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Climate Change, Green Taxes, and Green Living

  
 
nighthawk
11:58 / 29.10.06
The idea of 'Green taxes' has been floating around for a while now, but I imagine they'll be in the UK news a lot more this week, after this leaked report.

Climate change is becoming a much more prominent issue - not so much because of the massive loss of life etc. threatening poorer communities, as we saw in New Orleans, but because climate change may cut global annual economic output by up to 20%.

Anyway, I was wondering what people here thought about the prospect of 'green taxes'? They strike me as an attempt to shift the burden of sorting out climate change onto working people, rather than producers and industry. Indeed I think that this is the instinct that lies behind a lot of the attention given to 'green living' in the media etc. But perhaps I'm too cynical.

What does Barbelith think? Can climate change be rectified through "market forces and price signals", as Mr Milliband is claiming? Are Green commodities and Green taxes a solution, a step in the right direction, or completely inconsequential?
 
 
Tryphena Absent
18:11 / 29.10.06
Green taxes are a step in the right direction because if people get used to them you can start to remove products from the market and it won't be a huge and controversial step. If the government are at all serious about climate change then they know they're going to have to bring in restrictions eventually. Those restrictions should be broader than the CFC restrictions and there won't necessarily be replacement products. Basically we need to tax airline fuel but if that happens now people are going to be pissed. Tax everything else first and they're liable to shrug and be irritated rather than angry.

If we accept that capitalism is here to stay then we have to find some way to make the reality of global warming fit into that ideology before we reach a real crunch point. As to this

They strike me as an attempt to shift the burden of sorting out climate change onto working people, rather than producers and industry

The burden has to rest on everyone, they're trying to find a way to make money from climate change before they start to frankly haemorrhage capital. Who can blame them? If anything can harm the economies of the developed world climate change can, it has more power to bankrupt then anything the West has seen in 100 years.
 
 
Alex's Grandma
18:32 / 29.10.06
It does seem as if this version of the 'Green Living' thing, if it takes off at all, is going to effectively translate as one more stick to beat the GBP with, really. It's difficult enough trying to dispose of all the wine bottles, pornography and drug paraphernalia in a surreptitious manner as it is (I mean I try and recycle, but it's ... well, you can only take this so far,) and once there are licensed 'Green' rubbish inspectors empowered to go through the bins for evidence of environmentally unsound practices, (at the moment this seems about five years away,) I guess I'm going to have to think about burning a lot of material in the back garden. Which will result in C02 emmissions.

If the report results in anything, I'd imagine it'll be an increase in personal taxes, fuel bills and prices at the supermarket, and that would be about it. If it's at all possible (and under any currently feasible UK administration it's surely going to be,) the effects of any new green taxes on business will be passed on to the consumer as fast as humanly possible.

I just feel the problem of climate change should be addressed by government first, business second, and Joe Public third. And not the other way round.

Frankly, on pretty much any subject, apart from possibly private members bars in London, I'd trust the opinions of a vomit-stained sock puppet being put through it's paces by an insane drunk outside Camden tube station over David Millband's, full spot. How is it possible to trust a man who so closely resembles one of Gerry Anderson's less successful ideas?
 
 
Olulabelle
18:33 / 29.10.06
Nicholas Stern's report suggests that climate change will put the world into global recession.
 
 
Alex's Grandma
18:34 / 29.10.06
X-posted with Anna there - not trying to start fite.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
19:11 / 29.10.06
When you think about what we actually have to effectively do to reduce emissions enough global recession is about as surprising as a dog barking.
 
 
Hydra vs Leviathan
10:24 / 31.10.06
Green taxes look like a lot of hypocrisy to me, just like "health-motivated" alcohol/tobacco/etc taxes - if the govt taxes pollution, however much it claims its intent is to deter people from polluting, it instantly gives the govt an incentive to increase pollution - because if it's taxed, the govt makes money from it...

If the government really wanted to prevent polluting behaviour (either at the individual-body level or at the ecosystem level) then it would pass criminal laws against it - but that would cost the govt money (note that, at a corporate level, fines are not really a criminal penalty but more like a form of taxes)...

It's also worth noting that neither governments nor corporations actually want ecologically sustainable sources of energy, or practices of living in general, because they benefit - in fact, they derive much of their present power- from the wasteful nature of consumerist culture. Sustainable sources of food or renewable sources of energy, by their very nature, cannot be controlled by a monopoly or oligopoly, because they are self-renewing or otherwise "unlimited" and thus not in limited and controllable supply... thus we get governments positing the energy crisis as fossil fuels vs nuclear (both dependent on both very finite, non-renewable material resources and very large-scale, necessarily centralised technology) and not giving solar, wind or wave energy a look in, and international trade rules designed to prevent any country's farmers from meeting their own local-scale food needs, and "terminator" GM seed technology, and government-subsidised supermarkets buying food at a loss to the farmers, etc etc...

Neither government nor the market will "tackle" climate change, since it (or rather the social relations that are causing it) are in their (at least short-term) interests, and it has been proven many times that short-term interests trump long-term interests for the power-hungry (money being a sub-category of power). IMO the only way to act against climate change is for individuals and small-scale communities to get it together in theire own lives and start making sustainability a reality on a small-scale, pragmatic level - while recognising that the fight against climate change is also necessarily a fight against both governmental and corporate power...
 
 
Tom Coates
10:57 / 31.10.06
Well it depends where the money goes, really. I'm certainly in favour of being able to give companies incentives for cutting emissions, I'm definitely in favour of money being invested in new technologies that reduce emissions and pollution and I'm also in favour of using taxes to transition people from one particular type of product to another that is environmentally more sound. That approach worked relatively well with the transition to Unleaded fuel: Current UK fuel tax rates
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
11:09 / 31.10.06
I agree with it in principle, in the same way I thoroughly agree with compulsory recycling in principle. (Hackney Council, for example, make it tremendously difficult to do your recycling duty- first off they gave us two boxes for our building- a building containing (I think) either eight or ten flats. I contacted them and asked for more, and we got a couple more, which they didn't bring back after the next collection. Now we only appear to have one. And last week they didn't turn up to collect it.)

Green taxation sounds like a fantastic idea, as long as it doesn't get so ballsed up that it overcomplicates everything without actually being levied on the right things. I'll raise a tentative hand in favour, because on paper it's the best idea anyone's had in a long time.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
12:01 / 31.10.06
Sounds like you have a problem with your recycling pick up staff rather than the council itself. Ring them and complain that the boxes have disappeared. Make yourself the fear of Hackney council!
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
12:25 / 31.10.06
Sounds about right (mind you, and last bit of off-topica, the Council and I are already at loggerheads over their refusal to make it in the slightest bit simple, or even possible, to pay my council tax. I WANT TO GIVE THEM MONEY. WHY WON'T THEY LET ME GIVE THEM MONEY??)
 
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
15:31 / 31.10.06
Gosh. Stern's report was a bit of a blast. I wonder whether they'll have to rethink aviation policy. Or whether they'll just say "Yes, we need to address these issues" and then ignore them.
 
  
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