SkepticLawyer has a nice round up of blog reactions to the Australian Government's plan to ban incandescent light bulbs by 2010. (As well as lot more interesting links -- check it out.) For once, I find myself agreeing with Miranda Devine, who wrote:
So what kind of hypocrisy is there in a government that bans incandescent light bulbs while subsidising people who drive fuel-guzzling, greenhouse gas-emitting, giant four-wheel-drives?
With a 5 per cent import tariff on four-wheel-drives, most of which are imported, compared with a 10 per cent tariff on other cars, the Government is encouraging us to drive vehicles that are the worst greenhouse offenders of all. Work that out.
There is a much worse government subsidy for producing greenhouse gasses.
There is a tax concession for employer provided cars, but no tax concession if an employer pays for public transport. That's already a subsidy for producing greenhouse gasses, but it's worse than that. If the the car is driven less than 15,000 km in a year, the taxable benefit is 26% of the car's value, but if it is driven more than 40,000 km the taxable benefit is just 7%. That's right, the more you drive the car and the more greenhouse gas you produce the less tax you pay. And yes, people do drive their cars as much as possible in order to get to 40,000 km and save thousands in tax.
So my proposal is simple. The cost of the concession is about one billion dollars per year, or $50 for every person in the country. So abolish the subsidy for producing greenhouse gasses and give the average family of four a $200 tax cut.
Oh, and it was good to see that Devine has dropped the Global Waring denial.
hmmm ... maybe it's a difference in Canadian vs Australian tax terminology (or I am particularly dense today), but I'm not sure I understand how a 7% tax benefit is higher than a 26% benefit.
Or did you mean that the taxes on a vehicle are 26% at 15,000km but that through the tax benefit the taxes are reduced to 7% at 40,000?
You either count 26% of the value as income or 7%
Wow, just like Al Gore and his huge energy sucking mansion.
in which ben engages in class warfare...
Quite the non sequitur there, Ben. Are we playing free association in the comments today?
There's also the little matter of the support by the Oz government fof the coal power industry!
Oh yes, let's cite Matt Drudge as a reputable source for anything.
Drudge reputable or not, the info is in the public record. That was just the first link.
He's a hypocrite. He wants us lowly peons to struggle even harder to get ahead while he lives it up in the lap of luxury. If he really cares so deeply, he ought to move into an average home. But obviously he doesn't.
Now. now Qrazy, just because its been widely reported that Gore buys carbon offsets to cover the emissions from his travel is no reason to assume he does the same at his home or that he buys green electricity.
Next you'll be wondering how many people live full-time in an eight bedroom mansion (plus guest house) or start to wonder about the ethics of spying on a private citizen or even asking if the report is true.
To return to the initial subject of the post: the best way to level the playing field between 4WDs and other vehicles would be to abolish the import duty on both or, failing that, to reduce the duty on other cars to match the 4WD rate.
If necessary, the loss in revenue could be offset by raising the fuel excise. (I say "if necessary" because Australia currently has a substantial budget surplus.)
Currently we have relatively high taxes to own and drive a vehicle - including annual registration and CTP insurance - and the incremental cost to drive an extra mile is relatively low. This means it's economically rational to drive as much as possible rather than, for example, taking some trips by public transport.
Lower the upfront cost and raise the cost of fuel and people may drive less, they may also replace their vehicles more often, meaning less air pollution and (maybe) better average fuel consumption. (The life-cycle environmental impacts of turning over the car fleet more often are another matter.)
"He wants us lowly peons to struggle even harder to get ahead while he lives it up in the lap of luxury."
Plus I hear he eats babies.
Say I wonder what the power bill for the White house looks like?
But I'm sure that's totally different.
Ben's not playing free association since we're talking about hypocrisy here. The Gore issue is related, and it's newsworthy. If he's so terribly worried about an impending climate disaster, you would expect him to be changing his lifestyle out of fear.
Ian, I don't know if replacing vehicles more often is a viable idea, since the production of each vehicle might involve producing more pollution than driving the newer vehicle would save.
Ben's right of course that the Drudge Report is simply reprinting information from the Tennessee Center for Policy Research an "independent, nonprofit and nonpartisan research organization" whose website front page features such gems as:
Friedman's Fight for Liberty Lives On
Minimum Wage Hike Means Maximum Harm for Working Poor
How Fast Does The State Government Spend Your Money?
Yeah, they sound really nonpartisan.
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/02/26/gore-responds-to-drudge/
Gore's response:
>1) Gore's family has taken numerous steps to reduce the carbon footprint of their private residence, including signing up for 100 percent green power through Green Power Switch, installing solar panels, and using compact fluorescent bulbs and other energy saving technology.
>2) Gore has had a consistent position of purchasing carbon offsets to offset the family's carbon footprint -- a concept the right-wing fails to understand. Gore's office explains:
>What Mr. Gore has asked is that every family calculate their carbon footprint and try to reduce it as much as possible. Once they have done so, he then advocates that they purchase offsets, as the Gore's do, to bring their footprint down to zero."
Damn it, Al, don't you know that "global warming" is just a cover for our secret plan to reduce the poor to serfdom and wipe out the population of the developing world?
Ben, I said turning over the vehicle fleet more often "may" reduce total pollution. It depends very much on stuff like whether the old cars are recycled properly.
Anyone know what the average cost of power in Tennessee is?
A quick calculation says that in an average month in 2006 Gore paid 7.5 cents per kilowatt hour, so we can work out exactly how much he's paying for his "hypocritical" green power use.
Hey, maybe then we go through his garbage and count the condom wrappers!
I guess the right's much-vaunted respect for the right to privacy was just too "inconvenient" in this case.
Well, if you're the sort of person who thinks anyone to the left of the late Reagan is an evil commie who personally has the blood of millions of gulag prisoners on their hands, then yes, they are non-partisan.
1. Friedman is (was) around a million times more intelligent than Gore. It's true, I calculated it last night.
2. Gore is a dick. I can't afford to "offset my carbon" on account of I'm poor. It's nice that Gore wants me to be poorer in order to save the polar bears and so he can feel good about offsetting his emissions, and so I can rely on his social programs, but honestly, I'd rather not.
"I can't afford to "offset my carbon" on account of I'm poor."
Have you costed it?
How about Al "I'm for the poor" Gore pays to offset it for me?
Sorry, isn't raising taxes on the rich to pay for social services one of the things you object to?
Yes, I'm just saying he should do it voluntarily since he thinks it's so important, otherwise he's a dick, just like all the rest who want other people to pay for their dream social programs.
While Democrats like Gore hate the poor, Republicans love them.
That's why they've spent the last six years making more of them.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/4579573.html
So if George Bush cares about AIDS patients he should pay for research and treatment out of his own pocket?
Yes, I'm just saying he should do it voluntarily since he thinks it's so important, otherwise he's a dick,
Gore is a dick. I can't afford to "offset my carbon" on account of I'm poor.
Dick if you do, Dick if you don't.
You're silly, ben. :D
You might like to note that the tax on kerosene is 40 cents per litre, except when it is avaiation fuel, when the tax is 4 cents per litre. Of course you already know that farmers and miners don't pay tax on petroleum products used on their private property.
Apparently Al and tipper Gore both work from home.
Say, given that Gore is a best-selling author; a consultant to Google; a director of Apple; chairman of an investment company and a TV network; a judge of the Virgin Earth Prize and the organiser of the Live Earth concerts; you think that maybe he has a significant number of people working for him?
And let's not forget the round-the-clock security detail.
Odd how many of those super poor live in, say, Camden NJ, a liberal utopia if ever there was one.
Yeah, silly, it's true. If I wasn't here, you guys would just pat each other on the back all day. Wouldn't it get awful dull if nobody disagreed with you?
A revenue-neutral carbon emissions tax would, by definition, be offset by lower taxes elsewhere.
Depending on which ones you cut, the tax system as a whole can remain as progressive as it currently is, if that's what's important to you. This pathetic "rich/poor" posturing is just a red herring.
Ben, I don't know if the Chronicle article reproduces it but the original report has a list of the 10 US states/territories with the highest proportion of extremely poor people.
With the exception of Washington DC, IIRC, the other nine spots were all taken by "red" states.
Ben
Al is paying for his own carbon offsets and advocating a system where everyone else does the same. Meanwhile you are paying for your own health insurance and advocating a system where everyone else does the same.
Isn`t what Gore is doing the whole basis of your stupid ideological system - a market based system to solve a problem, and if the poor don`t like it they can just eat cake?
You really are being a flaming hypocrite today.
For the record I advocate jailing libertarians who cannot afford their carbon offsets. They can walk on a treadmill to provide green power for others. If they really valued their freedom they would pay for it - its all about priorities.
"I can't afford to "offset my carbon" on account of I'm poor."
If you really are poor, in fact not even as poor as most of the world's population, then you won't be responsible for more than your fair share of allowable carbon emissions.
Granting the obvious points that Drudge is a hack and that ben is a self-contradicting hypocrite, it appears from Gore's response to Think Progress that he does not deny the claim that he uses 20 times as much electricity as the average household. His non-denial strongly implies that the claim is true.
This raises the following questions:
1. What exactly is Gore doing with all this electricity?
2. Does this level of consumption indicate that Gore advocates purely non-conservational solutions to the CO2 pollution problem?
3. If he does, doesn't this put him outside the scientific consensus that he claims to speak for?
4. Is there a sustainable way to provide the current consumption level, let alone 20x?
Can anyone comment? Thanks.
Since somehow it's impossible not to discuss Gore in any climate change discussion, I'd just like to point out the obvious fact that hypocrisy doesn't invalidate an argument. Even if Gore is a hypocrite, that has no bearing on whether he's right or wrong about climate change.
This is the first time I can recall that I've seen Tim Lambert come with any sort of proposal that might reveal a political preference. (Not counting sane science proposals, but they aren't really political, are they?)
I wonder if the political blogs will notice.
Not that there's anything wrong with it, of course.
Regarding "carbon offsets," I've posted this question elsewhere, and have never received and answer.
How can you have an "offset" situation when there is no limitation as to what you are offsetting--whether by way of government regulation or current limitation on availability of product or service?
Presumably, by paying "carbon offsets," Gore believes that he is paying someone for something. What is he paying for, and to whom is he paying it?
I'm not a big fan of what is implied by this sort of "carbon offset" thing. Taken at its base, it would mean that the wealthy could induce poor people to sell them their carbon "ration cards" (note the government regulation aspect), leaving them with no "carbon-emitting ability." That's not good social policy, IMHO.
"This raises the following questions:
1. What exactly is Gore doing with all this electricity?"
Don't know.
"2. Does this level of consumption indicate that Gore advocates purely non-conservational solutions to the CO2 pollution problem?"
Being an advocate means you argue for something, i.e. say some words that are an argument. He's not saying any words for the above argument.
"3. If he does, doesn't this put him outside the scientific consensus that he claims to speak for?"
I haven't heard of any scientific consensus for any particular level of conservation. The only scientific consensus is about the amount of CO2 that ends up in the atmosphere.
"4. Is there a sustainable way to provide the current consumption level, let alone 20x?"
Sure, there's no laws of physics that would need to be broken, just a question of whether people think it matters enough to be worth paying what it costs.
Chris, thanks for addressing my questions, but I am looking for information, not for semantic hair-splitting.
Gore clearly advocates some action regarding the co2 pollution. His actions seem to indicate that he does not favor conservation. If so, what does he favor?
Science surely can tell us something about what are the feasible (as opposed to theoretically physically possible) solutions? Is there some kind of accepted scientific view on the matter? Are there any such feasible solutions that do not require substantial reductions in energy usage? Can, for example, the usage of plug-in hybrids substitute electricity for gasoline on a large scale? If that is so, can wind- or solar-generated electricity provide enough energy sustainably to satisfy current levels of household demand plus the added demand for transportation?
Is there some kind of accepted scientific view on the matter? Are there any such feasible solutions that do not require substantial reductions in energy usage?
A recent SciAm devoted an entire issue to these questions and more. Joe Bob sez: check it out!
Best,
D
Government a part of the problem? Say it isn't so!
Welcome to my world!
Raj,
Some examples of carbon offsets:
- installing insulation in houses to reduce electricity demand;
- conducting energy audits of business;
- distributing compact fluro light bulbs for free in Mexico city;
- trapping and burning for power methane from coal mines that previously was vented to ther atmosphere;
- funding an Indian or Chinese factory to upgrade their boilers from coal to natural gas.
- replacing petrol or diesel with a biodiesel or ethanol blend;
Two points:
1. Most emissions don't come from the household sector so it's unlike most offsets will either;
2. very few people wake up in the morning and think "how can I put some greenhouse gases into the atmosphere?". Offsets aren't about taking things away from people or restricting their activities, they're about finding ways to deliver the goods and services people actually want.
As to what the strategy going forward should be: my view is that we internalise the cost of greenhouse gas pollution into the polluting activities and let markets take the principal role into working otu how to minimise the resulting costs.
Energy conservation is undoubtedly an extremely important part of the solution - and hopefully the examples I've given show that offsets actually work with conservation programs.
In the long term, renewable energy will play a much larger role than at present but there's going to be a lengthy transitional period in which more efficient use of fossil fuels (i.e. integrated gasification coal-fired power plants) will play an important role.
"Welcome to my world!"
Sorry did someone write: "Government is a soul-devouring beast which must be destroyed at all costs and industry should be allowed to emit as much pollution as they like"?
I'm with you there, but ...
... woops! You fell off the "let's mistate libertarianism" deep end again.
Right because once we've "destroyed" government, pollution will be controlled by...sternly-worded letters to the editor?
Who was it who's supposedly fallen off the deep end here?