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Urgent measures we need to take now but for more long-term solutions
9 June, 2009 - 12:07
Achieving big cuts in the immediate short term is mainly about cutting demand. Changing where we get our energy from - substituting renewable sources for fossil fuel sources - will take a bit of time. But if we are to do it on the kind of scale we need to then we need massive investment starting right now. We need to be training those people in precision engineering to make wind turbines etc...etc... We need to be making the jack-up barges to install off shore wind capacity etc....
And maybe there are lots of other big structural changes we should be making right now. Maybe to the tax system ? Should we have a system of carbon rationing starting right now ?
You tell us what we need ....
18 June, 2009 - 00:48
#2
I have already commented against the suggestion for abolishing domestic flights on the need to change the balance of travel. But we should go further we should ration flying and fuel for motoring as a stage on the way to full carbon rationing. Every person should have a flying and motoring fuel ration. This should be progressively reduced. Rations should have a limited life and there should be a market enabling the rich to buy the ration from the poor who did not wish to use theirs. The government should take a cut of the market and ultimately could sell over the limit ration for a high price (and use it to subsidise public transport.)
The government should also launch a scheme to improve the insulation of the existing housing stock. This could be paid for by householders by continuing to charge them half of the reduced cost of heating their homes ubtil the insullation costs were paid for. (Green jobs again)
4 July, 2009 - 04:04
#3
To Tony Hamilton
Why should there be rich and poor, and why won't the poor want what the rich have??
5 July, 2009 - 16:06
#4
I agree Neal, but that's the great unspoken truth lurking behind the Climate Change debate. Truly it is an issue of cooperation, egality and, even, "socialism".The era of gross over consumption has been led by those who have had most or obtained most by fair means or foul. It is they who now must learn to get by on so much less, not just buy up the rights of the less well off!
5 July, 2009 - 19:15
#5
Thank you Chris Hemmings for saying most eloquently what I was hinting at. More power to your elbow Chris. Regards, Neal Pearson.
9 July, 2009 - 22:24
#6
Carbon Rationing and Trading:
The interesting thing about carbon rationing is that it has an inbuilt egalitarian element to it. In the early years there will be trading dividends that will acrue to those that are both poor and frugal (They do tend to go together).
However when carbon rationing matures and the ration cap reduces to 80% - 90% of its original value, then there will be little scope for trading, as most people will have little or no carbon rations to trade.
Maurice
21 July, 2009 - 05:27
#7
Interesting debate regarding rich and poor when it comes to climate change.
See "The Need for Trees" above. With this, I would like to see some coupling of a Forest Credit, paid for increasing a country's forest stock, with a tax on carbon extraction, levied on any removal of fossil carbon from its natural home. This is not meant as a new kind of offset, more a way to emphasise the damage done by the use of fossil fuels.
Further encouragement of reforestation will be needed but this redevelopment of a natural buffer against changes in atmospheric carbon is a long term solution that we really must start now. We don't merely campaign against cutting down existing forest but go out and out to bring home the importance of vastly increasing forest cover of the planet.
Chris Hemmings