The ultimate in CO2 reduction

[Respenus]

You know, I'm slightly divided as far as carbon rations are concerned. Although though carbon emission trading is considered a better alternative to carbon rations, they still have their merit.

It is not without its own problems. The first thing is of course government control. Who will decide the amount of rations, will they just cut us off right away, or will they slowly decrease as we slowly adapt to the new environment? How will they decide how much each thing, object, item costs in carbon rations? Fuel is one thing, what about food or clothing? Even electricity is troublesome, as you can't really measure where someone bought their electricity, either making it worth zero in areas with only renewable sources, or very high in old industrial areas. Who then decides to find the golden centre? While I for one don't really mind a centralised state, this might just be going a tad too far as far as control is concerned.

Oh, and how about the rich/poor divide? The rich find a few homeless or less well off people and bang, they're right back at 9M, while others are left to live in the gutter. Which once again brings up my question of how the hell can Labour call itself "socialist", while their politics are Thatcherist (more or less)

What bothers me most is that we just wish to solve the symptoms of a problem, not the problem itself. The first thing is the technology. If more money were invested in green R&D and oil companies taxed more without increasing the fuel price (a levy on company profits while forbidding major price increase), we could easily lower our CO2 energy output to almost zero, considering that we could get all our power from the sun. There are plenty of desserts our there, only Tesla died a few years too soon.

The second one is human population. No matter how much you limit CO2 output, you're going to have a billion more people around the world trying to get to your level. While I don't see that as a problem, I see the number of people trying to do it a problem. Skybird recently mentioned a number of people the while world could support if everyone lived western lifestyles. 500M to maybe, maybe 1B. Time to go digging some graves people.

[August]

The end game of carbon rationing.

[Skybird]

the problem i have with this news, Repenus, is not the carbon trading scheme in principal, althigz experiences in the EU show that it is very very far from the service record it was thought it would produce, it is indeed quite ineffective for a number of reasons that already are anchored int he vvery way it was designed to be managed.

Then problem I have is that here they now want to create carbon schemes not on companies, countries or comparable entities, but on the single individual private person, with all the implications of that. I using some imaginative thought on the very idea, it is hilarious. It is a typical PC poltical populism and hectic acivism without thoroughly thinking about whether or not it will do what is claimed it will do. Add it tighhtens bureaucratic control over the individual and subjugating it to the overall tyranny that is spreading in the name of growing EU democracy.

Now that the Lisbon dicates has passed, imemdiately the EU commission starts top claim even more gioths and powers for itself. They now want to tax European people (household, private persons) directly, as if the EU is a legitimate government and sovereign state in itself. That way they want to bypass oposition by local governments that threaten to weaken the commission by withholding payments.

"This is how liberty dies - with thundering applaus." (Princess Amidala, Star Wars).