[Pops]

Ralfy, the bit about reinvesting savings only holds as long as the amount not spent on the commute is available. If the one-person commute is avoided because the commuter cannot afford the cost, there is no "savings".

Just because I don't own a Lear Jet doesn't mean I've "saved" enough to buy a ski lodge in Aspen. lol

[Tanada]

I can vouch for that! In all the months I have been off work I have 'saved' an awful lot of gasoline, but it sure didn't put any money in my pocket to do something else with.

[ROCKMAN]

Pops – Obviously you wouldn’t make it as a DC policy maker. You wouldn’t understand that increasing the US budget by a lesser amount than planned would be a “drastic cut in the US govt budget”. LOL.

But you and Tanada bring up an aspect that’s been bugging me and this is perhaps the best place to air it. The POTUS wants to increase the “carbon tax” on electricity plants to help reduce the production of GHG. Taxing such pollution might give the power plants an incentive to reduced emissions. Or not. Just like some aspects of Obamacare: some employers see a financial benefit to paying the fine instead of providing the health insurance. I’ve heard nothing about a mandate to force plants to reduce emissions…just use those emissions as another revenue source for the govt. I have no trouble imagining a plant determining it’s better to pay the tax then pay to upgrade especially if they can pass some or all of it on to the customers. In time that might give some incentive to folks to use less e- but how many folks do you know today that aren’t reducing their e- as much as possible?

Am I missing something? Been known to happen, ya know. LOL.

[Pops]

I don't know. Even though my knee jerks to the left and I'm some kind of tree hugger the "idea" of imminent doom from GW hasn't sunk in yet I guess. The greenhouse effect makes logical sense to me and I have no problem with the idea that we need to consume less. I don't see modern Americans as any happier than those of 50 years ago even though we have lots more stuff, it's all relative.

I'd rather see the story line be more one of conservation, for our children's' sake, for the sake of the natual world, for the sake of God's entrusting it to us, etc. The whole "sky is falling" bit is growing old, whether it's Dems/TEAs are Evil! or mad max is around the corner! or we'll all fry in our skins! At some point you need to do a thing because you want to not because We'll All Die! if you don't.

If taxes do that then that's OK with me. We use taxes to promote or deter lots of things we think are important, the biggest tax breaks we have are employer provided health care and mortgage interest, haven't heard much about austerity in those areas, probably because most of the folks against taxes take advantage of those 2 lol.

But a combination of creeping regulation and slowly escalating taxes on "carbon" is fine for another reason, it's probably the only way the Federals can force the populous to wean themselves from FF.

[ROCKMAN]

Pops - "...it's probably the only way the Federals can force the populous to wean themselves from FF." But that's the key question, isn't it: will it cause a significant change in GHG production or will it just increase govt revenue with the costs passed on the public and the economy? And if it does effect consumption how long will that feedback loop take to work? Power utilities have been switching to relatively cheap NG and thus allowing cheaper energy production. So balanced against the increased carbon tax maybe we don't see much incentive to cut consumption.

It's real simple IMHO: you want to decrease the amount of GHG produced by utilities then just pass a law not allowing more than X tons/yr be produced per plant. Of course, that might require some plants to shut down for part of the year or stop providing e- for a few hours every day but this would achieve the goal. Making consumers pay for their share of GHG production doesn't reduce the volume one bit if the consumers are willing/capable of paying. But there is one indisputable fact: it doesn't matter if the policy reduces GHG production or not...the govt still gets a nice revenue out of the process. And that IMHO appears to be the primary goal of the policy. If it eventually reduces the amount of GHG production that would just be a lucky side effect.

[Tanada]

But a combination of creeping regulation and slowly escalating taxes on "carbon" is fine for another reason, it's probably the only way the Federals can force the populous to wean themselves from FF.

Why this obsession with Government Force? What ever happened to using Education and Positive Reinforcement plus Incentives?

You want people to stop using FF? Then put your money (government) where your mouth is and do like the French, pick a standard nuclear power plant design and mass produce enough of them to supply 85% of the electricity demand of the USA. Secondly subsidize electric and other alternate vehicle designs to make them CHEAPER than the FF designs, not just cost competitive. The heck with a tax rebate that only makes it possible to sell a luxury car at a mid car price range, make it that alternative energy cars are $10,000.00 and watch the stampede as people rush to by Nissan Leaf's and GM Volts and plug in hybrids from Toyota and Honda and Ford and Fiat.

Force is the last refuge of the bully. Anyone coerced by force resents the heck out of it and seeks to disrupt whatever they were forced to do as often as they can get away with it. If the force is annoying enough it leads to outright pushback, just look at Egypt.

[Pops]

Why this obsession with Government Force?

So "incentives" and education and subsidized PEVs materialize from thin air?

I'm ready to hear Ted Cruze on becoming more like the French, LOL

[Tanada]

Why this obsession with Government Force?

So "incentives" and education and subsidized PEVs materialize from thin air?

I'm ready to hear Ted Cruze on becoming more like the French, LOL

Geeze Pops who said anything about pulling stuff out of thin air? I have always been in favor of carbon import taxes, I don't care if its Oil from OPEC or Ethanol from Brazil there should be a hefty tariff on it.

After you use up that money you can take the fuel tax money that they are already improperly allocating and use it to fund incentives.

While your doing that you can straighten out the screwy school curriculum and get it educating people an science fact about carbon emissions climate change and ecosystem damage instead of the mealy mouth pap they put in kids heads. The current system fosters the false belief that geoengineering and higher technology can get us out of any mess we make. As a lecture I watched put it, that's like smashing all your china then super gluing it back together and claiming its just as good as new. Even if you manage to find every piece and get it back in place it will never be as good as new.

[Timo]

It's been a while, but here goes. The carbon tax IS NOT about an economic mincrease in government revenue. Our physical ability to avoid destroying the planet is, or should be, completely independent of economics. Either we do, or we don't. If we don't, game over. If we do, the carbon tax may have convinced a few people to reduce their use of FFs. THAT'S the purpose of the carbon tax. Economics are secondary. Now, i do fully understand that nothing is free, and our global economy is dependent on people consuming stuff and spending money to keep our way of life going for as long as possible. I also understand that carbon reducing technologies also requires money, so in that sense, the two issues are not totally independent of each other. I simply see some things as being worth more than money. But, to suggest that our dependence on our economy de jour fundamentally preculudes efforts to reduce greenhouse gasses, and precludes the transitions to alternative technologies to gain the energies we need to live is to deny that the planet, itself, is worth giving a damn about, and we should all rush in head first in our efforts to bring on the Rapture.

Sorry to rant, but i get tired of people using economic arguments to justify business as usual, knowing that time until the point of no return is running out. Let someone else worry about it. I don't have the money to create the change we all collectively need to survive. Ignorance is bliss. Inaction is heaven.

[Pops]

My point T is that an excise tax on an unwanted behavior (carbon, tobacco, seatbelt-free driving) discourages the behavior society doesn't like but it only affects the entity involved in the unwanted behavior.

Conversely, a tax incentive or subsidy paid from a general fund "penalizes" everyone indiscriminately via "forced" taxation and benefits only the recipient of the subsidy, Solyndra for example.

As Timo (hi Timo) pointed out, a carbon tax isn't a way to raise funds, although I know that is hard for people extremely attached to money to understand. It is merely a way to penalize evil-doers into bending to the will of society. LOL

Do you really believe we are going to get government to subsidise nukes when half the government is crowing they cut head-start by 5%? We can't even get half the population to believe there is anything but a conspiracy by Al Gore to make money.

Government is not going to do anything as long as that is the plan of half the government.

[ralfy]

Ralfy, the bit about reinvesting savings only holds as long as the amount not spent on the commute is available. If the one-person commute is avoided because the commuter cannot afford the cost, there is no "savings".

Just because I don't own a Lear Jet doesn't mean I've "saved" enough to buy a ski lodge in Aspen. lol

The only way to make sure that savings are not available is to hide them under your bed. Unfortunately, people have this habit of looking for ways to make their money grow, which includes putting them in banks or investing them in one venture or another.

And if there are no savings, then that means that that capitalist system has fallen apart. For example, instead of the example concerning Lear jets and ski lodges, try someone who earns only a dollars a day who can no longer get medical treatment because food costs more. Given that, is it any wonder why there are connections between peak oil and the price of food, and food and oil prices and social unrest?

http://todanz.blogspot.com/2011/02/food ... archy.html

[ralfy]

I can vouch for that! In all the months I have been off work I have 'saved' an awful lot of gasoline, but it sure didn't put any money in my pocket to do something else with.

"Savings" doesn't refer to resources saved but to income earned. The savings, which comes in the form of money, is put in banks or invested in other businesses, where ultimately the interest can only be paid by using the money to produce more goods and services.

In which case, the money was not lent to you but to someone else, who used the money to produce or consume more, which is why oil consumption grew for the rest of the world:

http://ourfiniteworld.com/2013/04/11/pe ... e-problem/

[Pops]

You aren't reading us Ralphie.

I didn't say no one in the world was saving money. I said avoiding an expense (i.e. living within walking distance of work) because I don't have the money to commute is not a savings because I didn't have the money to commute. I can't be saving money I didn't have.

That's where the part about me not owning a Lear Jet OR a place in Aspen comes in. I don't have the money to purchase a jet and no matter how many I don't buy, I still don't have money left over.

lol, sounds like a good system though, I'd not buy a jet a couple of times a week and bank the "savings"!

[Pops]

In fact I sorta did just that. I moved from an expensive area where i could commute and make good money but had to spend every bit, to a cheaper area where I make less money but have no commute, no mortgage, lower taxes, etc.

I was making $125 but now make $25 and low and behold I have no savings to invest! LOL

I'm the winner!

[Tanada]

My point T is that an excise tax on an unwanted behavior (carbon, tobacco, seatbelt-free driving) discourages the behavior society doesn't like but it only affects the entity involved in the unwanted behavior.

Conversely, a tax incentive or subsidy paid from a general fund "penalizes" everyone indiscriminately via "forced" taxation and benefits only the recipient of the subsidy, Solyndra for example.

As Timo (hi Timo) pointed out, a carbon tax isn't a way to raise funds, although I know that is hard for people extremely attached to money to understand. It is merely a way to penalize evil-doers into bending to the will of society. LOL

Do you really believe we are going to get government to subsidise nukes when half the government is crowing they cut head-start by 5%? We can't even get half the population to believe there is anything but a conspiracy by Al Gore to make money.

Government is not going to do anything as long as that is the plan of half the government.

That is precisely why 'Democracy' rarely survives, they turn into oligarchy or bureaucratic dinosaurs that can't respond to the real world because TPTB or some paper pusher don't want their boat rocked.

post1006801.html

What can I say, we could fix our problems by choosing a rational course but instead we just keep spiraling around the drain headed for Stage Eight.

[Pops]

I think today there are more democracies than not, but it's certainly messy after eons of rule by the rich and powerful. We in the US are pretty dysfunctional right now but I don't think we're circling the drain, I'm probably too optimistic tho, I bought a lotto ticket yesterday, LOL.

Any organization is going to drift toward oligarchy, that's the rule. The aim of a democracy is to be able to throw the oligarchs out without burning down city hall. But the point of representative government is to elect representatives to do what the individual can't or won't for the "Greater Good". Otherwise why have a government at all? To protect the turf of the local Plutocrat? Our big problem is probably also the oldest; everyone wants something and nobody wants to pay.

But generally my personal feeling is the duty of citizens is to guard against oligarchy but the duty of government is to protect the citizen from whoever would seize power, whether that's a foreign power or an internal power. The most obvious internal powers of course are the mentioned special interests, plutocrats and especially the non-human personage of corporations.

Dow, RJ Reynolds, GM, "investment" bankers - and carbon producers. Go down a list and it is clear that corporations will not do the right thing unless forced and will whine and cry and lie every step of the way if it affect the bottom line. So laws or fines or both are required to be enacted by the representatives.

--
I don't believe we're circling the drain though, more likely just continuing a cycle. Young people are idealistic and old people are afraid and it's always been that way so it should be no surprise that with a lot of old people they are being more successful hanging on to their gains. For 50 years the owners have been ascendant and the worker in a rut, 50-100 years ago it was the reverse - we were younger then and more idealistic.


I heard on NPR yesterday that some TEAs and Dems are getting together to oppose portions of the military appropriations bill regarding civil rights, domestic spying etc., I believe I pre-visioned that... (No Country For Old Men allusion there in case you missed it lol) Maybe with the Boomers Bubble passing like a too-big-serving of cabbage, young people can assert their idealism again.


That's enough of that lol

/off_topic_rant

[Nano]

What is interests me these days is the story of nuclear energy. I think there will sooner or later be a grand public outcry over the way nuclear has been neglected in developed countries. People will start to wonder more and more why energy is getting more expensive even while climate change and air pollution are not being solved. How long will people believe that solar and wind energy are all they are cracked up to be?

The results of the Chinese nuclear program will be coming in throughout the next few years as the first of a raft of new EPR's and AP1000 come online, on time, and on budget. And all the US, the EU and Japan are getting is more coal and gas burning. Methinks you can fool some people some of the time, but not all the people all of the time. The nuclear option will sooner or later return to the developed world. Sooner would be better. In principle, nuclear could replace all fossil fuels including crude oil at $100 a barrel, and nuclear fuel is inexhaustible.

[ROCKMAN]

Nano - Here's one possible explanation. Not sure why building a nuclear plant in the US, manned by American citizens and selling all the output in the US would be a problem if some of the capital came from a non-US company.

Plans to build two new reactors at the South Texas Project nuclear facility outside Bay City hit a road block Tuesday.The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission ruled that a partnership between NRG and Toshiba Corp. through the holding company Nuclear Innovation North America violated a U.S law prohibiting foreign control of nuclear power plants.

“At this point NINA from our perspective is foreign owned, controlled or dominated,” said NRC spokesman Scott Burnell. “Until such time as NINA can come up with a different corporate ownership structure we would not be able to approve their license.” The holding company plans to appeal the ruling to the NRC’s Atomic Safety Licensing Board, arguing that NRG controls 90 percent of the holding company, a NRG spokesman said. No date for a hearing has been set.

Regulators took issue with NRG’s decision two years ago to pull back its investment in expanding the existing two reactors at the South Texas Project facility. At the time electricity prices were falling rapidly with the tapping of vast domestic reserves of natural gas. Since then the licensing process, which takes years to complete, has been wholly funded by Toshiba in the form of a loan, an NRG spokesman said.

But Houston-based NRG has not completely dismissed the project, at least in concept.
“It is unknown where natural gas prices will be in the future,” said spokesman David Knox. “At some point it’s very possible new nuclear will be economically viable.” NRG and Toshiba remains hopeful they can convince the atomic safety board to overrule NRC staff. But they will likely face an uphill climb.

“In this case it would seem unlikely the board would come to any different conclusion than what the staff has stated,” Burnell said. “They would have to prove day to day control of the company lies within the United States.”

[ralfy]

You aren't reading us Ralphie.

I didn't say no one in the world was saving money. I said avoiding an expense (i.e. living within walking distance of work) because I don't have the money to commute is not a savings because I didn't have the money to commute. I can't be saving money I didn't have.

That's where the part about me not owning a Lear Jet OR a place in Aspen comes in. I don't have the money to purchase a jet and no matter how many I don't buy, I still don't have money left over.

lol, sounds like a good system though, I'd not buy a jet a couple of times a week and bank the "savings"!

I don't think the IEA is referring to people who have to walk because they don't have money. Rather, they are referring to people who choose to walk so that they don't have to spend on gas. The money saved from not buying oil will be spent on something else, and that ultimately means oil consumption elsewhere. Hence, as oil consumption drops for the U.S., EU, and Japan, it rises for the rest of the world.

http://ourfiniteworld.com/2013/04/11/pe ... e-problem/

That's also why sales for cars, appliances, etc., are rising globally.