because it wouldn't only be the power bill that went up. There are only two ways to really lower the costs of energy generation in this scenario...1) Subsidisation of the power supply (which isn't going to happen) and/or 2) Economies of scale...and the only way to achieve that is by individual, self contained power generation, not by massive national utilities. The only reason power is (relatively) cheap at present is the economies of scale w.r.t. coal mining and transportation. It's the reason why coals mines are so huge, why the trains are miles long and the price is relatively cheap. If it wasn't like this, then you'd be paying through the nose for power right now.
The reason why Copenhagen, like all the other conferences, was a dud is because of this. Money = power and neither the big corporations or the governments are willing to change their ways because of what it will mean to them. It's the reason why all their talk about clean energy and such gets nowhere in the long run. In a cruel twist (for them), they are at the behest of the people. Not because of the people's insistence that they change, but because of what will happen if they change or have to change quickly. People don't like change, people like to be comfortable and let someone else have to do all the dirty work. If we're going to get out of all of this, then it will have to be a change in the very fabric of the society that is going to have to happen, not a cosmetic change of changing your methods of power generation. If society doesn't change its fundamentals, then we will repeat the same mistakes over and over again.
You can only do that so many times before the system ultimately fails.